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Chapter Text

Aithne Moran woke up in her underwear when the Sith started firing on Endar Spire. Not the nicest way to wake up, especially several hours before her shift was due to start, but from the rock of the ship and the firing she heard down the hall, she knew the situation was already bad and she’d have to jump ship fast.

The door whooshed open, and she fell into a combat stance at once, but it was just her barracks mate, a blond Alderaanian guy whom she’d never spoken to awake. Aithne relaxed.

Her barracks mate was not so relaxed. “We’ve been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet!” he yelled. “Endar Spire is under attack! We don’t have much time!”

Aithne blinked in the force of his adrenaline and fear, then turned away and crossed to the footlocker that held her supplies. “No, duh, we’re under attack,” she muttered. “Otherwise, I’d still be asleep.” She sorted through her things, trying to decide what to take with her. If they were evacuating, she’d need to travel light. She looked over her shoulder. “You got a name?”

Her tone seemed to calm the kid down somewhat. “Trask Ulgo,” he replied. “I guess we haven’t talked before this. Hurry up, we have to find Bastila! We have to make sure she makes it off the ship alive.”

Aithne grimaced. Republics. Always certain the fate of the galaxy swung on the actions of a single soldier. Well. It was what all the propaganda said. She pulled on her pants, long-sleeved shirt, and cargo vest, wishing they equipped their people like the fate of the galaxy swung on a single soldier. “Bastila’s that uppity Jedi the navigation officer keeps complaining about, right?”

Ulgo looked as horrified as if she’d just declared allegiance to the Sith. “She’s the commanding officer on Endar Spire!” he protested. Aithne leveled a look at him. All she’d seen since boarding the bucket a few days ago were a couple of bridge officers, but she knew enough to know that wasn’t true. To his credit, Trask flushed, even as more shots rocked the ship. “Well, no,” he admitted, “but she’s the one in charge of this mission. One of our primary duties is to guarantee her safety in the event of enemy attack! You swore an oath, just like everyone else on this mission. Now it’s time to make good on that oath!”

He glared at her. Aithne stared back, buckling a simple leather belt around her waist. One of the only concessions the Republic had made in equipping her for combat was to offer her one of the new stealth field generators. She’d considered it, if only to make them pay for it, but she’d never been good at sneaking around.

“Look, we haven’t met, so I’ll forgive that,” she said. “I swore that oath because I had no choice. Republic froze my assets on a visit home to Deralia and told me I could join up or take my chances with no credits and a ding on my ID. If I hadn’t been bored out of my mind anyway, I would’ve told them to jump off a cliff and gone smuggling, but as is, I don’t figure I owe them anything.”

Ulgo went pink, then pale, and Aithne knew he’d known about her. She nodded. Figured. Soldiers gossiped like domestic servants.

“Maybe not,” he conceded, “Look. I’ve heard about you: you’ve explored the farthest reaches of the galaxy. You’ve visited planets I’ve never even heard of. The Republic needs people with those skills and abilities, and right now, so do I.”

Aithne regarded him, then, as the sound of cannon fire emanated down the hallway and she felt the electric charge of failing systems in her teeth, she decided now wasn’t really the time for her to be petty. Anyway, her barracks was across the ship from the bridge and the escape pods. And Trask had come to wake her up. That said something, especially from a soldier as young as he was. He couldn’t be much older than twenty.

She sighed with unnecessary drama, more to comfort him than anything else—show she didn’t take this too seriously, that she wasn’t scared. “Firefights never wait until you’re ready for them, do they?” she asked. “I was asleep five minutes ago.” She popped a spare blaster and a couple of medpacs into her duffel and wrapped her hand around the battered hilt of her short sword. Melee weapons were better against current gen Sith armor and shield technology. “Let’s go,” she told Ulgo.

He looked relieved, then glanced behind him. “I think the door locked behind me because of the attack,” he told her. “But I’ve got the override codes. I should probably unlock it.”

Aithne raised an eyebrow at him and gestured at the door. “Well feel free.”

Trask worked with the door a moment, then turned back to her. “You had better take the lead,” he said.

Aithne wondered where all that Republic gung-ho spirit had gone, then took pity on Ulgo. He was really just a kid. “If that’s what you need,” she said under her breath, and started down the hall at a jog.

She was halted by a buzzing from her communicator. She brought it up and saw Major Onasi. She’d seen him once or twice while up briefing the navigators.

“This is Carth Onasi,” he was saying. A general broadcast, then. “The Sith are threatening to overrun our position! We can’t hold out long against their firepower! All hands to the bridge!”

The line went dead. Trask’s face had gone white. “That was Carth Onasi—”

Aithne cut him off. “I know.”

“He’s one of the Republic’s best pilots, though,” Trask said. Fear laced his words like a drug. He was talking more for himself than he was to her. “He’s seen more combat than the rest of the Endar Spire’s crew put together! If he says things are bad . . .”

Aithne interrupted him again. “Panic will get us killed, Ulgo. For now, just worry about the next ten meters, ok?”

Ulgo’s shoulders squared, and he nodded.

Aithne renewed the jog down the ship’s corridor. It looked bad. Conduits were sparking, and she could see some carbon scoring on the walls. The door ahead was locked. Aithne looked over her shoulder at Trask, but he shrugged. He didn’t have the codes for this one. Aithne breathed out through her nose and shoved her hair back from her face. She hadn’t had time to put it up in any way that would stay through an evac. She just hoped the whole thing didn’t come down and blind her in the middle of combat. The bucking of the ship made slicing the door a little more difficult than usual, but Aithne had considerable pride in her security skill. She’d opened the door in a few more seconds.

It opened to two uniformed Sith. Aithne raised her sword into the guard position, evaluating their stances, but Trask charged right in.

“It’s the advance boarding party!” he cried. “For the Republic!”

Aithne groaned. Force, he had a blaster, but instead of diving behind the door to shoot from cover, he was trying to close to melee range like the Sith didn’t also have blasters. If you had a melee weapon to take the fight to close quarters it was one thing, but if you didn’t have to risk the bolts, running across open ground was just stupid. The greenie was going to get himself killed. They’d shot him in the shoulder already.

Gritting her teeth, she ran across the firing path, and the craziness of the action took the Sith aback. She kicked out with her right foot, jolting the blaster rifle from one of them, and then stabbed up where his breastplate ended, up into his gut. She felt his armor crack, felt the sickening slide of blade into flesh. She used her foot again to pull her blade out and let him fall to the ground, whirling just in time to dodge the other guy’s shot at her unarmored back. She caught his gun in the crook of her upper and lower arm, wrenched it away, then brought the heavy hilt of her sword hard into his temple. There was another crunch of cheap armor, and he went down. Maybe dead, maybe not, but she wasn’t going to stick around and find out.

She turned to Trask. “You want to maybe survive long enough for us to get to Bastila?” she suggested, fishing into her bag and pulling out a medpac. The kolto inside would congeal the blood of his shoulder wound and kickstart the healing process. “You’re no good to her or the Republic dead.”

Ulgo was pale, his face taut and drawn with pain, but he nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “You saved my life. That was probably the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Aithne shrugged and knelt, searching the Sith bodies for supplies they might be able to use later. A replacement medpac, maybe. “I’m no good to Bastila or the Republic dead either. I need your help as much as you need mine. So.” She folded a few credits into her pack and looked up at him. “No more suicidal charges, maybe?”

Trask let out a laugh, then winced. “I’ll do what I can. But I’ve got a feeling that won’t be our last battle with the Sith.”

“Yeah. We should hurry.” Aithne rose and led Ulgo on toward the bridge. There were two more duos of Sith in the next room. If Ulgo was young, at least he took good notes, Aithne thought, and when he kept his head, he was a fair marksman. But as they made their way toward the bridge, anxiety mounted in her chest. They weren’t finding any survivors—just a lot of bodies in uniforms. The smell of ozone and burning was growing, and the sounds of fighting were growing rarer. The battle was going bad for the Republic. The shots from the Sith ships had stopped for now, but if their people cleared the ship? The Sith weren’t overly given to piracy or repurposing enemy resources. When they were finished with a Republic target, that target usually ended up so much space dust.

When they did open a door to a survivor near the bridge, Aithne almost cried out in relief, but the woman wearing an undyed linen robe was already engaged. Aithne’s hair stood on end as two plasma blades clashed with a high, unnatural sound very unlike that of regular swords or vibroblades, evidence of the super-deadly forces focused through the weapons.

The Jedi’s combatant was a muscular man in black robes, with purple tattoos under his eyes. “It’s a Dark Jedi!” Trask said unnecessarily. “This fight is too much for us. We better stay back. All we’d do is get in the way.”

Aithne glanced at him. Possible, but it was also just possible they could distract the Dark Jedi at a crucial moment, allowing his opponent to gain the advantage. More possible for Trask than for her, without her blaster, but she wasn’t going to dig hers out and leave herself vulnerable for an instant, in case the Dark Jedi decided to take notice of them anyway. Jedi were supposedly sensitive to the deaths of others, and if they did get killed and distracted the woman on their side, that would be counterproductive. At the very least.

The play of the blue blade on the red was mesmerizing. They flicked together at speeds swords and vibroblades could never manage—lightsabers cut the air as well as anything else in their way. You could smell them, like the fire off a comet in atmo. She wondered for a moment what Trask thought they would do if the Dark Jedi won, if that red lightsaber came for them next. The Dark Jedi wasn’t just big and better armed than they were: he was brutal. His face was set in aggressive, hateful lines, and he was feeding off it, feeding off that hate and anger. She could tell. It left a swooping feeling in her stomach, watching him, and she glanced at their Jedi, nervous.

But the woman didn’t look afraid. Her face was blank, serene, and her muscles didn’t shake as she met her combatant’s heavy strokes. She backed up, drawing him out. Then Aithne saw her shift her weight to her back foot, and she knew what would happen before it did. Her swooping stomach clenched as the woman counterattacked, striking below the Dark Jedi’s loosened guard. He fell to the deck smoking. The smell of burnt flesh joined the smell of burnt ozone and failing electric systems.

The Jedi turned to face them, her eyes lit in question. Then Aithne saw the bulkhead panel behind her turn red, stressed by systems within the ship. “Look out!” she cried, but it was too late.

The panel exploded outward, propelled by the force of overloading electronics. The effect was like a grenade going off. Aithne and Trask were knocked off their feet in the shockwave, and there was a soft, sickening gasp.

Aithne climbed slowly to her feet, aching all over. She looked down. The Jedi lay a meter or so from her dead enemy, impaled by shards of the shattered bulkhead. Around the points of impact, blood gushed from the wounds, and her clothes smoldered. Her eyes were wide open and already glassy in death, and where the bulkhead had been, a fire was burning.

Ulgo was shocked. “That was one of the Jedi accompanying Bastila,” he told her. He cursed. “We could have used her help.”

Aithne looked up at the hallway system. “We could use the fire suppressant systems.” She tensed as two Sith stepped around the corner. “Ulgo! To the left!”

She snapped a grenade from her belt, pulling the pin with her thumb, and hurled it at the men. They went down in the ensuing explosion.

She made only a cursory search of the four bodies in the corridor. The ship was getting more dangerous by the second. If the Sith didn’t get them, Spire itself might, now. Anyway, they’d made it to the bridge.

There were three Sith there and no Republics. Aithne body-checked the first one, moving him so he was between her and the others, while Ulgo knelt behind the open door and fired at them. “Wha—” Aithne’s Sith said, and he didn’t get much further than that before she’d stabbed him in the throat. She gripped him under the arms, carrying him in front of her as she closed with the second Sith by the cockpit controls. She saw the third guy stumble to his knees, down but not out under Ulgo’s fire. Trask would have him in a moment. Aithne dropped the corpse of the first Sith, ducked the pistol butt of the second, and used his momentum to elbow him in the side. The impact jolted painfully through her bones, but she felt his armor crumple, and the force sent him staggering away. She followed up her advantage, stabbing down into his off-side thigh, into the seam where his plates met, conveniently right over a major blood vessel.

He cried out, and in another three seconds, Aithne and Trask were the only two people left standing on the bridge. “Bastila’s not here,” he said. “They must have retreated to the escape pods! We better head that way too. The Sith want Bastila alive, but once she’s off the ship, there’s nothing stopping them from blasting Endar Spire to galactic dust.”

“Sith are wasteful that way,” Aithne commented. “Come on.”

They circled the bridge and opened the door to the starboard side. Aithne held up a hand then. A tingle had gone up her spine. She could suddenly feel a presence, like the overheated circuit about to explode on the other side of the bridge, but organic. It waited just the other side of the door that led to the airlock. The hum of another lightsaber being activated was just confirmation of what she suspected.

“Run,” she said.

But even as she started toward the starboard exit, Ulgo sent her sprawling. Her short sword was wrenched from her hands as Trask shouldered past her, bearing her weapon toward the Dark Jedi headed their way.

“He’d catch us!” he called back over his shoulder. “I’ll hold him off! You get to the escape pods! Go!”

He ran bodily into the Dark Jedi beyond the door, and then the door shut behind him. Aithne heard the sound of a blaster being fired into the panel, locking it down from the other side.

She felt cold. So much for no more suicidal charges, she thought. She wondered why he’d done it. He knew he couldn’t take Dark Jedi. For that first time? Because he’d come to wake her in the first place? Or because he was a twenty-year-old gung-ho Republic, trying to save the galaxy? She closed her eyes, swallowed hard, and bolted.

She had another couple vibroblades in her pack by now. He’d known that. Aithne got them out as she jogged, heading down the empty halls, and as she did, she felt the impact of a new cannon shot. Fear shot through her heart. She was alone—or alone enough the Sith weren’t sending anyone else over.

That was when her communicator buzzed. Aithne almost cried in relief as she turned her wrist up to see Major Onasi still there, still silhouetted by Endar Spire bulkheads. He was still onboard. “This is Carth Onasi on your personal communicator,” he told her. “I’m tracking your position through Endar Spire’s life support systems. Bastila’s escape pod is away. You’re Endar Spire’s last surviving crew member! I can’t wait for you much longer; you have to get to the escape pods!”

“I was off-shift,” Aithne found herself saying, like the major cared or needed to know. “I was asleep! Trask just—he just—”

“I know,” Carth told her. “Just get to me, soldier. You’re less than two minutes out, if you hurry.”

His voice was calm and steady, and Aithne nodded, new resolve surging through her. She hadn’t asked for this. To join the Republic, for the Sith to attack, for Ulgo to die for a stranger. But there it was—freedom, less than two minutes away. She was going to make it. Suddenly she knew it, like she knew her own name.

She fell on the two Sith in the next room, moving in a flurry of actions and reactions like people only experience when death is on the line. They were dead anyway, she thought, in the small part of the back of her mind that always regretted killing soldiers just doing their jobs. The Sith were already firing on Endar Spire; they weren’t waiting for these guys to get back to the airlock. At least the Republic doesn’t leave enlisted soldiers behind, however they get their people to enlist in the first place.

The major stopped her right before she got to the pods. “You’ve got a squad heading your way,” he warned. “They were almost on me. Now they’re more concerned about getting back to the airlock. I’m not sure how you got this far on your own, but you might want to look for some way to thin their numbers.”

Aithne scanned the room. “There’s a decommissioned droid over here,” she said. “Think I’ll activate some help. I’ve picked up some parts from the various piles of rubble lying around.”

She signed off the comm and got to work on the droid—a Republic assault model. Aithne liked droids. A lot of times, they made more sense than people, and they certainly acted in more logical ways. She patched the droids shields and programmed it to patrol, and then stood calmly to one side. Her heart rate was slowing. The pod bay was just across the next room. So was the major and an escape.

Another benefit of droids: pain didn’t slow them down. Her droid friend kept going until every one of the Sith next door had been slaughtered. It overloaded and exploded after that, but she didn’t need it after that. Aithne strolled into a room full of steaming corpses. The dead captain had a beautiful vibroblade on him, fitted for custom upgrades, though none had been applied. Aithne picked it up, turning it over in her hand consideringly.

Then she marched through the door to the escape pod bay. The major had kept his word. He was waiting for her. “Nice work with that assault droid,” he remarked. “There’s only one active escape pod left. Come on. We can hide out on the planet below!”

“Just the two of us?” Aithne asked, raising an eyebrow. Any planet with a Sith presence around it large enough to take down a Republic cruiser was definitely hostile territory. She wondered which planet it was, anyway. Had she ever visited before? She sized up Major Onasi. Of the two guys she’d met since the Sith had opened fire, he’d’ve been her choice of escape partner, she thought, with a pang for her young bunkmate. But Onasi was a vet. He looked like he was closer to forty than thirty, and he was a big Republic war hero too, if Ulgo’s reaction to him back at their barracks had been any measure. More than that, though, he didn’t look scared right now.

The major misunderstood her mostly sarcastic remark. He grabbed her bloody hand and looked her in the eye. “I’m a soldier of the Republic, like you. We’re the last two crew members left on Endar Spire. Bastila’s escape pod is already gone, so there’s no reason for us to stick around here and get shot at by the Sith. Now come on. There will be time for questions later!”

He was trying to comfort her, Aithne realized, with a vague sense of surprise. She’d needed it back by the airlock, but now . . . of course they had to escape together. She was just glad he’d waited. She stared into his amber eyes for a moment, tilting her head in confusion. “Sir, yes, sir,” she said, disengaging her hand and activating the panel to bring the escape pod online. “And thank you.”

Her thanks was soft, but it left Onasi looking at her just like she’d looked at him, like that was the last thing he thought she’d say when he’d kept back on a ship under fire with a Sith squad inbound and systems failing everywhere just to make sure she got out too. He stooped to enter the escape pod then, and she followed him, pulling the door shut behind them and engaging the airlock.

She strapped in as the major pressed the eject.

Aithne’s stomach dropped. She closed her eyes. She hated space travel without inertial dampeners. Escape pods weren’t built with them, and they only had rudimentary life support and temperature control systems. Her teeth rattled in her skull as the jets roared, and when they hit atmo of the planet below, she felt it like a punch to the gut. The straps of her harness cut into her shoulders. The g-forces around pressed on her chest, trying to drive the air out of her lungs.

A warm hand worked into hers, and she opened her eyes and met Onasi’s. Now he looked scared, she noted. There wasn’t a lot of satisfaction in the observation, but as the air grew hot around them and Aithne began to hear the shriek of wind and flame outside, she thought it was at least nice to know she wasn’t the only one. And that she wasn’t alone.

She hoped the pod was rated for the pressure of whatever planet they were over. She hoped they landed someplace they could survive. She hoped the impact didn’t kill anyone, that the impact didn’t kill them. “Take a dozen more Sith over the forces of nature any day—” she started, trying to smile at the major.

Then there was a bone-crunching crash. Aithne felt a sharp pain in her left side and a dull one in her head. The red emergency lighting went out with a sizzle and a pop. But then Aithne wasn’t in a position to be scared of the dark.

Chapter Text

CARTH

Carth groaned. Every part of him hurt. There was a pounding in his head and a wetness on his side hotter and stickier than sweat from the journey through atmo. He groped at it, assessing the damage. Laceration from the harness, he determined, sharp enough to break skin, even without tearing his jacket or shirt first. Minor injury and not even worth a medpac. But he’d have some bruises tomorrow.

He snapped off the harness and activated the flashlight attachment on his wrist comm, scanning the inside of the escape pod. The beam shone through rising concrete dust. The woman from Endar Spire had been on the side of the impact. There was a hull breach to her left, and metal had buckled inward. Not far, but far enough. He saw scattered debris from wherever they’d crashed littered over the woman’s lap and chest, a rising purple knot on her left temple, and a long, deep, weeping gash on her arm. For a second, Carth thought she was dead, then he saw the rise and fall of her chest.

He forced himself into motion. Crashing escape pods drew a lot of notice. The Sith would be here before long, looking for Bastila. He unbuckled his fellow survivor, catching her up in one arm.

He looked around. Fortunately, the door to their escape pod had been on the airward side. He disengaged the airlock and shouldered open the door. It squealed in protest.

Grunting, with the unconscious woman over his shoulder in a half fireman’s carry, Carth clambered free of the wreckage. She was heavy, and his shoulder strained to bear up under her dead weight. The woman was in good condition, with fine bones and a narrow waist, but she wasn’t a whole lot shorter than he was: as tall as an average human man.

A few meters out from the pod, over the crater of broken concrete and oozing tar they’d left on impact, he could readjust her in his arms, slinging her right arm backward around his neck and gripping it with his right hand to leave his left arm free and his vision more or less unobscured. Smoke surrounded the pair of them. Carth looked up, and he could see their trail blazing across the night sky.

At least we landed on the night side of the planet, he thought. The horizon was jagged, a vista of climbing glass skyscrapers, neon, and chrome. A city. Good for breathable air and amenities; maybe not so good for avoiding detection. A pair of gleaming eyes shone at him out of the darkness, and Carth turned, hand on his hip and his left-hand blaster.

The watching Ithorian, the first of many onlookers who’d come to see the crash, held up his hands, backing away. Carth stared at him for a long moment, wondering if the alien would head straight for the Sith. They were murderous xenophobes, but they sometimes paid alien informants. Then he decided it didn’t matter. He didn’t understand the Ithorian language, and he couldn’t murder someone on simple suspicion.

He grunted, adjusted the wounded woman in his arms, and staggered off in the opposite direction.

It took Carth ten minutes to find the right kind of low-rent, skeevy apartment complex to hide in. By that time, his arm and shoulder were screaming. The woman he’d been carrying still hadn’t come to, and he was really starting to worry. Head injuries could be ugly.

She needed rest and treatment, and for that, he needed to find a good place to put her down. Luckily, they’d landed in what seemed to be a dodgy area of town. Not a lot of lighting. Mostly occupied by refugees and criminals hiding out. On a Sith-occupied planet, he and his friend from Endar Spire were both.

So, he’d looked for a place with signs out front promising furnished units, no ID check necessary, with a breaker box out back indicating utilities might be run for the building. Then he looked for a door that looked unloved. It took him another five minutes to find the right one. Rusty mailbox out front with a missing number on the address and dust in the join seam of the door. He used one of his last security spikes getting in.

The furniture was coated with dust just like the mailbox outside. Some of it had been overturned, like the last inmates of the apartment had left in a hurry. The single window and the glass door out to the tiny balcony were so coated with grime that no one could see in or out. Perfect. In the middle of the night, in a building like this, full of people who didn’t want to be found almost as much as he didn’t, no one was going to come looking for them here.

Carth carried the woman over to one of the couple of beds in the room. He dusted off the brown and yellow mattress with one hand the best he could and hoped the woman didn’t have allergies. Then he set her down with a sigh of relief.

He walked over to the wall switch and hit it. He’d been right: utilities here were building-wide. The place would rent with a built-in utilities fee. The lights came on, and Carth returned to the bed and knelt to examine his friend from Endar Spire. She was covered in pavement and blood. Carth opened one of his few med kits and got out a moist, antiseptic towelette. He rubbed it across her face and hands, careful of the bump on her temple, about the size of the first two knuckles on a human hand.

Damn, he hoped there wasn’t internal damage. He didn’t have ID or credits for off-worlder medical treatment, especially if the Sith had any kind of major presence here, and he didn’t like how pale the woman was looking behind that bruise.

She’d probably be pale anyway; she had several freckles ranging over a small, tilted nose and high cheekbones, but that just meant a knock on the head left her looking even worse. Her eyelashes fluttered a bit as he wiped her forehead. “Hey,” he said, “you with me?”

But then she stilled. Some curls were stuck to her cheek, matted down with blood. Carth worked to wipe it away and was encouraged to realize it wasn’t actually hers. She’d been carrying vibroblades aboard Endar Spire; it had to come from all the Sith she’d fought before she’d got to him.

All the blood and concrete dust, along with the poor apartment lighting, made it hard to tell what color the woman’s hair actually was. He thought he remembered brown, or maybe red. Red would suit the freckles, anyway. But she’d been pretty, before the crash. He did remember that, if not the details of how she’d looked. Brave too, fighting her way through most of the ship with a rookie straight from the academy before she lost him just inside the airlock. She’d made a joke, as they’d hurtled down toward the planet, even though he could tell she was terrified.

She was still a lot prettier than he liked, for a woman who wasn’t conscious to get medical treatment. She couldn’t consent to letting him take a look at her, but injuries didn’t care about modesty or privacy. That arm wound needed care, and there might be others. Carth grimaced, then went ahead, unzipped her vest, and worked her shirt off. He cleaned the gash on her arm, sealing it with butterfly bandages before wrapping it in gauze and injecting a kolto pack for good measure. Aside from the head injury, there weren’t a lot of other easily treatable wounds on her. Some abrasions on her hands that he disinfected and treated with an antibacterial, and vicious bruising where she’d been caught by her escape pod harness. There might be some internal injuries there, he thought, and from a physical examination of her torso, she might have also cracked a rib, though none were broken clear through. The medpac injection would stimulate any fractures to knit together sooner if she lay flat.

He looked away then, hunting in her pack for a spare set of clothing, mostly to avoid looking at her, topless except for her underwear. With women as tall as this one was, you didn’t often get curves to match the height, but she had them. She had curves like a cantina dancer. He brought out a crisp white shirt, unstained by blood or carbon scoring, and worked her limp arms through it, buttoning it over her chest until he felt comfortable again. She’d be happier if she woke up dressed.

Only then did Carth treat his own injuries. All in all, he was in better shape than the woman on the bed. And like she had, he’d managed to bring his pack with him. He washed up in the fresher, taking the time to clean it so that if he or his companion used it in the future, it would actually do some good. Then he dressed in his own spare clothes, leaving the ones he’d been wearing in the fresher to air out. Then he returned to the main room, dusted off the other bed a good deal better than he’d been able to dust the one his friend lay on while he carried her, and sat down.

Retrieving his datapad from his pack, he began searching through the service records of the crew of Endar Spire to find out who this woman was. He set the datapad to present the files to him in order of experience. It made sense that only one of Bastila’s most experienced soldiers could have survived the ambush. But he didn’t find the woman on the other bed among them. He didn’t find her among the soldiers at all. Not until he had reached the advisory crew members did he find her, and he noted with considerable surprise that she was the very newest recruit.

Aithne Moran. He looked across. The grayscale picture in the file matched that of the woman on the bed. Twenty-eight. Apparently, she’d been a scout. Carth’s eyebrows rose, though, when he saw the marksmanship and combat scores she’d been issued after training. The woman was a killing machine. She’d outscored 98 percent of Republic recruits in the galaxy in her handling of melee weapons, and 80 percent of them in marksmanship. Carth browsed in the psychological profile he’d had access to as a superior officer. She could’ve talked to that Ithorian, he saw. Hell, it looked like she could talk to almost any kind of alien they might run into here. Testing had revealed leadership ability, as well as a masterful grasp of tactics, but these skills had been lying mostly dormant, according to the profiler. That was fine, but what worried him was the line that said the woman hadn’t actually been a willing recruit to the Republic Fleet. She was a conscript from one of the initiatives out in the Rim, taken on a visit to her homeworld because her ID said she had been a lot of places and in a lot of different situations. It was a policy Carth didn’t appove of. Press-ganging soldiers into service didn’t result in long-term loyalty or in particularly motivated troops. Numbers for desertion, and even betrayal, were significantly higher among servicemembers who came in like that.

Worse, Moran fit the profile. No living relatives, no friends to collect on Republic benefits. The Republic psychiatrist who had evaluated her had speculated she’d agreed to stay on mostly out of boredom. Her scores for intelligence, self-reliance, and creative problem-solving were incredibly high, but they were paired with incredibly low scores for respect for conformity, rank, authority, or tradition, as well as a slighter tendency toward impulsiveness. A borderline genius, but unreliable. Definitely a maverick.

 But the Republic had thought she was worth it. Carth stared at the last, highlighted line in the file. The Jedi thought she was worth it. Apparently, Bastila had specifically requested this woman’s transfer to Endar Spire. Five days before the attack.

Carth leaned over, bracing himself on his knees. Something stank here. No friends. No family. No reason, really, to fight for the Republic, and—if her file was accurate—both the capacity and psychological disposition not to, especially since they’d seized her assets and tried to force her. So, what was Aithne Moran doing here? And what did the Jedi want with her?  There was only one conclusion: Aithne Moran was dangerous. He probably couldn’t trust her. But he needed her help.

Well. At least he could solve some of the other unknowns before she came to, he thought. Silently, Carth slipped out of the apartment.

A few hours after dawn, Carth returned, exhausted. The Sith were already here in force. They’d quarantined the planet and were combing every level for Endar Spire survivors, Bastila among them. Carth had seen Bastila board the escape pod on Endar Spire, and already people were talking of a pod that had crashed in the Undercity of this planet.

Taris. Carth swore as he lay down. Taris, of all places! Carth knew that as soon as Aithne Moran awoke, they were in for a rough time.

Carth woke up the next evening, and immediately glanced over at Aithne Moran. Her cry had awoken him. Her arm flew up and over her face, her right leg kicked, but when he looked closer, he saw she was still asleep.

She pulled her legs to her chest, and he thought he heard her sob.

Carth turned over in the darkness, looking away from her. Every person who’d seen combat had nightmares. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Aithne Moran’s looked like. His own were bad enough. Carth closed his eyes, and he could feel the smoke clogging his nostrils, burning the back of his throat. He could hear the screams: civilians, running for cover, calling for their friends. Wives. Husbands. Parents. Children. He could feel . . .

Carth rolled over and climbed to his feet. There was no use dwelling on it. He crossed to the fresher, turned on the tap. Splashed some water in his face. Didn’t do a lot to cleanse his conscience.

How the hell didn’t I see it coming? 

The hum of lightsabers, red and yellow. I looked over into a pair of narrowed blue eyes and tried to call on my aggression. Instead, I just felt ambivalent. Ambivalent and exhausted. I couldn’t even muster up a spark of rage against the girl’s naïve self-righteousness and determination.

It was all so idiotic and tedious. It was pointless for them all to stand against me, but they Just. Kept. Fighting.

I shrugged off my cloak, freeing my arms for one more battle, but then a tingle ran up my spine. A presentiment of danger—not from this Jedi child against me. Beyond. The ship’s deck shook.

Then I did feel rage. And fear. 

She woke up midmorning their second day on Taris. Carth jumped when Aithne Moran shot up like a rocket, hands poised to fight, eyes wild. Then she realized she wasn’t under attack. She sat back, groaned, put a hand to her head, then stood. She ran her hands over her ribs, her arm, feeling the half-healed injuries, the edges of the bandage beneath her shirt. Then she looked over at him, questioning.

Open, her eyes were deep-set and large and a light golden brown. They cleared as she took him in.

“Good to see you up instead of thrashing around in your sleep,” he told her. “You must have been having one hell of a nightmare. I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to wake up. I’m Carth, one of the soldiers from Endar Spire. I was with you on the escape pod. Do you remember?”

Aithne Moran had an interesting face awake, he thought. Expressive. He saw memory, grief, fear, and recognition all cross her face, each in an instant, and then she nodded. “Right. Major.” Her voice came out hoarse. She frowned and cleared her throat. When she next spoke, the tone was low—melodic and a little bit wry, just like he remembered from Endar Spire. “I’m Aithne Moran, by the way. How did we get here?” She gestured at the grimy apartment surrounding them.

“Let’s leave the titles on the wreck, Aithne,” he told her. “This planet’s under Sith occupation, and rank and protocol could get us killed. Judging by your file, you won’t have a problem with that. Call me Carth.” He explained how she’d been hurt in the pod crash and how he’d dragged her from the crash site to this abandoned apartment.

She seemed impressed when he had finished. “So you just got up and went after a pod crash, dragging my dead weight along, and got out before anyone too bad caught us? Huh. Nothing to sneeze at, Maj—” she caught his look and caught herself in time, taking in a breath. “Carth,” she reminded herself, nodding and meeting his eyes. “And more than most would’ve done. Or been able to do. Thank you.”

She’d done that on Endar Spire too, Carth remembered. Thanked him for following protocol, like she expected him to leave her behind. He guessed she’d probably been on her own a while, and maybe out of the habit of relying on anyone else. Maybe she’d never even developed it. “You don’t have to thank me. I’ve never abandoned anyone on a mission, and I’m not about to start now. Besides, I’m going to need your help. Taris is under Sith control. Their fleet is orbiting the planet. They’ve declared martial law, and they’ve imposed a planet-wide quarantine. But I’ve been in worse spots.”

Aithne scoffed. “Like what?”

Carth smiled. “Maybe I’ll tell you sometime. I saw on your service records that you understand a remarkable number of alien languages. That’s pretty rare in a raw recruit, but it should come in handy while we’re stranded on a foreign world. There’s no way the Republic will be able to get anyone through the Sith blockade to help us. If we’re going to find Bastila and get off this planet, we can’t rely on anybody but ourselves.”

Aithne sighed. “Better and better.” She massaged her temples. “Bastila . . . Trask wanted to find her too.”

Trask, Carth thought. The Alderaanian she’d fought through most of the cruiser with. Her bunkmate back on Endar Spire. He quickly explained why Bastila was the Sith’s number-one target on the planet. “Bastila is the key to the whole Republic war effort. The Sith must have found out she was on Endar Spire and set an ambush for us in this system. I saw Bastila get on an escape pod. She must have crashed down here on Taris. For the sake of the Republic war effort, we have to find her.”

“So this one Jedi is more crucial than any strategy or supplies?” Aithne asked.

Carth understood the sentiment. He had other things he’d rather be doing too. But he’d seen Bastila’s battle meditation in action enough times to know how deadly it could be under the right circumstances. He explained to Aithne. “She can inspire her allies with confidence and make her enemies lose their will to fight. Often that’s all it takes to tip the balance in a battle. Of course, there are limits to what she can do. From what I understand of her ability, it requires great concentration and focus to maintain her battle meditation. The attack on Endar Spire happened so fast she never had a chance to use it. Like us, she barely got out alive.”

“And now, we’ve got two armies rushing to claim her,” Aithne finished. “The Sith to bribe, recruit, or force her to their side—or take her out—and you Republics to make sure they can’t. And, unfortunately, for now, I’m part of the ‘you Republics.’ Alright. Let’s get the never-lose-a-battle good luck charm. How do you suggest we go about it?”

She sat back on her right leg, hands on hips, face frozen in a polite, go-to smile. It was a mask. She didn’t think he had anything to contribute here. Carth took a breath, pushed down his temper, and shared some of the ideas he’d had. They had one advantage: the Sith weren’t looking for them. No one would recognize Aithne Moran at all, and while a few Sith might know him by name or reputation, no one would be looking. Not with Bastila on the loose. He suggested they move without attracting notice. “If Bastila’s going to escape Taris, she’s going to need our help,” he concluded, “and we’ll probably need hers.” Whether Aithne liked it or not, with the barricade in effect, the two of them alone probably wouldn’t have the firepower to escape.

When he’d finished, Aithne’s expression had changed. There was something like respect behind her eyes, and she nodded. “Any idea where we should start looking?” she asked.

“While you were out, I did some scouting around,” Carth told her. “There are reports of a couple of escape pods crashing down into the Undercity. That’s probably a good place to start, but the Undercity is a dangerous place. We don’t want to go in there unprepared. It won’t do Bastila any good if we go and get ourselves killed.”

Aithne absorbed this. “So—scout out the upper levels and gather what information we can,” she said. “We’ll have to see if we can get some more credits and supplies too. I grabbed a few things off the bodies on Endar Spire, but the grand sum of my wealth is two extra vibroblades, a blaster, a couple of medpacs, and about seventy credits.”

“You may want to check on those medpacs,” Carth suggested.

Aithne grimaced, guessing he’d needed them to treat her while she’d been out. “Great. So. What do you know about Taris? I haven’t ever been here for any extended period of time.”

Carth gave her the rundown on the three levels of Taris and the classes that lived there. He’d been to Taris on assignment a few years back. It wasn’t a fond memory. “I entered this info into your datapad journal,” he said, when he’d finished, holding it out to her.

Aithne took the journal from him. “Thanks.”

Carth nodded acknowledgment. “We can use this abandoned apartment as a base, and we can probably get some equipment and supplies here in the Upper City. Just remember to keep a low profile. I’ve heard some grim stories about the Sith interrogation techniques. They say the Force can do terrible things to a mind. It can wipe away your memories and destroy your very identity!”

Her face changed again at that, and he saw her shiver. Carth rushed to reassure her. “But I figure if we don’t do anything stupid, we should be okay. I mean, after all, they’re . . . they’re looking for Bastila, not a couple of grunts like us.”

“We’ll take our advantages where we find them,” Aithne agreed, and didn’t say anything more about the Sith. “Give me a few minutes to clean up so I can look like I haven’t just been in a pod crash and give us another advantage. Water in the fresher running?”

“Yeah, it’s run through the building,” Carth confirmed.

Aithne nodded again, turned on her heel, and scooped up the clean pants and vest he’d left on the foot of her bed. She emerged from the fresher twenty minutes later. Carth smiled, as if by reflex, when he saw her.

Yeah. She was pretty, all right. The bruise on her temple had faded from purple to blue-gray, and she’d hid most of it under a wave of washed-and-dried hair, which turned out to be brown like he’d thought, although with a lot of red and gold in it. Most of it was pinned and twisted up in a thick coil at the nape of her neck, but little curls were already escaping around her forehead and down behind her ears. She had some color in her cheeks, and wore her vest and trousers like a senator, though they looked years old, like something she might have picked up at a secondhand store or lived in for a while. He had to say, he liked the way her pants fit. She had legs that went on for days, but that tilt of her chin and that glint in her eye was even better. She looked like a woman who could kick just about anything that came at her in the teeth. Maverick or not, he needed some of that grit down here.

She raised an eyebrow at him and waved her hand in a What? gesture.

“You look better,” he observed.

“Most people do when they’re clean,” she responded.

“You ready?”

She shook her head and strode across to the workbench on the back wall of the apartment. “Toss me my pack and a ration bar,” she ordered.

Carth grabbed her pack from beside her bed and a ration bar from the meager supplies he had collected while scouting out Taris. Walking over, he handed them both to the woman at the workbench.

“Thanks,” she said without looking at him. She was already opening up the casing of the hilt of one of her vibroblades, looking at the wiring inside. She fished out a part from an interior pocket of her pack and began tinkering. “Got this off a fallen Jedi on Endar Spire,” she told him. “The blade’s from the Sith captain of that squad that almost got you, before the others opened fire again. Together, they’ll remind me what I’m doing.”

She worked quickly and efficiently, and Carth saw she was an expert technician. That was something that could come in handy down here. She took a bite of ration bar every now and then, chewing without looking at or thinking about it. She crumpled the wrapper when she’d finished. “Disgusting,” she remarked. “Somewhere in those supplies we’re going to get, we have to get our hands on better food.”

She shoved the wrapper in her pack for disposal later, and in a few more minutes, she was done upgrading her vibroblade. She sheathed it on her left hip and turned to him. “Ready,” she said. Then, without waiting for him, she turned and led the way out of the apartment.

Well, Carth thought. He’d said she wouldn’t have a problem forgetting rank and protocol.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

Carth’s low-profile idea wasn’t going to make it past the complex corridor, Aithne thought as she emerged from the apartment. A Sith and two droids were holding two Duros at gunpoint.

“Okay, you alien scum,” the Sith shouted. “Get up against the wall! This is a raid!” One of the Duros raised his hands in exasperation.

/There was a patrol here just yesterday!/ he complained in the native Duros tongue. /They found nothing! Why do you Sith keep bothering us?/

And that was all it took for the Sith to escalate from insults to flat-out murder. The Duros was on the ground with a smoking hole in his skull before an instant had passed. “That’s how we Sith deal with smart-mouth aliens!” the Sith declared to the other Duros, with all the confidence of a man who knew he wouldn’t be held accountable for his actions. “Now, the rest of you, get up against the wall before I lose my temper again!”

He turned to Carth and Aithne, and Aithne realized he’d seen them come out of the apartment. Seen—but not acknowledged. When he looked at them full-on, he stopped. “Hey, what’s this?” he asked himself. “Humans hiding out with aliens?” Then the pin dropped. He gestured a command to the droids. “They’re Republic fugitives! Attack!”

With no cover in the hallway, the only thing for it was to rush them. So Aithne did, closing to a range where the droid blasters and the Sith’s rifle would be effectively useless. She beheaded one of the droids, severing its central processor from its torso, and thrust the chassis back to Carth as a shield. He caught it, thrusting an arm under each arm of the droid and firing from behind, a blaster in each hand. It took skill to do that, Aithne thought, blocking the Sith’s attempt to dive behind his second droid. Most Republic soldiers could only fire a single blaster at a time with any precision, but Carth’s shots were as sharp as sword thrusts—pinpoint accuracy to the joints of the other droid while she focused on the Sith. Nice he hadn’t tried to back her up by firing on the Sith too, putting her into the blast zone. She’d run into that once or twice, fighting with partners. One advantage of fighting with a vet.

In no time, the Sith and droids were down. Aithne turned to the remaining Duros. /Poor Ixgil/ he remarked, staring down at the corpse of his buddy. /He should never have talked back to that Sith. Thankfully you were here to step in and help us, humans. This isn’t the first time the Sith have come in here to cause trouble for us, but hopefully it will be the last./

Frankly, Aithne doubted it, but she was nice enough to leave him to his hopes. She jerked her chin at the Sith and his droids. “Will someone come searching for this patrol?”

/Don’t worry about the bodies./ the Duros assured her. /I will move them so it looks like they were killed elsewhere. That should throw the Sith off the track. With any luck, they won’t be bothering us again for a while./

Aithne lifted a hand in farewell, privately thinking that with that attitude, with any luck, the Duros would still be alive this time next week. “Come on,” she told Carth. He followed her, face grim.

She didn’t like it either—the Sith free to gun down anyone they wanted, purposely discriminating against aliens. But the attack told them what they were up against. They were going to have to be careful.

They left the apartment complex and headed through the streets. The silence was tense. Aithne felt awkward. Aside from the fact he was a major in the Republic, a good shot with double blasters, and the kind of guy who didn’t leave people behind, she didn’t know a whole lot about Carth Onasi. He’d talked more than once about her service records; she hadn’t had the same advantage. So, to put them on more even footing, and to break the uneasy quiet, she spoke up.

“So. Onasi. Tell me about yourself.”

He seemed surprised she’d even asked. “Me?”

Aithne rolled her eyes. “No. The Chancellor.”

His nose wrinkled at her sarcasm, then, hesitantly, his mouth turned up at the corners. “Well—I’ve been a star pilot for the Republic for years,” he started. “I’ve seen more than my share of wars . . . I fought in the Mandalorian Wars before all this started.”

Aithne considered. That had been an ugly business. The Republic was still half crippled after the fighting. It had left them vulnerable to all the Jedi who turned, and fifteen and twenty years ago, they hadn’t been prepared for the total war tactics the Mandalorians had used. Onasi was old enough to have seen a lot of it, and to have picked up the consequent scars. Probably how he knew to stay calm in a crisis and about stealth advantages when the enemy was focused on alternate objectives. He’d impressed her back at the apartment.

“But with all that,” Carth continued, “I’ve never experienced anything like the slaughter these Sith animals can unleash. Not even the Mandalorians were that senseless!”

Aithne made a face. “Torching targets that could have military value,” she agreed, “sometimes just to watch them burn. Murder without any tactical or strategic advantage. The Mandalorians have some honor. The Sith are out for power and violence: that’s it. I’ve seen some of the worlds they’ve left behind.”

 “Yeah,” Carth agreed. “My homeworld was one of the first planets to fall to Malak’s fleet. The Sith bombed it into submission. Rivers vaporized, cities obliterated, entire ecosystems destroyed. And for what? There wasn’t a damn thing our Republic forces could do to stop them.”

Aithne was quiet a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“We did everything we could,” Carth said. “I did everything I could. I followed my orders and did my duty. But I—look. I’m not accustomed to talking about my past much. At all, actually. I’m more used to taking action: to keeping my mind focused on the business at hand. So, let’s just do that. If you have more questions, ask them later.”

Aithne held up her hands. “Subject closed. I get it. I didn’t mean to step on your toes, Carth. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I just wanted to get to know you a little. I didn’t have access to personnel records on Endar Spire.”

Carth ran a hand through his hair. He had a full head of it, for all the fine lines on his forehead and around his eyes, and there wasn’t a gray thread she could see among the brown. Most of it was gelled back, but his bangs had one stubborn cowlick that resisted and fell down toward his right eye. He forced a smile. “I know. I’m sorry. You probably mean well with your questions, and I . . . I get the feeling we’ll be spending a lot of time together over the next little while. It’s just . . . kind of a sensitive subject.”

“We’ve all got those,” Aithne answered. “It’s stellar, Carth. Whatever. We’ll talk when you want to talk.”

Carth Onasi had a story, obviously. That but was interesting—like he had some reason to think that as the fire rained down on his homeworld, there was more he could’ve done. Something he could have done to stop it. She wondered who all he’d lost that day. She didn’t have any family. Hadn’t since her dad when she was nineteen years old, long enough to have forgotten his face, if not the way he smelled or told her That’s my girl when she’d been smart. And sometimes it still hurt so bad she couldn’t breathe. Carth had only had half the time to recover and might have lost a whole lot more—in a way a lot more traumatic than a sickbed in a hospital.

There was a transit station up ahead. Aithne gestured at it. “You said you thought Bastila crashed in the Undercity?”

“Yes,” Carth answered.

“Let’s see if we can get down there.”

Turned out they couldn’t. When they reached the shuttle to the Lower City, an armored Sith stopped them. Apparently, in addition to the blockade around the planet, the Sith were controlling the population by restricting access between the levels. Only individuals with the proper clearance papers could take the shuttles.

Leaving, though, Aithne noted something. The Sith had stopped them, not because they had no papers, but because they were not dressed as Sith. “We need armor,” she told Carth as they walked away.

“Not papers?”

Aithne shook her head. “Have to track down a forger or go through proper channels for those, and I’m guessing they don’t lease to Republic fugitives. Easier to part an off-duty Sith up here from their armor. Back there, the guard didn’t care we didn’t have papers. This is the Upper City. Not much goes on the Sith can’t handle. Security’s lax. I’m guessing if we look like Sith, he or one of his friends will let us through. There’s got to be some place around here the Sith relax.”

“If we’d known about the guard twenty minutes ago, we could’ve stripped the Sith back at the complex,” Carth mused.

Aithne considered. “That Duros will have hidden him by now. Anyway, there might be some damage to that uniform I wouldn’t want to explain. The Sith really make some shoddy equipment. Well. At least they get it.”

She slid her eyes sideways toward Carth, and he made a face. “Budget cuts,” he explained. “The Republic tries to keep riot armor in its cruiser armories for firefights, or at least a store of energy shields—”

“Carth.” Aithne told him, meeting his caramel brown eyes with hers. She smiled. “I get it. I’m messing with you. Exchange or private security gear’s usually better than Republic or Sith issue anyway.”

“Yeah, unfortunately,” Carth agreed. “But it can be damn expensive.” He thought a moment. “Let’s head to the cantina,” he suggested. “We can get a drink, something to eat, and maybe some information. All sorts of people hang out at the cantina. We’ll see if we can’t pick up a lead on that armor.”

“Good idea,” Aithne agreed. “I’m parched.”

In a matter of minutes, they were in the cantina. Aithne noticed an old man watching her. Their eyes met, and he beckoned. After a brief conversation, Aithne returned to Carth.

“What was that all about?” Carth asked.

“He’s giving up pazaak,” Aithne explained. “He asked me to buy his deck.”

“Did you?” Carth asked.

“Of course. I’m a fair hand at pazaak. Figure I can earn back my investment and then some in an hour or so.”

Carth raised his eyebrows. “Oh ho, think you can, can you?” He pointed at the man across the room from them—a sleazy-looking sort in a red tunic. “That man over there swears he’s the reigning champ on Taris. I’ll bet you the price of our meal here that you can’t beat him.”

Aithne grinned. She did like a challenge. “Get out your credits,” she told him. “You’re buying.”

He did, too, once she came back in another fifteen minutes. And since he had been such a good sport, Aithne didn’t even tell him she’d told him so. She lifted a glass of fruit juice and tipped it back, toasting him.

“That all you’re drinking, beautiful?” Carth wanted to know.

“You trying to get me drunk, Onasi?” Aithne responded. “When there’s Sith in the cantina, yes. And are you sure you should call me that?”

Carth stilled. “I see the woman at eleven,” he said, keeping his voice low, as his eyes locked on the brunette nearly to the rear of Aithne in the cantina’s main room. She was alone and looked jumpy, and in plainclothes, but her military bearing was unmistakable. It was driving everyone else away. She was the first one Aithne had spotted too. “There’s another one?”

“Almost directly to your right, in a side room,” Aithne confirmed. “A man, this time. Looking frustrated with an empty glass already on the table and another in his hand. Don’t look. He’ll know you’ve seen him. Just act natural. Don’t call me ‘beautiful.’”

He took the cue and adopted a social tone. “Is there something else you’d prefer I called you?”

Aithne shrugged. “‘Moran,’ ‘Aithne,’ ‘You with the face,’ anything so long as it isn’t sexist and condescending boy’s club claptrap.”

It was just something to talk about that wasn’t the Sith in the room, which they would need to talk about or preferably to eventually but couldn’t approach too quickly without raising suspicions. She didn’t really mind, and she thought Carth knew it, but he fell into the banter easily enough. “Don’t get yourself in a twist over it, gorgeous. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

No, Aithne thought, regarding him with something like regret. It would have been interesting if she could think he did; he was a pretty good-looking specimen, with the thick brown hair and the cowlick and the caramel-colored eyes. A nice few-days’ stubble around his mouth and chin. And he was taller than she was by several centimeters; nearly half a handspan. That was hard to do. But even though she was calling him by his first name for security purposes, Major Carth Onasi had professional military man all over him. He’d banter for a distraction, banter for the game, but there wasn’t any real intention behind it. Not that she necessarily wanted there to be. He was at least ten years older than she was, and she could see the baggage all over him like a Coruscanti starport, even if he didn’t want to talk about it.

Still, she played her part. “There you go again!” she complained, pouting at him like she didn’t know the difference between harmless banter and actual sexual harassment.

“Oh, for crying out . . .” Carth started. “Fine. If it’ll make you feel better, you call me something. Go ahead. Come on: I can take it.”

Aithne considered. There were so many options. “You really want to leave yourself open like that, hotshot?”

Carth crooked his fingers at her in a playful challenge. Aithne was having fun now, and she thought he was too. Better yet, they probably looked just they wanted to right here: like two friends, coworkers, or would-be lovers out to kick back after a hard day’s work. Not like Republic fugitives with an agenda.

“You have the maturity of a twelve-year-old Huttlet,” Aithne decided. The fact that Hutts lived for centuries made it worse. “And all the fashion sense of a color-blind supernova.” She blinked at his flight jacket, which really was the worst, most garish shade of orange.

Carth laughed. “Ou-ou-ouch! Wow! Well, I bet ‘beautiful’ doesn’t sound so bad in comparison, now, does it?”

Aithne laughed too. “I’ll allow it,” she conceded. “What will you pay me for the privilege?”

Something about that stopped him, and suddenly he looked wary. “Depends. What did you have in mind?”

Aithne searched his face, trying to figure out what she’d said to change the mood, or if it was that Carth had just started enjoying himself too much. “Chores around the house,” she mused. “Sexual favors, information. Again, the options are just staggering!”

“Well, given those options . . .” Carth started, then grinned at her. The grin didn’t reach his eyes. “Interrogate at will.”

Aithne frowned, uncertain, but tried her own smile. “Excellent. Soon all your secrets will be mine.”

And that was it. The banter fell to the table around them like so many pieces of shattered, shoddy Sith issue armor. “All my secrets are purely of the mundane variety, unfortunately,” Carth told her. “Nothing worth extracting, though you’re welcome to try.”

Sithspit, he thought she was prying again, or trying to draw him past the bounds of whatever he imagined their working relationship on Taris should be. Aithne didn’t want to get into all that again, and would’ve changed the subject, inventing some gossip story at a fictitious day job or something, but before she could, Carth had changed the subject himself. “Let me ask you something, though. I’ve been going over . . . the day before yesterday . . . in my head, over and over again since it happened. Maybe you could tell me what happened. From your perspective.”

Aithne looked around. “Here,” she returned. The hum of music and talk in the cantina was pretty loud, and they were pretty far away from the nearest tables or groups of cantina-goers. She didn’t think they would be overheard if they talked about it. So long as they kept straight faces.

She was really bad at that.

“I wasn’t really in a position to know what was going on, really,” she said carefully.

“Neither was I, to tell the truth,” Carth admitted. “They brought me onboard as an advisor, for the most part. Everything happened so fast, it’s anyone’s guess as to what actually happened. We lost a lot of good people . . . and for what? I’m just surprised either of us are still here to talk about it.”

He was being very careful, Aithne realized. Everything he said could just as easily refer to some sort of corporate takeover as to the battle of the Endar Spire, and he meant it to. But he also clearly wanted an answer to his question. Whatever that question actually was.

“But a little more surprised about you,” he admitted. Now they were getting somewhere. “You don’t claim to be a part of things—or not officially. Just what was your position a few days ago?”

Aithne rubbed a finger along the inside of her glass. She didn’t like where this was going. “I’ve been a freelance scout and surveyor for years now. I was . . . brought onboard for my skills. The . . . contract . . . was indefinite. But solid, for the foreseeable future.”

Carth hummed. “That makes sense. Still, it seems a bit strange that someone who came on last-minute’s still here, you know?”

Aithne’s face went hot. She scowled. “I didn’t . . . arrange to leave my contract early, if that’s what you’re saying, maj—” she caught herself before she gave them away, after all his careful maneuvering. “Carth. I’m here because some no-nothing kid up and took the axe. After I specifically warned him not to.” She clenched her fists upon the table, remembering Ulgo, snatching her sword and running bodily into that Dark Jedi, blasting the door to slow him down, even after he’d finished with Trask himself.

“Wait,” she said. “What’s so odd about my being added to the . . . to the team last-minute?” she asked, on a hunch.

Carth spread his hands. “You were the only one. Not to mention our friend downstairs was the one to specifically request your transfer.”

Bastila. Aithne’s stomach flipped. “Why?” she asked, voice flat. She didn’t like this. She’d assumed her assignment to Endar Spire was random, or that the mission the crew was on specifically required her skills. If it was the Jedi crew that specifically required her skills, though . . . she did not like this.

Carth shrugged. He obviously wasn’t too interested in that side of the question. “She and her people asked numerous things when they came onboard. Hell, they practically took over, as far as I could tell. Look: I’m sorry about your partner, but considering . . . everything . . . your presence here, whether you know it or not, seems a little convenient.” He raised his hands again. “I’m probably wrong, and this is probably nothing, I know. I learned a long time ago not to take things at face value, however, and I hate surprises.”

“Well. Just when we were getting along,” Aithne retorted.

“I mean I have to expect the unexpected, just to be safe,” Carth told her, like he was trying to apologize.

Aithne forced a laugh. “Thought you were pilot program, not security,” she said. “Make a lot of allies with that attitude, Onasi.”

Carth looked genuinely defensive now, not like he was faking it for any spies in the room. Real-life, actual spies, not the ones he’d dreamed up in his head. Aithne guessed they looked like a fighting couple now: boyfriend and girlfriend or husband or wife in a spat. At least they still wouldn’t look like conspirators. “Look. It has nothing to do with you personally,” Carth told her. “I don’t trust anyone, and I have my reasons.”

“That but back when the Sith shot up your homeworld,” Aithne guessed, “when you did your duty but.”

“Yeah, what happened to ‘we’ll talk when you want to talk’?”

“That was before you flipped on me in the middle of a perfectly normal conversation and started accusing me of spying or sabotage,” Aithne pointed out. “Look, if there’s some reason you can’t work with me here, Carth, that’s something I should know about.”

Carth tossed down his fork and glared. “It won’t be a problem,” he said.

“Sure?”

Carth cursed under his breath. “You must be the most damned persistent woman I’ve ever met.”

“Say what you want in conversation, Carth, but please don’t curse at me,” Aithne told him. She wasn’t fond of vulgarity in general, and particularly not when it was spoken in anger.

Carth seemed to realize he’d overstepped. “Right. Sorry. We’ll talk about it, but later. Think we’ve sat here long enough to make a move in this cantina?”

Aithne rose. “To get more credits, maybe. Still need about half an hour for the Sith. Fine. I saw some dueling viewscreens coming in. I’m going to go sign up to duel.”

“Why the he—why in the galaxy would you do that?” Carth demanded. He was still annoyed, but he was trying. Aithne gave him credit for that.

She shrugged. “Being nobodies to the Sith is one thing. Being nobodies to everybody else is another. We’re going to need allies if we want to make it offworld eventually. The best way to get allies in a hurry is to have a reputation as a person who gets things done.”

“And getting shot and cut up in the ring’s the best way to do that.”

“There are huge crowds back there,” Aithne told him. “There are energy suppressant fields in most recreational dueling rings on civilized worlds. They keep blasters and vibroblades from doing any major damage. Besides. You got a better idea to get us some credits fast?”

Dueling in an arena was at least better than raiding the apartments like the Sith, she thought. She turned on her heel and marched away, leaving Carth to his own suspicious thoughts. Behind her, she heard him call for the waiter and asking for a double.

In a couple of hours, she was back, sweating and a little sore from the sting of the dulled vibroblade impacts. She slid into the chair opposite Carth again. He looked much better, and like he’d managed to stay sober getting his head clear. “Sith still here?” she asked.

“The woman is. Not sure she has anywhere else to be. Or maybe she’s waiting for someone. The first guy left. Another woman came in and left, and now there’s a second man watching the band.” Carth reported.

“Great.” She slid thirty credits over the table. “For dinner,” she told him. “And a little bit extra.”

“I don’t need—” Carth started.

Aithne shot him a look. “We’re neither of us rolling in credits. You can afford to turn down free money? I’m not giving you half of my winnings—pazaak or my share of the dueling pots. But . . . we are allies, and you did save my life. So you get 10 percent.”

Carth pocketed the credits with a grimace. “You earned us three hundred credits just now?” he asked.

“Fought the first two duelists on the ladder,” Aithne explained. “The first guy was a pushover. Name of ‘Deadeye Duncan.’ If I’d stopped at him, we’d have been laughed out of town. Because I beat Gerlon Two-Fingers too, we have some credit, and not just the monetary kind. I used the stage name ‘Mysterious Stranger.’”

Carth blinked. “That was a good idea,” he complimented her. “We could use the money and the notoriety, but there’s a possibility the Sith have come across a copy of the crew manifest someplace.”

“I thought so too,” Aithne agreed. “Name’s a bit cheesy; wouldn’t have been my choice. But Ajuur over there seemed to think it sounded good. So. Time to exploit and corrupt some Sith. Which target, do you think?”

Carth considered. “If the woman’s not waiting for someone, she’s waiting on an opportunity,” he said. “Looks pretty miserable, if you ask me. It can’t be fun for ordinary grunts out for a paycheck in the Sith ranks. But after a couple hours here, she’s also sober. Man in the other room might be a softer touch, particularly for you.”

Aithne looked up at him sharply. He was right, but it wasn’t something she would’ve thought that he would comment on. “Could say the same thing about you and the woman,” she suggested.

He shook his head. “Impossible to tell,” he told her, “But I’ve seen the man eyeing the waitresses, and you’re a sight better than anyone working this place.”

“Huh. Maybe I should go after the woman,” Aithne observed. All in all, she wasn’t too fond of con games, especially when it meant laying a honey trap, like they seemed to be talking about doing here. But in the end, she did go for the man. If Carth’s report was accurate, they had a better shot with him, and they needed that set of armor.

She sighed, shrugged off her vibroblade sheaths, and passed them under the table to Carth. Then she fisted her fingers in her hair, pulling out a handful of pins, and let it fall around her shoulders and down her back. She combed her fingers through it a couple of times, hoping her hair opted to go sexily tousled instead of frizzy today, bit her bottom lip, and pinched her cheeks.

“Right. How do I look?” she asked.

Carth looked amused. “Nice,” he remarked drily.

Aithne clicked her tongue, rolled her eyes, and rose. Then she worked her face into a wide-eyed, ditzy expression and sashayed over to the mark. She engaged him in conversation, pretending to find the sallow skinned, weak-chinned fellow impossibly attractive. She had talked to him maybe seven minutes before he’d invited her to a Sith party that night. He obviously was lacking female companionship. Just to be safe, Aithne asked with much fluttering of the eyelashes, if she mightn’t bring her friend along too, explaining how he wasn’t all there and didn’t get out much. The Sith, Yun, agreed, confident such a stupid fellow as she described wouldn’t ruin his plans to enjoy Aithne’s company tonight.

He left after another three minutes to make preparations for the party, and Aithne rejoined Carth. There was a faint smile on his face, but his eyes had gone shuttered and guarded once again. “You were . . . um . . . very convincing.”

Aithne sighed. “I believe that was the point, wasn’t it?” she asked. “Look. It’s not hard to act stupid, or to be attractive to someone desperate for a date. Little easier than faking a genial conversation to divert eavesdroppers or making sure they don’t hear things they shouldn’t in conversations about something substantial. Just another game, Carth. Like the others. We’ve been invited to a Sith party in a couple hours. My friend Yun said Sith will be drunk, and dropped they aren’t going to bother locking up their uniforms. He didn’t know I was listening to that bit, but he said it. Let’s go. We need to find something to wear.”

Carth made another really sad attempt at a smile. “You telling me we’re going shopping. Sister, just shoot me now!”

An hour and forty-five minutes later they were back at the apartment. Carth had been surprised when Aithne had gotten exactly what she wanted in twenty minutes and left the store. Aithne had not been surprised when Carth had taken a similarly short amount of time choosing his own party clothes. He was out in the main room now, already dressed, while Aithne dressed and prepared for the party.

His voice rose up in a growl from outside. “C’mon, Moran, we’ll be late!”

“The less time we spend around sober Sith who can identify us later, the better, as far as I’m concerned,” Aithne answered. “But keep your shirt on. I’m ready.”

She left the fresher, and Onasi gaped. Second time today, Aithne noted in the back of her mind. Maybe his professionalism wasn’t without remedy, she thought, at least up in his head. In the poor man’s defense, she’d committed to the honey trap by now, and she supposed a single-shoulder A-line navy dress with an asymmetrical hem was a ways from a combat suit or five-year old scouting fatigues or a woman covered in escape pod debris.

Carth had made similar efforts, though. He’d shaved, and his clothes were crisp and neat, and best of all, a very becoming dark red. Made a nice change from the glaring Orange Jacket of Doom. “You clean up well, flyboy,” she noted.

He blinked, and the moment was over. There he was, iron-clad Professional Military Man. “Let’s go.”

They walked over to the other apartments in silence. In a short time, they were opening the door to the apartment where the Sith bash was located.

The atmosphere was hazy with smoke, and the entire place smelled like alcohol. Music pounded through the speakers, and Sith swayed awkwardly on the dance floor in what was less of a dance and more of a mix of lust and too much to drink.

Yun the Sith came forward to meet them. “You made it!” he said, slurring his words a little. “Wait, whoo’s zthat?” he asked, confused, gesturing at Carth.

Aithne widened her eyes innocently. “You said I could bring my friend, Yun! First time he’s been to a party in months, poor dear!”

Carth glared at her but didn’t say anything, and after a moment, Yun shrugged, dismissing her silent, unfriendly companion. “You’ve got to try some of this Tarisian ale!” he told Aithne. He swung an arm around her shoulders, gesticulating expressively toward the makeshift bar. His hand hung a bit too low for comfort. At first, Aithne wasn’t sure if it was drunkenness or stratagem. Then she looked at Carth’s dark face and knew.

“Careful, Yun,” called a Sith from a few feet away. “A couple more bottles of this and we’ll all be passed out on the floor!”

That’s the idea, thought Aithne in satisfaction. Yun laughed at the other Sith giddily. “Aww, Live a little, Sarna. We don’t have work tomorrow, anyway!”

Aithne was only able to keep an eye on Carth for the first few moments: long enough to see him stalk over to a couch and rebuff an amorous Sith woman with an expression more intimidating than an angry gundark’s. But then she was too busy warding off Yun to pay Onasi much mind.

This was why she didn’t like playing the honey trap, Aithne thought about ninety minutes later. There was a limit to how many times a girl could turn her face to the side, smile playfully, and wag her finger. There were also limits to how far she was willing to go for a set of Sith armor. Prostituting herself to get down to the Lower City had never been on the agenda, but Yun had obviously invited her to the party in hopes of a hookup, not simple company. Everyone had their preferences, but she was not that kind of girl. She hadn’t even meant to play that kind of girl.

Finally, she ran for Carth. “Help,” she said. “This game’s gotten just a bit out of hand.”

“Yeah, I called that one as soon as we got here,” Carth snorted. “Think you should’ve gone for the woman. She’s here too—the one your friend calls Sarna. Seems a bit nicer than our pick.”

“No kidding,” Aithne agreed, darting her eyes across the room. Yun was headed back her way, off his rear end drunk but with a confused, determined expression. “So—help?” she prompted Carth.

Carth sighed. “Fine. Just don’t freak out.”

Then he stood and wrapped his arms around her, just as Yun came into view. “Where have you been, Addie?” he breathed into her ear, using the alias she’d told him she’d been using for her character. “Getting into trouble while you leave me here alone?”

Aithne’s breath came out in a stutter. Onasi’s arms around her were warm and strong. This wasn’t a game she’d been prepared to play. One of his hands cradled the back of her neck. She could feel the callouses on his fingers and palms. The other played in her hair, just above the neckline of her dress. It was high enough, but still . . .

She managed the cue, just. “What, can’t do without me for five seconds, babe?” she gasped. That “babe” was a lifeline. Aithne Moran would never say “babe.” That was an Addie Fe word, and it kept her from buckling at the knees and falling down into those caramel eyes exactly like the bimbo she wasn’t. “I told you: give me five secs with the moron, and we both get all the free drinks we could want.”

A lot of other men, confronted with the evidence they’d obviously been used as a patsy and let a couple of cantina flies mooch off their desperation, might wither up in shame and embarrassment. Unfortunately, Yun Genda happened to be a Sith.

Aithne was wrenched out of Carth’s arms and forced up against a wall. “Jussht a friend, eh?” Yun hissed, eyes blazing. “Not all there. Hasshn’t been to a party for ages! You kark-brained little cantina rat! I’ll teach you to mess with the Sith!”

Great, Aithne thought. Now she’d have to kill him. She’d wanted to do this without a mess. But as she tried to decide whether to palm-strike his nose or knee him in the groin first, a man reached out for Genda’s shoulder. He turned sluggishly, and his face met Carth’s fist, and like all his fellows, he was out.

Aithne regarded the unconscious Sith on the floor. “You wanted things to play out that way,” she accused Carth.

“Maybe a little,” he admitted. “Got tired of waiting on your diplomacy with the Sith.”

“I could’ve handled him, you know,” she informed him.

“Mm. The same way you did the rest of tonight?” Carth asked. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Hey, you asked for my help. Babe.”

Aithne pulled a face. “Ha-ha.” Force, she still had goosebumps. Less from the body check into the wall and more from . . . whatever that had been before. Her eyes flicked to Onasi’s biceps, up and over his lips. She turned away. Her face felt hot, and with her skin and enduring inability to fake an expression, everyone, their mother, and their akk dog knew when she blushed. Carth Onasi the paranoid lunatic, with all the baggage of that Coruscanti spaceport, should not be able to tell when she blushed. He shouldn’t be able to leave her blushing. “A few seconds’ more warning next time? I’d just thought, maybe we could hide. But thanks.”

“Coward,” Carth remarked, moving to the back of the room, where several Sith had stowed their uniforms against the wall. He picked up one duffel and tossed it across to her.

“Tease,” Aithne muttered under her breath.

He heard her anyway. “Hey, I was just following your lead, gorgeous,” he told her. She awarded him another point inside her head. He was right. “You might want to check the nametag on that backpack there.”

Aithne did. Yun Genda. She smirked. “Flyboy, you have an evil streak.” she noted. “I approve.” She didn’t know if it offset or matched the raging paranoia, but the chivalrous shade to it was oddly touching.

“I do what I can,” Carth said, affecting modesty. “Like to be there when he explains how he lost it.” He looked sideways at her as they left the apartment and the drunken, snoring Sith behind. “I didn’t want things to go the way they did tonight,” he told her, “But it probably saved us a fight and some heat from the Sith.”

“And if Yun Genda’s looking for a mooching cantina rat and her boyfriend mad at him for assaulting her, he probably won’t come up with why we actually wanted the armor,” Aithne said. “So there’s that.”

They made it back to their apartment without any trouble. The streets were almost clear, this late at night. Side effect of their part of town, along with the Sith presence throughout the city. Without a word, Aithne went to the fresher and removed her makeup and dress, dressing in her scout’s uniform, which she had washed and left to dry earlier. She emerged and checked.

Carth had elected to sleep in a plain tee and shorts. A very tight tee and shorts. Nothing really immodest, but . . . she eyed the arms that had held her earlier, then looked away. Now she was the one ogling him. Great.

What’s worse, he’d caught it, she realized. There was an insufferably smug little smile on his face as he turned away and climbed into bed, and since neither one of them had sheets to put on the apartment-issue mattresses, he wasn’t about to cover up, either. Even better. Aithne’s jaw tightened. She stalked across the room and hit the light, then walked back over to her twin bed, foot-to-foot with his.

So, he was attractive, she thought, and attracted to her. So what? He wasn’t going to act on it. She wasn’t going to act on it. He thought she was a Sith spy or saboteur. She knew he was an overcareful head case. Things were just weird, here alone in an apartment, trying to outsmart the Sith quarantine and escape Taris together, unable to comply by the rules of rank and protocol without giving themselves away. They were in each other’s pockets, that was all. She’d never been on a job like this, and if she was any judge, he hadn’t had a woman in years. Too devoted to the Republic for one thing. There was the tragic past. And he wouldn’t trust her enough, once they’d got past first-date how-are-yous and the first five minutes of flirtation. No wonder, really, that it might be hard for him to maintain Military Man Professionalism on the ground like this. As for her, she simply didn’t have any, just Freelance Professionalism, which was a good bit looser.

Still. It had been One. Single. Day. One!

Aithne squeezed her eyes shut. They needed to get off this planet. Soon. She opened her eyes and turned over to lie on her stomach. “Your feet stink, flyboy,” she muttered.

He chuckled. “Good night, beautiful.”

Chapter Text

Morning came, and they were still on Taris, and when a warm hand closed around Aithne’s shoulder, she curled up into it before she came fully awake. And then she wanted to scream. “Hand off or you lose it, flyboy,” she growled. “Five more minutes.” She shook him off and rolled over, away from him.

“No can do, Moran,” he said. “Up and at ‘em. Every minute we waste is another one the Sith could find Bastila, and we’ve finally got what we need to go after her.”

Aithne sighed and rubbed at her gritty, gluey eyes. She sat up. “Breakfast first,” she told him.

Carth tossed a ration bar her way. Aithne grimaced. “Some breakfast this is,” she said. “I’d like to lodge a complaint and file for a better mom for my wake-up call.”

Mercifully, Carth was already fully dressed, ready for action. Unmercifully, that meant the return of the glaring Jacket of Doom. “Not a morning person, I take it,” he said, grinning at her.

Aithne stretched and yawned. “No, and morning people make me reach for my vibroblade.” She grabbed another combat suit they’d picked up shopping yesterday and shot another scowl at Onasi, just because. Because he was there. Because that grin was cuter than any expression that had a right to appear on a paranoid Republic major’s face when she was trying to stay Professional.

“How very early it is,” Carth intoned, eyes twinkling. “By all means, let’s wait to save the galaxy till noon.”

Aithne groaned. He really was a morning person, wasn’t he? That was typical. Just typical. She retreated from the grin and the jokes and the horrible, confusing cheery friendliness and changed inside the fresher. When she came out, she pointed at the flight jacket.

“That,” she said, with some vindictiveness, “is gonna have to go. Since you stole Genda’s armor instead of Sarna’s or some other person’s, you get to wear the clown suit.” She heaved the Sith duffel up with one hand and hurled it at him, just like he’d hurled it at her last night.

He caught it. “And we’re explaining you in the combat suit how?” he asked.

Aithne hesitated. The answer was obvious, really, but it was also embarrassing. Yet another ding in the Be Professional plan. “I could be a bounty hunter informant,” she suggested. “Taking you to a criminal or Republic hideout.”

Carth snorted. “Yeah. Okay.” He understood all right. No Sith would actually follow a bounty hunter informant down into the Lower City. If he thought she knew something, he’d take her in and interrogate her for what she knew. If a Sith in uniform went with a woman out to the Lower City, the real reason was probably something a little more unofficial and innocuous. Relatively speaking. Well. The Sith weren’t big on discipline or on moral fiber.

She was hot again, wishing she had taken Sarna’s armor or some other person’s. This was just . . . awkward.

“We should stop by the clinic to pick up some medpacs on the way down,” Carth suggested.

Aithne acknowledged this. He’d said the Undercity was dangerous. She sighed. “Keep on the neon,” she said then. “You can change in a bath house someplace later on. In fact, you having a spare set of clothes is probably a good idea anyway. From everything we’ve heard, once we’re in the Lower City, people will react better if you’re dressed like you and not a Sith.”

The civvies turned out to be a good idea before they ever hit the shuttle to the Lower City. The proprietor of the clinic nearest their hideout, Zelka Forn, was very nervous about attracting Sith attention for some reason. He was a nice man. They saw a couple aliens in his clinic—in the xenophobic Upper City—and he promised not to upcharge them for being off-worlders. Aithne found herself promising Forn to look out for a serum he wanted—a cure for the rhakghoul disease, a fatal and untreatable illness that infected inhabitants of the Undercity. Apparently, the Republic had developed the cure just recently before the Sith had taken over their base, annihilating them all. Now the Sith were reserving the life-saving serum for their own patrols instead of replicating it and eradicating a plague that was the scourge of everyone in the substructure of Taris. Because, of course, the rhakghoul disease itself was just another tool to them: something else they could use to keep the citizens of Taris immobile, shut up and quiet in their separate districts.

As Aithne and Carth made to leave the med clinic, Forn’s assistant stopped them. He told them to take the cure, if and when they procured it, to the Exchange, from whom he could extract a nice finder’s fee. Aithne sneered at him, but she didn’t bother turning right around to Zelka and outing his assistant as an operative or contact of the intergalactic crime syndicate. Truth was, depending on how things shook out on Taris, a bounty on the rhakghoul serum might be just what the doctor ordered. She hoped things didn’t shake out that way. If the Exchange wound up with the serum, about as many people would receive it as had it now, and they’d pay through the nose to get it. Still—their main objective was to get off Taris, not to solve the whole planet’s problems.

Carth ducked into a bath house after that. He was a bit hesitant coming out. “Come on, flyboy,” Aithne called, pounding on the doorway of the men’s room. “Don’t worry about how you look. There’s not a man in the galaxy who can rock that armor.”

Carth stalked out, his helmet under one arm. He glared. “Your boyfriend doesn’t bother to clean the inside of this getup,” he complained. “Smells like Sith.”

“And sweat and Tarisian ale, I imagine,” Aithne added. “Suck it up, Carth. Twenty minutes here, twenty minutes back.”

“And then carry it on my back the whole rest of the way,” Carth grumbled.

Aithne shrugged. “There’s a cost to saving the galaxy.”

“Yeah, you pay it next time.”

“I paid it last night. It’s your turn.”

The shuttle to the Lower City wasn’t far. The Sith on guard let them board without much trouble. As Aithne had suspected, she didn’t care about papers, so long as Carth looked like he had business—whether or not that business was something her CO might have ordered or approved of. She smirked and called something lewd after Aithne as the two of them got onboard the shuttle, and Aithne endeavored not to blush too much. Or to chop off the woman’s head.

Took them another five minutes to find another bath house for Carth to change in—this one with smoky windows and peeling paint along the front, looking very unlike a place anybody should go to relieve themselves or try to get clean. Aithne looked down the streets while she waited. The light from Taris’s star reached down here, but only just. These were the bottom reaches of the Tarisian metropolis, below the walkways and clean air up above, and they were lit mostly by swinging, flickering streetlights from various ceilings. The effect wasn’t too different from the interior of Coruscant. Cavelike. Grim. And Aithne knew at a glance as much as she did from Carth’s datapad journal entries that the same kind of people lived here.

Aliens. The poor. Folks who lived hand to mouth, by their wits or on the other side of anything strictly legal—or legal by any definition. Smudges of soot stained the walls of the buildings here. Carbon scoring. And smears of dry and wet stuff suspiciously like blood.

She was relieved when Carth came out, back in the glaring Jacket of Doom. He glanced around. “Nice place they’ve got here, huh?”

Aithne shrugged. “Is what it is, I guess.”

They started forward into the dim, but they didn’t get too far before they ran into a firefight. Two groups of people, lined up like players in a ballgame, except every one of them had a gun or a shock stick. They hurled insults at each other, from which Aithne gathered that the members on both sides represented two different swoop bike gangs, the Black Vulkars and the Hidden Beks. After a brief skirmish, the Vulkars defeated the Beks, and turned to Aithne and her companion. “More strangers!” shouted a Vulkar. “Attack!”

“Friendly,” Aithne grunted, ducking under a shock stick and feeling her hair frizz. She scythed her left vibroblade around. One advantage of fighting Lower City folk, anyway. The Black Vulkars weren’t in armor. She could use the cutting edge of her weapons instead of precision thrusts with just the points. Took more force, but a lot less planning, and it was always her preferred way to fight.

After about a minute and a half, she stared down at the six bodies on the pitted, dirty street. “Well, Onasi, we’ve walked straight into a gang war. This should be a lovely time.”

“Seen a lot of those, have you?” Carth asked, looking over. His eyes were suspicious again, and Aithne sighed.

“I’ve been around. I never do illegal jobs for crime syndicates or gangs—swoop bike, prison, or street. But I’ve been asked to go a lot of places. That doesn’t make me a thug: just a mercenary. And not even a violent one, when I can possibly help it.”

Carth made a face. “Yeah, well, I don’t think these Vulkars are going to give us a whole lot of choice.”

Unfortunately, his words proved prophetic. The Black Vulkars were violent bullies, attacking with little to no provocation. Aithne saw many frightened families paying them off. The Beks seemed nicer, but they were exactly what their name implied: “Hidden.” It soon became clear that the best place to go for information on anyone was the cantina, where the owner, Javyar, maintained a general ban on violence, though it was broken every now and then, and the Exchange ran a bounty office from the premises.

Accordingly, Carth and Aithne showed up at the cantina just in time for lunch. But, of course, they arrived just in time to witness an epic break of Javyar’s violence ban. Three Vulkars faced down a short man in an odd hat and goggles. He cut an unimpressive and almost comical figure, but something about him got Aithne’s back up, even before the Vulkars mocked him, saying he couldn’t possibly be the famous bounty hunter Calo Nord.

“One,” the man said, in a short, clipped voice.

“Get back, Carth,” Aithne warned, holding an arm out, backing her and Carth into the entrance hall. She watched the Vulkars keep on at it, like they didn’t think that he would do it.

Nord counted two, and then three, and the second he hit three, he lobbed a flash grenade at the offending Vulkars. Five or six people screamed. Several others gasped. Aithne got her arm over her eyes just in time, so she saw it when Nord gunned down his harassers, one by one, with a lightning speed that rivaled even Carth’s.

Nord left his table and his drink. He turned his goggles toward her as he passed, and Aithne looked into the reflective lenses and thought of a shark. She let him pass without comment. So did the bouncer that supposedly was there to restrict violence. Three seconds after Nord had left, he called a waiter to dispose of the bodies.

Aithne and Carth found a table a ways away from the bloodstains, in the room where the band was playing. “I’ll buy, if you want,” Aithne offered. Carth nodded.

They waited for their food in silence, and when it arrived, they ate in silence. It was a lot better than Onasi’s ration bars, but Aithne still wasn’t sure if it was worth the bloodstains and air of tension. Everyone in the room was armed to the teeth, she noticed. There were no families here. No kids, and the people that seemed to be on dates didn’t seem to be on the nice ones. The eyes of the denizens of Javyar’s cantina looked hunted, haunted, like any step they took could be their last. The bounty office in the room catty-corner to theirs probably didn’t help, Aithne thought.

Carth broke the silence first. “Hey, check it out,” he said, pointing back toward the main room, where an angry-looking Twi’lek had emerged out of the bounty office. She was a kid, Aithne thought, both surprised and concerned. A teenager, anyway, and a young one. Rutian coloration. She wore a black cowl-neck tank and a gray puffer vest and a black headdress and lekku rings over her headtails. And she was being chased by a couple Rodians.

Aithne put a hand to her vibroblade.

“No, wait,” Carth told her “I want to see how this plays out.”

Aithne frowned. She didn’t like it, but she guessed the girl did look more angry than she did really scared. “I told you to leave me alone,” she snapped at the two Rodians. “So give me some space, bug-eye! Your breath smells like bantha poodoo!”

/Little girl should not be in bar,/ one of the Rodians observed menacingly. /This no place for little girl. If little girl smart, she run away home now./

The kid flushed purple and put her hands on her hips. “Who you calling a little girl, chuba-face?” she demanded. She was using Huttese loaner words, but surprisingly speaking Basic.

/Little girl needs lesson in manners,/ the other Rodian sneered.

It was an obvious threat. Aithne started to move again. This time, Carth grabbed her hand, holding her back. She stared at him. He wasn’t just going to sit there and let these thugs bully a kid, was he?

But the kid seemed thoroughly unimpressed. “Just a sec, boys,” she told the Rodians, holding up a finger. “Zaalbar . . . a little help here? I need you to rip the legs off some insects.”

And that was when the Wookiee who had been minding his own business at a table by the wall stood up. /Mission, I’m busy,/ he complained in his native language. /They just brought my food!/ He sounded young too, Aithne thought. Not as young as the Twi’lek, relatively speaking. Wookiees weren’t quite as long-lived a species as the Hutts, but they could live for centuries. This one wasn’t a child. But maybe a young male, about as old as Trask Ulgo, for his kind.

His words weren’t all that scary, but Aithne just bet that to everyone else in the room, he sounded just terrifying. Not many people understood the growls and whines that made up Shyriiwook, the Wookiees’ native language. Carth for one looked pretty blank, and to Aithne’s gratification, about as surprised as she was, for all he’d been the one so sure the kid could handle herself.

The Twi’lek looked sympathetic, but she gestured beside her anyway. “Quit complaining, you can finish eating later. Besides, you need the exercise, so get over here.”

The Rodians looked suddenly nervous. Aithne didn’t blame them. Not many people wanted to mess with a Wookiee. Those who did rarely lived. /We want no trouble with Wookiee,/ one stammered.

/Our problem with you, little girl!/ said the other, bigger, stupider looking Rodian. He raised his blaster, and suddenly the Wookiee, Zaalbar, was at his elbow, looking straight down at him.

“You got a problem with me, then you got a problem with Big Z,” the Twi’lek girl, Mission, said. Zaalbar roared his agreement. “So, unless you want to take on my furry friend, I suggest you greenies hop on out of here.” She gestured at the door pointedly. Aithne sat back in her chair, dropping her hand away from her vibroblade.

“I admit it,” Aithne murmured. “You were right.”

“Didn’t think I’d be right this way,” Carth replied, still staring at the two-meter high Wookiee.

So were the two Rodians. Finally, one said sulkily, /Little girl lucky she has big friend/. And, shamed, hardly daring to look from side to side, they skulked out of the cantina.

Aithne raised her eyebrows. “What do you say? Shall we meet your friends?’

“Most interesting people in here,” Carth answered. “And we’ve got to start asking someplace about Bastila.”

They finished up their meal and crossed over to the table where Mission was sitting waiting for her friend. Aithne slung down into a chair beside the girl, and before the girl said a word, she lifted her hands.

“Hey, no trouble,” she promised. “The name’s Aithne Moran. The man in the stupid-looking jacket is my friend, Carth Onasi.”

“Lay off the jacket already,” Carth muttered.

“When you do,” Aithne returned without missing a beat, or taking her eyes off of the Twi’lek. The girl, who’d looked wary when they first sat down, smiled slightly, then relaxed. She took Aithne’s extended hand and shook.

“Charmed. You know, I know pretty much everyone in this part of the Lower City, but I never seen you here before. Guess that makes me and Big Z your official welcoming committee!”

The Wookiee grunted and raised a hairy claw, but really seemed more focused on his lunch. Clearly, the girl was the talker. Not surprising, considering the language barrier.

“You showed a lot of guts dealing with those Vulkars, kid,” Carth told her. “You got a name?”

“My name’s Mission Vao and this big Wookiee is my best friend, Zaalbar,” Mission told them. “I’d offer to give you two a tour of the neighborhood, but the streets down here aren’t safe. But if there’s anything else that you need . . .” she gestured, indicating that she was at their disposal.

“Mm,” Aithne hummed. “Don’t get me wrong, those Rodians were harassing you, and I was a half second from tossing them out on their antennae myself, ask Carth, but I kinda want to know the answer to their question too. Your folks don’t mind you hanging out in here?”

“Nah, I’ve got street smarts,” Mission boasted. “They know me and Big Z can take care of ourselves. Long as I’m home in time for dinner, they don’t care what I do.”

The answer came easily, but Aithne knew a lie when she heard one. Like everybody else in here, Mission Vao had a weapon on her hip. Even stores in the Tarisian Undercity didn’t sell those to kids her age, and no parent or guardian worth anything gave them away. Mission Vao was a runaway, a gang member, an orphan, or two or three together, lying now because she didn’t know Aithne and Carth from pimps or slavers. If that was the case, though, she probably could take care of herself, so Aithne forced her hormones and general sense of human decency down, stopped snooping, and decided to take advantage of the friendliest person they’d met on Taris offering help no strings attached.

While Aithne was circumspect in her questions, as suspicious in some ways of Vao as Vao was of her, she quickly determined Mission didn’t know anything worth knowing about Bastila or the escape pods in the Undercity. The kid did have a lot of quality intel about the lay of the land in the Lower City. She was able to tell them that Calo Nord, the murderer from the entrance hall, was one of the local Exchange boss’s newest and best bounty hunters, and to tell them about the nature and origins of the ongoing gang war. The leader of the Vulkars was an ex-Hidden Bek named Brejik, out for a twisted revenge on Gadon Thek, the leader of the Beks, whom Brejik felt should have ceded his power after an accident a while back. Mission assured them that unlike Brejik, Gadon Thek was a good guy, and that he might be willing to help them with their questions about recent goings-on in the Undercity.

Mission admitted that she and Zaalbar had a loose association with the Hidden Beks, or at least were on friendly terms, so Aithne knew Vao’s information wasn’t necessarily objective. But on the whole, her story sounded both complete and plausible, and she didn’t seem the type to lure a couple of strangers in to an enemy. Aithne and Carth agreed they should look up Gadon Thek at the Bek base. Unfortunately, that meant taking leave of Mission and her friend.

Mission seemed disappointed with Carth and Aithne got up to leave. “You’re going?” she asked. “Yeah, this dive is pretty boring,” she agreed. “I guess we’ll wait for Big Z to finish his lunch, then go and see what we can find someplace else. Look me up if you ever want to talk, ok?”

Aithne could tell that, friendly and capable as the girl seemed, not a lot of people took the trouble to talk with her. “We’ll do that,” she lied. She shook Vao’s hand again, and Zaalbar, who had been eating more or less steadily since the conversation started, raised his hair claw in farewell just like he had in greeting, though he didn’t say a word.

“She’s a bossy, lying little snot, but I like her,” Aithne murmured, looking back over her shoulder at the duo as she and Carth walked away.

“You mean about her parents?” Carth asked. “Come on. If you were her, would you tell a couple of nosy strangers in the cantina the only soul you had looking out for you was a Wookiee?”

“I didn’t say I blamed her for the lying,” Aithne said. “Wish we could help her somehow. Both of them.”

“Didn’t look to me like they need it, really,” Carth answered. “My guess is they look out for one another. Not a whole lot of people in the galaxy who could understand a word Zaalbar says, and Wookiees are aliens who can’t easily learn another language. So, she’s his mouth, and he’s her muscle. It works.”

“I guess. But it’s no way for a kid to grow up. Take it from someone who did.”

“You were an orphan?” Carth asked.

Aithne shook her head. “Not as young as she is, but younger than I should’ve been. Younger than I liked.”

Carth regarded her. “I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “That’s hard.”

Before they left the cantina, Aithne checked in at the bounty office about possible criminals they could take out, both for credits and to boost her reputation. When she found out one of them had been placed by a misogynist fart in space to kill a girl who had just defended herself from unwanted advances, Aithne was able to settle that right in the cantina. She got the fart in question to withdraw the bounty and left with leads on two others much less objectionable.

Then she and Carth left for the Bek base. It was late in the afternoon by this time, and Carth was getting worried. Fortunately, the Bek base turned out to be within easy walking distance. Aithne didn’t have a lot of trouble getting the doorkeeper to let them in; the Beks really did have an open-door policy compared to the Vulkars.

The base was clean and organized-looking for the Lower City. Beks walked around quietly, greeting one another with a friendly word or clap on the back. Aithne knew immediately she’d chosen correctly in approaching the Beks for help. Identifying Gadon Thek was easy too. He was standing behind a desk in the main room—a powerful-looking man in light armor, listening to a readout of swoop bike specs instead of reading them. The accident Mission had told them about had deprived him of his sight a couple of years ago.

Aithne walked toward him, but before she got too close, she heard the distinctive noise of a blaster being cocked. She turned to see a purple Twi’lek woman aiming a blaster rifle square at her heart. “Hold it right there,” the woman growled. “Who are you and what is your business with Gadon?”

Gadon’s head swiveled toward the sound of the disturbance. Aithne blinked. His eyes were indeed the milky blue of the blind, but she got the impression he could see her anyway. Looking closer, she detected ocular implants. He would be able to see at least the outlines and heat signatures of her and of Carth. He held up a hand to his bodyguard.

“Calm down, Zaerdra. Nobody is going to try anything here in the middle of our own base. It would be a suicide mission!”

“You’re too trusting, Gadon,” said Zaerdra. “Brejik and his Vulkars want you dead. Anyone we don’t know is a potential threat, and it’s my job to make sure you’re safe!”

“You aren’t wrong, ma’am,” Aithne said with a small half bow. She looked back at Gadon. “Your security’s lax. But I also gather that’s the reputation you want to foster: friend of the people; leader to those in need; and runner of the best, fastest swoop gang this part of Taris. So, I’m guessing you’ve taken precautions against your enemies that might not be easily apparent. Your bodyguard can relax. I’m not here to assassinate anyone. I’m here because I’ve heard good things. I’m Aithne Moran; this man with me is Carth Onasi. And we need your help.”

Zaerdra was still tense. Gadon noticed she hadn’t lowered her blaster. He looked annoyed. “Well, Zaerdra? Is she wrong? Do you want us to start attacking strangers on sight, Zaerdra, like the Vulkars do? I will never let it come to that! Now step aside and let them pass.”

Zaerdra frowned but nodded and lowered her weapon. “As you wish.” Turning to Aithne and Carth the Twi’lek said, “you can speak to Gadon if you want, Ms. Moran, but I’ve got my eye on you! You try anything and you’ll be vaporized before you can say Vulkar spy!”

Aithne bowed again. “I wouldn’t expect anything less,” She walked over slowly to the desk, and Gadon looked at her, trying to take her measure.

“You talk a good game, stranger. You’ll have to forgive Zaerdra. Ever since Brejik and the Vulkars began this war against us, we’ve all been a bit on edge, and the problems with the Sith haven’t helped things. But how is it that I can help you?”

Aithne swallowed. She looked at Carth. So far, they hadn’t asked anyone directly about the Republic escape pods. Doing so was a risk, and it wasn’t one they’d be able to come back from. She knew Onasi knew it too; his jaw was tight, and his eyes were wary. But he nodded, gesturing that she could go ahead.

“We need to know about those Republic escape pods that crashed in the Undercity,” she told Gadon Thek.

Gadon tensed, then became very intent. Whatever he’d been expecting her to say, that had not been it. “The escape pods? You know, I’ve heard the Sith have been asking around the Upper City about them as well . . . but you don’t look like you’re with the Sith.”

Zaerdra, not understanding, snapped, “They might be spies, Gadon. They might be working for the Sith!”

Gadon shook his head. “Calm down, Zaerdra. If the Sith thought we knew anything useful they’d have a battalion of troops kicking down our door. No, I think these off-worlders have their own agenda.”

“So,” Aithne said. “We’re not Sith. Your door is bootprint free. But would you tell us: Do you know anything useful?”

Gadon’s mouth curved up. “I suppose I could tell you what I know. It’s not like it could do any harm to me or my gang.” The curve became an actual smirk. “But it might cause problems for the Vulkars, and that’s okay in my book.”

Aithne tilted her head. “Might be okay in our book too. They tried to kill us enough times on the way, I might positively enjoy causing them problems.”

Gadon nodded in approval. “The Vulkars stripped those pods clean within hours after they landed,” he told them then, without further roundaboutation. “It’s too bad we didn’t get there first, considering what my spies reported the Vulkars found. A female Republic officer named Bastila survived the crash. We Beks don’t believe in intergalactic slavery, but the Vulkars aren’t so picky. They took her prisoner.”

Carth clenched his jaw, turning white. Terrible images swirled in Aithne’s head of all the things that might be happening to the key to the entire Republic war effort. Aithne didn’t care too much about that aspect of it. But no one should have to endure slavery, and young women perhaps most of all.

“And what will become of her?” she asked, carefully.

“Normally the Vulkars would take a captured slave and sell them for a nice profit to Davik or an off-world slaver,” Gadon explained. “But a Republic officer is no ordinary catch.”

Carth touched Aithne’s shoulder, leaning so his mouth was near her ear. His lips brushed her hair as he whispered. “They still think Bastila is just a Republic officer. That could work to our advantage. Maybe she’ll even figure out a way to escape from the Vulkar base on her own.”

“You want to count on that?” Aithne murmured back, keeping her breathing steady with an effort.

“I’m blind not deaf, son,” Gadon told Carth. As Carth straightened, alarmed, Gadon raised both his hands, holding them palms outward. “No, I don’t want to know who Bastila really is or how important she is to whatever your mission may be. But you should know, girl, that she’s too valuable to leave with the Vulkar scum at the base. Brejik’s probably got your Republic friend hidden away somewhere safe until the big swoop race. You’ll never find her.”

Aithne narrowed her eyes. Part of her wanted to view that last sentence as a challenge, but the rest of her knew the swoop race remark was more essential. She put her hands on her hips. “Why’s she being brought out at the big swoop race?” she asked.

“I’m afraid your friend had become a pawn in Brejik’s game to take over the Lower City,” Gadon told them. “He’s offered her up as the Vulkar’s share of the prize in the annual swoop gang race. By putting up such a valuable prize, Brejik hopes to win the loyalty of some of the smaller gangs. Their numbers will allow him to finally destroy me and my followers.”

Aithne understood then. “So. It’s in your best interests for us to rescue Bastila, but you’re saying our only opportunity will be at this race. How do you propose we go about it? Carth and I alone can’t fight all the gangs.”

“Though it seems we’ve done enough today to make a dent,” Carth muttered.

“The only hope you two have of rescuing Bastila is to somehow win the big season opener of the swoop race,” Gadon said, looking pleased that they’d caught on.

Well. They were a swoop gang, Aithne thought. Made sense it came back to swoop racing. “And you’re going to help us with this,” she finished.

Gadon grinned. “I might be able to help you with this,” he corrected her.

Aithne sighed and let her arms fall. “Alright. What do we have to do?”

“The swoop race is for Lower City gangs only,” explained Gadon. “I might be able to sponsor you as a rider for the Hidden Beks this year. If you win the race, you’ll win your friend’s freedom. But first you have to do something for me.”

“Besides making sure the Vulkars don’t get the loyalty of the smaller gangs?” Aithne asked, a bit peeved.

“I don’t know that you’ll win,” Gadon pointed out.

Aithne showed her teeth. “If that’s what I have to do, I’ll win,” she said simply.

“My mechanics have developed an accelerator for a swoop engine,” Gadon told them. “A bike with the accelerator installed can beat any other swoop out there! But the Vulkars stole the prototype from us. They plan to use it to guarantee a victory in this year’s swoop race. I need you to break into their base and steal it back.”

Aithne frowned. Gadon was clever, that much was clear. What’s more, he knew how to maneuver. She’d known coming into the base he had a handle on public relations, and now she saw he knew how to make use of even unforeseen assets and people. She leaned forward and put both her hands on the desk, looking up into Gadon’s face. Zaerdra tensed again, half-raising her weapon, but Gadon held up his hand.

“Before I do this, I need you to promise me two things, Gadon Thek,” Aithne said.

“What?” Gadon asked, suddenly wary.

“First, I want you to swear the prototype is the invention and intellectual property of your engineers. I want you to promise me that, on your honor, we won’t be the original thieves.”

Gadon regarded her. “I can understand your suspicions,” he replied after a moment. “But everyone in the Lower City knows my reputation. Like you yourself noted, it’s something I take great pride in. My word is my bond. I swear: That prototype is Hidden Bek technology.”

Aithne considered for a moment, then nodded. She believed him. She held out her hand to shake. “Next, I want you to promise that when I bring you the accelerator, once your gang wins, you will hand over Bastila to us, a free woman.”

Gadon took her hand. “I swear,” he said again.

They shook. “Then we have a bargain, Gadon Thek. Now. How am I supposed to get into the Vulkar base?”

Gadon nodded. “Getting into the Vulkar base won’t be easy. The front doors are locked tight. But I know someone who might be able to get you in the back way: Mission Vao!”

That didn’t go over too well with Zaerdra. Apparently, Mission was a sort of mascot around the Bek base. Zaerdra knew her well, and she didn’t want Mission doing anything so likely to make the kid a target for the Black Vulkars.

But Gadon was adamant: “Mission’s explored every step of every back alley in this part of the Lower City. Plus, she knows the Undercity sewers better than anyone. If anyone can get inside the Vulkar base, it’s her,” he said.

Frankly, Aithne was more on Zaerdra’s side of the question, but Gadon didn’t have any other leads. “Where can I find her?” she asked.

“She and her Wookiee friend Zaalbar are always looking to stir up a little excitement,” said Gadon. “They like to go exploring in the Undercity, despite the dangers. Your best bet is to look for her in the Undercity. But you’ll need some way past the Sith guard post at the elevator.”

“We have a Sith uniform to disguise Carth,” said Aithne.

“And you, what, used a stealth field generator?” Zaerdra asked, smirking and looking down at Aithne’s plain leather belt.

Aithne felt herself blushing once again and bit back an angry answer. But Gadon was already talking. “A simple disguise might have worked in the Upper City, but security here is much tighter. Under quarantine, they aren’t even releasing criminals into the Undercity anymore. You’ll need the proper papers to get past the guard. Luckily, my gang ambushed one of the Sith patrols headed down to the Lower City. They never made it, and their security papers fell into my hands.” He gestured at some official-looking documents on the desk in front of him. “Since we’re working together now, I suppose I could give them to you in exchange for your uniform. With the Sith security papers, you won’t need a disguise anyway.”

Carth handed Aithne his sack of armor. “It’s ugly armor. No big loss,” he joked.

“And there goes Yun Genda’s dream of one day recovering his lost equipment and making it off the pig list. Or out of the torture chamber,” Aithne sighed. “I suppose I shall have to reconcile myself to having my retinas burnt out by the Jacket of Doom.”

“Jacket of Doom?” Carth demanded. “Come on, sister, isn’t that going a little far?”

Aithne widened her eyes at him and said nothing.

Gadon chuckled and reached out a hand for the duffel. “Thanks for the uniform. You won’t need it with these security papers anyway.” He slid the papers over to Aithne, who put them in her back.

“Well, Carth, I guess we’ve got a date in the Undercity,” she said, bowing to Zaerdra, who gave her a stiff little nod back and waved her gun for them to leave.

They started out of the base. “Can think of better places for a date, beautiful,” Carth commented.

Aithne grimaced. “So can I, and since we’re going to meet a teenage Twi’lek—no date. Bad word choice. But honestly, I don’t think we should head out tonight at all. It’s been a long day, and we’ll need to be rested before we hit the Undercity.”

“You’re right,” Carth agreed. “I just—hate losing time.”

Aithne shrugged. “We know where Bastila is. We also know we can’t get to her right now. We have a plan. That’ll have to do for the moment.”

“We going out, or is it ration bars for dinner?” Carth asked.

Aithne considered. On the one hand, she still had a feeling they’d need all the credits they could lay hands on before they managed to get off this planet. On the other, tomorrow could be another long day, and supplies might end up being more important. “Let’s get takeaway,” she said. “One last meal that tastes like food before tomorrow. Got a feeling we might not get one then.”

“Right, so you want seaweed, fish, or fish?” Carth asked. Taris didn’t have any land devoted to agriculture. Everything they ate was sourced from the planet’s oceans. Aithne smiled faintly.

“Still better than a ration bar, flyboy.”

The next morning, they were in the Lower City bright and early. They had to pass a set of Lower City apartments to get to the elevator to the Undercity, though, and in front of the apartments there was a bit of a to-do. One of Davik’s agents, harassing a couple of Black Vulkars about their tribute to the crime lord. The Vulkars were being stubborn, and so the agent called out a mercenary. There was nothing too strange about any of this. What was strange was that, when the Vulkars caught sight of the merc, instead of fighting him, they paid the agent and ran. It was the first time Aithne and Carth had ever seen the Vulkars flee a fight, except for the time in the cantina they’d been running from a Wookiee.

Aithne frowned. Then she took a closer look at the merc. There was a tattoo she recognized on his upper bicep. “Onasi,” she said to Carth, nodding her head. “He’s Mandalorian!”

Carth’s fists tightened. He went for his blaster. This time, Aithne was the one stopping him. “Don’t even bother, Carth, you’d lose,” she told him. The Mando’s muscles bulged out from under his civilian tank and vest. He was well over six feet tall, with scars crisscrossing all over his body. His gray hair was still cut military-style, though, and he had a big repeating blaster rifle at the ready. “He’s not wearing armor. You know what that means?”

It was clear Carth did know what it meant. “He fought all the way to the end. To Malachor V,” Carth breathed.

“And wears it like a badge of honor to this day,” Aithne agreed. Something in her gut thrilled, a respect almost akin to awe. “Come on. Let’s meet him,” she told Carth.

“Are you crazy?” Carth demanded.

“Probably.”

“Su’cuy, Mando,” Aithne called.

Beside her, Carth, already angry, went absolutely rigid. But the Mandalorian mercenary turned super fast. He looked her up and down. “You’re not one of us,” he guessed. He had a voice like gravel. “What are you, some kind of translator? Fought in the Wars, did you?”

“He did, anyway,” Aithne said, gesturing at Carth. “That’s probably why he’s glaring at you like he’d like to dip you in acid, and me for opening up a civil conversation. I’ve just been around.”

“I don’t have time for any civil conversation,” the Mandalorian growled. “Davik’s got me working on a special assignment. Keep your Mando’a inside your head; you’ll live longer.”

He shouldered his way past Aithne without a backward glance. Aithne wasn’t offended. Despite the threat, it was almost civil for a Mando and an Exchange thug.

“You want to tell me what the point of that was?” Carth asked.

Aithne shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered, still almost feeling a pull toward the Mandalorian mercenary’s black-clad back. “Like Nord’s bad news, he’s not. And I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him.”

“He’s a Mandalorian working for a crime boss, and we don’t have time for him any more than he has time or interest in us, thank goodness.” Carth said. “We need to get to the Undercity. If you want to tell me on the way how you picked up Mando’a, I’d like to hear it.”

“I’ve done jobs for Mandalorians on occasion,” Aithne answered. “They don’t all speak Basic that well. Some of them are really fanatical about the language provision in the Resol’nare. Think it means they can’t speak anything else. I’ve done other jobs in their territory against them. You knew I was a merc from the start.”

“Didn’t know you’d done jobs for Mandalorians, though, did I?” Carth muttered. “Did you pay any attention to what they did?”

“Certainly, I did,” Aithne answered calmly. “The adoption of war orphans, the work they did on the infrastructure of worlds they conquered, and the general decrease in crime they promoted. I saw the atrocities of war they committed too, but those weren’t limited to Mandalorian perpetrators, especially once the Revanchists got involved. But I don’t know what you’re frowning about. The Republic got its systems back. They freed the slaves. Democracy returned! We’re still waiting on the law and order, but I guess we can’t have everything. You want to argue about it some more once we’re on the elevator?”

Carth stared at her. “For a woman trying to be trustworthy, you sure have some strange ideas.”

“If I have to try and be trustworthy, I’ve already messed it up,” Aithne rejoined. “And honestly, I don’t think it matters whether I’m worthy of trust or not, since you’ve said you don’t trust anyone. I might as well forget the whole thing and just be honest.”

The two of them walked in tense silence toward the Undercity elevator—Carth’s angry, Aithne’s resigned. It was a depressing start to what was sure to be an even more depressing day, Aithne thought.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

Two beggars stopped them as soon as they exited the elevator into the Undercity. They stank to high heaven, as if they hadn’t showered in months, and they were far too thin. The second- and third-hand rags they were wearing hung off near-wasted frames. But none of that seemed to take away from their ability to obnoxiously demand credits for Aithne and Carth’s passage in the elevator.

“Who are you people?” asked Aithne after Carth had expressed his disgust.

The beggars explained, more dramatically than they needed to, that they were Outcasts; that everyone in the Undercity was a criminal or descended from one; and that all Outcasts were doomed to stay in the Undercity in a life of poverty and danger forever, denied access to the world above.

Aithne looked at them for a long, long time. Under her judging stare, the beggars began to squirm. Finally, she reached into her purse and pulled out two ten-credit bars.

“Fine. Here are twenty credits,” she said. She knew it’d go a lot further down here than it would in the Upper City, or even in the Lower.

One of the beggars looked to his fellow in disbelief. “Credits?!” He punched his fist into the air. “We have credits, my brother! Now we can buy food and medicine!”

“Save your credits,” Aithne advised. “Buy some self-respect. It will take you a lot farther.”

Carth eyed her as the beggars ran off. He was still miffed about the Mandalorian sympathies he assumed she had. They had fought in the elevator about it. Aithne guessed she could have explained that respect for a culture that valued family and honor, for Mandalorian ambition, commitment—and somewhat for Mandalorian tactics, and a realistic view of the strengths they’d offered the galaxy that the Republic wasn’t too hot on at the moment, did not equate to sympathy with the worse things the Mandalorians had done or a wish that they had won the war and the Republic been absorbed. She had explained that as a person from the Outer Rim territories, she hadn’t had the luxury of Carth’s automatic Republic citizenship and easy allegiance, that the first formal training she’d ever got had been after her conscription, and so she’d spent most of her life being more loyal to her brain, her belly, and her purse than any high-minded democratic ideals. But since she thought that really should’ve been both obvious and forgivable, she wasn’t inclined to go into the more nuanced points of her stance on Mandalorians or why she’d worked for them just as often as she’d worked against them over the years—though neither had happened very frequently. The more they’d talked, the more she’d felt that if he was going to make hasty assumptions about her based more on past trauma and paranoia than on facts and observation, he deserved the discomfort they caused him.

But now, she seemed to have caught him off balance once again. “You could’ve just run them off, you know,” he said, referring to the beggars.

“I could have,” Aithne said quietly. “But desperation will drive people to ends you wouldn’t want to see, Carth. Maybe if I hadn’t given them the money, they would have attacked the next people off the elevator. Maybe now that they have the credits they’ll make something of them—invest in a useful skill they could sell or something.”

“Maybe. Maybe it’ll teach them harassing visitors really pays,” Carth replied. “They’re not the first people you’ve helped on Taris. There was the woman from the bounty office too, and the man you promised to look out for the rhakghoul serum. Even with Yun and the others: we took that route because it meant we wouldn’t have to kill anyone.”

“There are tactical advantages to avoiding out-and-out murder, when we can,” Aithne protested. “We want a reputation for efficiency; we don’t want to slip up, become infamous, and get a bounty called down on our own heads.”

“I think you might be a good person,” Carth said. “You know, behind your hatred of democracy and determination to put everything in the most heartless, utilitarian terms you can.”

“Oh, behind that,” Aithne jeered. She rolled her eyes. An Outcast woman came up and introduced herself as Shaleena. She seemed anxious to repair the bad first impression the beggars had given Carth and Aithne of her home. She directed Carth and Aithne to Gendar, the village leader, and Rukil, the storyteller. She assured them that those two men could answer all their questions about both the Undercity and Mission Vao. Aithne took a cordial leave of the woman and left to find the two wise men of the village.

Looking about, she was surprised to realize that the village was much cleaner than the Lower City. It was cold, and dark, though, and people were quiet, as if they’d lost their need to talk. Looking around, Aithne saw an emotion calmer than desperation on most of their faces, but somehow, more unsettling. It was hopelessness.

A pair of children walked past slowly. Their cheeks were hollow, their pupils dilated from trying to see in this dark land where the stars never shone. This went beyond hormones, Aithne thought, her heart aching. Every species that wasn’t actually subterranean or aquatic should have a sky.

Something of the anger and compassion she felt for these people must have shown on her face. Carth’s voice spoke out from beside her, louder than usual in the preternatural silence of the Undercity. “Hey . . . beautiful.” Aithne turned and met his eyes, feeling half-wild, and he reached out, almost dropped his hand, then didn’t. Instead, he patted her shoulder twice, awkwardly.

Aithne stared at him a moment, then made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, swung her arm out, and flung it around his back, under his arms, drawing him to her roughly in a strange side hug. Right now, looking out at all of this, into the black, selfishly, she needed the human contact.

He was surprised at first. He stiffened. Then his left arm came up around her shoulders, and he squeezed. Together they stared out at the ramshackle, threadbare tents that served as these people’s excuse for houses. They saw the citizens’ bare feet, their yellowed toenails and cracked, broken heels. They smelled a soup on a fire, or rather, didn’t smell it, because it was little more than water. And in the silence of the nearly voiceless residents, they heard the weight of gravity, the concrete bottom of the world of the rich and privileged up above. It was the ceiling to all who lived below, a roof to hold them back from any sky. It felt like a trap, a tomb. These people had been literally buried alive, and now, so were she and Carth.

She guessed he probably needed the comfort too.

After a moment, she pulled away, but as they walked through the sparsly spaced tents of the Undercity, she did retain his hand, and what was more, Carth let her.

As they neared the part of the village where Shaleena had told them they could find Rukil and Gendar, Aithne saw a man clap the shoulder of another man, whose eyes were shadowed with grief. The second man held a tiny child in his arms, and the first ruffled her hair. He looked back at the tent he had just finished helping the other pitch, then started to walk away.

Aithne let go of Carth’s hand and went after the man. She nodded back at the other guy and his daughter. “Who are they?” she murmured.

“Cale,” Gendar the village leader answered. “His wife and son were killed in a rhakghoul attack yesterday while out scouting for supplies. I just moved him and his daughter to a smaller family tent. I am Gendar, leader of this village.”

Aithne shook his outstretched hand. “Aithne Moran.”

“Carth,” said the pilot.

Gendar asked them how he could be of service, and then he was. He confirmed Gadon’s story of the day before: the Black Vulkars had indeed been the first to Bastila’s escape pod, and they had taken her with them when they’d left. When Aithne then asked about Mission Vao and Zaalbar, Gendar told them that the two could usually be found in the sewers and gave them directions.

Aithne took leave of him with a bow, and then she and Carth went to see Rukil, a very old man sitting on a low stool nearby. She knew he was Rukil only from Shaleena’s description. When she asked his name formally, he actually just hit her with a load of gibberish about the herald of prophecy and harbingers of false messages. Aithne blinked, stepping back slightly.

“Careful,” Carth said, as she nearly ran into him. “This one might be crazy enough to actually be dangerous.”

Aithne asked Rukil what he meant, tentatively. The man calmed slightly. He introduced himself as Rukil, and explained his apprentice was missing, that she had gone scouting for information on the Promised Land, a fabled self-sufficient place in the Undercity, free from rhakghouls and poverty, where all the inhabitants of the village could live in comfort. His apprentice, whose name was Malya, had been missing for three days. He asked Aithne if she would look for Malya.

There was literally nothing to be gained from helping Rukil, village elder of the local Undercity settlement. These people had no credits, no power, no connections. The confirmation of Bastila’s current whereabouts and situation and a direction to start looking for Mission Vao was all anyone down here could give them, Aithne knew. At least looking for Zelka Forn’s rhakghoul serum might bring along a profit, or a supply of the cure if they happened to need it. Aithne found herself promising to help Rukil anyway.

Carth didn’t like it. “We don’t have time for this!” he snapped, as the two of them walked away.

Aithne sighed. “For a meticulous search for the whereabouts of the young woman, maybe not. That doesn’t mean we can’t promise to keep an eye out. We don’t know exactly where Mission and Zaalbar are, anyway. We’ll be scouting around. We can look for Malya. And if we find her, it’ll be a relief to at least two people down here and probably more, and that’ll make me feel better. Wouldn’t you feel better too?”

Carth looked around. “Well, maybe,” he acknowledged. “But searching for Mission and the prototype accelerator has to be our number-one priority.”

They headed for the gate that that separated the village from the rest of the Undercity, where rhakghouls roamed at free range. An agitated woman stood at the gate, pounding on it in vain.

“Run, Hendar, run!” she cried.

A man, panting, ran up to the gate, just outside the village. “Open the gate!” he called, looking behind him.

Aithne caught sight of a lone creature in the distance, swiftly closing.

The gatekeeper refused to open the gate, maintaining rhakghoul was too close.

“The mutants will kill him if you don’t!” cried the woman, tears starting in her eyes, her fists bruised from pounding on the gate.

“And if I open the gate, they will kill us all!” retorted the gatekeeper.

The woman turned to Aithne. “Make him open the gate,” she begged. “My husband will die!”

Aithne nodded. “Open the gate,” she called up to the guard. “My friend and I’ve got the rhakghouls.”

“You’d risk your life for a stranger?” the gatekeeper wondered, incredulous. “You are brave, up-worlder. I will open the gate, but you must hurry.”

He opened the gate, and Carth and Aithne raced forward. The rhakghoul was already within three meters. It was a slavering, white, sinuous mass. Its teeth stuck out of its wide mouth at odd angles, gleaming with poison in the dark. Its eyes were dark and overly large in a lumpy head. They contained not a trace of either mercy or intelligence. Aithne raised her blades to guard, and the creature sprang. But before she could kick out and connect with its body, putting those foul teeth as far away from her as possible, something else connected first. Three shots rang out.

Aithne blinked at the bleeding, oozing mess centimeters from her feet. It was dead.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “Somehow, I think blasters are the way to go down here.”

“Yeah, let’s keep those teeth and claws at a distance,” Carth agreed. Aithne strapped her vibroblades to the back of her pack and got out her spare blaster, as well as a belt she’d been stocking with grenades. She fastened it over her shoulder, staring out into the blackness of the Undercity’s eternal night. The worst part of it was that it wasn’t actually ongoing—there were sickly little lights hanging here and there across a jungle of rebar and concrete, drilled and screwed into the walls: proof the architects of Taris had always intended for people to live down here, or intended they should for a long, long time, anyway.

Behind her, she heard the sound of the gate being raised once more, joyous exclamations of Hendar’s wife, whatever her name was, reuniting with her husband. Aithne ignored them. Instead, she raised one hand to the gatekeeper and started out into the dark.

“The rhakghoul disease,” Aithne said, keeping her voice low, just in case. “It isn’t airborne, is it?”

“No, it can be spread through fluid contact with a rhakghoul’s teeth or claws,” Carth said, “or picked up as a fungal or bacterial infection from too close a proximity to rhakghoul dens or droppings. They aren’t sure whether the mutation is introduced through a fungal or bacterial infection, but if it were airborne, every man, woman, and child in the Undercity would turn.”

“So—”

“Stay away from dens and nests,” Carth answered, “and don’t let them touch you. It’s probably harder than it looks out here; you saw back at the gate: those things are fast.”

They turned in the direction Gadon had given them for the sewers, but suddenly something else was running at them out of the black. Aithne almost fired before she realized who it was.

Mission Vao bowled into her at top speed. She gripped the front of Aithne’s combat vest, looking up into her face. Her gray eyes were swimming in tears. “Please!” she sobbed, panting as she did it. “You have to help me! Nobody else is going to help me. Even the Beks won’t help me. But I can’t just leave him there—he’s my friend! You’ll help me, won’t you?”

Aithne gripped Mission’s wrists, pulling them down away from her collar but gripping them, allowing for physical contact, an anchor point to stave off the kid’s obvious panic. “I can’t do a thing if you don’t slow down and tell me what’s happened,” she said. “Mission. Breathe. In through your nose, and out through your mouth. Now. I’m going to count up and down from twenty, and I want you to just keep breathing. When I’m done, you’re going to tell me what’s wrong, and we’ll see what Carth and I can do.”

Mission nodded, starting to relax. Aithne counted, using Huttese instead of Ryl on a hunch. She wanted a language that sounded like earliest childhood to Mission, like warmth and safety and whatever guardians she might have had once upon a time. It worked, too. Mission Vao’s eyes went even wider, and by the time Aithne was finished counting up to and down from twenty, she was breathing slow and easy, and her hands around Aithne’s wrists had relaxed from a frantic, desperate grip to something much more trusting.

“Now. What happened?” Aithne asked.

“Th—thanks,” Mission stammered. “Anna, wasn’t it? And Carth?”

“Close,” Aithne said, “It’s closer to Ahn-ya. Or Moran. Or ‘hey, you.’ Now. The trouble?”

“It’s Zaalbar,” Mission told her. “The two of us were wandering around here in the Undercity. You know, looking for stuff we could find, just kind of exploring. We do it all the time.”

“I guess with a Wookiee at your side you’ve got to figure you can handle the odd rhakghoul attack,” Carth said. His words were inconsequential, but his tone was what mattered: casual, unworried, like the three of them were right back together at Javyar’s, and it worked too. Mission relaxed even more.

“Only this time, they were waiting for us,” she went on. “Gamorrean slave hunters. We didn’t even have a chance to run. Big Z threw himself at them, and he roared for me to run.” Tears started in her eyes again, sadder. The panic attack was over, but the kid was still distraught. “I . . . I took off; I figured Zaalbar would be right behind me. But there were too many of them; he couldn’t get away. They’re going to sell him to a slaver, I just know it!”

She bent her head and laid her forehead against Aithne’s shoulder and just sobbed. Aithne squeezed the girl’s arms, forcing her attention up again. “Listen here, no one’s selling your friend. Do you know where they took him?”

Mission shook her head uncertainly. “I don’t know for sure, but those Gamorreans like to hang out in the sewers. The stink reminds them of home, I guess. That’s probably where they took Big Z.”

Aithne nodded. “Okay. Now, the three of us are armed. Carth’s a soldier, and I’ve been in places just like this one more than once. Together, we can get him back. But Carth and I are down here for a reason too. We actually came here looking for you. So, once we help you get Zaalbar back, we’re going to need your help to get into the Vulkar base. It’s important.”

Mission nodded. “It’s a deal,” she promised. “As soon as we get Big Z back, I’ll show you a way into that Vulkar base! Now come on—we have to find Zaalbar before they sell him to slavers, or worse!”

“Seems Priority Number One just shifted into rescuing a Wookiee from the sewers, flyboy,” Aithne noted to Carth.

“I’ll keep up somehow,” Carth muttered wearily. “Mission, do you need any more supplies? I’ve got an extra blaster, if you can use two, and we both have a spare change of clothes. Neither one would fit you too well, but either would give you a bit more protection than what you’ve got on now.”

Mission looked at what they were wearing. “Those are standard-grade combat suits,” she observed. “They’re designed to be one-size fits all, to stretch or shrink for whoever needs to wear ‘em. They aren’t, and since both of you are so big and tall, any of your stuff’s liable to pool around the ankle and wrists and bunch at the pits and crotch. But you’re right. Better than going in my regular clothes. Thanks.” She looked both Aithne and Carth up and down and grimaced. “Don’t know if stretch marks for a big barrel chest or a proper front and rear end’ll be worse, but I think I’ll grab Aithne’s spare anyways. Guessing it might smell a little better. You think you could turn around? Keep an eye out for the rhakghouls?”

Carth and Aithne did. Mission swapped Aithne’s spare combat suit for her street clothes, complaining about the night air as she did it. When they turned around, the kid looked different, and she hadn’t been wrong about the fit of the suit. But she’d punched an extra hole in her belt with a knife to take up some of the extra slack in the pant seat Aithne had left in the elastic with her larger hips and cuffed the sleeves and pant legs to accommodate her shorter limbs. She still looked every bit a third-rate thug. Aithne had to repress her smile.

“I’ll stick to my own blaster, though,” Mission told Carth. “Had it since I was ten. We know how we work together. Your stuff’s probably a whole lot nicer, but we don’t have time for me to practice with it. Thanks anyway, Carth. I can take one of your packs.” Carth was carrying two today; they’d stocked up heading for the Undercity and even brought an extra pack to do it.

“Thanks,” Carth said, handing one over, “and don’t worry about the gun. It’s better to use a weapon you’re familiar with well than it is to misfire a higher quality gun. There’s a lot of second- and third-year service personnel in armies that don’t know that.”

That actually got a smile out of the kid. She led the way to the sewers, where they were immediately confronted by no less than four rhakghouls. Rhakghouls didn’t allow for firing from cover, so the three of them dodged around the room, trying to keep a meter and a half between them and the rhakghouls at all times within the close confines of the sewer, which, while spacious as sewers went, hadn’t been designed with this activity in mind. Still, after a couple of minutes, the rhakghouls were dead, and Carth, Aithne, and Mission checked each other for injuries. They’d got out unscathed.

“You two are pretty good in a scrap,” Mission remarked then.

“You should see Moran when it doesn’t have to be blasters,” Carth said. “With sword in hand, she’s about as fast and accurate as any Jedi that I’ve seen.”

Aithne wrinkled her nose. “You speaking as someone admiring the vanquishers of the Mandalorians or suspicious of traitors to the Republic?” she wanted to know.

“No, neither,” Carth assured her. “Just a career man who’s seen a lot of combat. You’re good, Aithne. You’ve probably saved my life a couple of times these past few days, fighting from the front the way you do.”

“So, what, you Republics?” Mission asked. “Survivors of that big crash over the planet, or of the takeover of that Upper City base? If Carth isn’t crazy about traitors to the Republic, I mean.”

Carth and Aithne looked at one another.

“It’s okay if you’re Republic,” Mission rushed to tell them. “I like the Republic. They’re the good guys, right? A whole lot better than these Sith animals.”

“Carth’s Republic,” Aithne confirmed. “Big-time war hero. I’m a recent, reluctant and therefore, to him, slightly suspect conscript from the Rim.”

“She talks a lot of nonsense,” Carth told Mission. “But we were both in the battle over Taris, yeah. We crashed here not quite a week ago. Now our objective is to find anyone who might’ve survived with us and break out of the Sith blockade.”

“And to do that, you need to raid the Vulkar base, ‘cause they were first to the pods that crashed down here,” Mission finished.

“Well, no,” Aithne admitted. “Actually because they stole the Hidden Beks’ prototype accelerator, and that’s the only guarantee of winning the Republic officer the Vulkars are putting up as their share of the prize in the big swoop race in the next couple of days.”

“And I thought this adventure was complicated,” Mission said. “So, what do you think? Door Number One, Two, or Three?” she asked, looking around at various corridors in the Tarisian sewers.

Aithne considered. She looked at Carth, who shrugged. Aithne took a guess and went right. A Gamorrean sentry proved her guess accurate. After they’d dealt with him, they dodged the sound of several heavy feet to a door to the right and went through a door on the left.

Aithne stopped up short, seeing a rusted droid standing useless in the middle of the room. She grinned then, inexpressively relieved. Gamorreans were big, and it sounded like there were a lot of them next door. “And here I was thinking we were about to start hurling grenades like we were in a food fight or play some long, complicated game of tag with our piggy friends next door,” she remarked.

“You can do something with that hunk of junk?” Mission asked, skeptical.

“Should be able to,” Aithne answered, fishing in her pack for the smaller bag of repair parts she’d been hoarding and adding to since Endar Spire. She crouched down next to the droid, opening the panel on its belly. “I’m good with droids. Always have been. And if I handle things right . . . it’ll take care of all those Gamorreans in the next room for us, and the three of us can have something of a breather.”

She spent a few minutes tinkering with the droid, which then left to attack the Gamorreans next door to them. Aithne heard the sound of grunting pig-men and turned to Carth and Mission. She smiled brightly. “Anyone for a sawdusty ration bar?”

They took up positions leaning against the rusted walls of the sewer passage, avoiding the streams of . . . well, sewage, that leaked from pipes overhead. They ate and shared out some water from Carth and Aithne’s canteens between the three of them.

“So, what was that before?” Mission asked, “when you said Carth don’t trust you? Just because you’re from the Rim? Cause that’s not right.”

“It’s not like that, Mission,” Carth protested. “Look, it’s complicated.”

“Not too,” Aithne disagreed. She gazed at the pilot speculatively. “To his credit, I don’t think he’s classist or elitist,” she admitted. “That was just me, talking nonsense, like he said. He’s pretty democratic with his paranoia. Claims he doesn’t trust anyone at all.”

Mission looked wary. “Is this some kind of . . . thing between you two?” she asked, making a vague but somehow perfectly descriptive gesture. “Because I don’t want to get in the middle of anything.”

“It’s a thing for her, not me,” Carth complained. “As far as I’m concerned, we only need to depend on each other far enough to get off this planet, but somehow, she seems personally offended I happen to be cautious.”

“Couldn’t be because you basically insinuated I might have sabotaged our ship and killed a cruiser’s worth of people,” Aithne murmured.

“I didn’t!—Look,” Carth said. “You’re probably one of the most skilled women I’ve ever met. Your ideas have gotten us this far, and I’m lucky you’re here to help me, no question. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop watching you or being wary. I’m just not built that way. Period.”

“‘Not built that way’ is something you say when someone asks why you can’t speak Wookiee,” Mission offered. “Not when you can’t help accusing your partner of what? Murder? Treachery?” She looked at Aithne for confirmation.

Aithne sighed. “There was no outright accusation. He doesn’t have the proof, because it’s nonsense, and he knows it. And he’s right that we don’t actually have to trust one another to get off Taris together. But if he can’t help ‘watching me or being wary,’” she said, putting on a mocking, Carth-like tone, “I can’t help needling him about it because it’s ridiculous. You’re a new way to pick at him, and I like that. But it isn’t fair or particularly kind to either of you. So. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“And I’m not trying to offend her,” Carth said, “but I’ve been betrayed before by people I—” he shut his mouth like a trap then, and his cheeks reddened. “Well, it won’t happen again, that’s all.”

“It’s not fair to make me pay for that but on your homeworld,” Aithne said. “The past can be a lesson or predictor for the future, but a lot of times it ends up completely irrelevant.”

“Maybe you’re right, but it isn’t always,” Carth insisted. He seemed to have forgotten Mission was still in the room. “There are no guarantees. Not for you, not for me. Just . . . could you try not to take it so . . . so personally?”

“Could you try not to tell me how I should take things?” Aithne retorted. “Ungrateful, idiotic little . . . monkey lizard,” she muttered under her breath.

She knew it was a mistake the moment she said it. Carth took one look at her and laughed. “Is that your idea of an insult? I know you don’t go in for cursing, but come on, sister! Take your best shot!”

Aithne tossed her head back. “Fine!” she snapped. “You schizoid, trauma-ridden, split-personality lunatic! You’ve got yourself some medals and commendations, nice rank, nice hair and arms, and nice manners. You have twenty-so years in the service, so you’ve seen a thing or two. You can shoot a gun and purportedly fly, so you think you can sit back and let what you’ve seen and a raging case of paranoia fly your brain. Well, you can’t. Your fear and your past are ruling you, Carth Onasi. They aren’t teaching you; they’re in the cockpit. Now, I couldn’t care less if you tell me what you’ve been through or not; I’m not your therapist. I only care what you think of me because your whole back-and-forth schtick is exhausting. I’m exhausted! After three days! And because I think if it wasn’t for the raging paranoia, we might actually really get along.”

Carth’s face had gone rigid. “Feel better?” he asked simply. “I think you might have hurt my man feelings with that rant. For someone who claims not to be a therapist, you can do a hell of a lot of analyzing.”

“You asked,” Aithne spat, as much because even now in a sewer, with both of them out-and-out furious at each other, Mission staring in riveted fascination at them both, her half-eaten ration bar forgotten, halfway to her lips, and the sounds of the droid pounding on the Gamorreans next door, she was ridiculously attracted to him. And she knew it was mutual. Honestly, she thought she was getting a worse case of unwarranted suspicion off Carth Onasi because they did get along so well, because he did want so much to like and trust her.

“I did,” Carth admitted finally. Something in him seemed to come undone then, or to relax. “That’ll teach me, then, won’t it? We do get along,” he said. “You—you aren’t half bad, even when you’re about ready to bite my head off.”

Aithne tilted her head, as if to say, See?

Carth turned back to Mission abruptly. “It isn’t always like this,” he apologized. “It’s been . . . it’s been a hard few days. Hell of a first impression, huh?”

“You’re telling me,” Mission agreed emphatically. “Sheesh! That was better than a matinee drama holovid! Hey, take a look at this.” She held out a datapad to Carth. “Found it over there on that Outcast skeleton.”

“What’ve we got?” Aithne asked him after a second.

“It’s a journal,” he said after another few seconds’ skimming. “Apparently belonged to Rukil’s grandfather. He was hunting down clues to the Promised Land. Puzzles, guesswork. Nothing that really makes a whole lot of sense.”

“Still, Rukil might like to have it,” Aithne said. “Give it back to Mission. She should have some room in her pack to carry it.”

Mission put it away as ordered. “Time to go?” she asked.

Aithne listened. The sounds of bludgeoning and furious squeals still rang down the hall. “Not quite. We’ve got a few more minutes. I think you’ve heard enough about me and Carth. Why don’t you tell us something about you?”

“Really? You want to know about me?” Mission repeated. “Nobody’s ever really been interested in me before,” the Twi’lek said in wonder. “What do you want to know?”

“Why don’t you start with how you met Zaalbar?” Carth suggested. “The two of you make a bit of an odd pair.”

Mission looked out into the hallway. “Big Z’s my family, you know?” she answered. “I know I told you I had parents, but that was just because I didn’t know you guys, you know? I didn’t know what you wanted. The truth is, I think my parents are probably dead. It was just me on my own for years until the day I saw Zaalbar in the Lower City. I could tell right away he was in trouble. This was before the gang wars were out of hand, but even then, the Vulkars were scum. A few of them were hassling Big Z, trying to pick a fight, but he wasn’t looking for trouble.”

“Who’d want to pick a fight with a Wookiee?” Aithne asked.

Mission rolled her eyes expressively, laughing a little. “Hey, no one said the Vulkars were smart. But there were three of them, so maybe they figured they could handle him. I don’t know.” She continued. “Anyway, I don’t like the Vulkars at the best of times, and when I saw them picking on this poor Wookiee, all alone on a strange planet, overwhelmed by the big city, I just lost it. I screamed out ‘Leave him alone, you core-slimes!’ and charged right at them. One of them saw me coming and slapped me so hard he just about knocked me cold.”

Aithne tensed, thinking about it. If this was three or four years ago, Mission would have been eleven at the very oldest. “You’re lucky he didn’t fry you with a blaster.”

Mission stiffened. Her eyes went flat like a rock. “Hey, I don’t need a lecture from you. You ain’t my mother! I knew what I was doing. Those Vulkars didn’t scare me. They’re nothing but cowards! I knew how to deal with them. Of course, I never got the chance,” she admitted. “I guess Zaalbar didn’t like seeing me get smacked around. He let out this howl and yanked that Vulkar a meter up off the ground and held him there by his throat!” Mission chuckled, remembering the expression on that Rodian’s face.

“What did the other two do?” Aithne prompted. Mission laughed.

“The other two screamed and ran off. Can’t say I blame them. The first time you see an angry Wookiee up close it isn’t a pretty sight.” She shook her head. “I thought Zaalbar was going to rip that punk’s arms off and beat him to death with his own fists. The Vulkar was so scared he fainted. Or maybe Big Z’s breath just knocked him out.” She giggled. “I keep telling Zaalbar to brush those choppers of his, but he never listens.” She patted Aithne on the back, adopting a mocking maternal expression. “Just stay upwind when he’s speaking, and you’ll be fine. Anyway, I knew those Vulkars would be back with friends, so I grabbed Zaalbar and we took off. Ever since then we’ve been a team. We look out for each other, you know?”

She shivered and glanced toward the door. Aithne patted her on the back. “We’ll get him back, Mission, don’t worry.” She changed the subject. “How did Zaalbar end up on Taris?” she asked.

Mission shrugged. “He was fleeing some kind of trouble back on Kashyyyk. That’s all I know, really. Big Z doesn’t like to talk about it. In case you didn’t notice, he’s the strong, silent type.”

“Oh, we noticed,” Carth chimed in.

Mission smiled. “It doesn’t matter to me, though. I accept him for what he is, not what he was. Me and Zaalbar like to live in the present.”

“How’d you survive before you met Zaalbar?” Aithne asked.

Mission’s smile vanished. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded, offended. “You think I can’t take care of myself? I’ve got street smarts!” she declared proudly. “I know how to get by on my own. In fact,” she informed Aithne, “I look out for Zaalbar more than he looks out for me, you know? Big Z’s a bit too gullible to make it alone on the mean streets of the Lower City.”

Aithne did believe that Mission certainly contributed to her partnership with the Wookiee, but she also was sure that without him, Mission would probably run into more trouble than she could handle pretty quick, especially with her seeming penchant to go looking for it, and now that she was getting older. She also saw that mentioning it to the kid was probably a bad idea. In any event, she didn’t hear sounds of combat down the corridor, which meant the droid she’d repaired had been torn apart and whoever was left was their problem, or that it had taken care of all the bad guys.

“Come on. Break’s over. The way should be clear now—or clearer.”

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” Mission agreed. “Like I used to tell my brother, fast talk and slick words don’t get the job done.”

Aithne stopped where she had just been starting forward toward the door. So, there’d been a brother. “I didn’t know you had a brother,” she said in a neutral tone.

Mission suddenly shifted. “My brother’s a touchy subject, you know?” she said. “It just so happens I don’t really feel like talking about him right now. Nothing personal. Let’s just get back to the business at hand, okay?”

“Yeah, watch that ‘nothing personal,’ Mission,” Carth said. “Aithne doesn’t tend to believe those.”

“Let’s not get into that again,” Mission said in an emphatic voice.

The three of them crossed to the room next door. Now and then, Aithne had to dodge streams of green, foul-smelling sewage that cascaded from the ceiling in a rush and through the grating below her feet. Aithne looked down at the droid that she’d repaired. All around the room, Gamorrean bodies littered the floor, bruised and bloody and very, very dead. The droid, still blue-shielded and on patrol, passed by them in total innocence. Aithne smiled.

Suddenly, Mission halted. “Hmm,” she said, in a tone that also stopped Carth and Aithne. “Look at this.” She gestured toward a door on their left. “This is one of those old-style manual locks,” she explained, noting her companion’s confusion. “No computer codes or nothing. The sewers is the only place you’ll see one of these on Taris. You can’t use conventional security spikes on these old locks, but don’t worry. I’ve come across them before. I’ve rigged up a device that should do the trick.”

Aithne raised an eyebrow. “Handy,” she remarked, as the teenager pulled out a little metal contraption from a pocket in her borrowed combat suit. Aithne didn’t know she’d moved personal effects in. Mission fiddled with the lock for a moment, the door opened, and out rushed a tall, hairy, nasty-smelling, but very much alive Wookiee.

/You’re a sight for sore eyes, Mission!/ growled Zaalbar.

Mission beamed, rushing forward to embrace her best friend, who returned the hug with a care not to crush her but with obvious warmth. “I’m glad to see you, too, Big Z!” cried Mission. “You didn’t think I’d forget about you? Mission and Zaalbar—together forever!”

Zaalbar smiled with his eyes, the way Wookiees did, and caught sight of Aithne and Carth. His expression changed to one of curiosity. /I remember these two, from the cantina,/ he said. /What are they doing here?/

Mission stepped back and indicated Carth and Aithne. “These are my new friends, Big Z. Without them I never could have got you out.”

Aithne bowed. “Just a few dead rhakghouls and a reprogrammed droid,” she murmured. “I’m surprised you noticed us at the cantina, Big Z. You seemed elbow-deep in your dinner at the time.”

She couldn’t form the sounds to speak Shyriiwook herself, but just the fact that she’d referred back to his statement alerted Zaalbar to her understanding of it. He’d have to be sensitive to that, as a Wookiee far from home. /You know the language of my people. That is rare, among your species. I am impressed./

He looked at her for a long, long moment. Then, slowly, deliberately, he lowered himself to kneel on the filthy sewer floor. Maintaining eye contact with Aithne, he said /You have saved me from a life of servitude and slavery. There is only one way I can ever repay such an act: I will swear a lifedebt to you./

Aithne swallowed. The planet seemed to twist under her feet a moment, and then she felt the oddest sense of déjà vu, as though she’d been here before, standing and looking down at a person swearing an oath to follow her forever.

Ridiculous, she thought. She’d never had a dependant in her life, much less anyone vowing some kind of formal loyalty. And honestly, she didn’t want that now. A vow like the one Zaalbar was trying to make was an honor that couldn’t be refused without conferring great shame and insult on him, but it also conferred a great deal of responsibility upon the recipient. If she wasn’t mistaken, the Wookiee was trying to give her his life, for as long as it coincided with the duration of hers—he’d outlive her by several centuries, and by the time she died of old age, Zaalbar would still be in his prime. But even just giving her his youth was a huge commitment. And why her? Why not Carth? He was senior officer.

Not that Zaalbar knows that, one part of her thought, and another: Of course, it’s me.

Mission knew exactly what her friend was trying to do. “Are you sure about that, Big Z?” she asked, concerned. “Think about it carefully. You better be sure about this.”

Zaalbar looked at Mission without rising. /I am sure, Mission. This is an issue of great importance to me/ he continued, now addressing all of the people in the room. His voice rose to fill the space. /Because of our great physical strength, Wookiees are being used as slave labor on our own homeworld. They see us as brutes and animals to be exploited. Over the years slavers have taken many of my people; we must always be on guard against raids against our villages. When the Gamorreans captured me, I thought I was doomed to a life of servitude./ His eyes found Aithne’s again, and he met her gaze with a weight of gratitude and seriousness in his eyes that nearly crushed her. /I have been saved from such a fate, and the only way I can repay that is through a lifedebt./

Carth was silent, aware that something heavy was going on, even if he understood nothing of Zaalbar’s speech. Mission was silent for a moment too, then she looked directly at Aithne, her eyes hard with challenge.

“Big Z swearing a Wookiee lifedebt to you. Wow—this is major. Do you realize what this means?”

“The meaning’s in the word, isn’t it?” Aithne responded. Her voice came out high and brittle, nervous-sounding. She cleared her throat.

“A lifedebt is the most solemn vow a Wookiee can make,” Mission said. “It means he’ll stay by your side for the rest of your life—wherever you go, whatever you do, Zaalbar will be with you.”

Don’t mess him up, Aithne heard as plainly as if the girl had said it. She screwed her eyes shut and closed her fists, but this felt right. Not only did she not want to scorn Zaalbar’s freedom and his right to do what he chose with it, or make a mockery of his oath, it felt like she was meant to accept some other way, like she couldn’t do anything less.

Hoping she was doing what she was supposed to, she opened her eyes and nodded. She stepped forward and placed her right fist over her heart, and while it might not have been precisely the correct cultural gesture, Zaalbar seemed to glow.

/In the presence of you all, I swear my lifedebt,/ he said. /Forever after will I be by your side, Aithne Moran. May my vow be as strong as the roots of the great Wroshyr trees of Kashyyyk./

Aithne nodded again, filled with respect and a little bit of awe for a being who could kneel before someone else and swear such a vow and only increase his dignity and the value of his personhood by doing so. “I . . . accept,” she managed, “though reluctantly. I do not feel worthy of such service or such a trust, but in turn, I vow I will do my utmost to honor it. Forever after, you have a place at my table—or a fistful of ration bars inside my pack. Forever after, you have a berth inside my house—or a bedroll in whatever foxhole I happen to be in. Forever after, you shall be as family to me.”

The words were awkward, off the cuff. She didn’t know what one said on occasions like this, but saying nothing didn’t seem like an option. But Zaalbar seemed satisfied, and he accepted her hand up.

Mission ruined the moment, swinging her arm around Aithne’s waist. “I guess this means you’re stuck with me too,” she said, sounding not at all apologetic. “Wherever Big Z goes, I’m going. I almost lost him once. It’s not going to happen again.”

Aithne started. She hadn’t even started to think of that. She extricated herself from Mission, staring down at the kid in horror. “Mission, I don’t want to break up your family, but—”

“You did hear back there that we’re fugitives on this planet and trying to fly into a war?” Carth said, much more plainly.

/What’s this, Mission?/ Zaalbar asked. /Aithne?/

“They’re Republic, Zaalbar,” Mission explained. “Survivors from one of those pod crashes a few days ago. I’m helping them get into the Vulkar base after the accelerator they stole from the Beks, so they can win the big race in a couple of days and win that other officer. See?” she told Carth. “I was listening just fine, before. I know what we’re going into.”

“You may think you do, but this is a little past swoop gang wars and Exchange deals in back alleys,” Aithne said. “War is—it’s a whole other ballgame, Mission. We’re not playing with dummy rounds here. There are a whole lot of people who want Carth and I dead, and even more who want our friend, Bastila. It’s like your gun, that’s safer to shoot even if Carth’s might be better. I don’t want to take you someplace where you aren’t prepared for what could happen.”

Not to mention school, Aithne thought, and university or apprenticeship to a trade or some kind of higher education. Not to mention boys—or girls, or other. Not to mention periods and mood swings and reproductive health—or other kinds of health. Innoculations and citizenship and paperwork. Sithspit, she wasn’t ready for a kid! Let alone a nearly fully grown one that thought she was but wasn’t and all the trauma she might’ve accumulated all these years that she’d been on her own. All the catching up she would have to do on stuff ordinary kids had learned and done but she hadn’t. She wasn’t ready for the fiscal or the moral responsibility of preparing Mission for a life within the bounds of some kind of galactic law and society.

“So I’ll learn what I need to know,” Mission said. “You and Big Z aren’t leaving Taris without me, and that is that.” She folded her arms across her chest. Her jaw was set, but there was enough fear in her eyes that Aithne suddenly knew Mission’s brother had done just that.

“Okay,” she said finally. “Okay. We’ll make it work. Somehow.”

Mission squealed and hugged her. Aithne hugged her back, staring at Carth over the top of the girl’s headdress, completely nonplussed.

“Congratulations,” he murmured.

“Help!” she mouthed.

He looked sympathetic. “Later,” he mouthed back.

/I would like to hear a full explanation of what it is we are doing,/ Zaalbar said.

Mission, Carth, and Aithne worked together to give him one. /And what is your plan once you have found Bastila?/ Zaalbar asked after they had finished.

“We plan on somehow breaking the Sith blockade and leaving the planet,” Aithne answered. “Carth and I will escort Bastila to a place where she can regroup and receive new instructions. Carth at least will have to do the same with his own superiors. As for me, I don’t know. Maybe the Republic will let me resign my commission. Maybe we’ll renegotiate, and I’ll contract for them on a freelance basis. That’d be my preference. Or—it would’ve been. With the two of you—I don’t know.”

Zaalbar, she thought, could probably handle whatever scouting or reconnaissance missions she chose to go on. Mission had certain skills that would translate well to the work too; she’d seen that. But with her along, Aithne would feel limited in the jobs that she could take, and she didn’t want Mission working full time with them, not at her age. But she also knew she couldn’t in good conscience separate Mission and Zaalbar for long. It was a problem. It needed a week’s thought, and she’d only had three minutes.

“This’ll be fun,” Mission said confidently, completely oblivious to the massive bomb she and her Wookiee best friend had just dropped on Aithne’s whole entire life. “I always wanted to see the galaxy, go on adventures. But I guess now I still owe you one secret path into the Vulkar base. That was the deal, wasn’t it? Don’t worry! I know a backdoor into that scum den!”

“Good,” Carth said, comforted by the return to business. “The sooner we get there, the better.”

“I better come with you,” said Mission, beginning to pace in thought. “The Vulkars put up a force shield to keep the sewer dwellers out. I’m one of the only non-Vulkars on Taris who can get you past it. I can’t remember exactly how to get there,” she added, “but I know it was somewhere here in the sewers. Over to the . . . northeast, if I remember right. I just hope the rancor monster isn’t still there.”

Carth blanched. Aithne said slowly, and very calmly, “I think someone forgot to mention that tiny little detail, Mission.”

Mission looked apologetic. “There used to be a rancor monster that made its nest there in that part of the sewers,” she informed Aithne. “Pretty much eats anything it can get its claws on. That thing is huge!” Aithne suddenly had a vivid image of a rancor beast the size of their Upper City apartment chewing on a bloody blue headtail, a ripped orange jacket at its feet. Mission held up a hand, “Wait to panic, Aithne. Luckily for us, rancors aren’t too bright. I was able to sneak past it before, so I’m sure we’ll figure something out. That is, unless you want to change your mind.” She looked at Aithne, challenge in her face.

Force, she couldn’t wimp out in front of a teenager. Mission was going to be very bad for her, Aithne thought. “Let’s go,” she said.

“Okay then, off we go. Like I said, somewhere to the . . . southeast. Just look for the force shield, and we’ll know we’re there.”

Carth looked at Mission. “Well, which is it?”

“Which is what?” asked Mission in confusion.

“First you said we need to go northeast, then you said we need to go southeast. Which is it?”

/She also said she didn’t know,/ Zaalbar remarked.

“He just made a sarcastic comment,” Aithne informed Carth. “Like we didn’t have enough smark alecks in the group.”

Chapter Text

AITHNE

They went east. Zaalbar took the lead. It was now his own personal mission to protect Aithne, and to do that, he felt he needed to be in the front, the first to see and fight off what would harm her. Carth tailed the line, providing a rear guard and ranged support with his blasters. Mission and Aithne filled in the middle, Aithne with vibroblades again. She wasn’t going to let Zaalbar face the rhakghouls in melee combat on his own.

“Now, you understand that when we run into trouble, I want you back with Carth,” Aithne told her. “In cover if you can find it, and always at least a meter and a half from any enemy coming at us. Use that stealth field generator if you have to,” she added, with another nod at Mission’s gear. She hadn’t realized at first, but Mission had swapped out Aithne’s borrowed belt for one of her own. “Glad to see you have one and know how to use it. That’s never been one of my particular talents.”

“So, what’s with you and Carth?” Mission asked, completely ignoring her instructions.

Aithne took in a breath. The sewers were loud, full of running water and other flowing liquids, as well as echoes off the metal walls from their various unsavory inhabitants. But that didn’t mean Carth wouldn’t hear from where he walked three or four meters back. Then again, she’d hardly hesitated to talk about him with Mission right in front of his face before.

That didn’t make the argument they’d had before right, though, she thought.

“We shouldn’t have pulled you into that fight,” she said. “I’ll try to make sure nothing like that happens again. Carth’s and my disagreements are Carth’s and my disagreements. They have nothing to do with you, and the way we both tried to use you back there was, frankly, inexcusable. Excuse me anyway?” She glanced at Mission and tried a smile.

Mission laughed at her. “Sheesh, it was more fun than any talk I’ve had in a long time. Big Z’s not much of a conversationalist. And watching you go off on him?” She whistled. “Did he really accuse you of blowing up that ship you guys were on?”

Aithne grimaced. “No. Not in so many words. But I was the newest recruit to the ship, and Bastila and the Jedi requested me to be there—something I had no idea about until he told me, by the way—so he thinks it’s suspicious that I was one of the survivors. Frankly, from what he said, he might have just as easily been insinuating I’m special forces on a secret mission he doesn’t know about or something, but the point is, he doesn’t trust me, and it’s almost entirely because of some crap that happened in his past that he won’t tell me about but lets dictate everything he does and feels anyway.”

“And it’s frustrating, because he’s cute and nice, and when he’s not out thinking you’re about to stab him in the back, you really like him,” Mission summarized.

Aithne looked at her. Mission shrugged. “You said it, not me. The guy’s old enough to be my father. Probably about ten years older’n’ you. He does have nice hair. And I guess he’s taller than you. Does it get at you worse because he likes you when he’s not out thinking you’re about to stab him in the back? Because he does, you know? All that stuff he said about you being the most skilled woman he’s ever met and you guys getting along, even after you’d had that massive fight.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Aithne agreed. “It’s like I said before: it’s just exhausting. I don’t have time for it, and I don’t want it. I’m good with Professional Military Man with Trust Issues. I’m good with him being my friend. I’m not good with this back and forth. But that’s what I’ve been stuck with the past few days. Leaves me a little bit crazy. Meaner than I want to be. I’m working on it. Guess one advantage of getting off Taris is I’ll be done with Major Paranoia.”

Mission’s lekku twitched. “Aithne?” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Keep working on that meanness,” Mission advised.

There were several skirmishes before they finally reached the blue force shield Mission talked about. Aithne found another Outcast journal, this one even older than the last. She gave it to Mission to keep with the other. She had a feeling it would be important. But she had still seen no trace of Rukil’s lost apprentice.

When they did reach the force shield, Mission shut it down just as easily as she’d retrieved the mines in their path. The Upper Sewers smelled slightly better than the Lower Sewers and seemed somehow older. The passages were eerily quiet, aside from the dripping of sewage, and Aithne was more than a little creeped out. She felt like the bantha when the hunter is near.

There were a few skirmishes in the Upper Sewers as the company trudged on through the gloom and muck, but not nearly so many as below. The company, too, was quieter, more aware. Aithne could feel Mission beside her grow more and more uncomfortable, and assumed they were nearing the lair of the rancor monster. Finally, Mission spoke into the silence.

“Hey, Carth,” she said in a forced light tone, calling back to the pilot, who’d drawn closer since they’d entered the Upper Sewers and things had gone quiet. “You’re a pilot for the Republic, right? You’ve been all over the galaxy I bet, right? So, tell me, how would you rate Taris compared to other worlds you’ve seen?”

Opening a conversation with Carth had been the exact right thing, Aithne thought, as his voice came back, warm, steady, and calm. Just like on Endar Spire after Trask’s death, it put her almost instantly at ease in the eerie silence and the building apprehension over the rancor monster.

“To be honest, Mission, Taris would rate pretty low,” he said. “The prejudice, the rich spoiling themselves while the poor are crushed beneath them: not a pretty picture.”

Mission forgot her fear as she rose in defense of her home of nine years. “Yeah, but that’s only since the Sith occupation. Before that . . .” she thought for a moment. “Well, I guess it wasn’t all that different, really. Hmmm. Maybe Taris ain’t as great as I thought, you know?”

Carth had drawn level with them now. He reached out and put a hand on Mission’s thin shoulder. “Trust me, Mission. Honestly, I think your leaving here with us is for the best. There are a lot worlds better than Taris. There are worse, too,” he added. “But Taris is no place for a kid to live on her own, even a kid who has a Wookiee to look out for her.” he finished with a glance at Zaalbar.

Ooh, bad move, flyboy, Aithne thought. Massive tactical error. Mission turned violet. She threw Carth’s hand off her shoulder, furious.

“Hey, I ain’t no kid! I look out for Zaalbar as much as he looks out for me! Big Z’s my friend, not my babysitter, and I ain’t looking for someone to fill the position! Geez,” she complained, “I come ask you a question, and you give me a lecture!”

Carth stiffened. “Don’t you snap at me, missy! You want a lecture? How’s this: only bratty little children fly off the handle because of a simple comment.”

Aithne tilted her head at him. “Then Mission isn’t the only bratty kid we have around, is she?” she said.

Carth’s ears went red, but Mission seemed to see Aithne’s remark as a defense of her position rather than a criticism of Carth’s short fuse. “I don’t have to take this from you, Carth! You ain’t my father! So, keep your lectures inside your withered old head, ‘cause I don’t need ‘em!”

Carth looked up again, incensed, “And I sure as hell don’t need this. Let’s just drop it and go back to what we’re doing.”

Aithne looked between the two of them, bemused, then to Zaalbar. The Wookiee met her eyes, and she could see he was smiling. She fell back beside him. “Now why didn’t you swear your lifedebt to him?” she murmured under her breath. “Then Carth would’ve acquired a teenage ward. Sounds like he’s prepared.”

/They sound like parent and cub,/ Zaalbar agreed. Then he handed her a datapad. /From the dead one,/ he said, pointing at a severed arm at his feet. /I also found these chemicals within the pocket of its sleeve./ He produced three vials of green fluid.

Aithne read the datapad. Then she cleared her throat, projecting so the fuming Carth and Mission could hear. “Playtime’s over, children. According to this, our rancor monster’s just next door.”

“Any bright ideas?” Carth asked.

“These vials contain a formula that smells like dinner to the rancor,” Aithne explained, gesturing toward the glass bottles in Zaalbar’s claw. “This Bek here’d planned to douse something toxic enough to destroy the rancor with it. It’s a good plan, so far as it goes. Unfortunately, he wasn’t fast or sneaky enough to feed the rancor before the rancor fed on him.”

“I can do it,” Mission volunteered. “Gimme a grenade or a mine or something. I’ll pop it right in that rancor’s ugly mouth and get out of there before it even knows I was there.”

Aithne eyed her stealth field generator again. “From what this datapad says and the evidence of this poor guy, the rancor will come after whatever we put the chemical on pretty quick. I don’t want it coming after you.”

“Look, you said if I’m coming with you, I’m coming into a war,” Mission said. “There’s a whole lot of things out there worse than rancor monsters. If I’m coming, I’m a part of your team, you know? I’m not a kid. I can do this.”

“You sure?” Carth asked. “You’ve picked us up a lot of mines down here. We could leave that formula corked. Have you set up a bunch of traps instead, and me and Aithne could lay down a crossfire outside.”

“It’ll smell me one way or the other,” Mission argued. “No guarantee it won’t think I smell like dinner anyway, right? At least with the formula, we’ll only have one explosive to deal with. Trust me: I can handle this.”

Aithne hesitated. “Alright,” she agreed finally. I’ll wrap the grenade in an extra shirt after I’ve doused it, though, just in case. Be sure you hurry.”

/And be careful!/ Zaalbar roared.

Aithne prepped the grenade and wadded it up in an extra shirt they’d picked up down here. She gave it to Mission, who all but faded from sight. The door behind the place she’d been seemed to open of its own accord. From the place she stood, Aithne could see the rancor beast. To her surprise, true to her imaginings, it was nearly as big as their apartment in the Upper City. Long, yellow teeth hung over its heavy jaw. Its long, leathery arms hung at its sides, tipped with long, bloodstained claws that reminded Aithne of rusty knives. She closed her eyes and said a prayer to whatever powers existed for Mission. A few long seconds passed, then Aithne saw the rancor lurch forward with surprising grace. The grace of a predator about to kill. Aithne held her breath. The rancor snorted, opening its mouth, then roared in pain. A bright light shot out of its mouth, and blood flew everywhere inside the neighboring room, a disgusting, thick, greenish black. When the carnage cleared, there lay the rancor monster, dead.

“Well, that’s entertaining, ain’t it?” came a voice from beside her as Mission deactivated her stealth. She stood there, unharmed and confident, smirking at the astonishment on her companions’ faces.

Aithne reached out on impulse and dragged the teenager to her. “You’re alright,” she gasped.

“Geez, don’t go all sappy on me,” Mission complained, squirming away. “I told you I could handle it.”

Carth was staring. “You’re the best stealth op I’ve ever seen,” he said.

“Gee, thanks,” Mission retorted. “That a soldier of so many years’ experience would say that to a kid like me might be the best compliment I’ve ever had.”

“Play nice with the other kids, Mission,” Aithne told her.

“Hey, you’re the one with hangups about being mean,” Mission answered. “I got no problem with it.”

Aithne hugged her around the shoulders again for that, and Mission groaned and pushed her away—but not too hard. They crossed the rancor room, past a pile of bones and foul-reeking offal, and into the next passage.

Opening the door, they were confronted with two Vulkar guards.

“Finally,” Carth growled, drawing his blasters.

In no time at all, Mission had sliced them into the Vulkar base. The smell was immediately better; the Vulkars had their own air recycling system. And clearly weren’t channeling refuse through canals. For a moment, Aithne just sagged against an empty wall. Zaalbar joined her.

/Yes, it’s good to get away from the smell of the Undercity,/ he agreed, though Aithne hadn’t said anything at all. Aithne held up her closed fist, and Zaalbar tapped it with his own.

“Just carbon emissions; pollution; and stale, cold fish, instead of the urine and dung of a dozen species, rust, and rhakghoul droppings.”

Mission snorted. “C’mon, you babies. Let’s get that accelerator for Gadon.”

They fought their way through the base, which, surprisingly, was mostly occupied by droids. “They must all be at a party or something,” Mission commented at the third sentient-free room. About halfway through the base, Aithne called a rest.

“I trashed the cameras a while ago,” she explained. “The Vulkars won’t see us taking a breather here. Besides, we just freed that waitress. I’d rather rest feeling good about myself than after a mass slaughter.”

Her companions nodded. Zaalbar and Mission locked the doors to keep them safe from interruptions, and all of them flopped down on the floor, which, like at the Bek base, was clean. Aithne and Carth passed out the ration bars again, and then Mission and Zaalbar went off by themselves in a corner to talk, presumably about Zaalbar’s imprisonment, his lifedebt, or what the future might hold with Aithne.

That left Aithne alone with Carth again. Aithne sat with her right arm around her right knee, holding her canteen and swirling the water inside.

“I apologized to Mission about that fight we had in front of her at lunch,” she said. “I owe you an apology for that too. I didn’t have any business dragging all of that out in front of her. Didn’t have any business saying a lot of what I said, and in the end, I went way too far, even though you did egg me on.”

“You did,” Carth agreed. “But like you said, I did ask for it. And I’m not certain anything you said was actually wrong.” He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he stared at the blank back wall of the base like it had the most fascinating artwork he’d ever seen on it—or like he was just that determined not to look at her. “Can’t say I’ve been called out that way in a while. You get to a certain place in your career, when enough people outside it are gone, and—well. People stop second-guessing you, at least out loud. But here you are, probably the least professional soldier I’ve ever met—which isn’t surprising, seeing as you never asked to be one and only just got started—saying things I never thought about before. You’re really something, Aithne Moran.”

“You like women who fight with you,” Aithne observed softly. Carth’s eyes flicked to hers, then away. “Guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, twenty years in the service. Had to be some reason you thought it was worth it. Don’t worry,” she added. “I’m not after anything like that. Part of why I’ve been so frustrated. Mixed signals.”

“Yeah, I’ll raise my hand to that,” Carth admitted. “It’s just the circumstances, I think. We’ve been alone in this crazy situation, depending on one another for survival, away from all the dress and protocol that makes frat regs work during a military assignment. Emotions are high. Fears are too. And you’re one hell of a woman. I never meant for—you know.”

“I know,” Aithne murmured. “All that about the circumstances—it’s what I thought too. This,” she gestured between them, “isn’t real. But your issues are.”

“That’s just it, though,” Carth told her. “My ‘raging paranoia.’ I was thinking about it today, and it’s not because I don’t respect or admire you. Just the opposite, in fact.”

“Yeah, I thought that too,” Aithne agreed.

“Five years ago, the Jedi had just finished the war with the Mandalorians,” Carth explained. “Revan and Malak were heroes. I was proud to have served in their fleet. It was completely unexpected when they turned on us, invading the Republic while we were still weak. Nobody knew what to think. Least of all me.”

Aithne took a drink of her water. “Don’t feel so special, flyboy. It set everyone’s head on end.”

“I mean, our heroes had become brutal, conquering Sith,” Carth continued, “and we were all but helpless before them. Think about it . . . if you can’t even trust the best of the Jedi, who can you trust?”

Aithne raised an eyebrow, leaning back against the wall. “Actually, I think the Jedi would say Revan and Malak were less than sterling examples of the Order even before they turned to the Dark Side.”

Carth looked at her then. “What do you think of the Jedi?” he asked, distracted. “I mean, I get the feeling you aren’t wild about saving Bastila, or that her party ordered your transfer.”

“You’d be right,” Aithne agreed. “Sure you won’t be shocked if I tell you, Republic?”

Carth recognized the jibe at his reaction to her views on Mandalorians. “Hah. I’m sure I might be,” he said. “But I’d like to hear it anyway, if you don’t mind.”

Aithne shrugged. “I don’t mind. I think the Jedi are mystical and out of touch when the galaxy needs practical solutions. I think all their preaching about peace and harmony is a crock when they take kids away from their families and train to repress every natural good emotion they have, and that their compassion is a joke if it doesn’t translate to mercy missions when the galaxy is burning and innocents are at risk. I think the Revanchists were right. Before they turned all evil.”

Carth was staring at her again. But this time, unlike his reaction outside the Lower City apartments, his eyes were soft and approving, and he was smiling like he could hardly help it. “I couldn’t agree with you more,” he said.

“Anyway. So what? I remind you of Revan and Malak?” She spoke it sarcastically, but Carth answered seriously.

“You have a few sentiments in common,” he pointed out. “But no, that’s not it. There were . . . there were others. Good, solid, trusted men who joined them. Malak and Revan and the Sith deserve to die for what they’ve done.” Carth’s voice was gaining passion and momentum, and Aithne decided now probably wasn’t the time to point out that Revan was already dead. “But the men who fled the Republic and joined them are even worse. The Dark Side has nothing to do with why they joined with the Sith. They deserve no mercy!” Carth’s face had grown darker and darker throughout this speech, and for the first time, Aithne could see the Dark Side in his eyes—not the mystical power that turned Jedi into parodies of themselves, saviors into brutal, superpowered war criminals. The angry and ugly passions and motivations that were somewhere inside every sentient being. For all his paranoia, Aithne hadn’t seen them in Carth before. It was a big part of why she liked him: all in all, he was simply a good person. She’d known that from before they’d ever met face to face. Good people were rare enough, and Carth was good to a degree that was even rarer. But she supposed no one could be completely good.

“You say that with a lot of hatred,” she observed. “But I think I get it. Someone you admired before went bad. Betrayed the Republic, betrayed you, without the excuse of a mystical evil Force trigger. Now anytime you admire anyone, you think how bad they can go. It’s not healthy.”

“I know,” Carth said. He looked deflated, old and tired and sick. “Fear in the cockpit, like you said. Shouldn’t let it fly me, especially when I might be in an entirely different system. I’ve become so accustomed to expecting the worst in others, and you’ve done nothing to deserve that. You make me nervous, sometimes. The things you say, the way you think. But everything you’ve done has helped us, and more than a few other people. It probably won’t be a problem much longer. We’ll get off Taris and head our separate ways. But for what it’s worth, for however much longer we are working together, I’ll be working on it.” Without looking at her, he extended his hand to the side, and Aithne shook it.

“Then I think we can call a truce. If you help me figure out what to do with a Wookiee and a teenage Twi’lek when we do part ways, I’ll even owe you,” she told him.

“Yeah, that one’s gonna be interesting,” Carth agreed. “When we get back to the Republic, I can pull some strings. Fast-track approval on some family benefits to help you provide for Mission. Maybe get Zaalbar approved as a Republic attache or consultant. Whether he thinks he should or not, he should get a salary for helping you. Otherwise, his lifedebt is just another form of slavery. I’m assuming you can’t pay.”

“No,” Aithne agreed. Now she was the one smiling at him like an idiot. “I never ran a profit margin large enough for an assistant. But you’re right, and if he gets a wage, it’ll make me feel a lot better about the whole thing. Thanks.”

“Cheers,” Carth answered.

Aithne rose. “I’m going to go check on the others. We’ll move out in a little bit,” she told him.

She walked over to join Zaalbar and Mission. When she asked Zaalbar about his past, he refused to talk, saying it didn’t matter to his lifedebt or their future. He wasn’t rude about it, and Aithne didn’t get a sense of any turmoil within him—just a closed book—so she left him alone with his remaining ration bar and a half and turned to Mission instead.

“Do we need to talk about anything?” she asked.

She’d left the question open-ended, leaving it open for Mission to open a conversation about her role in the team or how she felt about leaving Taris, which seemed to be on her mind, or anything. But Mission seemed to take it as a criticism of the way they’d left their talk at lunch.

“I . . . I was a little snappish at lunch,” she said. “I’m sorry about that. I get kind of touchy when it comes to Griff. It’s kind of embarrassing telling people about him.”

“Rule of thumb with me,” Aithne advised her, “you don’t ever have to tell me anything you don’t want to—even if it’s making you act weird and I have no context, I’ll deal, or ask you to.”

“No,” Mission protested, lekku waving fast. “I want to tell you. We’re family now, right?”

 Aithne realized what she wanted. “‘You have a place at my table,” she repeated quietly. “A berth inside my house.’ As long as you want it, so long as you accept the dangers that come with it and do your best to learn how to keep yourself safe. I’m not separating you and Zaalbar, and I’m not angry you want to stay with him.”

“I was worried, you know,” Mission said, “after I just said I was coming like that. I know you didn’t really want me. But you won’t regret letting me come along, I swear. I can look out for you just like I look out for Zaalbar. With the stealth field generator, and the mines, and a lot of other ways too, I’ll bet. And it’s not just Big Z, either. You know that, right? It’ll be nice getting off of Taris. Seeing what else is out there, you know? Also, I owe you big for today. I came at you all wild, after asking everyone I knew for help for Big Z, and they said no. And you were a stranger. But you didn’t flinch. Not even for a second. I knew then I’d be your friend forever, whatever happened.”

The total honesty left Aithne without defense. Her chest hurt, and her eyes stung. She cleared her throat and drew her knees up to her chest. “I needed to use you,” she said.

“Oh, I know,” Mission assured her. “You didn’t do it because you’re a good person or nothing. But that thing you did, with the counting, when I was scared and in a panic? You did that because you’re a good person. It reminded me of my brother too, which is probably why I got mad at you a little after that. I never knew my parents. My brother always looked out for me. He’s the one who brought me to Taris. I was just a kid, only five, but I remember the trip—if you could call it that.” She looked away from Aithne, and her lekku twitched. “We were stuffed inside a packing crate in a star freighter’s cargo hold with just enough food and water to make the trip. Not exactly first class, you know?”

“Think I do,” Aithne confessed, smiling. “I’m a scout. Over the years, I’ve probably traveled almost every way you could think of.”

Mission smiled back, slightly less nervous. “I don’t know the whole story—I was pretty young. But my brother owed a lot of money. Might even have been a few arrest warrants out for him. I don’t know.” She shrugged. “The only way to get off the planet was to smuggle ourselves out. I mean, I don’t want to make it sound like we were criminals . . .” she hesitated. “Well, maybe my brother was.” She looked down, flushing. “See, this is why I don’t like to talk about it. It makes Griff sound worse than he really was. My brother had his problems, but he always looked out for me.”

Until he didn’t, Aithne thought. “He’s your family,” she said, keeping her voice neutral.

Mission brightened. “Yeah! That’s what I’m trying to say! Without my brother, I don’t know where I’d be. He gambled,” she admitted, “and drank. And he was always borrowing money for his latest get-rich-quick scheme. But he had a good heart, you know? He taught me how to survive. He showed me how to slice into a computer’s security system, how to get inside a locked door without the entrance codes, and how to spot a wealthy mark for a quick shell game.”

It sounded like he’d been leading Mission down a path headed nowhere fast, Aithne reflected. She met Zaalbar’s eyes over the space between them. The Wookiee’s expression was guarded, and he made a slight gesture with one claw. He didn’t approve of Griff either, Aithne saw, but he wouldn’t advise telling Mission so. “How long’s it been since he left?” she asked instead.

Mission didn’t catch Aithne’s assumption that he’d left, even though she hadn’t actually said so. “Going on five years now,” she answered. “I really miss him since he left. I keep hoping he’ll come back some day. He promised me he would.”

Just from the rough sketch Mission had given her, Aithne figured that Griff wasn’t big on keeping promises. “Why did he leave?”

Mission’s face hardened. “He fell in with a bad crowd. It’s all Lena’s fault!” she cried. “She’s the one who took him away from me! Just batted those long lashes at him, and off he went!”

“Who’s Lena?” asked Aithne, interested but a little alarmed by the introduction of this new character.

Mission crossed her arms. “I don’t want to talk about Griff and Lena,” she said, putting an inflection on the woman’s name so it came out like a sneer. “Just the thought of that space tramp makes my blood boil! Subject’s closed as far as I’m concerned! If I’m going to be any help to you,” she explained in a somewhat calmer tone, “I can’t be worrying about my brother running off with some intergalactic skank! So, is there anything else you need before we go?”

“I did want to talk with you about Carth,” Aithne said. “Wait, just hear me out,” she added as Mission started to protest. “Look. That back there outside the rancor lair was a sillier fight than him and me outside the Gamorrean hideout. You know it was. He wasn’t trying to talk down to you; he was trying to answer your question. When we first met in the cantina, he was the one who believed you could handle yourself. I was the one wanting to charge in and save the teenager. We’re both going to treat you like that on occasion. We’re old, you’re young.”

“You’re not that old,” Mission grumbled. “And you didn’t charge in and try and rescue me. He did actually give me the stupid lecture.” She made a disgusted noise. “I’ll think about it, okay?”

“All I’m asking,” Aithne said. She stood. “Everyone done with dinner?” she called. “Great. Because I think we should get out of here with the prototype accelerator before the Vulkars get back from spreading death and terror through the city.”

Everyone rose with her, and they headed toward the exit of the room. Before they’d crossed all the way to it, Aithne heard Mission’s voice. “Uh, hey, Carth. Can I . . . can I talk to you for a second?”

Quick temper, quick cooldown, and quick apologies, Aithne thought with quiet satisfaction. Better than a sulky grudge-holder anyday. It was nice both Mission and Carth had that kind of personality. As long as they were all working together, there’d be some fights, but they wouldn’t last long.

Carth kept walking toward the garage. They’d already disabled the elevator security. “Are you ready to have a civil chat?” he asked. “Or is this going to be another childish tantrum?”

Aithne bit her tongue to keep from laughing out loud. She saw Zaalbar shaking beside her and didn’t dare to face him dead on for fear they both would lose it. Even her own father hadn’t sounded so parental.

“Tantrum?!” cried Mission. “I’m trying to apologize, you nerf-herder!” She looked nervously at Aithne, took a deep breath and said in a much calmer tone, “Uh . . . I mean . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get mad at you. It’s just that I’m sick of everyone treating me like I’m a helpless kid.”

Aithne saw Onasi melt. The man was really a massive marshmallow, she thought. In his defense, Vao’s vulnerability shtick was powerful stuff. “Yeah, I know,” Carth said. “And I’m sorry about what I said too. I’m just a little on edge lately. Not surprising, considering all we’ve been through. But I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

Aithne felt like cheering. /It is good to see you two reconciling your differences,/ Zaalbar commented.

Aithne translated for Carth. “As for me,” she added, “I’d just as soon see another fight. You two make me feel better about my petty, crabby picking.”

Both of them blushed and looked annoyed. Also like they weren’t fooled for an instant and saw the comment for what it was—her own approval of their reconciliation, and a secondary apology for times she too had been unfair and immature. She still felt bad.

“Mission, you have to know that we don’t think you’re helpless,” Carth continued. “Look at where we are. Look at what we’re doing! We need you.”

“You really mean it, don’t you?” Mission said, in a tone very different from any she’d used before, even five minutes ago with Aithne. “Nobody’s ever said nothing like that to me before, not even Big Z. He might think it, but he’s not really one for words, you know? Thanks, Carth.”

Wonder when they teach that course in officer training, Aithne mused. Winning allies and influencing individuals. You just got yourself a friend forever, Carth Onasi. Not that Mission Vao was particularly difficult. The kid was so lonely and had been so overlooked and unappreciated that the slightest expression of gratitude, attention, or kindness could win her over. It made her shiver a little, and she was suddenly really grateful for Zaalbar’s presence in the girl’s life. He had probably kept away the kinds of people who would have manipulated the love-starved girl for their own ends, even without actively trying to.

Carth shrugged, embarrassed by the girl’s emotion. “Ah, it’s no big deal. I know how it is. Sometimes you just need to hear a few words of encouragement.” He paused. “Kids are like that.”

Aithne chuckled as Mission fell for it hook, line, and sinker. “Kids are like that!!?! Listen here . . .” she began, then stopped. She laughed. “Oh, I get it. Okay, you got me. You’re pretty funny, Carth, for an old guy. Come on, you geezer, let’s get back to what we were doing.”

The lower level of the Vulkar base was as depopulated as the upper, and Aithne was able to obtain a pass card after taking out the garage head that she suspected would take them to where the Vulkars were keeping the accelerator. She was even able to find a workbench, and she stopped there to upgrade their armor and weapons with some parts she’d found lying around.

Carth grumbled about the delay, but he got that Brejik would probably have some of his best men guarding the accelerator, and that after the day they’d had, any gear advantage they could get would be a good idea to offset the exhaustion. And Mission was excited that the workbench provided Aithne with the tools to cut down and fix her her stretched out borrowed combat suit so it wasn’t so uncomfortable. The upgrades took another twenty minutes where Aithne was dead to anything that wasn’t mesh, metal, and circuits, but when Aithne keyed them into the last room of the Vulkar base, she thought it had probably been worth it.

There were two Twi’leks waiting, armed to the teeth, and behind them, two Rodian guards.

The green male Twi’lek, who appeared to be in charge, spoke once he registered his surprise. /Looks like we have some visitors,/ he sneered, addressing the female Twi’lek on his right. /Lackeys conned by Gadon Thek into trying to steal Brejik’s swoop engine accelerator, I bet!/

Mission glared at the Vulkar, lekku twitching angrily. “Brejik stole that engine from Gadon! It was never yours to begin with!”

The Twi’lek male glared back at her. /Well, I didn’t go to all the trouble of acquiring this prototype just so you could steal it back for that old fool./

The female Twi’lek brightened. /Would you like me to dispose of these Bek spies, Kandon?/ she purred.

/No,/ said Kandon, /hold on a second. I see you aren’t wearing the Hidden Bek colors,/ he said, addressing Aithne. Aithne cursed mentally. He could probably tell she was heading this operation from how the others had pressed in toward her when confronted with the oncoming fight. Now she’d get saddled with speaking for the group and making whatever decisions Kandon threw their way. /I’m guessing you aren’t a part of that feeble old man’s gang. You must be a freelance mercenary./

“I’m not one of the Beks, if that’s what you mean.”

Kandon smiled in what he seemed to think was a friendly way. /Instead of stealing the prototype for the Beks, why don’t you come work for us? The Black Vulkars could use someone like you./

Aithne put her hands on her hips. This had the added benefit of putting them near her vibroblades, though she didn’t draw them yet. “I must’ve killed more than a dozen of you by now, and almost that many of your droids. I’ve let your slaves run away, blown up several of your consoles and one of your bikes before the big annual swoop race, and you think I might be a good recruit? A lot of loyalty to your people there, Kandon.”

/You say disloyal, but I know strength when I see it. Do you?/ Kandon reasoned. /Be smart! Gadon Thek is old news! He’s a blind fool in more ways than one. Brejik is a visionary—soon he’ll control the entire Lower City! Don’t shackle yourself to a losing team./

“Strength to me doesn’t equate to attacking strangers in the streets and harassing others in the cantina just ‘cause you can,” AIthne said. “Strength is being the people strangers and the harassed can go to. And vision isn’t stealing the innovation of others; it’s being the person making the innovations. Now. Hand over the Bek accelerator.”

“You tell ‘em, Aithne,” Mission said, pleased.

Kandon scowled. /I can see there’s not much chance of convincing you to come work for us after all. Most unfortunate./

The Twi’lek bodyguard leaned forward eagerly, an attack dog on a leash. /Now can I kill them, Kandon?/ she asked.

/Yes, darling,/ Kandon said in a hard voice. /Kill them. Kill them all./

Aithne unsheathed her blades in less than a second. Mission and Carth ducked behind the doorframe, blasters out, and Zaalbar joined Aithne at the front. He attacked the Twi’lek woman, clearly the bloodthirstiest opponent. Aithne went for a Rodian.

She’d adopted a sweeping, aggressive style against the Vulkars and their droids, using the cutting edge of her vibroblades to scythe down enemies quickly. When they had energy shields absorbing the force of her blows, small counterswings or swift thrusts after the main blow usually worked to sneak past or overload the shield she’d mostly overwhelmed on that first swing. She didn’t necessarily bother with a clean kill, so long as she disarmed and incapacitated the enemy. She knew it might be cruel, leaving some of her enemies to die slowly or spend days, weeks, or months recovering, but making sure every enemy died quick and clean in open battle was time-consuming work, when what Aithne wanted was a quick, clean total victory. 

But at the end of this fight, when the Rodians and the Twi’leks lay dead upon the floor, Aithne found Mission bent over, braced on her knees, so pale, almost all the blue had bleached from her skin. Carth, beside her, was looking lost and helpless. Tears were leaking out of Vao’s eyes, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Mission,” Aithne said quietly. “What’s happened?”

Mission nodded at Kandon’s corpse. “I got him,” she said. “He was—he was the first one. The first one I know was me. I mean, rhakghouls and droids are one thing, but—Aithne, I just killed that guy! I murdered him!”

Aithne, Carth, and Zaalbar all looked at one another. Guilt and awkwardness hung heavy in the air. “I said war was different,” Aithne said finally. “That was really your first kill?”

Mission nodded, unable to speak.

“Mission, that Twi’lek probably killed a lot of people, and for far less reason than you killed him. If you hadn’t killed him, he would’ve killed you, and he wouldn’t have thought twice,” Carth said.

“I know,” Mission said. “But—what, like that makes it okay? Like just because he was a murderer, I can kill him? Doesn’t that make me like him? Or that other lady, who was actually looking forward to it, who wanted to shoot us the second we walked in here?” She looked down in distaste at the female Twi’lek.

“No,” Carth told her. “Because you’re thinking about it. Because you’re here. Because you know what it is to take a life. We can’t always avoid killing people. But so long as we remember to talk first, so long as we remember to stay responsible, we aren’t murderers. Understand?”

“I think so,” Mission said, straightening. “Thanks.”

“And Mission,” Carth added, catching the Twi’lek’s eye.

“Yeah?”

“It was a good shot.”

Mission almost smiled at that. Aithne walked over to her. In lieu of Carth’s fancy words, she just gave the kid another hug. Then she nodded at the prototype accelerator across the room, parked under a fragmentation mine. “Will you do the honors?” she asked.

Mission wiped her eyes and nose on her sleeve. She nodded. She walked forward with confidence, and sadly, Aithne noted a new hardness to her face, to her aura. She’s really going to grow up on my watch, realized Aithne. And all I’ve got for her is this. Another wave of despair and helplessness crashed over her, just like it had right after Zaalbar had sworn his lifedebt and Mission had declared she was coming too.

“Hey,” Carth said softly, coming up to stand beside her. He was watching her face. “You’ll do okay,” he told her. “So long as you keep her, let her help, you’ll be doing more than anyone but Zaalbar ever has.”

“It’s not enough,” Aithne murmured.

“Well, no, but you’ll learn the rest of it, same as she’ll learn to deal with all of this. You’ll get it,” he said again.

That was when Aithne was sure he had been a father. She wondered if his kid or kids were still alive, or if he’d lost them when the Sith had burned his homeworld. He’d be so much better at this than me, she thought, not for the first time that day. But Zaalbar’d sworn his oath to the girl who could understand Shyriiwook, so she was the one who was suddenly a mother, whether or not Mission wanted her to see things that way.

Mission came back with the prototype accelerator. She stowed it in her pack and looked at Aithne, waiting for direction.

“Let’s head back to the apartment and get some sleep,” Carth suggested. “We’ll hand that over to the Beks tomorrow morning.”

But looking at Mission, and thinking about the world she’d be leaving behind, Aithne suddenly didn’t want to do that. “No,” she said. “Tonight, let’s sleep in the Undercity. I have a promise to keep to Rukil the storyteller, and another to Zelka Forn. I don’t want to head back to Gadon until we’ve found what happened to Malya and got our hands on some rhakghoul serum.”

Suddenly, it was very important no one be left without knowing what had happened to a young person they cared for. Suddenly, it was very important they leave Taris better than they had found it—in good hands, so to speak.

She looked back at Carth, and he nodded, weary, but understanding. Resigned. The four of them left the Vulkar base through the sewers and traversed the vast wilderness of the Undercity in silence. Surprisingly, there were no attacks. Aithne figured even rhakghouls knew enough to vacate an area where so many of them had died. They entered the village and found Gendar on the far side of the village.

“Request refuge for the night, Gendar,” asked Aithne, bowing.

“Of course, Up-worlder,” murmured Gendar, bowing as well. He rummaged about in the refuse and drew out a spare tent and four bedrolls. “Here. It is not much, but it is all we can offer you.”

“It is sufficient,” said Aithne. “We thank you for your hospitality.”

Together, Carth and Zaalbar pitched the tent. Mission and Aithne made up the bedrolls. Looking at one another in silence, the travelers collapsed without a word. In seconds, they were asleep. 

Chapter Text

AITHNE

The next morning, Aithne felt disgusting. Her clothes were still caked in mud, blood, and sewage from the day before, and since Mission had had her spare combat suit, there wasn’t anything clean to change into. Her mouth was somehow dry and slimy at the exact same time, and she knew without a mirror that her hair was a tangled rat’s nest. That’s what she got, Aithne thought, for deciding to be noble. Filthy clothes, filthy hair, filthy mouth, with no prospect for getting clean for hours and nothing but ration bars on the menu for breakfast, when it’d been ration bars for lunch and dinner the day before.

With the others still sleeping on the cold ground of the Undercity, Aithne took the time to organize all their packs. After retrieving Zaalbar’s gear from the Gamorreans the day before, there was one for each of them. She cheered up when she realized they actually had picked up some clean clothing in the Vulkar base. Changing into a new set of fiber armor made Aithne feel marginally better. She tied the soiled combat suit in a bundle and set it aside.  Then she laid out fresh combat suits for both Carth and Mission and turned her attention to Carth’s pack. She put in three spare shirts of varying sizes and a set of light plate armor. She gave herself the medical supplies—a stack of medpacs and antidote kits compatible with all their physiologies, their remaining ration bars, both of the datapads they’d picked up in the sewers the day before, and the Bek prototype accelerator. She made Zaalbar’s pack the armory, packing three shock sticks, a collapsible vibroblade, a rifle, and two blasters. She pulled the power packs of all the energy weapons and put them in a side pocket for safety, then bound Big Z’s own bowcaster to the back of his pack for easy access. Finally, she packed Mission’s duffel with a handful of energy shields and individual bags of weapon upgrades, repair parts, disarmed mines, and security spikes, as well as her selection of hardware tools for lower-tech entry into doors and secured lockboxes.

Everything else, she set aside with the soiled combat suit to trade away to denizens of the Undercity for credits or better food supplies for the day. Then, she rebraided her hair as best she could and shook Carth awake.

“Hey, flyboy,” she murmured.

He was truly awake far quicker than she had been the past two days. She tried not to resent him for that. “What?” he asked.

Aithne nodded at the piles of gear. “I’m going to trade for some better breakfast stuffs and fills for all our water bags,” she told him. “Can you watch the rest of our gear while I’m away? I don’t think most of the people down here would take things that don’t belong to them—”

“But a handful of them might,” Carth finished. “You got it, beautiful. You want me to get up the others?”

Aithne looked down at Mission and Zaalbar. The Wookiee was snoring softly. Vao’s lekku were both curled around her throat, like she was giving herself a hug. “They had a long, hard day yesterday,” she said. “Let ‘em sleep. At least a little while longer.”

Carth nodded. Aithne clapped him on the shoulder and took the stuff she’d elected to give away. In twenty minutes, she was back, with full water bags, some hardtack, and some crab rolled in seaweed, and the others were awake. Carth had elected to wear the plate instead of the combat suit she’d laid out for him, and it looked like he’d redistributed some of the weapons from Big Z’s pack to his to make up the weight difference. All three of them looked ready to go.

They took the water bags and food she passed out with thanks, but Mission looked unhappy. “All that stuff you took away was worth a whole lot more than this,” she said. “You should’ve woke me up. I could’ve made sure we weren’t ripped off.”

Aithne shrugged. “I didn’t want to keep carrying all of it with us. It was heavy, and we don’t need it all. On the other hand, I know people down here can probably use it, and this morning, I felt like food that wasn’t military grade would be worth a lot to all four of us.”

Zaalbar and Carth both made enthusiastic noises of agreement, Zaalbar actually through a mouthful of breakfast, but Mission still seemed grumpy. Fortunately, she decided to let it drop. “Thanks for packing the bags, Aithne, but you didn’t have to give me the lightest one, you know. I could’ve taken on a little more.”

Aithne shook her head. “It was less about weight and more about function,” she explained, “though I do think you’ll be more help if you aren’t pushed too far past what you’re trained to carry. The idea was actually to make sure none of us have to go digging through a multifunction pack to find what we need in a crisis. These packs can be pretty deep, and a few seconds can make the difference between fine and serious trouble. This way, we all know exactly who has anything we might need. And if it helps, we’re more likely to need the stuff in your pack and mine than anything Carth or Zaalbar are carrying.”

“Huh,” Mission said. “I never thought of it like that. Alright.” She finished her own seaweed roll. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to quarter the ground and run a sweep of the area for downed Sith patrols, as well as any sign of what may have happened to Rukil’s apprentice, Malya,” Aithne said. “Maybe a two- or three-kilometer radius around the village. We really don’t have time for more than that before we have to be going. I don’t want to spend more than six hours down here this morning.”

“Got it,” Mission said. “Uhh . . . you’ll show me what you mean by that, right? Quartering and sweeping? Me and Big Z just usually wander around, trying to see what we can find.”

“It’s pretty much the same thing,” Carth assured her. “The only difference is that we’ll adopt a pattern to make sure we don’t cover the same ground twice and cover every piece of ground within Aithne’s set radius.”

After they all had finished their breakfast, they rose and struck camp. Returning the supplies Gendar had lent them to the village leader’s own campsite, they made their way back to the village gate.

They started in the direction of the sewers and moved counterclockwise through the morning, without much rhakghoul interference. But about an hour and a half after they had started their search, they did run into other people—a group of four walking purposely through the gloom.

When one of them spotted her, he shouted an alarm. “Don’t—don’t move!” he yelled. “I’m . . . I’m not afraid to use this blaster if I have to!”

Aithne signaled ‘hold’ to the others. Behind her, she heard Carth explaining to Mission and Zaalbar what the signal meant and cursed herself for not thinking of it on her own. “Friendlies,” she called out, even though she couldn’t tell at this distance if the party was actually Sith. “At least, we haven’t been bitten or scratched by any rhakghouls.”

“Settle down, kid,” growled a voice like a cement mixer. Aithne peered through the gloom. She recognized that voice.

The new speaker stepped out of the shadows, into the light of one of the sickly overhead lamps. It was the Mandalorian from yesterday morning, leading a party of three other men.

“Right, you,” he grunted, catching sight of them. “Mando’a-speaking aruetii. She and hers aren’t a threat,” he told his people. “We’ve already lost enough men to those damn rhakghouls! The last thing we need now is more casualties from a needless firefight. You here after Republic salvage too? Let me give you some advice: forget about it. Do yourself a favor and just head back the way you came. The Undercity is crawling with rhakghouls. I’ve already lost a dozen men to those monsters!”

That explained the knocking knees and itchy fingers of the people behind him, Aithne thought.

“Canderous!” one of them cried suddenly, his voice jumping about an octave and a half. “I heard something! Over there, in the shadows! Sounded like a rhakghoul.”

Aithne turned in mild surprise. If it was, it’d only be the third rhakghoul they’d seen all morning. But it wasn’t: it was four of them. They loped towards Canderous and Aithne’s parties with their uncanny speed. Aithne and the others fell into attack position. Canderous raised his huge heavy repeating blaster. “Looks like we’ve got company!” he called to his men. “Get those blasters out, boys!”

Carth and Mission fell back to stand with Canderous and his men. Aithne and Zaalbar ranged to either side, melee weapons in hand. But then two of the rhakghouls broke ranks and went in from the sides they weren’t guarding. There was a horrible, wet, ripping sound to Aithne’s left, and a scream behind her. An outbreak of furious blaster bursts. But she couldn’t turn to see who’d been killed. She was facing down a seven-foot rhakghoul fiend, his fang dripping with poison, bared in a mindless, endless leer.

He lumbered toward her, claws outstretched. Aithne kicked out under his gut, forcing him off balance. Then there was a bang, and a gaping hole appeared in his gut, steaming. Blood spurted out toward Aithne, and exclaiming, dodged backward. Then she lunged and beheaded the thing, just in case Canderous hadn’t killed it. 

She turned around. Mission was pale but unscratched, and so was Carth, but two of Canderous’s mercenaries were on the ground, entrails steaming just like the rhakghouls’.

“Damn it,” Canderous swore angrily. “I told Davik this salvage mission was a bad idea. His men aren’t trained for this kind of thing, and I can’t babysit them all!”

Aithne looked down at the corpses in their low-quality combat gear. “Looks to me like you can’t babysit at all,” she muttered.

Canderous clenched his fists around the stock of his blaster. “I make no apologies for the weak!” he retorted. “If they couldn’t keep up, they deserved what they got. But this trip was just bad business. Come on,” he snarled at his one remaining companion. “We’re getting out of here before I lose you too. I can’t carry all this salvage back by myself. You people would be smart to get out of here as well,” he added to Aithne. “Even if you can handle yourselves against the rhakghouls, I doubt there’s any salvage worth finding at those pods anymore.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Aithne.

“Ah, the Lower City gangs got down here first,” he complained. “Anything worthwhile in those Republic pods is probably in their hands now. Davik won’t like that. They’ve been giving him more trouble than usual lately.”

“Well, then, you’d better get back to him,” Carth suggested.

Canderous shot him a look. “I’ll do that,” he said. “You want an escort to the elevator? Figure we owe you one for the help.”

Aithne shook her head. “Ret’urcye mhi, Mando.”

“Insolent . . .” Canderous shook his head. “Maybe we will,” he said, then walked off with his sole companion.

“Why’d you do that?” Carth asked as they watched the man walk away. “He clearly finds it insulting. Unless that’s why you did it, in which case,” he shrugged, as if to say that was just fine.

“Partly, I guess. He deserved to be annoyed, the way he talked about his people, after so many of them had died,” Aithne said. “But also, I just—” she shrugged too. She couldn’t explain why, but she thought it was a good idea if Canderous the Mandalorian remembered who they were, and she’d seen right away this morning that it was her Mandalorian greeting yesterday that had made him remember her. Sometimes she got these feelings, impulses to take actions that didn’t always make immediate sense, but when she followed them, it almost always turned out well. Somehow, though, she didn’t think Carth would understand that.

“How many languages do you speak, anyway?” Mission wanted to know. “Basic, Mandalorian, Huttese; you understand Wookiee, and Rodian too, don’t you? Those guys in the cantina day before yesterday.”

Aithne thought. She tried to figure on her fingers, then lost track. “I have a knack for languages,” she explained. “Always have done. They just . . . make sense to me, and in my line of work, it helps to be able to communicate with as many people as possible in the languages they prefer speaking and feel most confident in. I guess I speak about five or six languages humans can physiologically speak with some degree of competence—languages of species who are particularly widespread or influential, but I never bothered keeping track of the others I learned to understand, orally if not in written format. Probably any language of a species or planet I’ve stayed with for more than two months, and I’ve been a lot of places. Doesn’t mean I’m not rusty to start with, if I haven’t dealt with a language in a while.”

“Wow,” Mission said. “I make do with pidgin Twi’lek and Huttese, when I ain’t speaking Basic. And what I need to know to understand Zaalbar.”

For a while after that, journeying through the Undercity was once again uneventful. Sure, there were rhakghoul attacks, and they talked their way out of a confrontation with a Sith patrol once, but nothing too exciting. At one point, though, they caught sight of the escape pod, still smoking, buried in the cement. Near it, Aithne caught sight of a man in Republic uniform.

“Carth!” she called behind her. “Another Republic!”

Carth lit up. “Let’s go! He must’ve been down here a week! I wonder how he made it?”

As they drew close, however, Zaalbar motioned them to proceed carefully. On closer inspection, the soldier’s skin appeared gray. He was shaking and sweating. All at once, his skin ripped like paper. His body warped and twisted until he was an ugly, big-headed mutant, all gaping mouth and poison teeth, with raw, sinewy, gray, naked body. The Republic uniform lay shredded on the ground, and only the rhakghoul stood before them.

Its uneven nostrils, open slits in its grotesque round head, flared. It roared and lunged. Zaalbar sidestepped and brought his sword chopping around. The creatures round head went rolling.

Aithne stared at it until it came to rest like a tired top. She knew the rhakghouls had all been humans once, of course, but to see one transform like that . . .

“What kind of monster virus is that?” she gasped after a moment. “To change people, just like that?”

“No one really knows,” Mission answered. “I think it’s been on Taris for a few decades. There are rumors it didn’t use to be as bad; that it only used to affect humans and Devaronians, and not even all of them. But they’ve been running around down here as long as most folk can remember. By now, there are hordes and hordes. More all the time. They breed, you know? They don’t just spread through infection.”

Aithne looked at the kid. “You are way too blasé about a virus that turns people into those.”

“It’s awful,” Mission agreed. “But that’s just the way things are down here, you know? No use bellyaching over it.”

“How about finding the cure?”

“It’s great if we can do it,” Mission answered. “But a lot depends on us finding a dead Sith with the serum on him, you know? I mean, you heard that guy before. Their patrols are running out. Besides, don’t we have to get back to Gadon and the Beks if they’re going to install their gizmo on a bike? So you can help your friend in that big race?” Then she looked over at the pod crash. “In a way, it’s probably a good thing the Vulkars found her, huh?” she said. “If they hadn’t, she might’ve been down here to get bit by a rhakghoul. Did you two know him? That guy back there?”

“He wasn’t anyone I’d spoken with,” Carth answered. “I was just wondering if I’d feel better or worse if he had been.”

Aithne shook her head. “I’d only just transferred aboard when the Sith attacked,” she said. “Truth is, by now, I’ve been on Taris longer than I spent on Endar Spire.”

In all honesty, Mission was right. Their time in the Undercity was running short. Aithne felt the urgency pressing on her chest—both to leave and get back to their main objective and not to head back to the village emptyhanded. But it wasn’t until they were out in the only bit of Undercity wasteland directly adjoining the village that they hadn’t checked yet that they found something promising.

The two bodies on the ground were relatively fresh. They looked like they had died fighting back-to-back, probably in a rhakghoul attack. A man and a woman. The man was still clutching his blaster rifle, but his cheap Sith-issue armor had been broken in several places. It was stained with poison and blood. His free hand held his companion’s in a death grip. Her face was mauled beyond recognition, but her clothes proclaimed her to be an Outcast.

“The man was on patrol and ran into this woman,” Aithne began, reading out the signs for the others.

/This Sith spent his last moments fighting beside the stranger, fending off the monsters to defend himself and her,/ Zaalbar agreed, squatting beside the bodies himself.

Aithne translated what he had said for Carth. “You’re a tracker?” she asked Big Z then.

/My people train as hunters on our homeworld of Kashyyyk,/ Zaalbar confirmed. /Part of it involves learning to read the signs of prey and predator, what has befallen them both./ He looked up at them all. /The smell of death is slightly fresher on the Outcast woman,/ he added. /And the Sith man’s blood, not the woman’s, is farther forward on the ground. He was standing in front of her./

Carth had folded his arms. “Well, that’s something you don’t see every day.”

“Why not?” Aithne asked. “The Sith machine as a whole is something horrible. They promote officers who are cruel, ruthless, and ambitious, and that’s the legacy they leave behind them. But you have to know that for a lot of the foot soldiers on the ground, being Sith is just a job, just like it is for a lot of you Republics. They join up to see the galaxy or feed their families or because they happen to be good with a blaster, and they’re only corrupted by the apathy and rot of the Sith ethos later. Not everyone’s lucky enough to come of age on a planet under the protection of the Republic.”

A dark, ugly shadow crossed Carth’s face, and she knew he was thinking about those traitors to the Republic who had helped burn his homeworld.

“Foot soldiers, Carth,” Aithne repeated in a murmur. “Not the officers, and not the ones who used to be Republic.”

Carth seemed to struggle with himself for a moment. “I guess I can see what you mean,” he confessed. “It’s strange to think of. You get used to envisioning all the enemy as monsters.”

Mission squatted next to Zaalbar. She looked troubled. “I guess it’s probably easier that way, huh? Maybe it’s how a soldier has to think. To do what they have to do. But I—I wish I hadn’t seen this,” she told Aithne. “It’s easier when it Is just bad guys and good guys, like you said yesterday. I’m not—let’s go, guys. I want to leave.”

Aithne understood. Mission had only been able to cope with the shot she’d taken yesterday by accepting Carth’s kind of strict dichotomy—Kandon was bad, and she was good. The Vulkars were bad; the Beks were good. She’d been headed into the war expecting things to be similarly black and white: Carth, Aithne, Jedi, and the Republic as the good guys and the Sith as irredeemably evil. Now she was seeing this.

“Okay,” she said. “What do they have, Zaalbar?”

The Wookiee looked up from his inventory of the bodies. /The Sith has armor, weapons, grenades, and—/he trailed off. Then his eyes glowed, and he smiled. /—two vials of the rhakghoul serum./ He lifted them in his claw to show them.

Mission gaped. “I can’t believe it! We actually got it? We’re gonna cure the rhakghoul disease?”

Aithne slung her arm around the Twi’lek, pounding her on the shoulder. “We’re gonna cure the rhakghoul disease,” she confirmed. “We’ll give one to the village healer down here and take the other to Zelka Forn to replicate to wipe this blight from the face of Taris.”

 “Now that is worth seeing,” Mission declared.

/This woman is the apprentice you’ve been seeking,/ Zaalbar interrupted again, looking through a datapad journal. /Malya, apprentice to Rukil, disciple in the quest for the Promised Land./

He handed it to Aithne. “Right,” she said, forcing a practical tone. She’d known this would be the likeliest outcome if they found Malya at all. “Let’s go. Rukil will want to know.”

Though the dark of the Undercity was the same throughout Taris’s rotation, by the activity in the village, it was midmorning by the time they returned. Aithne led her companions through the tents. She grit her teeth against the silent despair of the village residents. She’d found Malya, and she’d leave them with a vial of serum to help their infected, and to replicate themselves if they could find the supplies. It wasn’t her place or within her power to upend the entire social structure of Taris.

Though if I had six months and there wasn’t a Sith occupation, Aithne thought rebelliously to herself.

Finally, she stood in front of Rukil’s tent. Rukil caught sight of her and smiled. “Greetings once more, up-worlder. Do you bring news of my apprentice? Have you discovered her fate, and proved yourself a true savior of my people?”

Aithne didn’t beat around the bush. “Your apprentice is dead. I have her journal. I’m sorry.”

Rukil sighed, but he didn’t look surprised. “It is as I feared, then. She joins the list of those who have given their lives in the service of our cause. But though I am saddened by this news,” he continued, a thread of excitement joining his voice, “there is yet hope. By finding my apprentice you have proved yourself worthy, up-worlder. You are to be the beacon on our path to salvation. You will guide us to the Promised Land!”

Though Aithne had been daydreaming about something of the kind literally seconds earlier, now she was aghast. “We don’t have the time,” she protested. “Honestly, I don’t think your Promised Land exists. Not down here. What your people actually need is some kind of lever—”

Rukil cut her off. “You are marked, up-worlder—even my dim old eyes can see the mantle of destiny that cloaks you. Perhaps old Rukil knows you better than you know yourself! I am old: I have lived a hundred years in the Undercity, cast down into the darkness. I know the legend and history of our people, and now you must learn it too!”

His wrinkled hands reached out for Aithne and pressed her hand with urgency.

“It couldn’t hurt to hear him, could it?” Mission whispered. “His apprentice just died. And now we have a couple more hours before you wanted to be back with the Beks, right?”

Aithne shot her an annoyed look, but then she sighed. She did make a practice of learning as much history as she could about each world she landed on, from as many different sources as it was practical for her to look at. It came in handy if she ever came to the world again. So, she sat on her butt in front of the ancient storyteller, arms clasped round her knees, and Mission smiled softly at her and sat beside her, weaving her arm through Aithne’s and resting her head against Aithne’s shoulder as though she hadn’t had someone she could just touch in years.

Aithne closed her eyes. The kid needed this. “Tell us the history of your people,” she told Rukil.

Carth and Zaalbar sat behind them. The four of them, Aithne thought, had to look like a pack of oversized schoolchildren, cross-legged or with their arms around their knees on the ground in front of the man.

“The great city of Taris covers the entire surface of this planet,” Rukil began. “There is no land to grow food. Kelp harvests and the creatures of the sea are our only food source. A century ago, rising levels of toxic pollution poisoned the oceans and a famine swept the planet. The rich hoarded food for their own use, and the poor were left to starve and die.”

Carth snorted. “From what I’ve seen of Taris, it doesn’t look like much has changed. Except for the Upper City, people here are just as bad off as the poor in your little history.”

“Don’t diminish it, Carth,” Aithne muttered out of the side of her mouth.

“Sorry,” Carth said under his breath.

But Rukil didn’t seem unduly offended. “Ah, young man,” he told Carth, “in those days, the poor rose up against this tyranny and civil war engulfed the planet. Millions died in the fighting, and huge sections of Taris were destroyed or abandoned. The rebellion was crushed in the end. Thousands were taken prisoner. The jails could not hold them all, and so the practice of banishing all prisoners to the Undercity was born.”

Aithne nodded, understanding. “Is that how you came to be down here?” she asked.

“Many brave men and women were banished here to the Undercity for their part in the rebellion,” he confirmed. “People like my father and grandfather were cast down, along with their families.”

“What did you expect?” Mission asked bitterly. “If they could get away with it the Tarisian nobles would stuff their own mothers down here to make more room in the Upper City.”

“You want to see it with us later?” Aithne asked. “Carth stole us an apartment.”

Mission’s eyes glinted, and she looked over at the pilot appreciatively. “Didn’t think you had it in you, geezer?”

“Yeah, what are you gonna do?” Carth said modestly.

“Now we live a dark existence beneath the streets of Taris,” Rukil concluded, “a life devoid of all hope but one—” he paused— “The Promised Land. And you will be the one to show us the way to get there.”

“No, I won’t,” Aithne said firmly. “But what is it? A path to a system of underwater caves the folks in Upper City don’t know about? A place where there’s farmable, edible mold and moss growing?”

“Legends tell of a self-sufficient colony founded just before the famine and lost during the Civil War,” Rukil explained. “A paradise beneath the Undercity where droid servants tend to every need. For many years I searched for the Promised Land, just as my father and grandfather did before me. When I became old and gray, my apprentice continued the search on my behalf.”

Carth looked over at Aithne. “It sounds like a myth to me,” he said. “Something to give the people here some false hope to cling to so they don’t go mad with despair.”

“The droid servants and the name, probably.” Aithne conceded. “Certainly, the hype is overblown. But there’s a possibility they had started a new underground colony a century ago with some type of food source unknown to the rest of Taris. No guarantee it still exists now, though, that it wasn’t tapped out of resources before the war or bombed out during.”

“I have collected many clues hinting at the colony’s location,” Rukil told them. He was reading Malya’s journal thoughtfully. “The journal of my apprentice provides yet more information.” He stamped his foot in frustration. “But still there are pieces missing from the puzzle! I know my father and grandfather each had journals where they recorded their own discoveries. Perhaps with these journals I could at last uncover its hidden location.”

Aithne started. She had those journals. They weren’t doing her any good, and they could give this village a valuable piece of its history back. “I found a couple of old Outcast journals exploring the sewers yesterday,” she said. She fished them out of her pack. “Here, take them.”

Rukil’s hands shook. His knees wavered, and for a second, Aithne worried the old man might have a heart attack right there. But then his knobbled fingers closed around the datapads. “Can it be true?” he breathed. “Is it possible that at long last the dream of my father and grandfather before him will be fulfilled? I . . . I can hardly bear to look.”

Aithne stood, and the others followed her. Rukil was peering at the type inside the datapads. Part of Aithne felt like she was done here. It could take Rukil days or weeks to decipher everything in the journals, and even once he did, there was no guarantee they would lead him anywhere. “Maybe we should go,” she started, but then Rukil suddenly shouted.

“Yes, yes!!” He pumped his fist into the air, and Aithne, looking at him, saw a shadow of the young man he must have been once—the descendant of revolutionaries, handsome and full of purpose. He crossed to Aithne and seized her by both arms. “Now I understand—it all makes sense! Now I see why the Promised Land has been so difficult to find! It is so obvious!” The joy on his face was so radiant it went a ways toward lighting up the underworld of the village. “You have done a great thing, up-worlder. A selfless act that will bring great joy to all the people of this village! I must take this to Gendar right away.”

Aithne pressed her lips together. “I should probably go with you,” she said. “If this goes anywhere, there’s something else you’ll need to have.”

Gendar was once again working nearby. As Rukil approached, Gendar looked up, annoyed. “Rukil. What do you want now?” he asked, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “Have you more tales of a hidden paradise, just waiting for us to find it?”

Rukil smiled. “You may not think these are fables after you see what I have brought you, Gendar!” Gendar straightened. He had obviously never, in all his years in the Undercity, heard Rukil use so gleeful a tone. “Look at these journals!” Gendar bent over the datapads, reading the passages in the journals Rukil pointed out to him.

“What? No, it can’t be!” Gendar said. He looked sharply at the older man. “Are these real, Rukil? Is this information accurate?”

Rukil nodded, serious again. “I swear to you everything in these journals is true, Gendar. The Promised Land!” he sighed. “I told you I would find it.”

Gendar nodded, thinking. “The entrance is far from here, Rukil. It will take us weeks to get there . . . perhaps even months. And we will have to cross several rhakghoul-infested areas.”

Rukil nodded. “I do not deny the journey will be hard, Gendar. But surely it is better than the miserable life we have here!”

Aithne felt a wave of foreboding. She knew how important hope was to these people, but the way Rukil and Gendar were talking of leaving immediately . . . “Sending an expedition of four or five of your best warriors to scout out the site would probably be smarter than a mass exodus on information that’s decades old,” she pointed out. “There may be a colony, or the ruins of one. But it may or may not be viable.”

Rukil looked stubborn. “I will see the Promised Land!” he declared. “I was sure I should die before we ever found a trace of it! If there’s even a chance, we must seize it!”

“The up-worlder may have a point,” Gendar said. “Our supplies are high right now. Our entire village could leave by nightfall. But if we do so on a lead that falls to nothing . . .”

“I am certain! These journals will lead us to the Promised Land!” Rukil said again.

Aithne could see there would be debate on the subject, and there should be, but it wasn’t her place to solve it. “Whatever you decide,” she interjected, “a gift for your people, Gendar.” She offered one of the vials of rhakghoul serum to him. “If any of your people contracts the rhakghoul disease, this will cure it. If your supplies are high right now, I’d say a better use of them might be having your healer duplicate the contents of this vial, before the rest of you undertake any journey through the bowels of the planet.”

“But this . . . this will greatly decrease any risk!” Gendar cried. “Whether we stay or go, it will improve our people’s lives beyond measure to be safe from that terrible disease. You know, up-worlder, that we never can repay you.”

Aithne shook her head. “My friends and I have already talked today about subjective value,” she answered. “That, for example, a hot breakfast and a little ease for our backs may be worth the cost of a small horde of supplies none of us truly need. After the last couple of days we’ve had, what should we say it’s worth to us, to know you and yours might have it a little easier in the future? Don’t underestimate what that knowledge can do for all our morale.”

“You are kind,” Gendar answered, bowing.

“Rarely,” Aithne answered.

“Aw, you’re full of poodoo,” Mission said, punching Aithne on the arm. “You are.”

“It’s time for us to go, Gendar,” Aithne said, bowing. “Rukil. I wish you well, whatever you decide. Give Shaleena my regards.”

Rukil clasped their hands. “Thank you once again, up-worlder. I will say a final good-bye,” said Rukil. “Where we are going, you cannot come.”

The others made their own goodbyes, and then, the four of them headed for the elevator. Already as they passed, they heard the whispers spreading through the city, sound beginning where it’d been silent. The Outcasts were moving faster, walking straighter as word traveled quicker than Aithne and the others’ own feet: The Promised Land was found. The Promised Land was near.

“You’ve started something here, beautiful,” Carth told her as they got onto the lift.

Aithne took one glance out at the dark, sunlit land before the doors closed on it. “Let’s just hope it turns out for the best.”

Chapter Text

AITHNE

The sunlight shining through the valleys of the Tarisian skyscrapers, as obscured and filtered as it was in the Lower City, was almost as welcome as the hot meal had been earlier that morning when Aithne and the others arrived back up top. Fighting the odd Black Vulkar again was refreshing after hours of mutant, contagious rhakghouls. At least the Vulkars didn’t spread disease.

More, though, Aithne felt that something was about to break on Taris, that they were close to the turning point that would finally get the lot of them off this rock, including Bastila. After that, life was a blank, but hey, you had to take things one step at a time.

It was nearing lunch hour when they got back to the Bek base. Aithne walked in, prototype accelerator in hand, and laid it on top of Gadon’s desk. Because Zaerdra hadn’t called a challenge, Gadon knew she was a friendly, but it took the blind swoop gang leader a second to identify her body signature with his implants.

“Moran, is it? You have returned. Do you have the prototype swoop engine accelerator with you?”

“On your desk, Gadon,” Zaerdra told him. “The two off-worlders are dirty and tired but unharmed. It’s the same with Mission and the Wookiee. It took you all long enough.”

“Oh, you know,” Carth said. “Fifty rhakghouls or more, a run-in with Gamorrean slavers, dodging round the Sith and the Exchange, not to mention raiding the Vulkar base. We did what we could.”

“You did well,” Gadon agreed. “But I was beginning to worry. The race is tomorrow, and my mechanics need time to install the prototype into the swoop engine of our bike.”

“And then you can hold up your end of our bargain. We’ve held up ours, and—as Carth says, it involved a great deal of personal risk on all our parts.”

“Don’t worry,” Gadon assured her. “I’m a man of my word. I promised you could ride in the swoop race under the Hidden Bek banner, and I’m still going to let you do that. And,” he said, in a salesman’s ‘that’s-not-all’ voice, “I’m even going to do you one better: I’m going to let you ride the swoop bike with the prototype accelerator installed on it. Without it, you won’t stand a chance.”

Aithne sensed Mission shoot Carth a worried glance behind her back. Zaerdra spoke up: “Gadon! You can’t be serious! We need one of our best riders on that bike! We can’t just let some rookie take the prototype engine into the race!”

Gadon shifted, and Aithne zeroed in on the tell: he was nervous, possibly guilty. “Because it’s new technology and requires an experienced touch, or because it’s unstable?” she asked, pitching her words to Zaerdra but staring down Gadon.

“You’ve got it,” Gadon admitted. “The accelerator technology isn’t finished yet. There’s a good chance it could explode during the race.”

Carth, Mission, and Zaalbar stepped forward, all about to protest. Aithne raised a hand, waiting for the gang leader to finish. “I can’t ask one of my own riders to take the risk—they’ll be running unmodified swoops in the race. You’ll be the only one using the prototype. If you can complete the track before the accelerator overheats, then you’ll win for the Beks. If you die, then one of my other riders could still come through for me.”

“Wait, so Aithne’s just . . . expendable?” Mission demanded.

Aithne looked at the Twi’lek. “He’s protecting his people, Mission,” she said. “I’ve always been expendable. People hire freelancers to be expendable. Terms for this job were a little odd, but the setup was pretty standard. If we hadn’t shown up, Gadon would’ve had to surrender his gang’s technology to Brejik or risk a team of his own people in recovering it. Fortunately, he had currency valuable to me and Carth: information on Bastila and a way for us to rescue her. He paid it to us, and what he got in turn was both his gang’s technology back and whatever Bek lives he might have lost if he’d had to make the recovery attempt instead. Now he’s offering another deal—giving us not only a chance to save Bastila but the best chance to save her, if, again, we will assume more risk than he’s willing to ask his own people to assume and obtain an asset that’s valuable to them.”

She hoped Mission would take the secondary point: that Mission herself was less valuable to Gadon Thek than the lives of actual members of his gang, that he’d risked her too. If Aithne died on Gadon’s swoop bike, she didn’t want Mission going back to the Beks.

“How can you talk like that?” Mission exclaimed. Her lekku were twisting wildly. “He’s talking about your life!”

“Bastila’s life’s on the line too,” Aithne pointed out. “If I or one of the other Beks don’t win tomorrow, off she’ll go into slavery, just like Zaalbar. Well, Gadon. You have all your bases covered.”

Gadon’s face was unreadable. “You don’t get to be leader of a swoop gang if you don’t know how to work all the angles,” he said. If you don’t know how to make sacrifices, he means, Aithne thought.

She turned around to Carth. “If I do this, I can trust you?” she asked. With Mission and Zaalbar, with making sure Bastila gets out no matter what happens to me, even though you don’t trust me, she meant.

“You can trust me,” he said. She believed him.

Aithne turned around to Gadon. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

CARTH

Gadon offered to let them stay in the Bek base for the rest of that afternoon and through the night. They ate in the Beks’ mess, and then Mission took them back to the Bek barracks, where she and Zaalbar had slept often.

Aithne was strangely silent. Through the past few days, Carth had gotten used to the sound of her voice, arguing with him, advocating for Mandalorians and Sith foot soldiers of all people, taking the lead as if Republic rank and protocol had never existed. Ridiculously sharp, witty, funny—sometimes dry or sarcastic, reflective, thoughtful, or on occasion, incisive and devastating, like just now with Thek or with him the other day in the sewers outside the Gamorrean hideout. In any event, Aithne was never at a loss for words. That she was now worried him.

Mission’s lekku wouldn’t stay still. She kept rolling over on her bunk, getting up to pace around the room. Zaalbar was sitting in a pile of their salvaged weapons, cleaning some, tinkering with others.

Eventually, Aithne got up and left the barracks. Carth got up. He started to follow her, but Zaalbar stopped him. He growled at him softly, and Mission translated. Her voice was flat.

“He says to leave her alone,” she reported. “That she needs to come to terms with what she’s vowed to do on her own. Even if she gets herself killed doing it,” she added in a bitter, venomous voice, clearly speaking for herself instead of the Wookiee now. “Frak.”

“Language!”

Mission slid her eyes to him, completely unimpressed. “Way I see it, it’s time for some karking cursing, if we’re just going to sit here without doing nothing else. You just let her say she’ll ride that swoop bike! Like, does Aithne even drive swoop bikes?”

“I don’t know,” Carth answered.

“You could’ve volunteered,” Mission insisted. “You’re supposed to be the soldier. She’s what, some scout and linguist the Republic brought on like yesterday. What about me and Big Z?”

“What about Bastila?” Carth countered, even though he felt uncomfortable about the Tarisians too. “We’re here for the Jedi. She’s enslaved now, and unless she’s rescued, her life will be a living hell and the Republic war effort is doomed.”

“I get that,” Mission said. “We gotta help her. I just . . . wish there was another way. I wish we’d never got back that prototype accelerator. The Beks could of won the race without it, and they don’t do slavery, though I guess they were quick enough to jump on using a girl from nowhere who just needed a little extra help, and . . . you know, the rest of us.” She curled up on her bunk then, and her lekku wrapped around her throat like her arms were wrapped around her shoulders.

“You caught that, did you?”

“She meant me to,” Mission said. “Practically laid it out on a big silver platter: you’re not a Bek, Mission, just a security spike on legs to these people, and they don’t give a flying flip whether you live or die. And she was right, wasn’t she?” Mission looked up at him, and Carth hesitated.

“Zaerdra wasn’t happy when Gadon wanted us to come looking for you,” he said. “I think some of them care a little. But, for the most part—”

“I thought the Beks were my friends. I thought I could trust them, that they were good guys,” Mission said. “But even if they did invent the prototype accelerator, they still were willing to ask us to murder a whole slew of Vulkars to get it back, and for us to get murdered too, or end up rhakghoul meat or whatever. Even if they wanna free your friend if they win the race, they’re using her being sold, manipulating Aithne and the rest of us. It just—it makes me mad enough to spit. Geez, I thought Zaalbar was naïve and gullible. Since we been running around with you and Aithne—”

Zaalbar roared something else. Mission’s face softened. “Thanks, Big Z. He says I shouldn’t think so much, that Aithne’ll come through. I guess he wouldn’t of sworn a lifedebt to her if he didn’t think she was special, and I know she is, but—I just don’t want her to die. I know Bastila’s important and all, but I never met her in my life. Aithne—she’s my friend.”

“That’s when things are hardest,” Carth told her. “When you’ve got orders that means you and your unit are at risk for an objective you just can’t value like the brass does. When all there is to do is . . . is just trust they know what they’re doing.”

Mission snorted. “And what happens when they’re wrong?”

“You lose,” Carth answered. He stood up and left the barracks. The Wookiee didn’t stop him this time. He walked through the halls of the Hidden Bek base without paying much attention to where he was going or who he was passing. Mission would be okay with Zaalbar. The Wookiee knew her a hell of a whole lot better than Carth did. He’d know what to say or what to do or . . . whatever.

For all he knew, Mission had been right to be angry with him. They had no idea whether Aithne could ride a swoop bike or not. As ranking officer, maybe he should’ve assumed the risk. To everyone but the dead, he was replaceable. There were thousands of qualified pilots in the Republic. But Aithne—she had two new dependants, a family, as strange as it was to think of, and she hadn’t had near time enough to make arrangements for them. There also might be other considerations.

The Jedi had requested Aithne’s services, and Carth had seen enough by now that he was starting to know why. Her ability with languages was an asset, and because she’d spent the past ten years on her own, traveling widely in and outside of Republic space, she had a point of view that most soldiers of the Republic lacked. She saw new sides to issues and could think creatively and solve problems independently in a way that didn’t rise up naturally in rank-and-file soldiers. In fact, she was almost perfect special forces material, but it was more than that. Aithne Moran had a klick-wide streak of some unidentifiable quality—some stroke of luck or inspiration or destiny that made things work out for her, that made things happen for her. It had got Zaalbar to swear a lifedebt to her in the sewers after less than an hours’ conversation and a rescue two other people had taken part in; let her pick up two random datapads in a day that turned out to be the long-lost instructions to some sort of salvation colony in the Undercity. He had a feeling it was the reason that Mando kept turning up. And that quality, whatever it was, was also why he thought she might have a shot at rescuing Bastila tomorrow.

But if he was wrong, if the Jedi had some other purpose for her, and Aithne’s skills and abilities weren’t up to tomorrow’s challenge, it was wrong to let her take the risk. On the other hand, while he had no idea what kind of swoop racer she’d make, Carth was fairly sure he’d make a bad one. He was heavier than she was, at any rate, and he didn’t know but that her reflexes might be better too.

He also had an idea that even if he suggested taking her place tomorrow, she wouldn’t go for it. For one, she might think he was asking because he didn’t trust her. But even so, operating on her plan with her allies, it would be so damn easy for her to subvert the entire mission . . .

Carth growled aloud. Out of the cockpit, Karath.

Anyway, he reasoned, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t have noticed if Aithne was planning some kind of betrayal. Every thought and emotion she had showed on her face, and she voiced most of them out loud. She could be cold and practical enough at times, though he thought a lot of that was a front, but she was the furthest thing from a liar.

Carth stopped. He looked up. He didn’t know where he was, and it took him a minute to realize he’d walked blindly across the base to the Hidden Beks garage. Four swoop bikes were standing ready, gassed and polished, ready for the race tomorrow. In a special room to the right, three or four mechanics worked on a fifth. And standing seven meters away from the window that looked in on it was a woman in a loose-fitting white linen shirt tucked into tight-fitting combat-weave pants.

Aithne’d used the time to track down a shower and change. He’d have to do the same, Carth thought. He looked down and realized his boots were still spattered with Undercity muck, though he’d avoided a lot of the rhakghoul blood spatters Aithne and Zaalbar had come in the way of today, and he hadn’t had a chance to use an actual fresher in days.

Aithne’s hair was clean, and loose for once, down in a cloud around her shoulders and skimming the top of her chest. It was thick and curly enough that, from his position, it was hard to see more than the tip of her nose. Aithne Moran had some gorgeous hair. A lot about her was beautiful, in a comfortable way that didn’t make a huge deal out of itself. He liked her height, liked her curves, and the way she smiled, when she did. He liked the light behind her big brown eyes, the freckles across her cheeks, and the way her hands moved when she talked.

Back in the Vulkar base, she’d accused him, obliquely, of mixing his signals a little, and he’d had to confess that he had. He hadn’t meant to be unprofessional, had never meant calling her beautiful to be more than idle banter in a conversation meant to distract anyone trying to eavesdrop on them in a cantina. When he’d suggested they drop rank and protocol between them to keep themselves safe from the Sith, he hadn’t meant for it to disappear completely. But here he was.

Probably another symptom of whatever it was that had made everything that had happened since they got to Taris center on her, he thought, that quality that was probably the reason the Jedi wanted her. He thought she was out of her mind half the time, especially on politics and Mandalorians, and she was damned frustrating, the way she got at him without, as far as he could tell, trying or . . . or even wanting to, the way some women had tried after Morgana, or in long tours away during their marriage.

As if she’d heard his thoughts, Aithne’s head turned, and her eyes caught his. She tilted her head, inviting him to come stand beside her.

“Come to comfort me my last day among the living?” she asked.

“I don’t think you’re going to die tomorrow,” Carth answered, surprised as he said it at just how strongly he did feel it. He was upset. He was worried about her, but somehow, he just knew Aithne would come through this. “I think you’re going to march back into that Upper City apartment after the swoop race, Taris swoop champion, and I think you’ll have Bastila with you.”

Aithne caught his eye again. She regarded him for a moment. “What, you starting to trust me or something, Onasi?”

Carth shook his head. “It’s not about that,” he objected. “It’s just . . . you. A feeling I have. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

Aithne was silent a moment. “I agree with you,” she said then, “and for pretty much the same reason. Going in, this looks like the worst deal imaginable. You know, I only ever rode a swoop bike once before. Did it on a dare. I was sixteen years old. Did a run down a canyon course back home after sneaking out in the middle of the night with a couple friends. Beat all the old hands by two seconds, but that bike scared me to death. There’s no reason to think I’ll live through getting on that death machine tomorrow with absolutely no experience, but—” she shrugged. “Still, it’s got me thinking.”

She handed him a datapad. Carth looked it over. There was a row of numbers on it, and a link to a text file. He opened the file and stopped. Last Will and Testament.

“Not sure if I did that right,” Aithne told him. “Never had anyone to leave my stuff to before or any last requests to make. I might not even have any assets to distribute if the Republic didn’t follow through on their promise to unfreeze ‘em. I don’t think I’m going to die tomorrow. I think I’ll win. But on the off-chance I’m wrong—I can’t just plow into stuff like this without thinking about the consequences anymore. Zaalbar will be fine. He’s an adult, though I think he’s a young one, and he’s strong and skilled enough to make it even in a galaxy where more than 9,900 people out of 10,000 aren’t going to understand a word he says. But Mission—she needs more than just one friend she can count on. She needs a home and school and a future. She’s a total idiot to throw in with me, just trying to stay close to Big Z ‘cause it’s all she knows, but I’m gonna do the best I can for her. I will.”

“Did you ever have a sister? Or a kid?” Carth asked.

Aithne shook her head. “I was an only child, and I’ve been smart—or lucky—enough in my dealings with men not to have run into any . . . complications. I just—when there’s a kid, looking to you, you take care of her, don’t you? Even if she doesn’t think she needs it.”

“She’s been reevaluating that, the past couple days,” Carth said.

“Good. She should,” Aithne said. “She won’t actually be an adult until she knows she doesn’t know a thing.”

Carth chuckled at that.

“I want her set up with resident ID codes in the Republic. I want Zaalbar legally set up as her guardian, if I’m not, just ‘cause it’ll make the paperwork a whole lot easier,” Aithne went on. “I want her vaccinated against all the major diseases transmissible to Twi’leks on high-traffic worlds in the Rim and in the Core. I’d like to get her out of the war entirely and in school on the safest planet possible, but if I don’t die tomorrow, that won’t happen. She’ll go wherever Zaalbar does, and he’s going to follow me. Anyway, I think she’s had enough gaps in her education that she’d be way behind and unhappy in an on-level program for the moment. She’s smart, but she’d feel like an idiot, and I don’t want that for her. Better to structure a homeschool program for her, at least for a year or so, but I haven’t had the time to come up with one.”

Carth examined the datapad, her bank account number and a will that detailed everything she was explaining to him now. “I’m surprised you’ve had time to do this much,” he said. “You . . . you’ve really taken her on.”

“She didn’t give me a whole lot of choice.”

Carth shook his head. “There’s always a choice,” he said. “I was a . . . I had a . . .” he trailed off.

“I thought so,” Aithne said. “She’s not wrong that you talk like you’re her father, talk like someone who was or is a father. Like my dad, too, what I remember of him. Not that you treat me like you’re my father,” she clarified, face heating, as Carth frowned and started to protest. “Just with her. You do and say stuff like I remember my dad doing and saying for me. He was a good father.”

“How long has it been since—”

“About nine years,” she answered. “I don’t remember a lot about my mother. She died when I really was young.” She looked at him. “Just ‘cause I’m telling you about me, you don’t have to tell me about you,” she said.

“Thank you,” Carth said. For him, Telos was still too close. Shouting for the medics, Morgana in his arms, never even finding Dustil’s body. He tried to explain. “It’s not that I mind, telling you. It’s just . . . it’s still raw.”

Aithne nodded. “Is it funny, that I’m more scared about what’ll happen if I don’t die than if I do?” she asked then. She gestured again at the swoop bike across the room. “If that monster machine takes me out tomorrow, it’s all over for me. I know you’ll make sure Bastila and the Republic are saved no matter how the race turns out—” her voice was a little drier and more ironic than he’d have liked, but there was no real bite to it. “—and I know I can trust you and Zaalbar to do what’s best for Mission too. But when I live, I gotta figure out how to get the Jedi all those Sith are looking for off-planet and keep a teenage girl safe and educated when she up and follows us all into the heart of the war. That’s what’s got me shook.”

“It’s not funny at all,” Carth said. “It’s normal. People like you and me, we’re used to taking risks, to putting our lives on the line for the cause—or maybe, out of professional honor, for someone like you.”

Aithne tilted her head at him. “Now you’re getting it,” she praised him.

Carth shifted. “But family, the people we care about—that’s the best reason we do it. Better than justice, or compassion on people we don’t know, or revenge. And worrying . . . worrying we’ll get it wrong, that we’ll let them down . . . fail. That’s the worst thing. To be scared of—or have happen.” He ended in a voice so low he didn’t know whether she heard.

She didn’t speak for a long moment. Then she said, “Let’s get a drink, Onasi. Beks have to owe me a few free shots if I’m risking my tail on their death machine for their glory tomorrow. Besides, watching these mechanics work is making me twitchy. I keep thinking maybe I’d do better.”

Carth straightened. “You know about swoop bikes?”

She shook her head. “Not a blessed thing, but I know about droids and computers, and in a second here I’m sure I’ll fool myself into thinking it’s the same thing and barge in on Gadon’s inventors who created that prototype accelerator.”

“You might be more likely to do that after a few free shots,” Carth pointed out.

“But it’ll be funnier,” Aithne replied. “So?”

She faced him, hands on hips, head tilted. Carth smiled and fell into step beside and a little behind Aithne Moran. Just enough to admire the view when she didn’t think he was watching. It was becoming a habit of his, he thought, and part of him was more than a little worried about it. The other part of him just really thought that drink sounded great.

BASTILA

Bastila’s body ached. Her head buzzed as that blasted neural disruptor kept trying to keep her disoriented. She’d been confined for days. She’d lost count. She’d been in a dark cell someplace. It had been small, she thought, but she couldn’t quite remember. She had wondered if the Sith had captured her, if they were trying to break her.

There is no emotion; there is peace.

She’d realized the Sith couldn’t have been the ones to capture her when her wounds from the crash had been healed. Her clothes were taken away, and she was forced into a skintight, brightly colored costume. If she was remembering right, the cakelike stuff on her face had been applied a few hours ago. She didn’t know how she looked, but she rather felt like her chest might fall out of her get-up at any moment.

Voices. There were more now, and Bastila almost shrieked when they led her out into bright light for the first time in days. There were voices everywhere. Human. Twi’lek. Rodian and Duros. She appeared to be someplace very busy, and as her captors led her by the talk blazed up.

Prize. She was a captive. She was to be offered up as a prize. A slave. Bastila knit her brow as they lowered the cage door over her, trying to impose her will over her sluggish, disjointed thoughts. She felt the Force, like always, but it seemed fragmented, broken into pieces around her.

Now and then, someone would come stand before her cage, leering at her, boasting loudly about what they’d do when they’d won . . . what? The race? Bastila kept having to force herself to focus. The light of the track hurt her eyes. All the voices echoed off permacrete walls and corroded industrial durasteel trappings and came back, doubled and trebled, to bounce around inside her skull.

Some instruments played a fanfare, and then a rumbling started. Piercing cheers rose up from all around. The din nearly split her brain in half. Bastila clutched the bars of the cage. The steel in her hands helped to dispel the confusion of her emotions. Maybe when the race was over, the winner would remove her collar. Then she could get them.

There was something she was meant to do for the Republic, for the Jedi. She was on an important, dangerous mission, sensitive and highly classified, especially from its subject. She was unprepared, but the only possible one for . . . why couldn’t she recall?

A voice broke into her thoughts. The voice of a human female, speaking Basic with an alien nearby. Low and musical, dramatic and expressive. Charismatic, Bastila thought. Dangerous. Somehow the voice cut through the noise of the disruptor and the swoop track. She focused in on it, directed her thoughts towards it. The voice itself was familiar, but for some reason, she couldn’t fit it to a face. Instead, she only received an impression of a black cloak spinning to the ground, of the flash of a lightsaber.

The alien the woman was speaking with was taunting her. /You were pretty good. Too bad I was better. You, and me, and Republic over there can have a party to make it up to you./ The sexist and offensive presumption of the remark sent a spark of anger through Bastila. She started to breathe in a pattern, controlling her response, beginning to see the circuits of her neural disruption collar within her mind’s eye as the conversation went on.

The conversation ended as one or the other of the participants walked away, but the thread of the Living Force she had sensed in the voice of the human female remained, and Bastila held it like a lifeline, pulling on it in order to free herself from the morass of confusion caused by the disruption collar and her many days’ imprisonment.

Within the passage of maybe half an hour, she had the measure of the collar. She knew she could break it at the most advantageous moment, but she was still trying to decide when that might be.

She had also cleared her mind enough to remember what had happened and understand what was currently happening. She had been captured on the planet of Taris, not by the Sith but by members of the Black Vulkar swoop bike gang. She was to be their share of the prize in the annual planetary swoop bike championship race.

The humiliation of it was almost enough to send her spiraling back into confusion, but, with difficulty, Bastila maintained her breathing pattern, repeating the Jedi Code inside her head like a mantra against the manipulations of the neural disruption collar. One thing she was sure about: she was not going to be awarded to some petty thug, as a trophy or an object for their lust. She was a Jedi, and even without her lightsaber, they were not going to reduce her to helplessness again. But surprise and a good sense of timing would still be critical if she were to escape.

The races were drawing to a close now. It seemed that another bike gang—not the Vulkars—had sponsored a freelancer, and that was the person in the lead. Bastila heard the buzz of conversation, along with all the deafening cheers, and it said that the woman had actually broken the all-time Taris swoop record. No one had come within eight seconds of the time set in her latest heat.

It was encouraging that the current leader was a woman. Not that women couldn’t be cruel, abusive, or seek out other women to enslave and torture, but statistically, it was a rarer occurrence than that of a man commodifying and using a woman for his own amusement. It was possible that the race winner would be more interested in selling her at some later date than in making immediate use of her. A lack of any focused intent or attention on her could furnish Bastila with an opportunity.

The fanfare sounded once again. “Ladies, gentlemen, and various others,” an announcer called over the loudspeaker in Basic. “I present to you the winner of this year’s swoop race: Addie Fe! Put your hands together and show your appreciation for one of the most daring riders this swoop track has ever seen!”

The swoop enthusiasts went wild. Fortunately, Bastila was sufficiently recovered that the sound no longer injured her.

“Through your skills and courage,” the announcer went on, “you have proven yourself the premier swoop rider on Taris and brought great glory to the Hidden Bek gang! Now, here to present the champion’s prize, Brejik, leader of the Black Vulkars!”

Bastila watched from under her eyelids as her captor strode up to the stage. He looked angry. Bastila fought a sudden surge of hope. If Brejik caused a commotion . . .

“People, hear me,” he cried to the audience. “Before I present the so-called champion of the Beks with her prize, there is something you should know: the winning rider cheated!”

From her narrowed, downcast eyes, all Bastila could see of the woman who had won her, Addie Fe, was that she was every bit as tall as her accuser, armed with vibroblades on either hip. The track lights shone on an aureola of small curls that had escaped her braided crown, painting them red and gold, though her hair, Bastila thought, was probably brown.

“That’s the tack you’re going with?” Fe asked, in a mildly curious tone, but the voice fell like a jolt on Bastila’s ears. It was the same voice she had recognized half an hour ago, the one the Force gathered to like a nova, the one that had given her the strength to break through the collar’s confusion. And the person it belonged to wasn’t known as Addie Fe at all.

“Because I read through the rules and regulations of your race here early this morning as I entered my name into the roster. They didn’t say anything about the modifications in place on my bike being illegal.”

“The prototype accelerator you used was clearly an unfair advantage!” Brejik snapped, face red, infuriated. He turned to the crowd again. “Because of this Hidden Bek treachery,” he announced, “I’m withdrawing the Vulkar’s share of the victory prize!”

Fe unsheathed her blades as the announcer wrung his hands. “You can’t do this, Brejik! You know the rules: nobody’s allowed to withdraw a victory prize after the race. It goes against all our most sacred traditions!”

“You old fool,” Brejik snarled. “Your traditions are nothing to me! I am the wave of the future! If I want to withdraw the prize and sell this woman out on the slave market myself, nobody can stop me!”

Bastila acted. The worst-case scenario was remaining with Brejik and his Vulkars. She popped the collar. She pushed with the Force, shoving the door of her cage wide open. She grasped the guard by her cage by his wrist and shoulder, threw him over her shoulder and stamped down hard upon his windpipe. Taking the double-bladed vibrosword from his corpse, she took up a guard position. “I might have something to say about that, Brejik.”

Bastila ignored the screams and murmurs around the crowd, how many of them were slipping quietly out the doors and others were retreating to a safe distance as what appeared to be the makings of a first-rate brawl was beginning by the victor’s seat. She kept her eyes upon Brejik.

“You were restrained by a neural disruptor!” Brejik accused her. “How could you have possibly summoned the will to free yourself?”

A few gang members, in yellow to the Vulkars’ red and blue, were making their way to the back of the race winner. Bastila didn’t know if she would end up having to subdue the Hidden Beks as well before the end; it could be that they also wanted her as a prize. For now, the Beks would be allies.

“You underestimate the strength of a Jedi’s mind, Brejik,” she said. “A mistake you won’t live to regret.”

Brejik darkened with rage. “Vulkars!” he shouted. “To me! Kill these women! Kill them all!”

In a single, flying leap, the woman Addie Fe jumped to Bastila’s side, taking up position at her back. Bastila fought a surge of annoyance. She was supposed to be handling Fe, though she was almost sure the woman wasn’t meant to be using that name. Bastila was not intended to end up being rescued by Fe instead. She didn’t like to think what this would look like in her report to the Council.

Her annoyance showed itself in an unwontedly vicious kick to the Vulkar coming in on her right. Bastila dealt him a brutal blow to the collarbone that sent him sprawling to the floor, screaming and clutching at the base of his throat, trying to keep his blood not just from leaking but from spurting away.

Behind her, Addie Fe impaled a Kadas’sa’Nikto dressed in a racing suit dyed the Vulkar colors upon her right vibroblade. “Applauding your ‘strength of will’ and all,” she said, pulling the blade free with a grunt, “but did you have to mention to everyone present that you’re a Jedi?”

Bastila swung her vibrosword in a wide arc, meaning to behead an attacking Vulkar, but the metal didn’t cut as easily as her lightsaber. It stuck in his throat, sending blood shooting all over the ridiculous costume the Vulkars had dressed her in. Bastila tried not to gag. The smell of combat was diminished, fighting with blades of metal instead of plasma, but the sensations . . .

The fact that announcing her affiliation had actually been a tactical error while she was surrounded by enemies and still missing her lightsaber just served to annoy Bastila even further. This mission had gone poorly quickly. She had been meant to control things, right from the start. Everything depended upon her maintaining control. Instead, she was off-balance on a world with a large Sith presence, in the power of the very individual she had been meant to keep within her power at all costs.

Not that it had ever been a very promising mission. She was merely a Padawan. Her primary teacher had been killed one Republic standard year ago, in the very engagement which had bound her to a task she had very little hope of ever fulfilling. She could sense the power of the woman behind her. A sense almost like heat from that of a forge at full strength. Beside it, she, her Battle Meditation, and all her training amounted to little more than a quiet domestic campfire. Yet the Council had charged her with keeping the other in check, and, indeed, they had explained that she was the only one with hope of doing so.

Yet here she was, within the first days of her mission, in completely over her head and out of her depth, making errors she ought to have known better than to make.

As she and her unwelcome rescuer turned together to face Brejik, the woman called out to her, “Aithne Moran.”

Yes, that had been the name, Bastila remembered. A freelance scout, to account for her propensity for independent thought and action but build within her the makings of what they hoped would be a sense of honor. Widely traveled, to account for experiences, skills, and opinions that would not be otherwise easily explained.

“Bastila Shan,” she shouted back, as Moran delivered a strong kick to the Vulkar leader’s stomach. Bastila dodged a sweep of Brejik’s vibrosword and dealt a blow to his shoulder.

Her savior dashed into a millisecond gap in his defense and stabbed him to the heart. He fell dead at her feet. Wasting no time, the woman knelt beside him, expertly searching him. She stuffed a few items into a nearby pack that lay forgotten by the wayside, and then held up a double-bladed lightsaber. “This yours?”

Bastila could have wept with relief, and Moran took her expression as affirmation and tossed the hilt of the weapon. Bastila caught it easily, feeling its accustomed weight in her hand. She did not have a belt to attach it to in this costume, but just holding it gave her back a sense of confidence.

She activated the saber. Twin blades of yellow light slid out with a hiss. Bastila deactivated it again and looked across at Aithne Moran, gathering her pack with her back to Bastila. She was wary: she hadn’t had the opportunity to introduce herself to the woman aboard Endar Spire in a way that would be plausibly casual before the ship had been attacked. She didn’t know how the backstory Moran had been given would lead her to act. If things were as she thought, the situation might actually allow for intimacy and an assumption of her mission sooner rather than later, but if something unexpected occurred once again . . .

“I assume you do not intend to collect me as a prisoner?” she managed finally. “Because if you do—”

“To rescue you, actually,” Moran answered, turning around and facing her full-on for the first time. Bastila had only ever seen her unmasked face once, and thereafter at a distance, from behind the window of a guarded medical bay in the Jedi Temple. She was amazed at how ordinary the woman appeared now. Her eyes had been sickly yellow and were now a warm golden brown. The blue-black veins that had been visible beneath the surface of her pale skin had faded, and her hair now did not appear as though it would fit inside a war helm. Instead, beneath the blood from the fighting, Aithne Moran vaguely resembled an aunt Bastila remembered from her early childhood—an artist, or a teacher. A librarian? Bastila wondered if looking ordinary made the woman more or less dangerous.

She licked her lips and began to play her part. “I don’t believe this. You’re . . . you’re one of the soldiers with the Republic Fleet, aren’t you? Yes, I’m sure of it. How did you end up racing for these swoop gangs?”

Moran’s nose wrinkled. Her mouth twisted up into quite a comical little expression. “That’s a long, complicated story best told someplace away from here. For now, just tell me: did they hurt you?”

“No,” Bastila told her. “I suppose Brejik was saving that for whoever ended up with me.” Suddenly the weight of all the danger she had actually been in hit her, along with the annoyance that the person who was her assignment had ended up having to take her from it. By the stars, what had taken her so long? “Was saving me what you were trying to accomplish by riding in that swoop race?” she was demanding before she could help herself. “As far as rescues go, this is a pretty poor example.” She might have only a fraction of this woman’s power and experience, but at least when she rescued someone, she did it properly, instead of leaving them to fight half the battle after making a gambit that could have so easily ended in failure.

Aithne Moran sat back on her right leg, hands on hips. Even leaning backward, she was a full handspan and a half taller than Bastila, and Bastila felt the difference. “Yes, well, you’re welcome,” she said mildly.

Bastila felt the reproof, and it turned her annoyance into something much closer to actual anger. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I managed to free myself from that neural restraint collar without your help,” she insisted, though actually, she wondered if she would have managed to do so without the nexus of Force energy that gathered to Moran like a magnetic field. It didn’t stop her mouth from running. “In fact, it’s more accurate to say that I saved you! Brejik and his Vulkars would have left you for dead if I hadn’t stepped into that fight. You’re lucky I was here to get you out of this mess!”

Moran regarded her, brown eyes moving across her face. “I’m sorry we took so long,” she answered then. “I know you’ve been scared, if you’ve even been fully conscious since the crash, and today has to have been worst of all. Try not to take it out on me if you can. I was out a couple days myself, and it took us about that long afterward to find out what had happened to you, let alone determine the best opportunity to retrieve you and arrange the necessary circumstances to make it happen. We did the best we could.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Bastila asked. “You weren’t the only survivor of Endar Spire?”

“There were several,” Aithne answered. “At least one ended up a victim of the rhakghoul disease in the Undercity, and about six others, as of a few days ago, were in degenerative, vegetative states in an emergency clinic due to various severe injuries or wounds suffered in the battle. But my pod came out in relatively good condition. I got the worst of it, but Major Carth Onasi dragged me clear and found us shelter to form a plan. He’s waiting for us now in our base in the Upper City. We should meet him.”

She started toward the exit, and Bastila followed dumbly, almost flooded with relief. Carth Onasi! He was Telosian, the descendant of at least one known member of the Agricorps two generations ago, probably more, and his lineage showed in both his medicals and his service history. He was a dependable, trustworthy officer, and possibly the best equipped of the Republic soldiers who had been aboard Endar Spire to keep an eye on Aithne Moran. Besides that, Bastila liked him. “Carth Onasi is alive? Finally, some good news!”

Aithne shot her a sideways look, and the right side of her mouth quirked upwards. “You know, I’d’ve appreciated that kind of greeting,” she remarked.

“Carth is one of the Republic’s best soldiers,” Bastila explained. “He’s proven himself a hero a dozen times over! And he sent you here to save me?” She regarded Moran, reassessing. “Carth wouldn’t have sent you if he wasn’t confident in your . . . abilities.” If the major had witnessed any . . . questionable . . . behavior from her, he would have immediately pulled rank and taken charge of her retrieval himself. And he had the experience to know. “Forgive me,” Bastila said. “Despite my training, I still tend to act a bit rashly sometimes. Please, take me to Carth right away! Between the three of us I’m sure we can figure out some way to get off this planet before the Sith realize we’re here.”

Aithne cut right into an alleyway, moving them quickly but confidently away from the swoop track, towards other areas of the Lower City. “It’ll be harder now,” she said. “The Sith are all on high alert. They haven’t been looking for Carth and me, but they all want to find you, and your little announcement at the swoop track won’t have helped.”

“I said I apologize,” Bastila said, nettled. “I’d been under the influence of that neural disruption collar for days. Revealing my identity was foolish. I recognize that. But surely we can find some way to compensate.”

“Maybe, if we work fast,” Aithne conceded. She shot Bastila another look. “But I think our first objective has to be to get you changed. You look like a Nal Hutta entertainer. It’s pretty much the opposite of subtle.”

Bastila wondered if the end result of this first part of her mission would be to put her in the dark cloak and mask instead of Aithne Moran, but she hurried after the older woman anyway, melting into the alley shadows in search of a secondhand shop.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

Every one of my guards had fallen, but there were only three Jedi remaining, and their leader was a child. By her braid, a Padawan. She had done well to survive thus far, but I could sense her fear. Her master was one of the women now dead upon the deck. 

By her braid, a Padawan. She had done well to survive thus far, but I could sense her fear. Her master was one of the men now dead upon the deck. 

She was now as I had been before the Mandalorian Wars. Alongside the fear, I could feel that same self-righteous sense of moral rectitude, the same determination and resolve. I could sense her strength within the Force, even if I couldn’t also see its evidence across the bridge of my flagship. But beside me, the girl was nothing. Her defeat was inevitable, but she did necessarily need to die. Within the fear were seeds of anger, within the self-righteousness, seeds of arrogance. She was out of her depth, and within weeks or months, she and all her power could be mine. I could almost pity her, as I could almost admire her.

“You cannot win, Revan,” she said, striking a double-saber variant of a Form I opening stance and thereby proving how young she was.

Then the entire deck broke apart.

After a split second of shock, the hatred and self-recrimination rushed in: equal parts “How dare he?” and “How did I not see this coming?” There was pride too, and irony—of course the moment my apprentice chose to finally do something right would be this . . .

I tried to laugh, but neither my throat nor lips seemed to be functioning. I could feel my life slipping away, fleeing its meat casing and the leaking coolant and lubrication systems. I could not feel the deck beneath my back. But I saw . . . I saw the Jedi girl, the Padawan, staring down at me with wide blue eyes—a moment ago so full of resolve, now teetering on the edge of uncertainty . . .

“Aithne Moran, are you quite all right?” Aithne blinked. She looked around and met Bastila’s wide blue eyes—the same eyes she had just seen in a . . .

What in the galaxy had that been?

For ages, she’d had nightmares about crashing, failing ships and the clash of red on yellow, blue, and green. They slipped away minutes after she woke up, leaving her with nothing more than vague feelings of unease about Jedi and all Jedi-related trappings. But she’d never had one awake before, and Bastila—Bastila had been inside her nightmare.

She was sure of it. Her eyes found the same little braid she’d noticed inside the dream, the perfect porcelain plate face and those unmistakable wide blue eyes. She stepped back and out, and her arms came up. There’d been something about Form II and droids and bags of meat and . . .

Bastila’s eyes narrowed, and her hand moved toward her lightsaber. Aithne clutched her head, rubbed her temples and looked around.

They were on a street corner just outside the apartment complex in the Upper City. She and Bastila had been talking about the attack on Endar Spire, and . . .

“Flashback,” Aithne muttered. “Sorry.” Only problem is, it wasn’t my flashback. “When the Sith boarded, did you fight any Dark Jedi?” she asked. “There were at least two that I saw.”

“I had to cut down two others in order to reach the escape pods,” Bastila confirmed.

“I just had a—” she broke off. It was crazy. And the last thing she needed was for Bastila to start thinking she was crazy, as well as an incompetent rescuer. “Never mind. It’s nothing. That’s the complex up ahead.”

She led the Jedi through the door to the rundown, low-rent alien-dominated complex Carth had found them their first night in the Upper City. It had been two days since they’d been there. She hoped their apartment hadn’t been taken over by some other ill-intentioned squatters in the interim. She tried not to feel Bastila’s probing, worried gaze right between her shoulderblades. She got a weird feeling from this Jedi they’d been looking for forever. It could just be Onasi’s paranoia rubbing off on her, what he’d told her about the Jedi specifically wanting her back on Endar Spire, but she had this wild sense that Bastila knew everything about her, didn’t like her much, and was maybe even a little afraid of her. Except that made no sense at all because she’d never once run into Bastila on Endar Spire or anywhere else. But if that was true, why had she been having nightmares about the woman for literal months?

The upshot of it was Aithne was more unnerved and off balance than she could remember being in her life, and a royal headache was beginning to drill at her temples.

They turned into a hallway lit with sickly fluorescent lights. The carpet underfoot was stained and ragged, but you knew it was an Upper City apartment complex because there was one. Aithne stopped at a nondescript door that looked just like all the others on the floor and entered the code Carth had programmed into its keypad to serve as their entrance lock.

She’d hardly put a foot through the door before she was bowled over by forty-three kilos of very relieved teenage Twi’lek. “You made it! Geez, you had me worried, but Carth and Big Z said you’d be back, and look! We cleaned the apartment!”

They had indeed cleaned the apartment, Aithne saw. The dust and neglect that had greeted her upon her return to consciousness days ago was gone, the window out to the balcony was clear and sparkling, there were new sheets upon both the beds and on the sofa, as well as two other bedrolls set up waiting. The others had even tracked down and put together a few plastic shipping crates in the center of the room to make a kind of dinner table, and there were green placemats on it and a glass jar full of colorful anemone.

She’d suggested Carth find some way to keep Mission and Zaalbar busy instead of coming down to the track today, but she hadn’t expected this.

“I never expected an Upper City apartment to be this small and rundown,” Mission said, “but I think it looks a lot nicer now, you know? And Big Z fixed the water pipes so the sink in the fresher don’t run so brown. We ain’t got nothing but ration bars for dinner yet, mostly ‘cause this place don’t have nowhere to cook it, but Carth says there’s a couple good takeout places around.”

“Welcome back,” Carth told her. Aithne met his eyes, and felt a sense of relief and grounding, of homecoming to it that she wasn’t altogether thrilled with. He’d been nice last night, even for him, and she’d been more scared than she’d wanted to admit. His confidence in her had let her have confidence in herself. It’d meant something that he’d opened up the way he had in the garage, even without going into specifics that were too painful, and something else that he’d kept her company while she’d knocked back shots in the Hidden Bek mess, stopped her when she’d had enough, and walked her back to the barracks after, supporting her with an arm around her shoulders when she needed it and then going right back to his own bunk without so much as one smart comment.

He turned to Bastila then. “Padawan Shan. See you’re free of the Vulkars.”

“Yes. Would you be kind enough to introduce your friends?” Bastila asked.

Carth nodded. “Sure. Bastila Shan, this is Zaalbar and Mission Vao. They’ve become what you might call attaches of Aithne, whom you met at the swoop track. We couldn’t have arranged to race in the planetary without their help these past few days. Zaalbar’s a fine tracker and warrior, and Mission is a first-rate demolitionist and security expert, and quite possibly the best stealth operative I’ve ever seen.”

“Good to meet you, Bastila,” Mission piped up. “These two haven’t shut up about you and you being the key to the entire war effort since we met. I never knew a Jedi before.”

“Yes, well, I believe the plan was to keep that relatively quiet until our escape from Taris,” Bastila said. “Still, it’s lovely to meet you both, and the Republic values your efforts.”

“Now we just need to figure out a way to get off this planet,” Carth said.

A small worry line appeared between Bastila’s brows. “You mean you don’t have a plan to get off Taris yet? What have you been doing all this time?”

“Getting you,” Mission said, looking at Bastila oddly, “and let me tell you, it ain’t been easy! First we—”

“I see,” Bastila said in a clipped voice, cutting her off. “Well. Now that I’m back in charge of this mission, perhaps we can start doing things properly. Hopefully our escape from Taris will go more smoothly than when you ‘rescued’ me from Brejik.”

Mission looked hurt, then angry. “Now see here, princess, we all risked our lives to save you! We could’ve been turned into rhakghouls or torn apart by the Vulkars and their droids getting the Bek prototype accelerator! Then, after everything else, Aithne almost gets herself blown up on a swoop bike, after hardly never racing anything before, and becomes Taris swoop champion just to save your ungrateful little flat Jedi bu—”

Aithne was gratified by Mission’s heated defense of her, but it was about time to cut the kid off, she thought. Carth was faster. “That’s enough, Mission.”

The kid clenched her knobbly blue fists. “But Carth!”

“I know,” he said. He looked at Bastila then. “It’s a little presumptuous to assume we haven’t been doing anything while you’ve been imprisoned,” he told her. “I know you’re new at this, but a leader doesn’t berate her troops because things aren’t going according to plan.” More severely, he added, “Don’t let your ego get in the way of the real issues here.”

Bastila inflated like an offended toad. She’d done that at the swoop track too, when Aithne had pointed out that announcing one was a Jedi on a planet under Sith quarantine probably hadn’t been the smartest career move. But thinking about it, it wasn’t a huge surprise. Aithne had recognized at the track that Bastila’s snappish accusations and defensiveness probably had as much to do with fear as anything else. She had to have been even more scared the past few days than Aithne and Carth had been. Captured as a slave; separated from her lightsaber; fitted with a neural disruption collar that would have left her entire world a haze of darkness, noise, and confusion. And she was about as close to Mission in age as she was to Aithne herself. Padawan, Carth had called her. Wasn’t that the lowest rank a Jedi could have and still be an official Jedi?

She did make it hard to pity her too much, though. Instead, she tilted her narrow little chin and glared. “That hardly strikes me as an appropriate way of addressing your commander, Carth. I am a member of the Jedi Order, and this is my mission—don’t forget that! My Battle Meditation has helped the Republic many times in this war, and it will serve us well here, I am sure.”

“Your talents might win us a few battles,” Carth conceded, “but that doesn’t make you a good leader. A good leader would at least listen to the advice of those who have seen more combat than she ever will.” He folded his arms, staring down the girl. It was effectively insubordination—implied insubordination at the very least—and Aithne thought she just might love him for it, because Bastila really deserved it, at least at the moment. She could tell Mission felt grateful and gratified for the defense too.

“So, maybe relax a little and we can talk about that plan we don’t have yet?” Aithne suggested gently. “Besides, adhering closely to a military structure right now isn’t really going to help us keep a low profile while we’re still in Sith territory. Major Onasi and I have mostly done away with it for the duration as an additional security measure. We should also consider the fact that, of the five of us, you’re by far the most visible and vulnerable here, and putting you at the front will not only likely diminish your opportunities to use that Battle Meditation of yours but could get us all in hot water pretty quickly.”

Bastila transferred her glare back to Aithne. “You know, I had my doubts about this mission,” Carth muttered, “and here you are, acting like a spoiled child.”

That got Aithne’s attention, and she looked from Carth to Mission. “Well. At least that makes three of us.”

Mission’s tense expression cracked as she remembered Aithne’s joke during her fight with Carth down in the sewers.

Bastila’s glare seemed to diminish a little into confusion. Her blue eyes flicked from Carth and Mission, back to Aithne, then to Zaalbar. “I see,” she said finally, and Aithne felt the power dynamics in the room shift and lock into place. “It’s true that I don’t have much military experience; perhaps I should not be so quick to judge. Very well, what do you suggest?”

Both question and the entire direction of her body language were aimed at Carth. Aithne could feel an almost physical wall in the Jedi’s regard toward her, a tangible exclusion, and again she got that sense the younger woman both disapproved of her and feared her without reason.

“First of all,” Carth said firmly, “we can’t get hung up on who’s in charge. We all need to work together if we want to get off this rock. The answer’s out there; we just have to find it.”

His eyes moved from Aithne to Bastila, challenging them. Aithne bowed silently. The power dynamics had been established, even if Bastila wasn’t ready to admit it. She was going to have to exercise some degree of diplomacy, like she sometimes had to on escort missions for corporate executives. Mission and Zaalbar were hers, by virtue of Zaalbar’s pledge to her. Carth wasn’t, quite, but he was reasonable and clever enough to know a good plan when he heard one, and while Bastila, for some reason, was absolutely unwilling to work with Aithne—strange, if Carth’s information was accurate and the Jedi had requested Aithne’s transfer in the first place—she would follow Carth. That more or less made Carth leader of the mission to escape Taris, with Aithne and the others as specialty consultants he was trusting to facilitate their plan. They would ultimately have as much leeway as he chose to give them. And while trust with Carth was a loaded concept, Aithne had an idea she’d earned his, at the very least in her capacity as a professional, and that Zaalbar and Mission had done the same.

“The sooner we start looking, the better,” Bastila said. “I’ve already been a prisoner of the Vulkars, and I don’t plan on being captured by the Sith.”

“We won’t let that happen,” Aithne said.

“I think we’ll need some more help getting off Taris,” Bastila went on. She moved over to the table the others had set up in the center of the room, and Aithne took it as the Jedi’s acceptance of their own help. She sat, cross-legged, at one of the places, and Aithne and the others moved to join her. “Maybe if we ask around, one of the locals can help us out. We should probably start by asking around in the cantinas.”

Mission raised a brow, painted human style for convenience in speaking with humans. “You know I’m local, right?” she asked. “And Big Z has been for the past few years.”

“Yes, but I doubt either of you have access to Sith launch codes or a starship,” Bastila pointed out.

“You got a point there,” Mission agreed. “Could maybe help you slice some codes, though, if we find out where they are. Or break into a ship. And hey, Carth’s a pilot. He can fly us.”

“I actually think the best plan right now is dinner,” Aithne said, and Zaalbar roared agreement. “I won a deadly swoop race and killed a bunch of Vulkars today, and I’m just about worn out. I’m not sure Bastila has had a proper meal in days. We’ll eat and rest, and tomorrow morning we’ll all be refreshed, thinking more clearly, and a whole lot less grumpy. We’ll start at the cantina per your suggestion, Bastila, and see what we can find. In the meantime, I think someone mentioned takeout?”

“Yeah, you deserve a little celebration, Taris Swoop Champion!” Mission cheered.

“Very well,” Bastila agreed. “I can’t say I’m opposed to dinner.” Her stomach growled loudly even as she said the words, and her cheeks turned a light rose pink.

Carth, Mission, and Zaalbar volunteered to go grab some fried squid, seaweed rolls, and fish cakes from a corner street vendor. Bastila, they all agreed, shouldn’t wander in the Upper City in the evenings when a Sith patrol came by every two minutes at most. Aithne begged a headache, that she’d inhaled too much swoop exhaust down at the track, and went out to the balcony for some fresh air.

She closed the door behind her and took a deep breath. The night air filled her lungs, clean and crisp. Aithne could hear the hubbub of the city from below. The lights of the city sparkled and shone. There was so much life on Taris. Even in the grime and filth of the Lower and Undercity, Taris teemed with life. The streets and tunnels were like arteries, pulsing with blood, will, and inspiration.

The feel of it was so different from the feel of the mind of metal and wheels inside her nightmares, that wasn’t staying conveniently within the confines of her sleep anymore. But the way she felt things now, reached out and sensed life and light, fear and darkness, planned out her steps and considered the risks and benefits—that was exactly the same.

The waking nightmare outside the complex was the first time she’d heard a name inside her recurring dream. Nightmare-Bastila, a woman Aithne had never met in her life before today, had called her dream-self “Revan,” as in Darth Revan, deceased leader of the Revanchists and lord of the Sith, the general who had won the Mandalorian Wars then turned nearly all the army they used to do it and come back to attack the Republic themselves. Bastila had earned her fame, even as a Jedi Padawan, not only with the power of her Battle Meditation, but by her participation in the successful assassination of the Sith Lord. The Republics were glad Revan was gone; before Revan’s death and the assumption of Revan’s place by their less-talented if more brutal apprentice, Darth Malak, they had been losing badly. The Republics still had a lot of ground to make up, but Revan’s death had signaled a change in the war, a respite for the Republic, followed by an uptick in the closeness and ferocity of the battles as the Sith strategy slacked and changed to one much more destructive, but also less controlled and less effective.

But why in the galaxy should Aithne dream about being Revan, fighting a Bastila she’d never even met?

The balcony door opened behind her. Aithne, vainly, hoped it was Carth, Zaalbar, or Mission, but she didn’t smell takeout, and it was much too soon for the three of them to be back anyway. “Do you need something?” she asked.

“You seem as if something is troubling you.” Bastila’s Core accent had a tentative, reserved tone to it. “Something more than a simple headache.”

Aithne turned to face the younger woman suddenly, leaning back against the balcony railing. “You Jedi have heightened mental abilities, correct? Powers through the Force or whatever. Extrasensory perception, degrees of precognition. You can use your abilities to influence weak minds. Can any of you communicate mind to mind? Using words or pictures? Memories?”

Bastila looked guarded. “Such things are not unheard of. Why do you ask?”

“Back there,” Aithne said, gesturing, “outside the apartment. We were talking about the attack on Endar Spire, and I zoned out on you for a minute. I said it was a flashback. Thing is, Padawan Shan, it wasn’t mine.”

In a flash of intuition, she knew she was right. The stricken expression on Bastila’s face, a sudden sense of fear, of being overwhelmed, unprepared . . . and none of it was hers. Aithne narrowed her eyes. “Don’t they teach you to control your emotions at Jedi school or something? You’re—” she waved a hand. “You’re in my head somehow. You have been since the swoop track, and I gotta say, it’s scaring me a little. Outside the apartment, I had a flashback. Not to Endar Spire. To an attack on another ship: Revan’s flagship. And you were there, fighting Revan. The only survivor of an attack team of maybe half a dozen Jedi knights. I think it was the day Revan died.”

She didn’t say that it was an expanded version of a nightmare she’d been having for ages or that in the flashback, she had actually been Darth Revan. Already, Bastila’s fear had spiked. Aithne could actually taste it, like a bitterness at the roof of her mouth. She didn’t understand any of it, but it scared her too.

“Can you stop it?!” she complained, pushing at her temple. “Goodness, the headache—it’s you! I know you don’t like me for some reason, which is weird considering Carth said your people asked for me in the first place, but that’s no reason to Force it into my head!”

“My apologies,” Bastila said, and the pain retreated somewhat, as did her sense of the younger woman’s emotions, like she had put it behind that wall again. “This . . . sharing of someone else’s memories, experiencing their emotions. Such talents are often a sign of Force sensitivity. Actual visual impressions from another, like your flashback today to one of my more intense memories, cannot occur if both parties are not sufficiently open to the the Force. I’ve been somewhat . . . excited today, but even so. I apologize,” she said again, “that it has apparently bled over into you and caused you pain. I did not intend that it should do so, and you’re right: the Jedi Council would instruct me to control it.”

“Just make sure you do,” Aithne said, running her fingers through her hair. “I have enough in my own head without dealing with someone else’s overflow.” She tried to accept the implications of the fact that she was somehow capable of eavesdropping on Bastila’s emotions and witnessing her “more intense” memories, and if it was Force stuff, the fact that in her version of the memory she’d been in the place of Darth Revan instead of Bastila herself was something she didn’t even want to think about—did it mean she was some sort of natural Force enemy to the Jedi they’d spent all this trouble trying to find or something? Or that Bastila thought of her that way? If so, why? The only thing she’d ever done to Bastila was rescue the girl when Bastila would have been in a much more vulnerable position than any woman ever wanted to find herself. A little defensiveness wouldn’t be uncalled for, but if Bastila’s head was somehow putting Aithne on a level with Darth Revan, that was something else entirely. She wondered if the Jedi was entirely sane.

“So. I’m Force Sensitive, huh?”

“So it would seem,” Bastila said in a remote, worried voice. “Given the circumstances of our first meeting and my own heightened emotional state then and since, your own natural talent has perhaps been feeding off my own Force abilities. Now that I am aware of the problem, I can set up . . . safeguards, to keep my mind from affecting yours again. However, the Force can be complicated. Even I with all my training cannot fully understand it yet. This matter is best left to the wise masters of the Jedi Council. Once we escape Taris, we can seek the guidance of the Council, if you wish. They will understand the significance of your vision, if there is any.”

Aithne’s wariness of Jedi rose up in the back of her brain. “Your people knew about me before this,” she accused, suddenly certain, not from Bastila’s emotions, but from the facts as she knew them. “Some Jedi or other sensed me with Force magic back on Deralia and got the Republic to conscript me. What do the Jedi want with me, Bastila?”

 “I have no knowledge of this,” Bastila answered. “Endar Spire was light on independent reconnaissance personnel. To facilitate the quick deployment of our attachment, the Jedi took the liberty of reviewing the files of currently unassigned Republic soldiers within a certain navigational radius. Your tactical and proficiency scores on certain metrics were impressive, and you happened to have completed basic training and be available for duty. Nothing more.”

That . . . made sense, Aithne thought. Of course it was something like that. Carth’s paranoia was getting to her. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Just—I didn’t want to serve in the first place. I’m a little sensitive about it. And now I need the benefits and the consistent paycheck, so I’m staying, but still—”

“I understand,” Bastila told her. “The first time connecting emotionally with another sentient being—on a tangible, conscious level—can be overwhelming, and it must be doubly so to learn of your Force Sensitivity in such a manner. It may help if, for the moment, we just focused on the task at hand. We can’t afford any distractions. And—” she added, nostrils flaring and a smile playing at the corner of her lips, “I believe the others have returned with our dinner.”

Aithne gladly put aside thoughts of her supposed Force Sensitivity for dinner, but even though Mission chattered almost consistently, with Carth and Bastila providing occasional commentary, Aithne found herself unable to keep up the conversation.

It helped to know that her assignment to Endar Spire had been mostly coincidence, but reading in between the lines, if she was Force Sensitive enough that Bastila would suggest consulting the Jedi Council about it, it was a big deal. A lot of people were Force Sensitive. There were whole species that were. But it usually wasn’t a matter for the Jedi. Usually, Force Sensitivity as such was just a matter of particularly keen senses, slightly sharper powers of intuition. Sometimes a marked lucky streak or, conversely, a talent for getting into trouble. Aithne could accept she had all of those markers.

But the thing was, Force Sensitivity as such didn’t necessitate any ability to consciously wield the Force like the Jedi or Sith Dark Jedi. But if she’d suddenly started having visions and experiencing mental bleed with trained Jedi, there was reason to believe she might have powers. People used people who had powers, especially if they didn’t really know how to use them. And Aithne had already had enough of being used this year. She certainly didn’t want to let the Jedi use her; she disapproved of the Jedi.

She wandered back out to the balcony after dinner. It had all been too much, these past few days. From the hazy boundaries and indefinitive back-and-forth with Carth Onasi to her sudden acquisition of a lifelong Wookiee companion and a teenaged Twi’lek ward, to almost dying multiple times, to discovering she might have Force powers—she wondered if she might be better off just melting into an alley somewhere first thing tomorrow. Desertion hadn’t ever been her style before, but it was looking better and better by the hour. She hadn’t wanted any of this. She wanted to go back to when life was simple.

Then the door creaked behind her again, and Aithne turned, half-angry. Couldn’t they leave her alone to brood for five minutes together?

It was Carth. Of course it was Carth. She wasn’t sure if it was his chivalry or his paranoia that had drawn him out here to check on her. Either way, it was more complications she didn’t want or need. “What do you want, Carth?” she sighed.

“Wow,” he said, looking taken aback. “There’s a greeting for you. I was coming to see if you wanted me to break out one of the advanced med kits the others and I picked up at the clinic this morning. There ought to be something in there for your headache. I know it was still bothering you at dinner.”

“Oh, that was just the aftereffects of our new Jedi friend, pounding her way into my brain by accident,” Aithne said.

“Bastila?” Carth said, surprised. “She’s been inside your head? That’s a huge violation of your privacy. We’re allies. Did she give a reason for it?”

His protectiveness of her was somehow endearing and annoying at the same time. “I told you it was an accident,” Aithne said, waving her hand. “She’s a wet-behind-the-ears, fresh-off-the-assembly-line Padawan, like you noted right after her arrival today, and apparently still doesn’t understand everything about the Force. And since she’s been under at least as much stress as we have these past few days—” Aithne waved her hand again. “Ding-ding, I’ve got mail. Because, apparently, I can feel things like that.”

“You’re Force Sensitive,” Carth said, grasping what she was getting at. “That . . . makes a lot of sense, actually. You didn’t know?”

Aithne shook her head. “No clue, and no training either. I don’t know how to keep her out, and since she’s only just started trying to keep me out and I have no idea whether she might slip up again . . . Just, on top of everything else that’s happened the past few days, it’s a lot. Also, she doesn’t like me. I think she’s actually terrified of me, and I can feel it. It isn’t fun.”

“Well, think about it,” Carth reasoned. “She was supposed to be in charge of this mission, and she ended up having to be rescued from slavery by the newest recruit to her blown-up command ship. She’s probably just a little insecure.”

Aithne snorted. “Huh. More than a little.”

“She’ll come round,” Carth promised. “She’s not a bad person, just . . . young. And a whole lot more sheltered and uptight than Mission.”

Aithne looked across the shining vista of the Tarisian Upper City. The stars weren’t too visible from here, but she could see the Sith blockade ships, drifting across the night sky up there. There were at least ten she could make out. “So—I didn’t do anything too embarrassing last night, did I?”

“I didn’t let you have that much,” Carth said without looking at her. “A hangover could’ve hurt your performance in the swoop race. You tripped a bit. Called me annoyingly handsome and infuriatingly nice. There was some more about my horrible Jacket of Doom and raging paranoia.”

Aithne closed her eyes, face hot. “Yep, that sounds about right. You think flinging myself off the balcony at this height would actually kill me, since I didn’t manage to blow up on Gadon’s swoop bike this morning?”

“It’s fine, Aithne,” Carth said. “We’re both adults here. Like you were saying, a lot’s happened the past few days. Things have gotten a little strange, and more than once. I can admit you’re an attractive woman. That doesn’t mean either one of us have to be unprofessional. We’ll get off-world, drop Bastila off at the Jedi Enclave, and we may never see each other again. You’ll finally be through with Major Paranoia.”

Aithne blushed even hotter at that. She hadn’t been tipsy when she’d said that one. “You heard that?”

“Nothing you haven’t said to my face more than once,” Carth replied, without looking at her, “if in slightly more mature terms. But in my defense, you’ve kinda been pushing all my buttons. Straight from the moment you woke up. You’re just so damned capable it can’t help but bring up some . . . some pretty bad memories. When I think of all the men who have betrayed us in this war, the one that stands out above them all is the one I respected the most. Saul. He was a friend, a mentor. I admired the hell out of him. Then you come along, with your whole . . . you,” he made a gesture that seemed to encompass her entire body and personality, then went on, “and the Mandalorians and Sith foot soldiers and every word of that damn file, and I . . . I can’t help but be a little wary, is all. Once upon a time, I trusted someone a lot like you. I . . . I missed the signs, and my homeworld burned.”

Aithne blinked. “Saul. Saul Karath. You knew the admiral of the Sith fleet?” Her voice went soft. She couldn’t believe he was telling her this.

“He was my commanding officer back when the Mandalorian Wars first began,” he confirmed. “He taught me everything about being a soldier, and I looked up to him.” Carth’s face grew dark. “Saul approached me before he left. He talked to me about how the Republic was on the losing side . . . and about how I should start thinking of my survival. I know now that he was trying to recruit me into the Sith, but I couldn’t have conceived of it back then. I argued with him, and he got angry, and he left. I never saw him again.”

“And then he glassed your homeworld,” Aithne realized.

“Saul was my mentor,” Carth explained. “He led us to so many victories against the Mandalorians, even when things used to be at their worst. I just . . . I couldn’t conceive of it. He . . . he couldn’t be serious. I was wrong, of course—he not only left us for the Sith, he . . . he gave them the codes to bypass our scanners. I remember waking up as the first of the Sith bombers snuck past our defenses and began destroying half of our docked ships. I knew right away what had happened. I could have stopped him, I could have stopped it all, if I’d just paid more attention.”

“You really think stopping one man, even an admiral, could’ve averted the entire destruction of . . . Telos?” she hazarded the guess, judging by his lack of a Core accent to Onasi’s Basic, Saul Karath’s involvement in the attack, and the fact that it had occurred fairly early in the war against the Sith. Carth nodded confirmation, eyes far away.

“I don’t know,” he answered her. “Maybe. He might have killed me if I’d tried, or I might have killed him. I was stupid, however, and I let him go. I’ve fought Saul for years now, and if I ever catch up to him, he will regret what he’s done. He will regret it.”

“So. You’re fighting for the revenge now. I hear that’s not the best reason to fight,” Aithne said, trying to keep her voice light, nonjudgmental, and without a hint of how much his confidence actually meant to her.

“It’s not,” Carth answered. “But . . . it’s all I’ve got left.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Sorry was inadequate, really, but Carth seemed to appreciate the sentiment anyway.

“I guess I wanted to tell you, make sure you knew the way I’ve acted toward you hasn’t been personal. That, if anything, it’s . . . it’s a compliment. I wanted to tell you, before we leave Taris.”

“Huh,” Aithne said. “Most frustrating, inconvenient compliment I’ve had in my life.” She met his eyes. “But thanks. I guess it’s nice to know you do admire me—professionally speaking.”

“Professionally speaking,” Carth confirmed, extending his hand to shake. Aithne shook it, and he held it a moment. “Though if we weren’t working together, if I’d just met you on shore leave somewhere—”

“I’d feel the same way about you I feel now: ‘too damn complicated,’” Aithne interrupted, withdrawing her hand. “And yes, you are worth the ‘damn,’ handsome face, niceness, and all.”

He caught the double meaning and smiled.

“Thank goodness for the Jacket of Doom,” Aithne remarked, looking back over the Tarisian skyline. “I think it’s been my salvation. Every time I’ve felt a bit weak, I think, ‘a man with that fashion sense . . .’”

He laughed aloud then. “Friends?” he asked.

“Even though we will hopefully never see one another again after Taris?” Aithne challenged him.

“Even though we will hopefully never see one another again,” he confirmed solemnly, eyes dancing.

Aithne grinned. “Friends,” she agreed. Suddenly, she was exhausted. “I’m going to go to bed,” she said. She turned around, and he followed her back into the apartment.

Bastila was already asleep on the bed that had been hers before the Undercity. With Mission on the couch and Zaalbar on the floor, that left a single bed in the apartment. Aithne and Carth stared at it, then down at the empty bedroll on the floor next to the Wookiee.

“He’s showered since the sewers, right?” Aithne asked.

Carth laughed again, though this time, he kept his voice low, so as not to wake any of the others. “I’ll take the bedroll,” he offered.

Aithne’s rebellious thoughts flicked for a moment to the fact that that would put her in his bed, then she just felt grateful. “Thank you,” she said.

She crossed over to Mission and put a hand atop the girl’s head. One of the girl’s head-tails wrapped around her hand, as if even in her sleep, Mission wanted her to stay.

It was too much, Aithne thought, for maybe the fortieth time in the past three days. She disentangled herself from Mission, walked back over to Carth’s bed, now hers, plopped down onto it, and instantly fell asleep.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

The morning light was still pale and gray through the window when Aithne woke up the next morning. She stayed in bed for a while, running over in her mind the list of things they had to do today. It was a short list, she thought, and lamentably vague as well.

1. Get credits. How many? She didn’t know how many they would eventually need.
2. Spread reputation. To whom, and in what way? Would it be more useful to run jobs for more shopowners like Zelka? To advertise as a mercenary or a bounty hunter to the Exchange?
3. Buy or befriend us a way off Taris. Which? As passengers, smuggled cargo Vao-style, or owners or thieves of our own ship? Should we steal a Sith transport?

Everyone else was still asleep. Zaalbar’s snoring made for a nice sound—somewhere between a rumble and a purr. It was like the hum of a hyperdrive. Bastila was restless, turning over in her sleep. As Aithne watched, Mission moaned and threw her hand over her face to ward off a sunbeam.

Aithne stood and dressed. Then she went to the workbench and spent some time doing some maintenance on her vibroblades. She took out the power cells and cleaned, oiled, and sharpened the blades, then made sure no gunk or dust had clogged up the circuits in the hilt. Finally, she closed the hilt casings, hung the blades in their sheaths from her belt, and grabbed some breakfast from the bag containing their supplies. Carth and the others had resupplied sometime yesterday while she was at the swoop track; in addition to more ration bars, there was some packaged seaweed, flavored kelp, and some eel and squid jerky. Aithne sighed. She would give just about anything for a piece of fruit, or something that didn’t taste like salt water. She grabbed a ration bar instead and headed out onto the balcony once more.

She’d been out there twenty minutes, watching the sun rise over Taris, when the creaking of the door announced the arrival of one of her companions. Aithne looked to the side and saw Bastila. She came to stand beside Aithne, gripping the railing with her left hand and occasionally nibbling on her own ration bar, held in her right. She was silent, but every so often, her blue eyes would slide over toward Aithne. She obviously wanted to ask something, but she seemed uncertain this morning.

Eventually, Aithne lost patience with Bastila’s nerves. “Thank you for shielding, if you are, but if you have something to say, you really can just say it.”

“I . . . I wanted to apologize for my behavior last night when we first arrived at the apartment,” Bastila said, her cheeks turning a pink that had nothing to do with the sunrise. “As you surmised at the swoop track, I had been frightened and confused for many days. When I came to myself, it was to find myself a slave, a prize for the fastest swoop bike racer.” She said the last three words with exquisite disgust. “Can you imagine the humiliation? You turned out not to be an enemy, but the fact that you were an ally there to aid me did not erase my knowledge that I did need you, or the violence we left the swoop track in. Although you warned me, and my training should have taught me better, I allowed it to affect my behavior—especially towards you but also towards the others. I was not at my best, and I’m afraid I glossed over many of your own travails for the past several days in my focus upon my own.”

“That’s a lot of big words to say ‘thank you, and I’m sorry,’ princess,” Aithne said. “You’re welcome, and I get it. I forgive you.”

“I was hoping, since I was so rude as to cut off Mission last night when she tried to explain, if you might inform me more on the particulars as to your doings these past few days,” Bastila said. “It couldn’t have been an easy task to find me at the swoop track. Yet somehow you managed. You also avoided detection by the Sith, discovered I was a Vulkar prisoner, gained sponsorship for the race, and became Taris swoop champion. That’s quite a resume.”

“It was a lot of work,” Aithne said, “and, like Mission tried to tell you, things got rough. We did a lot of favors. Some things that weren’t fun too. We tramped around in the sewers for hours searching for the Vulkar base as a favor to the Beks. Talk about your bad smells. I had a lot of help. Carth’s been great. Mission and Zaalbar too.”

“Your modesty is admirable,” Bastila told her. “But though others helped, you were the catalyst for these events, were you not?”

Aithne hesitated. “I get that before you got here, Onasi was the ranking officer,” she said finally. “But on a planet where we can’t operate according to Republic protocols, I guess I just felt it didn’t mean much. I’m trained to scout out locations and situations and find solutions to problems. So, I just . . . did. He was the one who made first contact with Mission and Zaalbar and got us the lead on the Beks. He also traded the armor we’d obtained up here to Gadon Thek in exchange for the papers that allowed us access to the Undercity. And if he hadn’t saved my life from the crash in the first place, none of this would have happened.”

“I see,” Bastila said. She nodded once, mostly to herself, then said. “Tell me what happened, please. Do not leave anything out.”

Aithne told her. She kept her sentences short and to the point, and the entire tale took less than ten minutes. When she had finished, Bastila looked thoughtful. Finally, she said, “When you were chosen to join this mission, I doubt any of us expected this much of you. A Jedi could have accomplished such things, of course, but only by drawing heavily upon the Force.”

Aithne forced a smile. Behind the statement was a lot of ego, she thought. “I think you’re underestimating us non-Jedi,” she said.

Bastila shrugged. “Perhaps. But the Force works through all of us to some degree or another. It is obvious to me that the Force has been working through you over the course of your trials here. There is no other explanation for your great success, though I am unsure what to make of this discovery.”

Aithne looked at the younger woman. “Do you have to make anything of it at all?” she asked.

Bastila ignored her. “Perhaps if you weren’t . . .” she looked at Aithne, a trace of awkwardness on her face. “Well, if you were younger, the Jedi might take you for training. But as it is . . .”

Aithne paused. “My Force Sensitivity is that marked?”

Bastila seemed surprised. “Indeed. Aithne, it’s not just any Force Sensitive who can see visions or possesses empathic ability to the extent where mental overflow from another can be physically painful. Your own Force Sensitivity does not merely allow you to sense and take advantage of certain opportunities that others might miss, to make allies or drive a vehicle; you are actively making use of the Force to provide you with insight into the minds of others, and probably somewhat to enhance your own physical abilities. In truth, ‘Force Adept’ might be the better term. But without training, you remain vulnerable—not only to overstimulation, as you’ve discovered, but to the manipulations of the Dark Side, which you have not been taught to recognize and resist. You are in no small danger.”

“So, what happens to the people like me who don’t become Jedi?” Aithne asked. “Who don’t find a master, or choose to leave the Jedi Order—and not by falling to the Dark Side? What happens to the ones who are never identified at all? There must be thousands at least.”

Her challenge seemed to make Bastila uncomfortable. “I suppose some join the AgriCorps or return to civilian life, once they have learned to harness or control their abilities, to whatever extent may be possible. Some do fall to the Dark Side, but they do not become Dark Jedi, as they lack the awareness to know that this path is possible. You would recognize them as crime lords, infamous thieves, or mass murderers. And some . . .”

“Some just live their lives, being Force Sensitive, and it’s fine, because the Jedi don’t have to be involved every time they could be, and sometimes it’s better that they’re not,” Aithne finished. “Besides. I’m too used to yelling when I’m angry and eating a liter of sweets when I’m sad, helping others when they need it and not just when it’s been approved, killing bad guys when they need it and not just when it’s been approved. I’m old and set in my ways. I’d make a terrible Jedi.” She’d switched to a light, teasing tone, but Bastila still got the message.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve overstepped my authority. I’m speaking of things that are best left to the Jedi Council. For now, let’s just accept the fact that you are . . . gifted.”

“I accept it,” Aithne replied, interrupting Bastila when she would have said more. “I don’t accept your referring me to the Jedi Council when we get through here. If I’m too old, let me be. I’m a grown woman, and I think I can decide what I want or don’t want to do with any gifts I may have. I’ve had enough of being conscripted this year, thanks.”

Bastila looked put out at that—was it simply because Aithne was dismissing her precious Jedi Order or did Bastila actually want something from her? Aithne felt some curiosity about it and wondered, if she pushed with her mind, could she get past Bastila’s mental-emotional barrier? In the end, she decided not to try it. She’d asked Bastila to put it up in the first place; she didn’t know what she was doing and didn’t know what would happen to Bastila if she “Forced” down the barrier; it was just rude besides; and honestly, she didn’t care what Bastila wanted to do with her as long as she didn’t get to.

“Well,” Bastila said, somewhat deflated. “Hopefully between your abilities, my training, and the skills of our companions, we can find a way off this planet at least.”

“Speaking of,” Aithne said, tilting her head at the balcony door. She heard voices inside the apartment. The others were up.

“Of course,” Bastila agreed. She motioned for Aithne to precede her through the door. Carth and Mission were dressed and eating ration bars at the table, but Zaalbar was still snoring on his cot. Aithne sighed and walked over to the Wookiee. She toed his lower thigh with her boot. “C’mon, sleeping beauty,” she said. “Up and at ‘em. We need to talk.”

Zaalbar stirred. “Come on, Big Z,” Mission seconded, reaching down to tug on Zaalbar’s ankle. “I got a handful of ration bars right here to get you going! Taste like sand, but they’ve got more calories than even you need in a morning!”

Zaalbar’s eyes were crusted with sleep. He sat up and reached for the ration bars in Mission’s hand before anything else, then shook himself all over and grunted. He moved to sit beside Mission. Aithne sat on his other side. Carth moved then, so he was between Aithne and Bastila when the Jedi sat down too. Aithne shot him an amused glance. She could tell the pilot thought he was being subtle, but behind him, Bastila just looked annoyed and chagrined that Onasi obviously thought he might have to run some kind of interference again.

There was an awkward pause then. Carth, Aithne, and Bastila all looked at one another, trying to determine between them which one of them should address the company. Both Carth and Bastila were technically Aithne’s superiors, and yesterday that had been important to at least Bastila. But Bastila was also outnumbered, and she knew it. She gave way in the silent power struggle without too much ill grace.

Aithne looked at the others. “Okay, guys, we don’t have a plan yet to get off Taris, so the plan for today is to find one. If we’re going to break the Sith blockade, we’re going to need a ship, and we’re going to need access to the Sith launch codes so we don’t get destroyed trying to leave. Right now, I’m thinking our best bet is to either smuggle ourselves offworld or get someone to smuggle us, or hijack a Sith spacecraft. But I’m not ruling anything out. I want us to spread out and see what we can find.

“However, there’s a secondary objective. Maneuver takes money, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. After resupplying yesterday, the five of us are in rather desperate need of credits. I have a few leads on that, but I’m going to need your help. Mission, Zaalbar. Are either of you any good at pazaak?”

“Big Z’s not great,” Mission answered for them both. “Not many people want to play a big Wookiee like him anyway. Scared of what might happen when he loses. But I’m alright.”

“Alright enough you’ll win more than you lose?” Aithne challenged her.

“It’s helped pay the bills a few times,” Mission confirmed. “That and salvaging rhakghoul traps from the Undercity. Relax, Aithne, I can handle it. We’ll be swimming in credits in no time!”

Aithne shot a look at Zaalbar, who waved his claws from side to side in a tentative gesture—Mission was alright, but not as good as all that. The Twi’lek elbowed her friend in the gut, but Aithne nodded, satisfied. Even if Mission didn’t come back with a lot of money, every little bit would help, and she’d be happier contributing.

“Good,” Aithne said. “We’ll need to be ready to pool everything we’ve got on the right plan, but if nothing comes up, anyone who earns money keeps 60 percent of the take and gives everyone else 10 percent. It’s a way to make sure we all have a little bit of money but all of us profit from every venture. Carth and I used the arrangement before.”

“If I might make a suggestion?” Bastila put in.

“Of course,” Carth said. “This is an open floor, Bastila. We’re all in this together.”

“Then I think we should keep to small groups,” Bastila said. “It is imperative that we not become linked together in the minds of the public. If the Sith start asking questions, it is better that they only get some information. If they capture some of us, it is better that they have only two or three of us. That way, we have the advantage and remain in a position to rescue anyone that falls into danger on this mission.”

“Me and Big Z are sticking together,” Mission said, before anyone else could say a word.

“Fine,” Aithne assented. “Check out Javyar’s while the three of us nose around up here. It’s your home stomping grounds, and you guys know it better than we do. We can all meet up three hours before sundown.”

“Ask around about the Sith quarantine and about any ships currently allowed through the blockade,” Carth advised, “but make sure you don’t sound too interested.”

“Chill, you geezer,” Mission laughed. “You think I don’t know how to eavesdrop and sneak around?”

“Do you have a comlink?” Carth asked. “We should be able to keep in touch if anything goes wrong.”

“Who do you think I am, mayor of Taris?” Mission asked. “No one ever gave me one of those gadgets, and for sure we couldn’t afford it! Look, we’ll meet you back here later, three hours before sundown.”

She started to climb to her feet, but Aithne stopped her. “No, he’s right,” she said. “You and Zaalbar might be fine in the Lower City today, but the rest of us might run into some trouble with the Sith. We need to be able to call you in case of emergency.” She looked at Bastila. “I’m guessing the Vulkars confiscated your equipment after the crash?”

“They did,” Bastila confirmed. “You recovered my lightsaber from Brejik, but apart from that, I’m afraid I have nothing to contribute.”

Carh nodded, stripping the comlink off his left glove. “Then, however we split up in the future, one party should have my com, and the other should have Aithne’s. Communication is going to be just as important as stealth here.” He handed the device to Mission. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

“I can probably figure it out,” Mission said.

“When you don’t know something, ask for help,” Aithne advised her. “I don’t want to call you saying, ‘Mission, Mission, the Sith got me and Bastila! Meet Carth on Suchandsuch Street and figure out how to save us!’ only for you to miss the call and the rendezvous.”

Mission’s eyes went wide, and she paid attention as Carth showed her how to use the comlink. When he’d finished, Aithne handed the kid a few credits so she and Zaalbar to get lunch—and to pay for a couple lost pazaak games. Then Mission and Zaalbar headed out.

“We should wait at least five minutes before following them.” Bastila murmured, hooking her lightsaber from her belt. Aithne nodded. She spent the five minutes lightening her pack. She wouldn’t need much today; just some medpacs, ration bars, her canteen, and her pazaak deck. Carth also ditched a lot of their spare clothes and armor. A few minutes later, they were ready to go.

They had just left the apartment complex when a dodgy-looking Twi’lek male approached. “Human! I have been looking for you,” he said to Aithne. He identified her as the Taris swoop champion. Aithne denied it at first; she didn’t want anyone connecting her with the racer who had absconded with the Black Vulkars’ prize for the race despite Brejik’s attempts to withdraw it. The Sith might have heard about the race and even now be searching for “Addie Fe.”

But the Twi’lek wasn’t fooled. He had followed her and Bastila all the way to the Upper City last night but then lost them in the crowd near the complex, and he had a message. He said Canderous Ordo had an offer she couldn’t refuse; that he was waiting for her in the cantina.

That made Aithne stop. She’d been drawn to Canderous Ordo from the first, without really being able to explain why. In light of what Bastila had told her about her Force Sensitivity, his sudden reciprocation of that interest felt like more than coincidence.

“Do you know this Canderous Ordo?” Bastila asked.

“He’s a Mandalorian mercenary for the Exchange,” Carth explained. “Only he fought all the way to Mandalore’s surrender after Malachor V. We’ve run into him a couple of times, but I wouldn’t say we know him.”

“Apparently he knows us well enough now to send professional stalkers to tail us,” Aithne said, tipping the messenger. “And I thought he didn’t like me.”

Carth laughed, but said, “Watch yourself, Aithne. We don’t know what the hell this guy wants with us. He’s an Exchange thug with a grudge against the Republic. This could be bait for a trap.”

“I love traps,” Aithne announced. “At the very least, they always break up the monotony. Come on.”

Canderous Ordo stuck out like a sore thumb in the polished Upper City cantina. Aithne saw him the second she and the others walked in. He stood at about 1.93 meters, and the black tank he wore left plenty of skin to show various war scars crisscrossing his heavily muscled arms. Waitresses and customers both were giving him a wide berth, and they edged still further away when Aithne and the others sat down at his table.

“You could’ve looked me up yourself,” Aithne said. “The message gram was a nice thought, but I don’t like feeling I’ve been rung for, especially after I’ve ditched an alias. Your man was good. I didn’t see him until this morning.”

Ordo began to smile widely. He had a smile like a firaxa. “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Aruetii. I wasn’t sure at the swoop track, but I thought that might be you. You pop up all over town. You seem like you know how to get results, and that’s just the kind of person I’m looking for.”

“Su cuy’gar,” Aithne said drily. “Copaani gaan?”

“We’ll keep to Basic for your uncultured friends,” Ordo said. “We haven’t been introduced. My name’s Canderous Ordo. I work for Davik and the Exchange. The hours aren’t great, but they promised me a fortune to work for them, and I have nothing better to do. Mandalorian mercs like me are in high demand.”

Beside her, Aithne could feel waves of tension just rolling off of Onasi. He’d spent years fighting men just like Ordo, and he wasn’t fine with this one. She shifted, as though she was just getting more comfortable, so that her shoulder touched the pilot’s. It’ll be okay.

“We’re in demand too, albeit in a different kind of way,” she said baldly. “I’m guessing you know that.”

“You picked up that Republic officer at the swoop race, then gave her a weapon—a lightsaber, no less—and got her out of that get-up Brejik had her in and into something functional,” Canderous answered. “I know.”

Bastila moved, bodily turning in her chair to face Aithne. “We don’t need to ally ourselves with this person,” she said. “We should move on while we can.”

“The only Sith within twenty meters is the one guarding the door,” Aithne said without turning around, “and he didn’t look twice at you. On the other hand, if we don’t deal with Ordo, he knows approximately where we’re hiding and can give the Sith a sparkling description of us and all our associates by now. Mission and Zaalbar were with us when we ran into him in the Undercity. Lucky for us, I don’t think that’s what he’s after.”

“Wouldn’t get me more than a little petty satisfaction, if you and I don’t deal,” Canderous said. “That isn’t really my style, but I see that you’re a thinker. I like that.”

“Aithne Moran,” answered the same. She tilted her head left and right. “Carth Onasi. Bastila Shan. What do you want?”

“The same thing you do, I’ll wager: a way past the Sith quarantine and off this backwater planet,” Canderous answered. “Lately Davik hasn’t been paying what he promised, and I don’t like being cheated.”

Aithne sat back in her chair, folding her arms. “What’s your plan, and where do we fit in?”

“I saw you in that swoop race,” Canderous said, “and I started thinking: anyone crazy enough to race like that is probably crazy enough to break into the Sith military base. I need someone to steal the Sith launch codes from the base. Without those codes, any ship leaving the atmosphere will be disintegrated by the Sith Fleet’s automated defense guns.”

“Obviously, but it’s a risk we can’t countenance taking without an immediate out,” Aithne replied. “Enough soldiers patrol the city we’d never catch them all at the base. There’ll be cameras there. They’d be on us in less than a day.”

Canderous’s eyes gleamed. “Here’s the deal,” he said, leaning forward. “You bring me those launch codes, and I can provide the vehicle to get off the planet: Davik’s flagship, Ebon Hawk!”

Mission had told her and Carth about Hawk. Apparently, it was fast enough to outrun the entire Sith fleet. Because she’d had it from Mission, who could have heard from Exchange braggadocio and propaganda about it, Aithne had initially been skeptical, but if that was the vehicle Canderous, a highly valued Exchange employee, was suggesting they steal, the rumors might be factual.

“Get us there within a rotation, and I’ll get the codes,” Aithne said, “but we’re going to need some help getting past initial base security. I’m not a bad slicer, and I have a better one on my team, but she’s still an amateur. The Sith will have military-grade protection.”

“Getting in won’t be easy,” admitted Canderous. “The Sith base is protected by an encrypted security system. It would take a top-of-the-line astromech droid to slice through it. Lucky for you, I know just the place to get a droid like that. Davik was having one custom-built by Janice Nall. Just tell her Canderous sent you, and she’ll sell you the droid. Then you can use it to get the launch codes from the Sith base.”

“Co-opting Davik’s own droid in your plan to steal his ship,” Aithne remarked. “Elegant. And if my people have ownership, in theory, you won’t be able to do without us. And you don’t have to put down the credits. Just one last thing: why aren’t you doing without us?”

“To give us that rotation to get out,” Canderous answered. “Everyone knows who I work for. If I broke into the base, they’d send an army down on Davik’s estate to get the codes back. That’s why I need you.”

Aithne looked at the others, raising an eyebrow. Bastila had a far-off, searching expression on her face. “I don’t sense any deception from him, which is surprising. This may be exactly what we need.”

Carth scowled. “I don’t guess we have a whole lot of options.”

Aithne extended her hand, and Canderous shook it, nearly crushing her bones in his giant spade of a hand. “I’m going to wait in Javyar’s Cantina,” he said. “You come find me when you’ve got those launch codes, and I’ll make sure we all get off this rock!”

As Canderous walked away, Aithne checked her chrono. It was midmorning. She brought up her comlink. “Mission, come in. This is Aithne.”

“This is Mission,” came the teenager’s voice after a moment. “You haven’t been captured by the Sith already, have you?”

“No, but I’ve got our ride out, contingent on us performing one teensy tiny little favor. Double down on the credit-hunting. We’re going to need the cash. We’ll see you at three hours till sundown.”

“Sure,” Mission said. “You’ll tell us more about this favor, though, right?”

“Three hours till sundown,” Aithne confirmed. “Over and out.”

She let the link go down and surveyed the cantina. The pazaak players were in the front room, but the most confident of them here would only bet forty credits a game. She glanced over at the dueling office to the left. She sighed. This was probably going to hurt.

Carth caught the direction of her gaze. “You sure, beautiful?” he asked. “I mean, you’re already champion of the big annual swoop race here. If we’re gonna break into that Sith base, it might be better if everyone in this section of the city didn’t recognize your face.”

“I could always wear a mask,” Aithne joked. “It’d fit in with my character.”

“‘Beautiful’?” Bastila repeated, glancing between the two of them. “Isn’t that a little inappropriate?”

“Only if he starts meaning it,” Aithne answered. “Carth, it pays really, really well.”

“If one of you could kindly tell me what you’re talking about?” Bastila asked.

“She wants to head into the dueling ring,” Carth answered. “It’s how we got the credits for supplies early on. She has a presence and a stage name there: ‘The Mysterious Stranger.’”

Bastila pulled a face. “Quaint. While brawling for a crowd’s entertainment isn’t the most sophisticated pastime, it seems to me you do have some practice, Aithne.”

Aithne grinned and winked. “See?” she told Carth. “The princess is on my side.” Honestly, she was ambivalent about stepping into the ring again, but now that Carth and Bastila had both been disapproving without actually saying no, she couldn’t resist. “Cheer me on, will you?”

Sweat-stained and exhausted but over a thousand credits richer, Aithne sank into the chair between Carth and Bastila several hours later.

“Did you have to take them on all back-to-back like that?” Bastila asked, looking concerned.

“Got the spectacle crowd in to see,” Aithne said. “And I’d just as soon not have to come back here again. Oof.”

“Are you alright?” Carth asked, leaning forward.

“Burn on my lower left leg and a cut on my right shoulder,” Aithne replied, “I’ve pulled a tendon in that arm too, and I have a killer headache from all the suppressor field feedback. Nothing serious, but I’m glad Zelka gave us that lifetime discount.”

“Hold still,” Bastila commanded. “Give me your hand.” Aithne did, and Bastila closed her eyes. A dim blue glow illuminated around their joined hands on the table, and Aithne suddenly began to feel much better. She’d been two seconds from keeling over in exhaustion. Now she was almost energetic.

Bastila, in contrast, suddenly sagged against the table. “Whoa,” Aithne said, steadying her. “Thanks for that, but you didn’t need to give me quite that much juice.”

Bastila shook her head, though she was pale. “You must be in fit condition to take the Sith base tomorrow morning. A kolto patch or adrenals might help, but the exhaustion and strain on your body from what you have done with it today would remain. By helping you, I help us all. It’s nothing.”

“It’s something, alright,” Carth said. “Except now you’re exhausted. I think both of you could do with a good meal.”

It was past the lunch hour and not time for dinner yet, but Aithne was suddenly ravenous. She motioned a waiter over and ordered a huge meal for all three of them, courtesy of her new winnings. The three of them ate like it was the end of a famine, and color returned to Bastila’s face. And when it had done, they strolled companionably out of the cantina to meet Mission and Zaalbar back at the apartment.

They were just taking their positions around the caffa table when Mission and Zaalbar strolled in. Zaalbar let out a roar of greeting and flopped down heavily to his bedroll with a thump that Aithne was sure would disturb the downstairs neighbors. He sat up on one elbow, and Mission took a seat next to Bastila at the table. “So, what’s this teensy tiny little favor your contact wants to get us off-planet? Sounds dangerous.” 

“You don’t even know the half of it,” Aithne said. “Here goes: we’re going to raid the Sith military base tomorrow to steal their launch codes so Canderous Ordo will help us steal Ebon Hawk.”

Mission giggled. “Good one, Aithne,” she said. “But really, what’s the favor?” When the rest of them didn’t respond, her gray eyes went wide, then started to shine with the light of adventure. “Well, it’s got style, I guess,” she admitted, switching gears with impressive grace. “How do we get into the base?”

“We buy a droid,” Aithne answered. “Ordo’s kindly lent us his name to do so, but unfortunately, we have to put up our own credits. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

She whistled as Mission produced the haul from her pack. The girl had nabbed around three thousand credits. “That dive was full of amateurs,” she boasted. “Those dumdums had probably never played pazaak in their lives!”

Carth eyed the pile of credit chips with suspicion. He folded his arms across his chest. “Mission, you didn’t cheat to get that, did you?”

“Course I did,” Mission said, shameless. “We wanted to make as much as we could, right? A couple of the guys I played thought something was up. They couldn’t prove squat, but they didn’t care, and Big Z and I had a couple tails out of Javyar’s. We gave most of them the slip and Big Z left the one that was half-decent out cold in an alley.”

So that was why the Wookiee looked so exhausted, Aithne thought. “We need the money, but in the future, consider whether the risk to you and Zaalbar’s worth it before pulling anything like that again.”

Mission was offended. “Geez, you’re welcome, Mom. Lay off the lectures. I knew what I was doing, and so did Big Z. We’ve been pulling this stuff for years now, and we’re always just fine, thanks.”

“It only takes one time to get you both gutted in an alley when the rest of us are counting on you,” Carth pointed out. “You’re part of a team now. You have to consider if the risks you take are worth the integrity of the entire mission. That’s all we’re saying.”

Mission blushed violet. “Never mind I took the risk in the first place for you guys,” she muttered. “But I get what you’re saying, alright? I’ll . . . I’ll be more careful.”

“That’s all we’re asking,” Aithne repeated. “If it helps, after we split up everything from both our ventures, you’ll end up with more than the rest of us made all day.”

In point of fact, Bastila had been busy in the background organizing everybody’s credits. “That’s 420 to me, Carth, and Zaalbar, 1,020 to Aithne, and 1,800 to you, Mission. Congratulations. It’s a fair bit of money.”

Mission’s eyes were huge. “Wow. You’re telling me. That could keep the likes of me nearly a third of a Tarisian revolution in the Lower City!”

 As everyone arranged credits in their purses, Aithne grimaced. “Don’t get used to it,” she advised. “I’ll buy the droid to hack the base myself if I can, but if it’s pricier than what I can afford, you’re the first person I’m hitting up for credits, Vao.”

Mission grinned outright at that. “Or I could just buy the droid myself and do absolutely all the work arranging this here escape. You can thank me with a medal when you’re all big Republic heroes. Or a title. I ain’t picky.”

Aithne raised her eyebrows. “You want to buy the droid? I will let you buy the probably super-pricey fancy astromech. You think I’d be too proud? I have no pride when it comes to my wallet. Life on the Rim squishes it out of you.”

“Don’t I know it,” Mission said. She looked excited, her lekku twitching. “Sure. I’ll get the droid. Where we going?”

“Janice Nall’s droid shop. Should be a couple blocks away from the shuttle station to the Lower City. I remembered the name when Ordo gave it to us. Anyone else want to go with me and Mission to buy the droid?” She saw Bastila’s look then, and realizing she might have usurped her authority again, added, “Anyone else want to volunteer to buy the droid? Do the commander-ly thing here?”

“No,” Bastila answered. “I think I shall take a cue from you here and have no pride when it comes to my wallet. We Jedi are meant to be humble, in any case.”

Aithne laughed aloud, delighted. “Bastila Shan! That was a joke! Pretty good one, too. Well done!”

“Thank you,” Bastila smiled. “In any event, I will remain here and meditate.”

Zaalbar opted out of a trip to the droid shop too and went to tinker with his bowcaster, but Carth got up and fell in step. The three of them started the walk across town. As they passed Zelka’s clinic, Aithne slowed.

“Thank you for dropping the serum off during the race yesterday,” she told Carth and Mission. “Today, if you hadn’t done that, I might have run it down to the Exchange.”

“You wouldn’t of!” Mission exclaimed, staring, horrified. “After everything you said down in the Undercity? After seeing what the rhakghoul disease does to people?! Knowing if Davik got his paws on it no one could of bought any without selling their own mother?”

“I didn’t,” Aithne told them, “because you two and Zaalbar did the right thing for me.”

“Zelka’s assistant, Gurney, was pretty pissed about it too,” Carth said in a casual, satisfied tone. “Desperation can be ugly, Mission,” he said then. “On either side.”

“You mean it’s really dangerous for you guys on Taris,” Mission said, understanding, “and that serum really could have been a good way to help us all get out. But it worked out, didn’t it?” she asked Aithne. “We didn’t need to do anything bad to get the money to buy that droid. Or at least, nothing really super awful. Cheating morons who gamble at cards doesn’t count. Anyway, I’d rather take a few extra hours to get off Taris and leave knowing no one has to turn into a rhakghoul ever again.”

“Me too,” Aithne said. “That’s why I’m glad it was you not me round here yesterday.”

Janice Nall’s droid shop was very clean and well kept. Aithne could tell from the many droids under construction on the wall that Janice kept busy and knew what she was doing but still didn’t have a lot of customers. Only a cute little astromech greeted them as they walked up to the counter. But when Aithne rang the bell, a Twi’lek woman in engineer’s coveralls came out from the back. Mission grinned, and Aithne’s own respect for Janice Nall rose significantly. As a Twi’lek running a shop in the xenophobic Upper City, Janice Nall had to have determination and expertise by the spade full.

Markup on the cute, beeping T3-M4 unit was insane. However, Janice Nall was also desperate to sell, and Aithne was able to talk her down to half price and still leave Janice feeling lucky. In the end, Aithne didn’t let Mission pay the whole price for the droid. She wanted the girl to be able to enjoy a little more than just a couple hundred of her 1,800 credits. They split the cost of the droid and agreed on a joint ownership, and Mission fell promptly, wholeheartedly in love.

By the time they got back to the apartment, Mission was wondering if she could teach herself astromech (one of the few languages in common use that Aithne didn’t know, despite her fondness for droids), and was asking the droid what holovids he could play. She introduced him to Zaalbar and Bastila.

“Teethree is going to help us break into the Sith military base tomorrow,” Aithne said. “Bastila, will the small-group rule still apply?”

They had no idea the strength they’d find in residence at the military base, or how many reinforcements might show up during their raid. It was imperative they put up a team that would have the best chance of hitting hard and getting out again with the launch codes, but Aithne knew backup was a good idea too, so she was passing the call.

“I’m afraid it does,” Bastila answered. “The strike team that raids the base runs a significant risk of capture. We should probably send no more than three to do the job.”

Mission and Carth and Zaalbar all protested at once, so Aithne got no more than a jumble of cries and growling and the overarching impression that they were all desperate not to be left behind and certain Aithne herself would be making the call about who actually went.

Aithne looked at Bastila. “Five of us should go to the door of the Sith base,” she said finally. “Three to go inside, Teethree to shut down the security system from outside, and a buddy to take him back to base. Bastila, I—I really think you should stay here.”

“I agree,” Bastila said calmly, far from being offended as Aithne had thought she might. “Remaining here, I can use my Battle Meditation to focus upon our success. There are many unknowns in the coming fight, and my ability will give us the best chance we have to overcome any unforeseen obstacles. In addition, I rather suspect my presence in the Sith base would increase our danger, not mitigate it.”

“I—yes, thank you,” Aithne said confusedly. “That was what I thought too.”

“You will lead the raid on the base yourself, of course. The Mandalorian gave the task to you, and it was only your reputation that led him to seek us out.”

“I—yes,” Aithne said again. Bastila was being suspiciously compliant with her taking charge of this facet of the mission, and Aithne had an uncomfortable idea she knew why. This was about Bastila’s notion of her Force Sensitivity again. If the Jedi didn’t think there was some sort of affinity between them, she wouldn’t be one to let a mere scout raid a major center of Sith operations. Aithne didn’t like it. But then again, it didn’t matter why Bastila agreed to the best plan, so long as they actually went with it.

She cleared her throat. “I want to take Mission and Zaalbar,” she said then.

“No,” Carth said flatly. “No way. I’m coming too.”

Aithne met his eyes over the others. She’d known Major Paranoia wouldn’t like this, or even the sane part of his personality unaffected by past trauma; Carth had a chivalrous, protective streak systems wide, and both she and Mission had run into it. “Two reasons,” Aithne said, in a slow, even tone. “First, our raid on the base depends on surprise and the untraceability of everyone attacking. That’s why Ordo couldn’t do this himself, remember, because the Sith would track him and come down on Davik’s estate before we could leave the planet. That’s one reason Bastila isn’t going: every Sith on Taris is looking for her. By contrast, I may be Taris swoop and dueling champion, but I’m also the ‘Mysterious Stranger.’ No one knows who I am, no one knows where I live, and my records with the Republic are so recent they might not have even been entered into any permanent files on Endar Spire. You’ve been a Republic hero for years, Major. Mission and Zaalbar, by contrast, haven’t been tagged with us yet. Not by the Sith. Seen, maybe, by a couple of patrols. But those ones weren’t paying attention.”

“Yeah, but—” Carth began.

“Second, I want you here, flyboy,” Aithne continued, ruthlessly, “because if something goes wrong in there, even with Bastila here meditating on our success, there’s no one on the team I’d rather have coming to our rescue.”

Carth backed down. As ever, he knew a good plan when he heard it, even if he hated the sound. “Okay,” Carth said then. “Alright. I understand where you’re coming from. I don’t like it. But we’ll do it your way.”

“This seems the prudent course of action, Carth,” Bastila offered. “Of the many plans we could have chosen, it seems less risky than many others. And I assure you, I will remain with Aithne, Zaalbar, and Mission in spirit every step of the way. They will never be alone, and they will succeed in our objective.”

Her voice was calm, absolutely confident. Aithne saw Mission shoot the Jedi a grateful look and tried to pretend she herself didn’t feel a little reassured. She’d always thought of Battle Meditation as a hokey good-luck charm, but the truth was, tomorrow, they’d be in need of some good luck.

“We should rest,” Aithne said. She knew she was commanding the others, but even so, no one argued. Instead, they all grabbed ration bars for supper and moved to different corners of the apartment to prepare for bed. It gave her a weird feeling, like reading a datapad upside-down. You could still make out and make sense of the words, but you got dizzy after a while.

She shivered and stepped out onto the balcony once again, breathing in the scent of sea air, exhaust fumes, and neon that was the Tarisian Upper City. Once again, she searched the night sky for Sith ships. There were many more tonight than there had been last night, flying back and forth like watchful birds of prey . . . or scavengers over a dead or dying beast.

When the door opened, as she had known it would, she pointed them out to Carth.

“They’re getting worried,” Carth said. “Since they haven’t found Bastila dead, they know she’s alive, and about a week after a pod crash is about the longest you can expect to keep a live Jedi, even on a planet under quarantine.”

“What’s their next move?” Aithne murmured, mostly to herself. For some reason, her recurring dream about Revan’s death came back to her, the feel of cannons firing on a Sith bridge instead of a Jedi one. She stretched out with her mind and thought she could sense a presence above—black and brooding, wrathful and violent, much more volatile than the cold, calculating, and weary Revan of her dreams, and utterly free of that slight trace of pity she’d dreamed about in Revan—or Bastila had dreamed of in Revan.

“Carth,” Aithne said suddenly, a cold fist grasping her heart. “I think Malak’s up there. I have a bad feeling. Something’s going to happen. Soon.”

Carth looked at her for a long, long moment. “Yesterday, you told me you were Force Sensitive. But it’s more than that. You’re like Bastila, aren’t you?” he asked. “Or, no . . . you’re like one of the Service Corps back on Telos. Maybe one of the Exploration Corps. Huh. Almost exactly like. Not a Jedi, but not ordinary either.”

Aithne shook her head. “I wasn’t ever selected for training. I’m not a member of the Jedi Order in even its loosest definitions. But—it seems my so-called Sensitivity is strong enough that Bastila’s thinking about taking me to the Jedi, anyway, yeah.”

Carth regarded her. “You know, that’s it about you,” he said then. “I’ve been trying to put my finger on it for days. I knew a few of the Service Corps back on Telos. It was one of the most popular planets for the Jedi to assign them. My grandfather was in the AgriCorps. Morg—someone else, her mother served. That explains—service members, they’d know things. They’d be drawn to people with no reason why, people they could help, or people to help them. They could work longer than anyone, complete tasks that’d be impossible for everybody else. It’s probably why the Sith targeted the planet; they were heroes, even if they weren’t official Jedi knights. It—it explains a lot, that you’re like them.”

He seemed excited, and also much more cheerful. He’d come out here because he was worried about her heading to the Sith base tomorrow, but it figured he’d think, like Bastila, that mystic Force powers she couldn’t even use would cure all woes.

“He’s a Fallen Jedi,” Aithne said, pointing at the sky. “And there might be a half dozen more tomorrow. What do I know?”

“And you’re taking Mission,” Carth said, returning to the problem at hand. He leaned back against the balcony, watching her. Waiting.

“She’s either a part of the team or she’s not,” Aithne said, shifting. “Letting her work to earn credits, have a share in T3-M4, it’ll help her feel like she belongs, but not like going out with us will. And lifedebt or no, Zaalbar will be watching her a whole lot closer than he will me.”

“You’re both going to be watching her,” Carth replied. “Aithne, who’s going to be watching you?”

“Bastila,” Aithne retorted. “Through her mystical Battle Meditation. She said so herself.” She wiggled her fingers for emphasis.

“I’d still feel better if I was going with you,” Carth said. “Past the door inside.”

“I know,” Aithne replied, turning her gaze back toward the sky. “Stuff down that need to always watch for evil or incompetence and try and trust me?”

“Yeah, it’d be easier for you if that was it, wouldn’t it?” Carth muttered.

Aithne shot him a look. “There is a limit to how cute I find a protective instinct, you know.”

Carth snorted. “Well, somebody’s conceited. I’m just saying, your taking all the glory moments is leaving me with some questions about my competence here. You got the Sith armor, you rode in the swoop race. I mean, why do you even keep me around?”

“Ooh, man-insecurity is even less attractive than man-hovering,” Aithne said appreciatively. “Well done.”

“I try.” The two of them looked out over Taris as the Sith ships darted through the sky. “Malak, huh?” Carth asked by and by.

“Yeah,” Aithne confirmed, and that cold fist clenched around her heart once again. As she stared out into the calm before the storm, she snuck her arm around Carth’s. He moved his arm, and her hand fell into his. His fingers closed around hers. He didn’t look at her, and she appreciated that almost as much as the comfort itself as he held her hand against the dark.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

The mood the next morning was tense. Bastila bade them goodbye and sat, cross-legged, on the floor of the apartment to await Carth and Teethree’s return. Carth didn’t say a word, and Zaalbar kept his claws close to his weapon, and his black eyes darted back and forth between Aithne and Mission as they all walked through the sleepy streets of the Upper City. Mission was pale and jittery. Only Teethree was exempt from the dark mood of the party, rolling along and occasionally beeping nonsense at intervals just as he had done the day before.

They arrived unchallenged to the gate of the Sith military base. Aithne nodded to Teethree. He beeped, rolled forward, sliced the security in five seconds flat, and rolled away. Aithne whistled in admiration. She moved to lead Mission and Zaalbar into the base, but Carth pulled her aside.

Aithne flinched, expecting a last-minute plea to be allowed to come along, but she didn’t get one. Instead, Carth only said, “Watch out for Mission, but don’t forget to look out for yourself in there. Let Zaalbar help. Be careful, and come back to us with those launch codes.”

“Hey, I’m not looking to get captured and tortured or killed by the Sith today,” Aithne said. “We’ll get it done, and by this time tomorrow, I expect we’ll be well on our way to dropping off Bastila at some Jedi Enclave and putting this whole thing behind us.”

Carth extended his hand. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said.

Aithne shook his hand. He turned away to leave with Teethree, and Aithne turned to the others. “Let’s get in there before a patrol comes through,” she said.

“So,” Mission said as they rode the elevator down to the Sith base entrance. “Carth confess his undying love for you or something?”

Her voice was higher than usual, and a little bit brittle. Aithne looked at her. “He did that last night on the balcony,” she said. “Asked me to run off to Nar Shaddaa with him the minute we blow this joint. Then he did this whole bit about how we’ve never been separated for this long before. So embarrassing.”

“Right, so he told you to keep an eye on me, then,” Mission said flatly. “Don’t worry! I’ll be fine! I can hold up my end of the team, you’ll see. I know I freaked out a little back at the Vulkar base, but those were Tarisians, even if they were Vulkars! These guys are Sith invaders. I’m not gonna have a problem making sure there’s a few less of them around before we head out of here.”

“Actually, Carth told me not to watch you so much that I get stupid and let myself get stabbed or shot by the Sith medical droid,” Aithne said. “I may be editorializing.”

“Don’t worry,” Mission promised again. “I’ll protect you from those nasty medical droids.”

Aithne smiled to herself. The jokes had worked. Mission already sounded more like herself. The elevator stopped, and the door opened.

A Twi’lek receptionist looked up. Her brows came down, and she demanded what they were doing there, her finger hovering over what looked like an alarm.

Mission immediately held both hands up and took just two steps forward. She and the Twi’lek woman had a rapid conversation in Huttese; Mission’s accent was provincial and her grammar even worse than it was in Basic, but she got the point across. The woman shot Mission a sly grin as she got up and quickly and quietly evacuated.

“She won’t tell on us,” Mission assured Aithne.

“I heard that. Not fond of Sith invaders either, is she?”

Mission made a face. “Right. I forgot you speak or understand every alien language in the galaxy. Uhhh, what are you doing?”

Aithne had sat down in the receptionist’s vacant seat and accessed the still-active terminal. “The receptionist terminals in bases like this often have security camera access,” she explained. “At the very least, I can check to see what we’re up against, and I might be able to . . .” she grinned and held out her hand. “Hand me the bag of spikes in your pack, please? Looks like I might be able to do some damage here to clear the way.”

Mission obediently fished out the package of computer spikes from her bag. “Hey, you won’t hear me complaining,” she said.

Aithne worked in silence for about three minutes. “‘Kay,” she said, “that’s the secondary barracks, medical, and the control center in chaos. The overloads I just set off won’t have got everyone, but things should be a bit easier now. There’s a massive assault droid guarding the elevator we’ll need to access the base commander’s rooms. He’ll have the codes, but we have to get past the droid to get to him. Fortunately, it was powering its shields through the base computers system, but it has an independent power supply it’s using for primary functions. Expect a tough fight there.” She handed the bag of spikes back to Mission, who put them back up.

/How do we attack?/ Zaalbar asked.

“Room by room, so they don’t sneak up on us with reinforcements at a bad time,” Aithne answered, getting up from her chair. “The first guys should be right through that door.” She pointed. Zaalbar took up position at her left flank, and Mission moved around behind the desk to crouch in cover there.

The next several minutes passed in a flurry of activity and battle. Aithne led Mission and Zaalbar around the base, and soon the trio were covered in sweat and blood. It wasn’t usually their own. Mission kept in cover and out of the heaviest fighting, sniping combatants on the edges of combat and making moves on Aithne or Zaalbar’s flanks. Often the enemy didn’t even see her, absorbed as they were in fighting the enormous Wookiee with a vibrosword or the not-quite-as-enormous human female with double blades running straight into their faces. Mission winced every time one of her shots felled a man, but true to her word, she didn’t break down about it as she had with Kandon in the Vulkar base. Mission, Zaalbar, and Aithne had brought mostly empty packs to the Sith base, but all three of them were soon weighed down with arms, armor, and useful technology. Aithne directed the others to steal everything the three of them could carry. Not only would it make for valuable salvage, it was her hope that, if enough things were missing, the Sith might view the attack as having been carried out by anarchists or rebel rioters without any definite strategic objective. It could give them another few hours to escape, or even so much as a day if they kicked up enough confusion with their attacks and thefts. Accordingly, Aithne, Mission, and Zaalbar also blew up power conduits, destroyed Sith terminals, and smashed the medicine cases. Camera records would show that there had only been three of them to attack, if Sith away from the base could find a working monitor to play them when they returned, but Aithne thought, with some pride, as they wrecked their way through the base that they were leaving enough chaos behind them for a squad of commandos.

She wondered, too, how much of their good fortune was coincidence, and how much might be Bastila back at the apartment, “meditating on their success.” A Twi’lek receptionist who hated her employers; rooms Aithne could easily sabotage from afar before it came to open combat; many of the Sith seemingly already out on patrol or quartered elsewhere in the Upper City so there weren’t a quarter of the Sith here that Aithne had anticipated. Was it Bastila? Was it her own Force Sensitivity, lighting a path forward?

Finally, the three of them stood before the door to the elevator antechamber, the door behind which the assault droid guardian lurked. “I want you both to shield,” Aithne said, “and Mission to switch to an ion blaster. Yes, I know you haven’t practiced,” she added to Mission, as the teenager started to object, “and I know what Carth and I told you in the Undercity. This is different. Remember to stay behind the door frame and time your shots.”

Aithne opened the door. A very frightening-looking droid stepped forward, blarting a challenge in a low, metallic voice. It was a couple handspans taller than Zaalbar, with metal arms ending in wicked sharp claws each equipped with a blaster gauntlet and other tech fixtures.

Worse, there were turrets in the room, mounted on either side of the elevator door. An alarm had gone out, or the droid had scanned them, because they were firing.

Zaalbar leapt into action, crossing the room in three huge strides to attack the rightmost turret at close quarters. Aithne maneuvered so the assault droid was between her and the leftmost one and went to work.

Fighting droids wasn’t like fighting Black Vulkars or rhakghouls in the Undercity. It was more like fighting opponents in armor. Rather than cutting with her blades, Aithne was forced to use precision thrusts at the joints of the assault droid in order to take it down. Since this particular model had a bigger reach than she did and had been equipped with melee attachments, this was sometimes a dodgy proposition. So, as Zaalbar took on the second turret, thereby leaving the assault droid the only viable threat inside the room, Aithne began to maneuver the droid around again so that its back was to Vao and her ion blaster. Its priority programming kept its focus on her and Zaalbar, who were bashing it with vibroswords at close quarters, rather than on Mission, who was actually best equipped to take it down.

Aithne saw when the teenager had caught on. The droid began to shudder and spark as EMP blasts hit its chassis. Its attacks faltered, the lights on its optical sensors flickered, until finally, it gave a whining, metallic stutter and collapsed.

“Good work, Mission,” Aithne said. The girl came out of cover, glowing with happiness and a thin sheen of sweat. She was exhausted. Aithne was tired too, and she could see even Zaalbar breathing heavily, but she knew they weren’t done yet. “One last fight, guys,” she said. “Then we can all head back to the apartment for a snack and water break before we blow this place.”

/The chieftain is below?/ Zaalbar asked.

Mission dug in her pack and switched out to her old blaster without comment. Then she led the way to the waiting elevator. She looked over her shoulder at the others. “Well? You coming?”

Aithne and Zaalbar moved to join her in the lift. “Stay back from the Sith commander, maybe?” Aithne asked. “Sith philosophy dictates that the person on charge is usually the biggest, meanest, cruelest, or sneakiest of them all, and usually some sort of nasty combination of all of the above.”

“Aww, you worry too much,” Mission told her.

The elevator opened on a short, eerily silent corridor. “Shields up,” Aithne ordered. Zaalbar and Mission obeyed, and Aithne strode forward and keyed open the door.

The tall, bald, armored man in the staid, nearly empty chamber beyond was sitting cross-legged, a massive, double-bladed vibrosword across his knees. Aithne closed her eyes briefly in relief. It’s not a Dark Jedi, it’s not a Dark Jedi. Even if he has powers, he’s not fully trained. She hadn’t thought they would get so lucky.

His eyes snapped open. “Who dares to break my meditation?” he demanded.

Better yet, Aithne realized. This guy hasn’t even realized his base is under attack. Thank you, Bastila.

The man climbed to his feet, hefting his vibrosword. “You will pay for interrupting my . . .” he stopped. His eyes narrowed at Aithne. “Wait. I sense the Force is strong with you. Very strong.”

Mission and Zaalbar shot Aithne looks. She grimaced at them. “How is that possibly relevant?” she asked the Sith, instead of responding directly. “Invaders in your base, barging into your private chambers, and you focus in on someone’s Force Sensitivity?” She made a disgusted noise in back of her throat. “Launch codes, please.”

“Who are you?” the Sith demanded. “You are not the Jedi. Who would have thought another adept in the Force could be found on this insignificant planet? Whatever your purpose, know your talent is no match for a disciple of the Dark Side!”

“Yeah, your Dark Side’s doing wonders for Taris,” Aithne retorted. “All-out war in the Lower City, and this blockade will kill the economy in another three weeks. You’ve got that long, maybe, before the citizens turn on you. With morale among your troops low in the first place, and you all hiding like rats up here in the Upper City from the gangs and rhakghouls below; with everything we’ve just done in your base, you think your Dark Side’s going to help you hold this place? Or stop the people who have already taken out dozens of your men?”

It was a slight exaggeration. There’d been maybe a dozen Sith in the base up above. A dozen and a half. But hey, it sounded good. The Sith narrowed his eyes still further at her. “Who are you?” he demanded again.

Aithne shrugged and attacked.

He was off his guard, and it gave her a half-second’s advantage. If Aithne had had a blaster, she could have killed him, but Mission had the blaster, and she hadn’t learned yet that you only got your enemies talking to distract them, then followed up on the advantage with a quick and lethal strike as soon as it worked. She wasn’t a practiced killer, and up until a few days ago, she had probably mostly fought to escape rather than to eliminate her enemies, even rhakghouls. Armed with two vibroblades, Aithne was unfortunately still slower than a blaster bolt. She went for the Sith’s head but hit his armor’s gorget instead; managed a follow-up prick under the armpit, but then he got his hand up, and suddenly, she couldn’t move.

Her every limb was pinioned, as surely as though she’d been frozen in carbonite. There was no pain; she was simply paralyzed. Only her eyes could move, watching the Sith in horror as he leveraged his vibrosword for the killing blow. “My master will surely reward me with my lightsaber for killing you,” he hissed.

Zaalbar howled. He tackled the Sith bodily, hurling him off balance and away from Aithne. He railed at the Sith with devastating blows from above. The Sith buckled, protecting his head and shoulders with the crosspiece of his vibrosword, trying to rally. Then he cried out. Mission had shot him in the thigh, the only clear shot she had. Aithne felt some wavering in the power holding her in paralysis. She wrenched her whole body and fell free. Staggering forward, shaking it off, she lunged forward to join Zaalbar’s attack. Within seconds, the Sith was down.

Aithne straightened, panting, and wiped a streak of blood from her face. She glanced back at Mission. “Next time, shoot him as soon as you’re sure he’s invested in my monologue,” Aithne told her. “We don’t fight fair with Sith. You can see they don’t do us that courtesy.” She looked across at Zaalbar, held out her hand, and clasped forearms with the Wookiee. “I owe you one, Big Z.”

/None shall harm you while I breathe, Aithne Moran,/ he vowed. /What magic did he use upon you, to make you unable to strike against him?/

Aithne sighed. “That was the ‘power of the Dark Side’ he was going on about.” She nudged the Sith’s corpse with a toe. “He wasn’t a fully trained Dark Jedi, thank the stars, but this guy was in training. Probably given Taris to watch because it is a backwater. Without Endar Spire’s crash and Bastila’s being here, I doubt the Sith would bother with this planet at all. Well. Hopefully we’ve done enough damage here to make it too costly for the Sith to stay. With any luck, Malak will order a withdrawal. That’d be the smart option, anyway.”

Mission looked struck by this. “You really think the Sith might leave Taris?” she asked. “Just ‘cause of what we did here? That’d be . . . Gadon was planning an assault on ‘em, like you said. Once most of the fighting with the Vulkars had been settled, and since you and Bastila killed Brejik at the race, and we got all those Vulkars at the base, it has been, mostly. If the Sith leave too, a lot of people in the Lower City’ll be better off.”

Aithne hesitated, stuffing the Sith launch codes from the commander’s body as well as some credits from a nearby footlocker into her pack. “They won’t die in the Bek-Vulkar gang war or due to a war with the Sith invaders,” she said finally, moving back toward the lift to the base’s main level. She didn’t share her suspicions of what would actually happen, based on years of experience on the Rim and a few times seeing the fallout after a warlord or a crime organization got crushed. The kid didn’t need to know.

They all stepped onto the elevator. “Hey, that guy back there. He said you had the Force. Is that why Bastila keeps wanting to talk with you?”

The three of them stepped out of the lift and started walking back toward the exit of the base. “No,” Aithne said. “She wants to elope to Nar Shaddaa too when this is done. Or maybe it was that she was trying to confide in me her secret passion for our contact, Canderous Ordo. I forget.”

“It’s okay if you have Force powers or something,” Mission told her. “That’s a good thing, right? Maybe you could be a Jedi!”

“I don’t want to be a Jedi,” Aithne told her. “I’m not a big joiner. Only joined the Republic fleet under protest, and the Jedi have to follow a bunch of rules that don’t sound fun to me, and some of them don’t even make sense. Besides,” she added, “Bastila says I’m too old.”

“So, maybe you could’ve been a Jedi, once, but you can’t now,” Mission summarized. She frowned. “Well, that’s not fair. Ageist. Isn’t that what they call it? Yeah—ageist. Anyway, you’re not that old.” 

“I am when you consider that Bastila probably started training to be a Jedi when she was three or four years old and hasn’t even made Jedi Knight yet,” Aithne told her.

They entered the reception area and crossed to the lift out. “I guess that’d make you older than Carth before you ever really got anywhere as a Jedi, huh?” Mission said. “And if being a Jedi don’t sound like fun to you, maybe you don’t want to put in all that time. It’s too bad: it’d sure be interesting being best friends with a Jedi, wouldn’t it, Big Z?”

Zaalbar looked down at Mission. /I believe our lives are already interesting enough,/ he answered.

“Aww, you’re no fun,” Mission complained. “But, I guess we are wiping the Sith and Black Vulkars and rhakghoul plague off Taris. It is a bit of a step up from what we were doing last week.”

Aithne grabbed first shower when they got back to the apartment, and afterward, she left Mission and Zaalbar there with Teethree to pack up all their things to leave. Aithne headed Javyar’s with Carth and Bastila. Fortunately, the Sith on duty at the shuttle bay to the Lower City had just begun his shift when Aithne and the others had hit the base and had no idea anything had happened yet. He accepted their papers without a fuss, and Aithne boarded the shuttle for what she hoped would be the final time.

The Lower City had a more hopeful air about it than it had had the last times they’d been there. The Hidden Beks were in high good humor, helping families clean up the streets. What Vulkars they met looked defeated and disorganized and slunk around corners as soon as they saw three armed people coming down the road. “Do you realize what you have done here?” Bastila asked Aithne and Carth a block from Javyar’s. “A gang war years in the making is finished, because of you. Citizens down here are safer and happier because of your actions this past week.”

“You helped cut the head off the snake,” Aithne pointed out. “Just like I’m sure you helped us in the Sith base this morning—thanks for that, by the way. But I’m still not sure we should be patting ourselves on the back too hard.” She’d hesitated to share her qualms about what they’d done here with Mission in the Sith base, but to Carth and Bastila she could speak her mind. “We’ve upset the balance of power in half a dozen different ways this week. Gadon and his Beks are ready and waiting to step into the vacuum left by the Vulkars, and I’m not entirely sure they’re better. Just have a better PR sense. But they’ve also got ambitions on the Upper City. Picked that up in their base a couple days back. This here—helping folk rebuild, building up their champion-of-the-people routine—they’re laying the groundwork for expansion. The Exchange won’t like that, nor will the nobles of the Upper City. Not to mention all the lesser gangs and crime bosses who will see all this confusion as the perfect opportunity to make their move.”

Carth looked at her. “Done a lot of work with and around organized crime?” he asked.

Aithne shrugged. “Enough. You pick up the patterns pretty quick. When you take out power without something to replace it with, bad things happen. So, sure. The Black Vulkars in their current form are pretty much done for. We might have made things too expensive for the Sith to continue on here too. But we still might have done just as much harm as good here on Taris.”

“You speak wisdom,” Bastila agreed. “It’s why the Jedi support a position of noninterference, when such a position is at all feasible. It’s why Revan and Malak’s interference in the Mandalorian Wars was so ill-advised.”

“Okay, no,” Aithne said immediately, facing Bastila. “That was not the application behind anything I just said. I do not think worlds should be left to themselves to work out their own problems with civil war, famine, or invaders just in case interference or a defiance of pacifist ideals makes things worse. All I’m saying is that getting your hands dirty taking majorly bad powers out of play without a plan for how to replace them with good powers is stupid. I wish meddling here had been avoidable, or that we had the resources to check the Beks and the Exchange now as we leave. That’s all.”

“You don’t get those kind of resources on a world that isn’t affiliated with the Republic,” Carth said. “And if Taris isn’t a good proposition for the Sith right now, it’s just as bad for the Republic.”

“Yeah, so screw Taris, right?” Aithne muttered, nodding at the bouncer outside Javyar’s.

She spotted Canderous at a table near the bar. She led Carth and Bastila over to him, and they all sat down. Carth flagged down a waitress, and they all ordered lunch. Ordo waited, a smug look on his battle-scarred face.

“I figured you’d be back,” he said, as the waiter slapped down piles of hot seafood in front of Aithne, Carth, and Bastila. “Neither one of us is getting off this planet unless we work together. Now I know the Sith military base had a break-in. I know it was you. I know you’ve got those departure codes I need. So, what do you say? We join forces and I can get you inside Davik’s base—and right to Ebon Hawk. We can go right now.”

Aithne grabbed a forkful of kelp noodles. “Lunch first,” she said with emphasis, stuffing her cheeks. She was to the point where she didn’t want seafood for another six weeks after they left here, but at least it was better than ration bars. And anyway, wiping out a Sith base was hungry work.

When she’d taken the edge off, she nodded at Ordo. “It’s not just these two I want with me,” she told him.

“The droid and those other two I saw you with in the Undercity,” Ordo guessed. “The Wookiee and that Twi’lek kid. No problem. You can bring your associates when we get out of here. What you all do after our getaway is your business.”

Aithne nodded again and ate a few more bites in silence. “Alright, let’s join up,” she said. “How are we getting into Davik’s estate?”

“Davik’s always looking to recruit new talent,” Canderous explained. “I’ll tell him how you won that swoop race and mention that you’re interested in working for the Exchange. I’ll say I brought you in so he could check you out. He’ll have you stay at his estate for a couple days while he runs some background checks on you. That’s standard procedure.”

“It’s risky,” Bastila worried. “We should find another way.”

“You got another plan, sister?” asked Canderous lazily, “Or are you just objecting because you didn’t think of it?”

“No, I don’t have another plan,” Bastila admitted. “I would rather not place my life in your hands, however.”

“I can say the same about you,” Canderous pointed out. “That makes us even. Fortunately, we both want to get off this rock, right?”

“Too late to back out now,” Aithne told Bastila. She jerked her head at Canderous. “If he’s heard about the attack on the Sith base, the Sith who survived the assault because they were on patrol, stationed elsewhere in the city, or whatever are already getting together and forming an effort to hunt us down. Mission, Zaalbar, and I did what we could to slow them down, but there’s no guarantee we didn’t miss something, particularly if the Sith had working tech outside their base somewhere they can use to make repairs. Besides, it’s not like we’ll be hanging out at Davik’s long enough for him to dig anything up.”

Bastila hesitated, but finally nodded. “Understood. Very well. We will follow your plan, Mandalorian.”

“What about you, Onasi?” Canderous challenged the pilot. He’d noticed that while the Jedi had relaxed, Carth was still sitting straight as a ramrod, fists clenched on the table, and most of his lunch uneaten. “You in?”

“Carth,” Aithne said. “Ebon Hawk’s supposedly fast enough to run that blockade, but our odds will be a whole lot better if you pilot. We need you.”

Onasi nodded shortly. “I’m not letting Bastila or any of you go with a Mandalorian without me, and I’m not about to be left back here. I don’t like it. But I’m in.”

“I’m sure we’ll all be bosom buddies when we’re done here,” Canderous sneered. “So. You and me, Aruetii. You’re the only one Davik might buy me bringing as a recruit. While Davik’s checking you out, we steal Ebon Hawk and escape Taris. Come on, I’ve got an air speeder nearby to take us to Davik’s estate. The sooner we’re off Taris, the better.”

“Sure,” Aithne agreed, washing down the last of her lunch with the last of her drink. She shoved the authorization papers at Carth. “Onasi, take charge of Mission, Zaalbar, and Teethree back at the apartment. You’re the best bet to get through the Sith guards and do that, now. Have the comlink on and ready for our signal when it’s time for pickup. Expect us in three or four hours.”

Aithne looked at Canderous. “The Jedi’s with us,” she told him. “We’ll pass her off as my sister or something, even though I’m clearly the pretty one.” Canderous choked, and Bastila scowled, but Aithne didn’t give the Mando a time to make a crack or Bastila a time to protest. “She needs the getaway more than any of us,” she said, “and when the fighting breaks out, she’ll come in handy.”

Ordo looked at Bastila. His lip curled. “I guess she fought at that swoop track too,” he said. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s just go.”

Aithne turned and clasped arms with Onasi. “See you on the other side,” she said.

“Be careful,” Carth told her and Bastila. “I don’t trust this guy as far as I could throw him.”

Aithne rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but you don’t trust anyone.”

She let go of his arm, laid some credits down on the table for their lunch and a tip, and with Bastila, followed Canderous out of the cantina.

The estate of Davik Kang was, as Aithne had expected, both large and overdecorated. For whatever reason, crime lords always seemed to have appalling taste. Kang, it seemed, had an unseemly fondness for the color purple. It was everywhere, on the walls, on the floors, on the upholstery of the cushions. The effect was not, as Kang probably hoped, one of opulence and luxury, but made the rooms appear smaller than they were, and the gold and marble inlay did not create an appearance of importance but rather made Davik look like an insecure Republic senator.

Canderous led Aithne and Bastila through the cold, garish halls. Behind Ordo, not one of the guards challenged their presence. There were a lot of guards, Aithne noted. At least as many men as she had killed inside the Sith base that morning.

They finally located Davik in his study, sitting with Calo Nord, the unfriendly, murderous bounty hunter Aithne had noted in Javyar’s right before her first meeting with Mission and Zaalbar. She felt the small man’s eyes focus on her from behind his opaque goggles. Davik followed Nord’s gaze, and his eyebrows rose.

He rose from his large, thronelike chair. “Canderous. I see you have brought someone with you. Most intriguing, if I do say so myself. You usually travel alone.”

“It’s not like you to take on partners, Canderous,” Nord put in. “You’re getting soft.”

Ordo bristled. “Watch yourself, Calo. You may be the newest kath hound in the pack, but you aren’t top dog yet!”

Calo’s hand twitched toward his blaster, but Davik raised one of his own. “Enough,” he said. “I won’t have my top two men killing each other—that’s not good business. I’m sure Canderous has an explanation as to why he’s not working solo anymore.” His tone invited Ordo to provide that explanation—quickly.

Canderous shrugged. “This is a special case, Davik. I ran into someone the Exchange might want to recruit. You may have heard something of her exploits already.” He indicated Aithne.

Aithne bowed, but Davik didn’t acknowledge her. “And the other?” he asked Ordo, indicating Bastila.

Aithne stepped forward. “My sister,” she said. “She’s harmless. She just got out of a bad relationship and needs somewhere to stay a while. Annoying, but family’s family, you know? But it leaves me somewhat in need of credits. I have certain skills. Canderous said you might be interested.”

Bastila looked annoyed at the story Aithne had provided for her, but she cast her glare down to the inlaid stone floor and tried to look suitably humble. A feat for her, Aithne thought, with some amusement. At least they’d stashed her lightsaber up her shirt and out of sight.

And the story seemed to satisfy Davik. “We all run into misfortunes from time to time,” he agreed, stepping out from around his desk and walking toward her. He circled her, assessing. “And I believe Canderous is right: I do know you. You’re the woman who’s been making such a splash in the Upper City dueling ring near here, correct? ‘The Mysterious Stranger’? Also, the rider that won the big swoop race. Very impressive. I like your style.”

“Aithne Moran,” Aithne responded simply, offering her hand to shake. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

Instead of shaking her hand, Davik turned it over and raised it to his lips. Aithne tried not to let her shudder of revulsion show. “You know, Canderous was right. The Exchange is always looking for new talent. You could have a bright future with our organization. With a recommendation from Canderous—and a thorough background check—you could become part of the Exchange. Many would kill to prove themselves worthy of this honor!”

“And have, I imagine,” Aithne responded. “I’m pleased to just have made the first cut.”

Davik seemed pleased. “Come with me. I will give you a tour of my operations. I’m certain you’ll be most impressed.”

Aithne wasn’t. Davik was a standard crime lord: egocentric and vengeful, with the usual affectations of hospitality and politeness and the seeming belief that affecting them would make his intimidation factor that much more powerful when he didn’t actually bother hiding any of the dirty and unpleasant business he engaged in. Also, he kept trying to hit on her, oozing flirtation and suggestion like a swamp thing despite her subtle discouragement.

She grew increasingly bored and fidgety until Davik finally led her into the hangar. When she saw the ship there, though, Aithne Moran fell as in love as Mission was with the T3-M4 unit. She was a Dynamic-class freighter, white, with red accents resembling a beak on her prow and upon the starward edges. Aithne felt a near-physical pull to the fierce, pretty thing. She felt it waiting, longing to be up in the sky again. She spied two laser turrets onboard; the ship had teeth as well as a beak, and it made her smile.

Aithne shot Canderous an admiring look: he was ambitious. He smirked at her.

“There she is,” Davik said, lifting his arms as if to encompass the entire freighter. “My pride and joy: Ebon Hawk, the fastest ship in the Outer Rim! Note the state-of-the-art security system I’ve had installed to protect her. The shields are completely impregnable. Nobody can get past them without the codes to try and steal my baby. Unfortunately,” the crime lord continued in a dour tone, “The Sith military blockade has grounded my vessel. Ebon Hawk can outrun any vessel in the galaxy, but even she isn’t fast enough to avoid the auto-targeting laser cannons of the orbiting Sith fleet. I am, of course, working on acquiring the Sith departure codes so that I may come and go as I please. However, progress has been slow.” He scowled, a small child deprived of his favorite toy, and completely unaware that the codes were currently on his prospective new hire. “But we should continue our tour.”

After what seemed like days but was probably closer to fifteen minutes, Davik led them to spacious quarters in a heavily secured “guest wing.” But Aithne could see that all the doors had locks, and not from the inside.

“These will be your accommodations,” Davik said. “The slave quarters are just down the hall. If you need anything during your stay, feel free to call upon their services. If all goes well with your background check, you will be invited to join the Exchange. I’d advise you to accept the offer when it comes—or suffer the dire consequences of refusal.”’

There were several things Aithne might have said to that. She settled for a wary, “I’m looking forward to working with you, Davik.”

“You will stay in these rooms as my guest for the next few days,” Davik continued. “I will not accept no for an answer. I must warn you that if you are found anywhere outside the guest wing during your stay—or if you bother any of my other guests—my security forces will deal with you most harshly. I will return after the investigation into your background. Until then, make yourself comfortable. Come Calo,” he said to Calo Nord, who’d inexplicably followed them around the estate, glaring alternately at Canderous and Aithne. “Let us leave our guests in peace.”

The door shut behind them, but the lock did not engage. Canderous turned to Aithne.

“Okay, we’re inside. Now all we have to do is figure out a way to get past Ebon Hawk’s security systems, and we can get the rest of your group and get off this planet. No sense waiting around here.”

“Not long,” Aithne agreed, “but let’s at least give Kang and Nord a chance to get out of earshot before we break out the gunfire with his guards. It should slow down his response. I’m not scared of a fight, but I don’t fancy taking on ten guys at once. So, Mando: spill. What’s your story?”

Canderous snorted. “You want to hear tales of my exploits? Of the wars I’ve seen and fought, the enemies I’ve seen die by my hand?” He laughed, seeming to remember something pleasant. “Sure, I’ll humor you.” He assumed a unique stance that Aithne identified as the storyteller’s, the teacher’s.

And then he spoke, not in Basic, but in Mando’a. Aithne smiled, actually touched. /My name is Canderous of the Mandalorian clan Ordo,/ he began. /I’ve been fighting across the galaxy for forty of your years. For my people it is the honor and glory of battle that rules us. It’s through combat that we prove our worth, gain renown, and make our fortunes./

Aithne changed her own stance, accepting the implicit challenge both of language and of Ordo’s teaching. She set her feet shoulder-width apart and clasped her hands behind her back in a soldier’s parade rest. /So you fought the Republic because they are worthy—or were,/ she replied.

/The Sith came to us with an offer,/ Canderous explained—or that was the sense of it. Actually, Aithne thought, the word for “Sith” in Mandalorian literally meant “Not-Jedi,” as if the Mandalorians viewed the Sith as inferior. /To fight a worthy enemy in a battle that would be remembered forever. Win or lose,/ he added, in a didactic tone, /as long as the fight is worthy, then honor is gained. The glory of having triumphed over impossible odds is what drives us. If there’s nothing at stake—your possessions, your life, your world—then the battle is meaningless. We Mandalore take everything we are and throw it into battle. It’s the true test of yourself: the battle against death . . . against oblivion./

Aithne thought she understood what he was getting at. When she was solving a problem, she never got as big a rush on the easy ones as the hard ones. When she was challenged to her breaking point was when triumph brought its greatest pleasure. But something didn’t make sense. /Then what are you doing now?/ she demanded.

Canderous almost seemed to wince. “The days of combat and glory and cheating death at every turn seem to be over now,” he said, in an abrupt return to Basic and an end to the poetic tone he’d used for the last couple of speeches. His stance shifted, and the formal lecture was over. “I take what I can. Times have changed. The Mandalore clans have been scattered across the Outer Rim, the Republic is in decline, and the Sith Empire rises to take its place. The clans as they are aren’t a threat, but the galaxy still fears us,” he finished, half in satisfaction, and half in seeming aggravation. “People think we war out of spite, or bloodlust. They don’t understand, and fear that. We only wanted the challenge of the battle—win or lose.” He shrugged. “And we lost. Now I have no real challenges. Crushing Davik’s enemies and the pathetic gangs in the Lower City could not be considered the most glorious of tasks.”

He paused. /When I think of the battles I’ve fought . . . the thousands I’ve killed . . . the worlds I’ve burned . . . I weep for my past,/ he added. In Mando’a, the words almost had the rhythm of a battle chant.

Aithne looked down, letting her hair and the shadows hide the expression on her face. She didn’t approve of the challenges the Mandalorians had sought, but she could understand the grief of a person out of place, stripped of all the honor he had once gained, thinking his glory days were behind him. /So long as you remember, those days are not truly gone,/ she hazarded. /Isn’t that the way of it?/ She repeated the Mandalorian remembrance of the dead, haltingly, and probably with indifferent grammar. She hadn’t been sure enough of what she’d heard said to get all the words down perfectly, but Canderous grew intent. /Cannot times be preserved in memory as well as your fallen siblings?/ Aithne asked.

“Where are you from?” Canderous asked suddenly. /Who are your people, Moran?/

Aithne shrugged. /Farmers from Deralia. They’re dead now./

“Farmers,” Canderous sneered. He turned away. “We will never again speak of this. We’ve got work to do, so let’s get to it.”

Bastila had been watching them. “Yes, I think that would be best,” she murmured. Aithne glanced at her. The Jedi’s eyes looked troubled. Aithne sensed flickers of unease from her direction, and she narrowed her eyes at Bastila, moving her arms in a silent gesture. What’s up?

Bastila shook her head, and Aithne shrugged. She rolled her shoulders, loosened her vibroblades in their sheaths, and started toward the door.

The first thing they did was head to the slave quarters. Servants and slaves were often the first to hear what happened in a household, and slaves, unlike paid servants, often had no real loyalty to their masters. It wasn’t hard for Aithne to cajole a male Twi’lek into telling her that Davik’s pilot had recently been locked up in the torture chambers for trying to lift some spice. Aithne thanked the man and hurried off.

“What’s the rush?” Canderous asked, annoyed, as Aithne pulled him away from a busty slave.

“I don’t know,” Aithne admitted, “But for whatever reason, I think we don’t have much time.”

“I feel it, too,” announced Bastila. “We should hurry.”

They left the guest wing, and as promised, Davik’s guards duly attacked. And thus began Aithne’s second rampage of the day, this time through the mansion of Davik Kang.

Aithne’s anxiety mounted every minute as they fought though the purple halls. Not a sense that the Sith were about to come busting through the doors of the mansion, but something . . .

The feeling grew, like a nasty nor’easter blowing in off the sea, black and massive with a bellyful of lightning. What’s their next move? she asked herself, as she had done last night. No word of Bastila, except maybe the rumor she escaped from the swoop track. They know she might escape. No real tactical advantage to keeping a presence on the planet, with the population rising. Then they hear about the base. They’re out of resources to spend with any practical benefit . . . except to make sure Bastila doesn’t escape. No matter what.

Aithne knew what Malak would do a second after they left the torture chambers, the security codes Davik’s disgraced pilot had possessed handily copied down to a datapad.

But by then, it was too late.

MISSION

About an hour after Carth’d got back to the apartment, Mission was watching a holovid with Teethree and Big Z. It was pretty fantastic; she’d never had a droid to play holos before and hadn’t often had the spare credits to go to the arcade to see stuff like that. T3-M4 didn’t have the biggest library; Janice Nall had built him for security and astromechanical repair, not for entertainment. And Carth said he didn’t want them on the Taris nets, in case the Sith had tracking programs Teethree didn’t have the software to block out. That was a pain, because Mission had never had a droid or anything that could access the nets, either, and she was dying to see what she could find. But just the one vid about the smuggler and the Coreworld prince among Teethree’s three-vid library was great. It was pretty cheesy, and Mission could see the plot twists coming so far off she could practically mouth the dialogue with the characters, even though she’d never seen this vid before in her life, but that was really almost part of the experience.

Except Carth kept ruining things, pacing around the apartment like a trapped nexu in a crime lord den. He couldn’t sit still for five minutes. It was giving Mission and Big Z bad cases of the secondhand nerves. “Would you relax?” Mission complained finally. “You ain’t seen Aithne this morning, but you’ve seen her in plenty of fights to know she’ll be just fine in Davik’s house. And Bastila’s a Jedi. She has to be even better, right? So quit your worrying. Sit down and watch the holo. She’ll signal us in a minute.”

“It’s not the Exchange,” Carth said, without even looking at her. “Hell, it’s not even the Mandalorian. There’s something else, something I can’t put my finger on. Last night, she said, ‘What’s their next move?’ The Sith’s. They’ve lost track of Bastila. They know she’s probably alive and about to escape, either from reports from the swoop race or just because they know that a Jedi can’t be left for this long without escaping. Then, their base goes dark. A hit on the center of their forces on the planet, and their launch codes missing.”

Mission shook her head. “We took plenty of other stuff from that base, just so they wouldn’t think we were after those codes and change ‘em.”

“Right, and we’ve got a few hours at least before they can get word to all their own planetary patrols about a change,” Carth agreed. “But that’s not what the Sith do next. That’s a defensive move, and it isn’t a good enough counter to what’s gone down here. No, no, you have to either admit defeat in a system that isn’t worth the effort or . . . or . . . Malak.”

Carth’s whole face went whiter than a human’s was supposed to be. He started scrambling for the comlink, like he couldn’t turn it on proper, and that’s when Mission got scared.

Aithne got there first. “Carth,” her voice said through the comlink, metallic and a little staticky. “Carth Onasi, come in. Onasi, give me a status.”

Carth managed to complete the connection. “Aithne—it’s the planet,” he said. “That’s what the Sith do next! It’s Telos, all over again!”

“That’s what I got too,” Aithne said, grimly, as Mission tried to catch up to what had both of them sounding as scared as she’d ever heard them. “We’ve got the security codes for Ebon Hawk, and we’re on our way. Keep your beacon on, and stay together! Just stay s—”

The signal from the comlink fritzed out, and the entire planet shook. Teethree staggered, and the holovid stuttered and stopped playing. Big Z jumped to his feet, grabbing up his vibrosword from where he’d set it down on the couch. Mission ran to the window and looked out across the city.

For a moment, she just couldn’t believe it. It was too horrible, too evil to even think. Cannon fire from hundreds, thousands of ships in orbit over Taris, raining down over the Upper City. There was no rhyme or reason to the fire, they weren’t going for the mayor’s hall or the stock exchange or nothing that made sense. That was an apartment building on fire! That was a sushi restaurant exploding! The Sith, they were just killing everything!

“Get back from there!” Carth shouted. Then his arm was around her waist, throwing her back from the window. Glass shattered behind them, and that weren’t all: the frakking metal bars to the balcony railing shattered too! Mission saw one cut Carth across the shoulder, and she screamed, but he was moving, he was still alive, hurling her toward Big Z, deeper into the apartment.

“In the fresher, all of you!” he roared. “We have to try and withstand the shocks in the doorway until the others get here!”

Mission couldn’t move, so Zaalbar moved her, carrying her by her arms toward the fresher, which was tiny for one person, let alone three and an astromech. But it didn’t matter. The ground kept shaking, and Mission could hear screaming and explosions now, fires burning, alarms going off. Cement dust shook loose from the ceiling.

“What if, what if when the comlink went out, that was Aithne, dy—what if the others don’t make it?” Mission asked. Her voice was high. It sounded like a little girl’s voice. Part of her hated it, but that part felt a long way off. Mostly, all she could think about was all the people dying all over Taris, the cracks in the ceiling and in the floor, the roof or the floor caving in, or a direct hit from one of the ships overhead . . .

“She’ll make it! They’ll make it!” Carth said. He was gripping Big Z’s arm in one hand. His other arm was around her, holding her so tight she could hardly breathe, but she wanted him to hold her even tighter, she wanted not to exist, to be gone, to be dead if it would make the shaking stop and she could just get out of the dying, entombed in apartment ruins or burned alive . . .

She thought about the Beks, about friends she knew from staying in different flophouses around the Lower City. Jenn and Old Gariiesh, and Jomklabba, and all of them. She was whimpering, burying her face in Carth’s jacket, and the blood from his shoulder wound was getting all over her head-tails. And she didn’t care, she didn’t care, she didn’t care!

Another bang hit the building. This time Mission actually felt the floor give. She screamed. They didn’t fall far, maybe just half a meter or so, but she could see the floor above. To get back out to the balcony, now they’d need to climb. She closed her eyes and reached out for Zaalbar too.

“I don’t wanna die, guys, I don’t wanna die here like this. We were gonna leave, we were gonna stop the Sith . . .”

“We will!” Carth said fiercely. “We’ll stop them, Mission. Just hang on!”

AITHNE

The Force-Sensing thing didn’t just work on Bastila. Aithne found out during the bombing of Taris. She could literally feel the planet and everyone on it dying around her. In Davik’s mansion, they were out of earshot of most other organics since they’d killed all of the guards, but Aithne could still hear screaming in the back of her head. She could feel pain and fear and death, growing stronger by the moment.

She doubled up in the hallway leading to Kang’s hangar. “Bastila . . .”

“You feel it, yes,” Bastila said, “but we don’t have time to mourn Taris now. If we do not escape, and quickly, we will die with all the others!”

“I can’t—”

Bastila reached out and gripped her hand, facing her in the corridor. A sort of envelope expanded around Aithne’s consciousness, enclosing her from all the destruction raining down all over Taris. Now she could feel Bastila’s fear, Bastila’s determination and anger, but little else. “You can,” Bastila told her. “Focus your mind on the next five steps. Train your thoughts upon Ebon Hawk, on the enemies that lie between us and the horizon. Let’s go.”

Aithne felt a surge of gratitude, and Bastila answered it even though she didn’t voice it aloud. “You’re welcome. Let’s go.”

Ordo was glaring at them, waiting down the hall by the security console leading to the hangar. Aithne staggered past him and input the codes.

The door opened, and Aithne saw Kang and Nord running in from the entrance on the other side. “Damn those Sith!” Davik was saying. “They’re bombing the whole planet! I knew they’d turn on us sooner or . . .” he caught sight of Aithne and Canderous and halted.

The building shook. Aithne saw the entrance behind Nord and Kang collapse, crushed by the weight of the skyscrapers above it. They didn’t have time for a fight here, but she could tell from the stance of the crime lord and the bounty hunter that they were going to get one. “Look what we got here,” Davik sneered. “Thieves in the hangar! So, you figured you’d just steal my ship and leave me high and dry while the Sith turn the planet into dust? Sorry, but that ain’t gonna happen.”

“I’ll take care of them Davik,” Nord growled, and something almost like a smile twitched on his face as alarm lights reflected in the lenses of his goggles. They’d found Nord’s room turning over the estate; the little man was a piece of work. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

“Make it quick, Calo,” Davik told him. “The Sith mean business. If we don’t get to our ships and find somewhere safe, the bombs they’re dropping will kill us all!”

With the force of desperation, Aithne sprang forward with Bastila Shan toward Nord. Around them, the hangar was falling to pieces. A large section of cement and rebar fell on Davik Kang. He got out one strangled cry before it crushed him. Aithne leveled her righthand vibroblade at Calo, but he had stopped, pulling out a small object from a belt pocket.

“You have me outnumbered and outgunned,” he told them all—Aithne and Bastila, right on top of him, vibroblades and lightsaber at the ready; Canderous, farther back, his repeating blaster leveled if Aithne and Bastila maneuvered Nord just the right way. “But if I’m going down, I’m taking all of you with me. This thermal detonator will blow us all to bits!” A large crack resounded over his head. Calo looked up to see the cracks from where the ceiling section had fallen on Davik, spiderwebbing out, heading his way. “Damn those Sith!” he cried. “They’ll bring this whole hangar down around our ears!”

“Ordo!” Aithne snapped, grabbing Bastila’s wrist and leaping backward. It was all the signal the Mandalorian needed. He aimed his blaster and took the shot. The weakened ceiling caved, collapsing on top of the distracted bounty hunter.

“Come on!” Canderous snarled, turning and barreling toward the mercifully still unaffected Ebon Hawk and the hangar exit. “Let’s get this ship fired up! We’ll pick up the rest of your friends, and then we have to get off this planet!”

Aithne caught his eye in the middle of the chaos and realized that whatever anyone else said or thought about Canderous Ordo, she’d be his ally whenever he needed one. With the fire raining down over Taris and buildings collapsing, anyone could’ve made an argument for leaving the others and just getting out. Most people would’ve. Canderous was abiding by the terms of their agreement, even in the clench. She nodded, reaching out and half-gripping, half-shoving his shoulder toward the cockpit as the Ebon Hawk power systems came online.

“I’ll copilot,” Bastila promised. “Give me the comlink; I can use its signal and the Force to help him find the others!”

Aithne stripped the comlink off her wrist without protest and handed it to the Jedi. She stayed by the entrance hatch. It stayed open as the engines powered up and life support systems came on, as Ordo maneuvered the ship out of the crumbling Kang hangover and into the skyline among all the fire raining down from the Sith fleet above. Aithne held on to a grip by the exit, looking down. Everywhere she looked, Taris was burning. She could taste the smoke and cement dust rising from the ruins. It burned the back of her throat and set her hacking. She tore a portion of her sleeve and tied the rag over her nose and mouth to filter some of the contaminants.

Cannon fire pelted the city. The horizon was dark red and gray with the blaze. Aithne saw fighters too, flying low over the city and shooting at men, women, and children running below, trying to escape their falling homes and businesses. She saw men protecting their wives and mothers protecting their children, only to be shot where they stood, the entire family turned to ash in a millisecond. She saw buildings topple and aliens running for cover. Taris was dying, all of it, like Telos before her, and Aithne knew the Sith wouldn’t stop until the entire planet, above and below the surface, was obliterated. She wondered if even the Outcasts in the Undercity would escape, fleeing to their Promised Land, or if they too would die in the hellish onslaught.

Canderous skimmed lower over the city, and Aithne saw a human boy in an alleyway. He looked no more than ten years old, and he was carrying a little toddler of a Twi’lek girl out of a building. Their clothes were scorched. The girl was bleeding. The boy laid the girl down next to a pile of rubble. He knelt beside her, checking she was alright, or pleading her to be okay. Then the pair looked up. A bomb landed right on top of them. Then Ebon Hawk had passed over.

Tears streamed down Aithne’s face. It wasn’t even the first time the Sith had done this, she realized, with new immediacy. Carth Onasi had lived through just this before. She could see him on his own homeworld then, as he was out on Taris now, and then she could physically see him, standing on the balcony of a building half-demolished, with Mission, Zaalbar, and T3-M4, all the organics waving their arms like mad. Bastila had contacted them. Canderous had found them.

Ordo brought the ship around the hover. A shot hit Ebon Hawk. Aithne felt the shields hiss as they absorbed it, but the impact was incredible. She had to ignore it. They were ten meters out from the others, five, three . . . close enough.

Zaalbar picked Mission up in his arms and bodily hurled her toward the boarding ramp. Aithne released her grip on her handhold, darted out, and caught the teenager, bracing herself against the deck so as not to go sprawling herself. She squeezed the girl for a split-second, then tossed her down the hallway. “Get to the hold and strap in!” she howled over the sound of the wind and the Sith barrage. “Clear the gangway!”

She caught Zaalbar himself as he landed on the deck, steadying him so he didn’t topple, and sent him down the hall after Mission. Teethree landed on the Wookiee’s other side, having used his astromech jets to make the jump independently. Then Carth was there, bleeding from a shoulder wound, face twisted in a rictus of grief and fury. Aithne hit the controls to close the boarding ramp.

“Which way to the cockpit?” he asked.

Aithne shook her head, uncertain herself, and Carth gave her up and went sprinting down the hall. Aithne followed him as Ebon Hawk took another hit, then a third.

She passed through a sort of workshop, with a swoop bike lying ready for action, then into the main hold, where Mission and Zaalbar were using emergency straps to harness themselves into what would otherwise be leisure seats. There were corridors leading left, right, and straight ahead, and another passage to the rear. Carth took the one straight ahead, and Aithne pelted after him.

“There you are,” Ordo growled, throwing himself from the pilot’s seat to make way for Carth. “Get in here. Our shields have already fallen to 70 percent! If we don’t get out of here in a hurry, we won’t make it!”

Carth began flipping switches, twisting knobs, and Aithne felt Ebon Hawk, which had been stuttering and staggering like a drunk under Canderous, come to life. The engines roared, and a second before the inertial blockers came online, Aithne stumbled back with the speed of the freighter, bumping into the Mandalorian.

She had no idea how Carth was flying; through the front viewport of the ship, all she could see was a landscape of flames and smoke, then a hailstorm of cruiser fire.

“Plot a course for Dantooine,” Bastila told him. “There’s a Jedi Enclave there where we can find refuge!”

Ebon Hawk left the atmosphere. The actual Sith cruisers came into range, but beyond them, Aithne saw stars. But they weren’t out of the fire yet. “Incoming fighters!” Carth reported.

Bastila turned to Aithne and Canderous. “Quickly, to the gun turrets!” she ordered. “You have to hold the Sith fighters off until we get those hyperspace coordinates punched in!”

Aithne nodded, then dove into her pack and pulled out a medpac. She tossed it at Bastila, who caught it. “Don’t let Onasi bleed out; he’s wounded,” she said, then barreled through the Hawk corridors in search of gun turrets, after Canderous this time.

She had a split-second impression of Mission, doubled over in her seat, sobbing and calling out to Zaalbar across the room, then she was through the main hold once again, into the rear passage, up the ladder to Hawk’s right turret. Aithne slid into the seat and engaged the gun. The computer came up and six red dots popped up upon her display.

A sudden, poisonous rage coursed through her. A vicious desire to kill and avenge. It acted like an adrenal stim, focusing her panicked, overwhelmed thoughts on those six pinpoints of light. Light on the display, but in her mind, they were darker than the darkness of space, points of rot and evil with their own gravity amid the Void. Aithne operated the turret automatically. She felt as though she really couldn’t miss.

And she didn’t. In a few seconds, four Sith fighters exploded outward; soundlessly, without fanfare, into starbursts of flame and metallic shrapnel, and the flame extinguished as soon as it came into being. Canderous dispatched the final two fighters, and Carth’s voice on the shipwide comm reported they were clear.

But still, Aithne stayed in the gun turret until the stars lengthened and vanished in the tunnel of hyperspace. The visions from Taris played out before her eyes—families vaporized, buildings falling, that boy carrying his wounded, near-infant neighbor out into the alley, only for all that bravery and goodness to be extinguished in a moment. She thought of Zelka Forn in his clinic and Gadon and Zaerdra in the Bek base; of Deadeye Duncan and his everlasting, hopeless ambition; of Shaleena and the Outcasts down in the Undercity. All that life extinguished in a moment.

For Bastila, against her escape, and against the shame of one Jedi and just two Republic survivors making the entire Sith presence on Taris nonviable. The thought of such reckless hate was mindboggling. Incomprehensible. And Aithne thought she understood all the baggage she’d blamed Onasi for before. She closed her eyes, imagining what this was going to do to Mission.

And then she got up and went to find her. She walked down the corridor back toward the main hold, running her hand along the bulkhead, just to feel the humming of the engines, the assurance that they were alive and flying away from the destruction. That, at least.

Mission was hanging from her harness. She hadn’t bothered to unfasten it. Zaalbar was kneeling beside her, holding both her hands, but he looked as helpless as the girl did, in his way. He looked to Aithne as she entered and roared at her, and for once, there weren’t words within the roaring. The Wookiee had none, but he didn’t need them. His grief and fury and confusion, his anguish for the anguish of his friend were all too clear.

Aithne nodded. She unfastened Mission’s harness herself, pushing the straps back from the girl’s body, and gathered the Twi’lek up into her arms. Both the girl and Zaalbar were covered in dust and abrasions, and there was blood on Mission’s lekku that didn’t seem to be hers—Carth’s, Aithne thought.

Mission gripped Aithne’s vest with one fist and pummeled the seat arm with the other, choking on her tears. “They just . . . they just . . .”

“I know.”

“We could’ve died! Everyone . . . everyone else did die, or worse, they’ll be there for days, just . . .”

“I know.”

“I wanna kill the Sith!”

“I know.”

“Oh, Zaalbar, Aithne, I was so scared . . .”

Mission started to heave, and Aithne was just able to tilt her sideways over the chair so the sick fell onto the deck instead of onto the front of Aithne’s vest or into Zaalbar’s fur.

“I’m sorry,” Mission sobbed when she was done. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

“It’s fine.”

The girl smelled of smoke and blood and fire and vomit. The Wookiee, if anything, smelled worse. Aithne breathed it in and thought of what she’d do to Malak. She stroked Mission’s bloody lekku, and counted with her in Huttese, and held Zaalbar’s claw, ignoring Ordo’s contemptuous look from the hallway. What she’d do to Malak!

Chapter Text

MISSION

Mission spent the entire trip to Dantooine feeling like the galaxy’s biggest fake. She knew luck was the only reason she’d lived through the glassing of Taris. If she hadn’t known Zaalbar, if Aithne Moran hadn’t been nice enough to say she could come along when Big Z swore his lifedebt, she would have been burned to a crisp or buried in the rubble with everyone she knew but her brother and Lena. Aithne and them didn’t need her. Didn’t want her, probably. No one ever did, really. But here she was, escaped from Taris by the skin of her teeth, just because she got lucky and Aithne Moran happened to be the nicest person she’d ever met. But when she thought of all the people who had lost their lives, she just about fell to pieces.

If it hadn’t been for Aithne, Big Z, and Carth, Mission wasn’t sure she would’ve made it. Not just off Taris, through everything afterward. Waking up seeing those buildings every night, thinking of Gadon and the Beks, of Jenn and Zaerdra and Cliope and everyone, and how blasted small and lonely and . . . and helpless she felt. Wondering what in the hell someone like her was supposed to do against powers that could destroy an entire planet, just like that. Breaking down crying what felt like every five minutes. She knew she owed the others more than that, that since she’d survived, since they’d saved her, she had to do something to earn it, to make sure it was worth it. Canderous thought she was some kind of ridiculous wimp, and Padawan Shan’s cool pity was almost just as bad.

But Aithne, Big Z, and Carth were there for her. Every time she woke Aithne and Bastila up screaming bloody murder, Aithne was there, no matter how annoyed Bastila was. She was showing Mission astrogation, teaching her about some of the Rim Worlds she’d visited during her career as a scout. It helped pass the time when there wasn’t anything but Taris to think about. She would stay up watching Teethree’s same three holovids with Mission over and over and over until Mission fell asleep. She didn’t tell Mission she was being stupid, or a baby, or anything like that.

Big Z made sure she ate. The first two days or so, she couldn’t keep anything down. She kept vomiting everything they pushed at her. The processed protein they ate on Ebon Hawk was pretty nasty, unless Canderous cooked, but she’d eaten nastier stuff back on Taris when she was hungry. Now, she wasn’t hungry. Big Z fed her anyway. He also helped her practice with the vibroblades and the fancier blasters they’d picked up with Aithne in the cargo hold, times she just had to hit something.

But Carth was the best. He really got it. What it was to lose your entire world, to be the one who walked away. He told her about Telos, about how it had felt for him after, the ways he had found to keep going. He told her about his neighbors and his friends, all the people he’d grown up with who had never made it out, and he listened to her talk about a whole legions of people he didn’t know just ‘cause he knew she needed it. He didn’t go on about how Taris was a bad world anymore; he just listened when Mission told him why she missed it. Then he’d teach her how to use a second blaster along with her first, or some math or something. He didn’t ever tell her she was stupid for not knowing that stuff already, either. And with her head full of Aithne’s astrogation and planet facts, Carth’s math, and Teethree’s holovids, sometimes it was easier to sleep at night. For a while, anyway.

Mission kept wondering what she was gonna do, though, to make her survival worthwhile, so Aithne never regretted taking her along with Big Z, and so she could make the Sith pay someday for Taris. She considered lying when they got to a Republic base, saying she was older so she could enlist as a soldier or something. She wanted to do something real for the fight, be more than just a kid hanging onto Aithne, some Taris street trash. Big Z would always be useful as extra muscle for Aithne, or even as a secondary scout. She needed to learn how to use the stuff she’d known on Taris to be as helpful, or learn enough new stuff it wouldn’t matter.

She also wondered if maybe she could do anything, though, or if she really should just bail. She kept thinking about Griff. As they got closer and closer to Dantooine, Mission thought about him more and more, wondering if Aithne might help her find him now so that they could be a family again. It’d probably be a better idea than staying with Aithne, really. She could be a help to Griff now, she knew, even if she couldn’t for Aithne or the Republic yet.

Big Z had a lifedebt now. Ebon Hawk was Canderous’s, really, and once they made it to Dantooine, Mission was scared everyone was just gonna fall apart. Canderous would take the ship and do whatever. Bastila would go back to the Jedi. Carth would go back to the Republic. Aithne’d go with him, but to a different assignment maybe, or maybe she’d do some work with the Jedi. Bastila seemed to think her Force Sensitivity was really powerful and important. Whatever Aithne ended up doing, though, Big Z was sworn to go with her, and Mission was just . . . extra. She knew Aithne and everyone really just saw her as a kid. So why not try and find Griff? Except that she owed the Sith.

She really owed the Sith.

AITHNE

Mission was barely holding it together, and Aithne was in way over her head. Two days into the voyage to Dantooine, she and Zaalbar had finally got it to where the girl could keep food down. She’d finally slept a night through last night. But she was so . . . lost. She would be watching a holovid, or reading a datapad, and just start crying. Aithne didn’t blame her, but the only one who really knew what Mission was going through was Carth. He was doing everything he could for Mission, and Aithne loved him more for it every day, but the time he’d have with her was running out, and it was taking a toll besides. She saw the way he looked after a talk with Mission. He was very literally taking on the girl’s burdens, and no one, no one should have to carry the weight of two crushed worlds. No one should have to carry the weight of even one.

They were all struggling. Maybe not Ordo; he seemed to have already put the whole thing behind him. But Bastila had to wake up when Mission had a nightmare just like Aithne did. Sometimes Aithne felt weariness and sadness that wasn’t her own coming off the Jedi. Bastila spent hours meditating every day, and she outright admitted it was as much to center herself and find inner peace as it was because she was a Jedi and meditating was just what they did. Zaalbar hurt so badly for Mission, sometimes Aithne could feel that too, and his helplessness that there wasn’t a whole lot he could do for her. Aithne shared that feeling.

But Aithne was in over her head for other reasons. Every day toward Dantooine, she felt more and more that Bastila had plans for her. Whether that had been the case before the battle for Endar Spire or not, it certainly was now. Whenever Aithne wasn’t with Mission, or tinkering with T3-M4, Bastila would try to catch her alone and strike up a conversation about Aithne’s Force Sensitivity and the ways she felt or drew upon the Force—consciously or otherwise. She kept talking about how Aithne had been “meant to” do this, that, or the other, and what the Jedi would say about Aithne’s “gifts.” The woman had serious recruiter vibes to her, even though she kept mentioning Aithne’s lack of training and her age in the same breaths as her power and ability.

Aithne thought she wanted to get in on the war now, get in properly, after Taris. There were a lot of things she had to work out about how to do that. Mission was the largest and most obvious; the Republic could probably work out some sort of attaché or advisory role for Zaalbar to stay with Aithne, but Mission was too young for the Republic to legally hire even in a support role. That said, Aithne couldn’t and wouldn’t just leave her behind. Even if Aithne could afford what she’d need to put the girl into some sort of boarding situation, she couldn’t morally conscience doing it after the kid had lost her entire planet. Money and connections to keep both Mission and Zaalbar with her would be an issue in any case. 

But there was also the simple matter of transportation. There wasn’t a Republic base on Dantooine: just the Jedi Enclave. Ebon Hawk was a stolen vessel in any event, but Aithne wasn’t under any illusions that it was her stolen vessel, to fly wherever she wanted to in. If it was, there wouldn’t be a problem. She could contract with the Republic as a freelancer and hire Mission and Zaalbar as crew herself. But the person onboard who had the best claim to be owner and captain of Ebon Hawk was Canderous Ordo. If he didn’t consent to either give her and the others a ride to a world with a Republic base after this or to sell one to them, she’d probably be out almost all the credits she had left after buying T3-M4 to charter transport off Dantooine from someone else.

But one thing she didn’t want was to get stuck in the Jedi Enclave, dealing with whatever the Jedi saw in her. She was still thinking about it ten days after Taris, when Carth finally announced over the shipwide comm that they were coming into orbit around Dantooine. Aithne headed up to the cockpit for a glimpse of the approach. She took up station in between Carth and Bastila in the pilot and copilot seats and looked down on a green, temperate world, with breathable air and friendly blue sky. They skimmed over grassy prairies, and a flock of birds flew away in panic. Then a compound of white stone walls came into view and a single docking platform large enough for a ship their size. Ebon Hawk came in to hover, then slowly lowered herself to rest.

Carth began powering down the ship, checking her status and fuel reserves. Bastila sat back in her seat, gazing out the front viewport.  “Dantooine,” she said. “It seems like a lifetime since I last set foot on her surface, though in truth it has only been a few months. We should be safe from Malak here, for now, at least.”

Carth shot Bastila an incredulous look. “Safe?! You saw what his fleet did to Taris: there wasn’t a building over two stories high left standing! They . . . they turned the planet into one big pile of rubble.”

Bastila looked prim. “Even the Sith would think twice before attacking Dantooine,” she answered. “There are many Jedi here, including several of the most powerful masters of the order. There is great strength within this place.”

That sounded like arrogance to Aithne; Jedi or no Jedi, she hadn’t spotted any cities or AD towers flying in. The Force was one thing, but it didn’t look like Dantooine’s Jedi Enclave had a big military presence to protect it. In the end, though, it didn’t really matter. “Whether there is or not, we need to resupply and regroup,” Aithne said. “You should report to your masters, and the rest of us need a chance to work out what happens next.”

“The Jedi will surely let Ebon Hawk dock and resupply here,” Bastila pressed. “And the Academy is a place of mental and spiritual healing; something we could all use after what we’ve been through.”

At this, Carth nodded. His eyes flicked to the back of the ship. “Maybe you’re right. It isn’t easy to witness the annihilation of an entire planet. I know Mission’s taking it pretty hard.”

Bastila shrugged. “She will find a way to come to terms with her grief. She is stronger than she appears. We just need to give her time.”

Carth’s face hardened, and Aithne raised her eyes and put her hands on her hips. “Wow, Bastila, let’s wipe out everything and everyone you’ve ever known and see how you ‘come to terms with your grief!’ You don’t come to terms with grief like that. Maybe you find a way to survive it, to keep going, but even that much is a feat of heroism, and you are never the same. You carry the scars forever, just like being shot through the spirit. You’d think the Jedi would know something about that.”

She was speaking to Carth as much as to Bastila, telling him she finally understood even as she upbraided the Jedi for her callousness. Bastila seemed to sense this too. She half-turned to the pilot and colored slightly, as if remembering her company. “Forgive me. I spoke without thought or consideration.”

Aithne shook her head, returning to Mission. “She’s fourteen years old,” she murmured. “She’s just lost her entire history and her entire world. Everything and everyone she has in the galaxy is on this ship, most of us strangers she’s known less than two weeks. She’s wondering if she was an idiot back on Taris and knows it’s just a fluke she survived, and that everyone she knew just died because of . . .” Aithne almost said ‘you,’ but hesitated, and changed her mind, “because of us. If she can bring herself not to hate us when her head’s stopped spinning it’ll almost be more than I’d expect, and getting her to trust she’s safe with us, that we care about her and we’ll make sure she’s alright out here, that’ll be something else altogether.”

“I understand you feel some responsibility for the girl,” Bastila said. “Perhaps we can set her up with a foster family here on Dantooine. Alternatively, a position in the Service Corps might not be inappropriate, under the circumstances. But there are larger concerns here than what will become of Mission Vao.”

Aithne glared at Bastila. “Not to Mission Vao,” she answered. “And not to me. Before even getting back in on this war, and I definitely am after Taris, I’m going to make sure Mission and Zaalbar are safe, provided for, and as happy as they can reasonably be. Preferably, and if at all possible, with me. I gave them both my word. Understand?”

Bastila regarded her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. “I do,” she said finally. “Very well. I must go speak with the Jedi Council. I need their advice on . . . recent developments. After I have met with them, I will need you, Aithne, to meet me outside the ship.”

“Why?” Aithne demanded, suspicious, but Bastila was already striding down the hallway toward the exit. In the distance, Aithne heard the ramp being lowered, and then Bastila was gone.

“What was that about?” Carth asked, leaving his chair to lean against it and face her.

“Oh, my stupid Force Sensitivity,” Aithne said, “or whatever the Jedi brought me onboard Endar Spire to do in the first place. Bastila said I just fit the profile for a needed reconnaissance specialist on the crew. It made sense at the time, but I just . . . you’re rubbing off on me, flyboy.” She rubbed her eyes and ran her fingers through her hair, probably disordering it even more than usual.

“The Jedi have the resources to set you up with a small ship and the ability to hire a crew,” Carth pointed out. “Could be a solution to your problem with Mission and Zaalbar.”

Aithne nodded wearily. “I’ve thought of that,” she admitted, “and it’s probably the only reason I’ll go in there to hear out whatever she wants that Council of hers to say. I just . . . I have a bad feeling about this. Bastila wants me for something, and I’m not sure it’s something I’m overly inclined to give, especially to the Jedi. I don’t like them, I’ve said. Don’t like the way they operate. Don’t like their rules, their mysticism, or the way their superiors keep all their secrets. I don’t want to be some Jedi pawn. I’d rather go with you and sign up with the Republic on a more permanent, willing basis.”

“Well, we could use more like you,” Carth said. “I could try and contact some people, get you an in with special forces or our commando operations. Not sure if it would help you with your biggest problem, though.”

“And I don’t have the skills to just retire and stay put and make the kind of credits to support us all,” Aithne muttered. She buried her face in her hands. “Did Bastila mention something about resupplying?” She laughed through her hands, more so she didn’t start crying like Mission than anything else. “You think the Jedi stock alcohol? Because I could really use a drink.”

“There’s probably some rule about Jedi overindulging,” Carth answered. “But they might stock a few drinks somewhere. You know, for medicinal purposes. Or to help teach them to resist temptation.”

Aithne really laughed then. She moved her hands down to her cheeks and looked at the pilot. “I’m gonna miss you,” she told him. “Your help with Mission, your guns in a firefight, the bad jokes, and that awful glaring Jacket of Doom.” She reached out and brushed off one shoulder of the jacket as if for imaginary dust. For whatever reason, probably just to spite her, he’d actually repaired it after the damage it had taken on Taris.

“Hah!” Onasi answered. “Even the Jacket of Doom, huh? I . . . uh, it’ll be strange, moving on to another assignment after all this. After everything we’ve been through, living out of each other’s pockets all that time on Taris . . . seeing it get destroyed.”

From this, Aithne gathered that Onasi would miss her too, but was trying to return to Professional Military Man now that things were drawing to a close. She smiled sadly. But then he surprised her again.

“You should give me a call sometime. Send me a wave through the holonet or . . . something. Tell me how everything works out for you, and Mission and Big Z. I’ll leave you with my information. If you ever need anything, or want to catch up sometime on shore leave, or . . . after all this is over.”

Aithne regarded him. She thought he meant it. “I should give you a call?” she asked. “That a fact, Major?”

He actually blushed. “Carth, please.”

Aithne held out her hand, and he shook it. “Okay, then,” Aithne said, inordinately pleased. A friendly Republic major would probably come in handy someday. Carth had already offered to help her out more than once. But even if he never did have anything or a connection to anything she needed, he really was worth it. For his own sake. “But let’s not do the whole of the teary goodbye until we know when and how we’re leaving Dantooine. You need to comm the Republic, and I better see what the Jedi have to say. Probably also be nice if we went and saw who it is Canderous needs to talk with about supplies.”

Carth looked thoughtful. “You think the Mandalorian might need a pilot? I mean, from what I saw, he wasn’t doing too well before you picked us up. Could be a good way to get to an outpost of the Republic. I mean, we could help him find someone else.”

“Someone as prejudice-free as you are, maybe?” Aithne suggested, raising an eyebrow. “If you want him to let you fly him someplace with an actual military base, you might try calling him ‘Canderous,’ instead of ‘Mandalorian.’”

“Right, like he calls you ‘Outsider?’”

Aithne shrugged. “I provoke him, and I don’t mind a few nicknames.”

“No, you don’t,” Carth agreed. “Well, then . . . I’ll see you around, beautiful.”

Aithne smiled again. Never let it be said that the man did not know how to take a hint. She frowned as she turned away then, wondering when she’d come to enjoy him calling her “beautiful” for real, instead of part of a game for an audience.

Bastila commed in an hour, and when she did, she actually asked for both Carth and Aithne. Aithne checked with Canderous before leaving Big Z and Mission on the ship, confirming that he had no immediate plans to ship out of system. He said, “Not without a pilot,” which lent credence to Carth’s theory that Ordo might be amenable to another deal, at least to a hub world where he could hire a guy. Aithne promised Big Z and Mission she’d be back soon, and then she and Carth went to meet Bastila.

The Padawan met them at the entrance to the enclave. “I have spoken briefly with the Council. They request an audience with Aithne. You may come if you wish, Carth, at least to the door that leads to the Council Chambers themselves. The Republic may desire a report when you return, but Aithne and I must go at once.”

Carth seemed to stiffen, and his eyes met Aithne’s. “An audience with the Jedi Council. That’s pretty rare for someone who isn’t even a Jedi. What’s this about, Bastila?”

“I’m sorry, Carth, but I cannot tell you,” Bastila answered. The response worried Aithne. Carth was a trusted friend to the Jedi; Bastila’s reactions to him on Taris had proved that much. What did the Jedi want with Aithne that was confidential enough to keep him out? “All I ask is that you trust in the Force and the wisdom of the Council.”

“You’re asking a lot from the major,” Aithne said, leaning back on one leg. “And this time, from me too.”

Bastila wrung her hands together, and Carth hesitated. “I don’t like being left out of the loop,” he said. “But I don’t think either of us want to get you in any trouble with the Jedi Masters.”

“Depends on what her Jedi Masters want,” Aithne muttered.

“Come,” Bastila said, with a pleading look. “They are expecting us. I will lead you to the Council chambers.”

Aithne looked at Carth one more time. He gestured her to go on. She sucked in a breath. For Mission and Big Z, she thought, then followed Bastila inside the Enclave proper’s large double doors. “I feel like I’m walking into a nest full of kinrath,” Aithne said under her breath to Carth.

The Jedi Enclave was pretty at least, Aithne thought as she walked through the halls after Bastila. Green pastures and trees were evenly spaced between picturesque stone walls. The ceilings were high and airy. It was a peaceful sort of place. In a short time, they’d arrived outside the Council Chambers.

Carth peered inside the room. “Bastila is shaking her head at me,” he reported. “I think this is my stop. I guess I’m supposed to just wait here and report she took you into the Council for some secret conversation.” He looked disgruntled.

“I’d rather you were in there too,” Aithne said frankly. “Honestly, this whole setup gives me the creeps.”

“Yeah, you and me both, sister,” Carth agreed. “Still. They’re waiting for you.” He clapped her on the back, and with a last, doubtful look back at him, Aithne moved inside to find out what in the galaxy these people wanted.

Four very old, very male personages in robes waited there with Bastila. The red-skinned Twi’lek addressed her first. “Ah. So, you are the one who rescued Bastila.”

His voice was kind, but the expectation in his eyes made her spine tingle. “I think we’d agreed to call that a mutual thing, actually,” she said. “For the sake of her Jedi dignity and all that.”

She shot Bastila an apologetic glance, and the woman glared back at her. Aithne shrugged. She was nervous.

“It is appropriate that you are here,” he said. “We have been discussing your rather special case. I am Zhar, a member of the Jedi Council. With me are Master Vrook,” here he indicated a tall, thin, old man who was scowling at Aithne as if she were the reincarnation of Exar Kun or something. “Master Vandar,” here Zhar indicated an impossible-to-read little green alien from a species Aithne wasn’t familiar with, “and of course, the Chronicler of our Academy, Master Dorak.” Lastly, Zhar gestured to a bald man that looked to be in his late forties or fifties. This man, Dorak, looked at her as if he had not yet made up his mind as to who or what she was or what he thought of her. “Padawan Bastila I am sure you are already familiar with,” Zhar finished.

“Alright, we’ve met,” Aithne said. “I suppose I should be honored and all that, but really, I just want to know what you mean by ‘special case’ and what you want from me.”

“Bastila tells us you are strong in the Force,” Zhar explained. “We are considering you for Jedi training.”

So it was that. “Don’t,” Aithne told the Twi’lek plainly. “I have no wish to be a Jedi.”

Zhar smiled, as if she could not possibly mean it. Most people jumped at the opportunity to join the order, Aithne bet. “Do not worry,” he said. “I am confident in your ability to learn.”

The sour-looking Vrook quickly cut in. “Master Zhar speaks out of turn perhaps. We need indisputable proof of your strong affinity to the Force before we would even consider you for training.”

Bastila looked affronted. “Proof?” she demanded. “Surely the entire Council can feel the strength of the Force within this woman. And I have already related to you the events that took place on Taris . . .” She would have continued, but an unperturbed Vrook cut her off.

“Perhaps it was simple luck.”

“We both know there is no luck,” Zhar told Vrook. “There is only the Force. We all feel the power in Bastila’s companion, though it is wild and untamed. Now that this power has begun to manifest itself, can we safely ignore it?”

Vrook was unconvinced. “The Jedi training is long and difficult, even when working with a young and open mind. Teaching a child is hard. How much harder will it be for an adult to learn the ways of the Jedi?”

“I agree,” Aithne broke in, “and Bastila’s said this. But, more to the point: I don’t want to learn. I think you’re all missing that little detail. I have a say in this. I’ll look after my power in the Force on my own, thanks. If the Council would like to make use of my services as a freelancer, however . . .”

“You believe you are capable of navigating the path alone? Hah!” Vrook burst out. “Such pride! Such arrogance! This one is already on the path to the Dark Side,” he told the others, gesturing at Aithne.

The little green man spoke up for the first time. “As are many who are not given proper training, Master Vrook,” he said in a high, creaky voice. “Only through our guidance can we hope to lead those who have strayed back to the path of the light.”

Aithne frowned at that. He was talking like she’d already been on some kind of path. She resented the implication that she was theirs to guide, and also that she in any way needed their help. She started to say so again, but the historian was speaking now. “Traditionally the Jedi do not accept adults for training,” he said. “There are rare exceptions in the history of our Order, however, and you are a special case.”

It was the second time they had said that, Aithne thought. What made her special? Why were the Jedi Council even considering this?

“I agree with Master Dorak,” said the diminutive Master Vandar. “Many of our own pupils are leaving the Jedi Order to follow the Sith teachings. We need recruits to stand against Malak! With Revan dead—”

Vrook cut him off with a heated gesture. “Are you certain Revan is truly dead?” he demanded. “What if we undertake to train this one, and the Dark Lord should return?”

Aithne started, focusing abruptly on Bastila. “What does he mean?” she asked. “Revan’s dead. You were there when Revan died; I saw it back on Taris!”

Master Vandar’s mouth tightened. He shot what could have been described as an annoyed look at Master Vrook, if members of the mighty Jedi Council were allowed to feel such trivial emotions as annoyance. “We should discuss this matter more fully in private,” he said to Master Vrook, completely ignoring Aithne’s questions. “Bastila, you and your companion must go. This is a matter for the Council alone.”

Bastila bowed. “As you wish, Master Vandar. We shall return to Ebon Hawk and leave you to your deliberations.” Her voice was loud, and final. Aithne glared at her, trying to knock with her mind, but Bastila’s walls were up and as thick as Aithne’d ever felt them. Bastila beckoned to Aithne furiously, and fuming, Aithne followed her.

Major Carth Onasi had a streak of rebellion in him. Apparently, he’d tired of waiting at the door like a good boy and gone off to explore or do something otherwise more useful with his time. Aithne approved, but his disappearance didn’t put her in a better frame of mind when Padawan Bastila Shan began hissing at her as they walked back through the corridors toward the ship. “Aithne Moran, what were you thinking, speaking to the Council in that manner?” Bastila demanded.

Aithne stopped up short. They were in the courtyard now, in front of Ebon Hawk. “Honestly?” she asked. “Asking my questions in plain speech, speaking my desires in the same? If you can tell me in what way I was actively disrespectful, I’ll apologize. The fact is, they are your masters, not mine, and if anyone was disrespectful back there, it was the Jedi. They didn’t listen. You’re not listening either, Bastila! I will work with the Jedi. I would love to work with the Jedi. Doing so could give me certain opportunities I won’t have in the Republic army proper. I will not become a Jedi.”

“It could be the only way to harness your—”

Aithne was finished. She must’ve glared hard enough that Bastila saw it, because the girl stopped talking. “Crap,” Aithne told her. “I did just fine on Taris without any Jedi training. Carth and I did better than you did on Taris without any Jedi training, though I acknowledge and thank you for any help you gave us with your Battle Meditation in escaping Endar Spire and in the attack upon the Sith base. Let’s be honest, Bas, the reason you and your people want me in the Order is to control me, because, for some reason you aren’t telling me, that’s important.

“Now, I haven’t worked out just what that reason is,” Aithne admitted. “I can’t see what military or strategic advantage the Jedi hope to gain from spending time and resources just to put me on their rosters and under their command. But I can tell you, whatever it is, I’m not having it. I’ve told you the terms on which I’ll work with you. You can go tell your Council: it’s freelance, as I am, with Mission and Zaalbar, or nothing. And honestly, even under those circumstances, you’d do well to consider telling me what you’re not; why I’m so special; and why even though most of them want me, at least one of those Jedi Masters thinks training me could be a calamity on par with the return of Darth Revan, Lord of the Sith. Just for sake of transparency and trust between colleagues.”

Aithne turned on her heel and strode away. Bastila caught her wrist, stopping her. Aithne almost threw her, but when she turned back to the younger woman, the Jedi looked like she was about ready to cry. “Aithne,” she said, in a strangled voice. “None of this was my idea, believe me. If it were up to me, I . . .” she took a deep breath, seemed to dismiss what she had been about to say, and started again. “As you say, I am beholden to the Jedi Council. I am honor-bound to keep what confidences they command me to keep.”

She took another deep breath. “It is true as well, you did do well on Taris, though I believe you owe more to my Battle Meditation and your own connection to the Force than you may think. But please consider how much more you might do with the talents and discipline we could teach you. You have the strength within you, perhaps, not merely to wield a lightsaber but to become a true asset in the war against Malak, someone more valuable than entire platoons of rank-and-file Republic soldiers. You could be one of those with the ability to ensure no child ever has to see another Taris or Telos. Consider that that is what we see when we look at you, and consider what we see when we imagine that power turned to the Dark Side through neglect or lack of knowledge!

“Furthermore,” Bastila finished, her voice growing stronger and more passionate, “I believe our fates in this war are bound together, that you proved that when you saved me from the Vulkars. You can feel the connection between us, Aithne! I refuse to believe that it is . . . purposeless. There is something we two are meant to do for this war, and I will see it done because I cannot see another Taris or Telos. If you cannot understand any of the rest of it, you must see that much!”

Aithne jerked her wrist free of the Jedi. She rubbed it, staring down at the girl. Bastila sounded . . . desperate. As if she, the Battle Meditation-wielding darling of the Republic war effort, truly believed she needed Aithne if she was going to succeed here. And she did, too. Aithne could feel it, because there was some weird mystical Force connection, except it dated back to before the swoop race, because Aithne had been dreaming about Bastila before then. If she were really honest with herself, that, as much as anything else, was what had her uncomfortable with joining the Jedi Order. She didn’t understand what it was with her and Bastila. That was a responsibility she didn’t want and hadn’t chosen, and from that little if it were up to me, even though she’d been a lot better about shielding her emotions since the balcony back on Taris, Bastila still didn’t even like her all the time!

The fact that Bastila might not like Aithne, though, really only strengthened her case. She was asking Aithne to join the Jedi Order, to partner with her in some nonspecific great endeavor to defeat the Sith and end the war, even though she wasn’t sure about Aithne herself. And despite her pride—one of Bastila Shan’s most notable features—by doing so, by admitting to all the value the Jedi might see in Aithne as well as the potential threat she posed, she was also admitting her own insufficiency.

“You don’t lack for guts, do you, Shan?” Aithne commented. She frowned. The odd combination of anger, weariness, admiration, and sympathy she felt for the Jedi right now was familiar. It was . . . it was the way that Bastila had imagined Revan felt for her in those last moments. She turned away, disturbed. “I—I’ll think about it. That’s all I can promise. And Mission and Zaalbar are nonnegotiable.”

“I understand,” Bastila said. “I will return to the Enclave, and I will reiterate your preferences as well. Until later, Aithne Moran.” She bowed, and walked away.

CARTH

“I . . . I understand, Admiral,” Carth said, feeling his stomach sink as Saul and the war slipped away over the horizon, at least for the foreseeable future.

“We’re counting on you, Major,” Forn Dadonna told him from her position over Ebon Hawk’s holocommunications panel in the center of the main hold. “I’ll be expecting regular reports on your position and upon Padawan Shan’s engagements. Make sure you keep us informed.”

“Will do, ma’am. Signing off.”

He cut the connection and slouched into the nearest chair. He ran a hand through his hair. Republic liaison to the Jedi Council. It wasn’t exactly the assignment he’d been hoping for when he reported back after Endar Spire. He’d had enough of babysitting Padawan Shan, and besides, he had a feeling she’d be staying away from the front for a while. He got that the Republic wanted to keep an eye on her and her Battle Meditation, but making him the liaison seemed a waste of his skills and experience. And tucked away in some little Jedi base on an agrarian planet just wasn’t where he needed to be.

Probably came down to resources. It was more time- and cost-effective to order Carth to stay where he was at instead of allocating another soldier to come out here and charging a ship to take them. The Republic was already stretched too thin, in terms of men and ships. They needed everyone in the field exactly where they were. They needed Carth, too, but they also needed someone to track Bastila, and here he was, conveniently in place where there wasn’t a damn thing else he could do to be useful.

Here, he was about as much good as an academy hall monitor, and he’d already seen that was about the role he’d be given around the enclave. It had stung, that little headshake of Bastila’s, saying that despite everything he’d done on Taris, when it came to whatever game she and the Jedi were playing with Aithne, he was just going to have to settle for the bench. He’d left that little hall and all the staring Jedi Knights within the first two minutes to radio the Republic.

 He heard steps on the boarding ramp outside—one person, alone. Wasn’t heavy enough for Canderous, though the Mandalorian was out somewhere talking with someone about supplies, and Mission and Zaalbar were still onboard, back in the portside dormitory. Carth stood and walked to face the rampward hallway.

It was Aithne, back from the Jedi Council. She looked tired, and about as upset as he was. “There’s a face,” he said. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“Huh. Could say the same thing to you,” Aithne answered, glancing at him. “You look like someone just put you in the corner or reminded you to eat all your synth dinner.”

“Hah. Bout what happened, really. I radioed in to Admiral Dadonna. I’m grounded until such time as Bastila leaves the planet. I’m to negotiate with the Jedi to be made her permanent attaché. ‘Official liaison to the Council,’ the admiral called it. But what it boils down to is I don’t fight and I don’t fly unless Padawan Shan does.”

Aithne whistled. “Tough break for a man like you. I get it. If it helps, I get the sense I’ll be hanging out with Bastila for the foreseeable future too, and I’ll be grateful for the company.”

She obviously meant it, but for some reason, he wasn’t as gratified to hear it as he would’ve been a week and a half ago when he’d thought she just wanted to get rid of him, or just this morning when he’d known they’d . . . they’d turned some kind of corner, but thought they were about to go their separate ways. He’d been reluctant to say goodbye, and he’d meant it when he’d said he hoped they could stay in touch and maybe see each other again. But working with Aithne Moran in close quarters for the next several weeks or months? That was different. Carth could see that getting complicated, and he didn’t have the time or space for complicated with where his life was headed.

So Carth passed over the implied compliment, moving to the meat of what Aithne’d said. “So, the Council want you to stay with Bastila?”

“I’m not sure if they do or not, but Bastila wants me to stay with Bastila,” Aithne answered. “Says our fates are bound together or some Jedi crap like that. Wish I could write it off completely, but I can’t say I can.” She pressed her hand up to her head and shook her head sideways, like she was trying to get water out of her ears, then grimaced. “Most of the Council want to train me as a Jedi. They’re low on recruits, and apparently I’ve got the juice to make it potentially worth it even if I am old. They kept calling me a ‘special case.’ But I get the sense it works both ways, that training me could be as bad of an idea for them as it could be a good one. One of the masters, Master Vrook, kept talking like I was sure to go all Sith on them, and then . . .” Aithne hesitated, “Then he said something very strange about Revan maybe not being dead.”

Carth was as mystified as she was. “But killing Revan is what Bastila’s famous for, aside from her Battle Meditation,” he said.

“I think it may be metaphoric?” Aithne said, more like a question than a statement. “Like Master Vrook at least sees the same power or arrogance or whatever in me that existed in Darth Revan. And I don’t think he’s the only one. Some of the memories Bastila’s spilled over into my head . . . I think that’s the way she sees me too. For both good and bad values of ‘Revan.’ Vanguard of the Republic Armada material, hero of the Mandalorian Wars material. Also Dark Side extraordinaire material; resurrector of the Sith material; corrupter of tens of thousands, boot-on-the-Republic’s-throat material. Last best hope and possible coming doom all at once. I probably sound absolutely insanity-level conceited to say all that, and it’s crazy, I know it’s crazy, but . . .” Aithne trailed off and shook her head. “It’s just crazy,” she finished. “Sorry, I’m ranting.”

“No, it helps,” Carth told her, fascinated. He looked Aithne up and down. “I mean, you’re good, and I understand you might be gifted, but Revan? You think?”

“I don’t,” Aithne said. “I think it’s crazy. I just think they think so. Or I think I think they do.” She sat down in one of the chairs, and Carth sat opposite her. Aithne laced her fingers together and looked down at them. “I think they’re really desperate,” she said, voice quiet. “And without wanting to take unfair advantage, or pretend to be something I’m not, if they want me to try to be their hero, it could give me the kind of leverage that I need.”

“For Mission and Zaalbar, you mean.”

Aithne nodded, eyes distant. “Anyway, after Master Vrook asked if Darth Revan was really dead, the whole lot of them got upset. They kicked me and Bastila out. That was about it.”

“But if they make you a formal offer, you’re thinking you might take it.” Carth tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice. If Aithne did, the way she was making things sound, he might be stuck on Dantooine for years.

Her eyes focused on him, and her mouth turned down. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m going to think about it.”

BASTILA

Bastila had hoped the Council would allow her to stay in a cell up at the enclave. It would calm Aithne’s paranoia, and perhaps putting some physical distance between them would allow Bastila to strengthen the wall she had built within her mind to keep Aithne from resonating empathically across their Force bond, and even catching some of the telepathic bleedover from Bastila’s memories and thought processes. The bond had already proven an advantage when it came to convincing Aithne that their destinies were linked, and it had also allowed Bastila some insight into Aithne’s own mind, but the access Aithne had had into Bastila’s mind on occasion was far too dangerous.

But, as expected, when she had delivered her secondary report upon Aithne’s response to her audience with the Council and repeated wishes regarding the terms of their business relationship, the Council had ordered her to return to Ebon Hawk, to remain close to Aithne. You’d think if they thought Bastila’s bond with the woman so important, they might rely on the insights it provided her regarding Aithne’s precarious state of mind, but no—the Council didn’t see how too much closeness could give the entire game away. Aithne already had her suspicions, aroused in part through the influence of Carth Onasi. Bastila had at first been grateful for such an experienced pilot and soldier of the Republic to accompany them on Taris, but she was beginning to see ways in which his unexpected rapport with Aithne Moran could prove problematic. There was a certain irony in it, but of course she could not tell either of them of it.

Bastila passed the Mandalorian on her way into Ebon Hawk. Somewhat to her surprise, he didn’t ask her purpose aboard or try to hinder her boarding, simply nodded and sneered and went on with his negotiations with the Aratech suppliers outside.

Mission and Zaalbar were in the main hold, playing pazaak. The girl’s face was drawn but calm, for now at least. There was another problem, Bastila thought, though to Mission’s credit, she believed the girl was more conscious of the challenges she posed than Carth was. It was not that she begrudged the girl a place of safety and stability after all she had been through. She did not even altogether disapprove of the way Aithne had taken up responsibility for the girl’s wellbeing or for her own part in upholding the Wookiee’s lifedebt. It showed a promising streak of honor and conscientiousness that none of them had entirely expected in Aithne Moran. Bastila, for one, had been encouraged to find it. However, Aithne was also demonstrating her stubbornness in her insistence on retaining the Twi’lek teenager, along with the Wookiee who had sworn a lifedebt to her. It was unclear whether she was also demonstrating a propensity to attachment that could be unhealthy. After all, providing for both the girl and the Wookiee was not at all practical for Aithne and presented significant hurdles for her to overcome. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable for Aithne to conclude that Mission at the least might be better off in an alternative situation. If Aithne’s insistence on keeping the girl was born of a sense of responsibility for her fate, it would be one thing. If it had its roots in affection, in fear for Mission’s future, or an unreasonable pride that no one else could provide so well for the girl . . . Well. That would be another.

Bastila made her way to the empty portside dormitory. Crossing her legs upon the deck, she placed her hands upon her knees and closed her eyes. The metal deck of Ebon Hawk was hard and cold, but Bastila had trained to numb herself to such sensory details. She slowed her breathing, closed her eyes, and reached out with the Force. She was just beginning to search out her surroundings with her feelings when a veritable nimbus of Force energy came into the space.

Bastila resisted the impulse to hiss in on her next breath. The raw power, as ever, was nearly overwhelming, especially when encountered this way, but the confusion, anxiety, and apprehension emanating from Aithne Moran at the moment was staggering on its own account. Bastila opened her eyes.

“Bastila. I didn’t expect to see you here again so soon,” Aithne said.

“The enclave is rather inundated with in-residence Jedi and visitors from across the planet at the moment,” Bastila lied. “They have hoped you might be good enough to continue quartering me on Ebon Hawk until our business is concluded.”

“That’ll be up to Canderous, I guess,” Aithne said, “but I think I heard him say he wanted to stay here a few days at least, to hunt for a few trophy beasts to sell elsewhere and maybe a new pilot from among the locals or Aratech workers. I don’t think he minds the rest of us squatting in his ship, at least for now. Were you—you were meditating. Should I head someplace else, seeing as we have actual rooms where we can be alone now?”

Bastila sensed an opportunity. “That’s not necessary,” she replied. “Actually, would you care to join me?”

Aithne gave her a nervous smile. “Meditation won’t turn me into a Jedi, will it?” The words were wry and joking, but Bastila could sense some real nervousness behind the request. She also sensed a sudden, near-desperate craving for spiritual rest, and all at once, her invitation wasn’t merely about opening Aithne’s mind and habits to the idea of feeling and wielding the Force. Bastila felt compassion for Aithne. It stood to reason that the other woman could use some peace.

 “No,” Bastila answered, “but it may help you to clear your mind. I sense much confusion and anger within you.”

Aithne sat down beside her, crossing her legs. She closed her eyes, but after a moment when her spirit did little more than flounder, she opened them again. “So . . . what do I do?” she asked.

“Here,” Bastila told her. “Close your eyes again. I’m going to reach out to you through the Force. You may feel my presence in your mind once again, and in a more deliberate way than on Taris. Don’t be afraid: I will not examine any thought or emotion you do not wish me to see, but I may be able to help you sort through some of the fear and confusion you are feeling. Now. Try and clear your mind of all thoughts.”

Entering Aithne’s mind was as simple as opening an unlocked door, indeed, it was a great deal simpler to commune with Aithne in this way than it had ever been to commune thus with any other Jedi. Bastila felt and acknowledged her own worry over this and put it aside to deal with later. Right now, Aithne was the important one.

Bastila could not read the thoughts of other Jedi as such; such articulate, verbal telepathy had never been one of her gifts, though she had heard of Jedi who did possess the skill. Rather, she felt Aithne’s thoughts as a rise and fall of impulses within the Living Force, sequences of images and impressions generally too quick for her to follow to their sources or significations, as tides of emotion that she could speculate upon but just as easily misattribute completely.

Still, she sensed enough to understand the energy and restlessness of the other woman’s mind, the vitality and voracity of it. Aithne was attempting to follow her instructions, to let her thoughts spiral upward and away, but even as Bastila felt the effort, she also sensed one wayward tendril of thought extending back toward the main hold. Aithne’s anxiety surged, mingled with worry, affection, protectiveness, and a helpless sense of unpreparedness and inadequacy. Insufficiency, and a burning desire to be sufficient, not from pride or possessiveness but from a strong sense of compassion.

“You are thinking of Mission,” Bastila said. “Right now, in this moment, you must let her go. What must be done for her will become apparent in its time, but your fear for her can only paralyze you in the here and now. Do you understand?”

Aithne’s thoughts swirled and crystallized, refocusing now on Bastila herself. A surge of defensiveness, and then a rapid sequence of what could be cogitation, planning . . .

“I say no more than could be apparent to anyone who’s paid attention to you the past several days. Do you deny it?” Bastila asked. When Aithne’s defensiveness settled and she said nothing, Bastila nodded. “Very well, then. Let us continue.”

Aithne’s thoughts began to drift upward once again, but they did not cease. After a time, new images began to flash over the connection. These Bastila recognized: a city in flames, Sith cruisers raining blaster fire down upon the skyline of Taris. Deep sorrow surged in Aithne, and also an ugly, vengeful hate. But Bastila had been expecting these; she dealt with them many times daily herself.

“Do not dwell on Taris either,” Bastila instructed. “Malak is irrelevant here. He cannot hurt you, and you are powerless to hurt him, and so in this moment, your hatred for him is doing more damage to you than it is to him. Push it aside.”

Bastila felt a twinge of guilt, saying that Aithne’s hatred for Malak was doing more damage to Aithne than to him in this moment. The Jedi teachings would have her say hatred did more damage to the hater than the hated in every moment, that it was a futile and self-destructive emotion that led only to the Dark Side. Perhaps this was true, but right now, Bastila was finding a difficult time dismissing hatred for the perpetrator of the destruction of Taris in all circumstances. If the Jedi Masters wanted to correct Aithne at a later date, they could do so.

So as Bastila sensed Aithne distracted, wrestling with her feelings for Malak, trying to dismiss or deal with the hatred she felt for the Sith, she attempted to push a thought through into Aithne’s mind, an awareness of how it felt to do this, of the power there was in an openness to the Force, and some sense of Bastila’s own memories of past meditation.

Aithne’s thoughts focused on her once again as she did so. Bastila received an impression of both annoyance and amusement, then a single word, as clear as if the woman had spoken it out loud: Clumsy.  

For an instant, Bastila was so startled she backed away from the connection. She barely remembered to erect her shields before she gave way to fury with herself. She must never forget what power this woman had. Push too hard, or too quickly, and Aithne would learn more from Bastila’s own efforts than any of them were prepared to have her know, and Aithne would not hesitate to make use of what she learned. Teaching Aithne Moran was best left to the masters; assisting her was all that Bastila was equipped to do. Oh, arrogance had always been Bastila’s largest failing as a Jedi. She would have to be careful not to let it break her with this one, for she knew the most obvious failure in her mission with Aithne was not the only one that she could make.

Indeed, she felt Aithne’s presence on the other side of her mental shields this very moment, gentle queries and a far less gentle, sharp, and avid curiosity. Bastila quieted her emotions, emptied her mind, and let her shields come down partially.

“You surprised me just then,” she explained, careful to speak only the truth. “I did not expect you to sense my taking a more active hand in assisting you. I apologize, Aithne, I was curious to see if I could use our bond in another way to promote your understanding of this exercise.”

She felt Aithne’s understanding of this; the other woman would understand overreaching in an excess of intellectual curiosity. And it seemed that Aithne had indeed learned something from the thoughts Bastila had sent to her along their connection; Bastila now felt her consciously attempting to send her awareness out through the Force.

And now they ran into a new difficulty, for as Aithne’s consciousness expanded through Ebon Hawk, it encountered that of Carth Onasi. The pilot did have the only presence aboard Ebon Hawk a rudimentary Force user would note when first practicing this exercise; the spirits of Mission, Zaalbar, and Canderous Ordo were fainter within the Living Force, more difficult to detect. But Carth’s mere presence in the Force was not what Aithne responded to now. She not only appeared to recognize him, she reacted, and all at once, Aithne erected her own shields, and Bastila was barred from pursuing whatever line of thought or train of emotion she followed. A Jedi Knight could not have blocked out Bastila better.

“Good,” Bastila observed, letting a trace of her disapproval show in her voice. “That is precisely what you must do if you wish to keep me away from something you do not wish me to see. However, be aware that what you choose to conceal can be as revealing as if you had shared it. If I hadn’t known there was an uncomfortable ambiguity in your feelings for Carth Onasi before, I could hardly fail to notice it now, now could I?”

She felt a flash of real anger from Aithne, but Aithne did not break the connection. She did speak aloud: “If I say it’s off limits, Bas, it stays off limits. I’m not done deciding what I think and feel there yet. You don’t get to tell me.”

 “Fair enough,” Bastila agreed. “But if it’s a distraction, or is contributing to your anxiety, best let go your conflicting feelings for Carth Onasi, as well as your anger at me for mentioning them. Release all distractions, fears, or anxieties. Release all resentment. Clear your mind.”

Aithne’s shields remained for nearly a minute, but then, they lowered, and Bastila felt the other woman’s mind open up like long-withered flower being stroked by the first rays of sunlight after a frost. Once again, Aithne’s consciousness expanded, moving past Carth in the cockpit now and out onto the grasses of the Dantooine plain. Bastila’s mind went with her, and together, they meditated. They felt the brush of an brith’s wing as it stroked through the atmosphere. They felt the joy of the kath hound as it ran, unhindered and unchallenged, free as any creature alive.

Then, like an athlete in a foot or swimming race after warm-up, Aithne’s consciousness returned to the Jedi enclave, and this time, Bastila felt her touch the minds and emotions of far more than the ones she was most familiar with—Bastila and Carth aboard Ebon Hawk. She sensed Jedi consciousnesses, moving through the enclave, felt at least some notion of the fears and loves they tried so hard to set aside in line with the Codes of the Jedi Order. Bastila shrank back from her connection to Aithne then, embarrassed, not to mention ashamed at the hypocrisy of her fellow Jedi.

To her surprise, Aithne followed her. They opened their eyes and looked at one another, breaking the meditation. “Did I intrude on the others?” Aithne asked, concerned.

Bastila hesitated. “No; the thoughts and emotions you perceived were only on the surface. Observing them in this way is akin to observing the interplay of emotions on a person’s face or beneath their words in public—no more than any might discover, if they have the sense for it and the wit to interpret what they find. But . . . Jedi are not meant to hold on to their emotions at all. I wonder what you must think of us.”

Aithne seemed to think this facet of things unimportant, a small mercy. “The way I see it, the emotions a person experiences aren’t necessarily emotions they hold on to, right?” she reasoned. “Even a Jedi can’t banish all feelings from their mind, can they? You aren’t droids. So, you might feel joy in lightsaber combat like those brith and kath hounds feel joy in flying or running. You might feel angry or afraid when you’re threatened—or hatred toward someone who’s committed an atrocity. The feelings are just part of life, part of the Force. It’s what you choose to do with them afterward that makes a person Light Side or Dark Side, right?”

The idea, though awkwardly phrased, wasn’t too far off from teachings Bastila had heard from her own masters as a youngling or read in the Jedi Archives. “Yes,” she admitted, “that is the general idea, though I would not have expected one so new to the art of meditation or the ways of the Jedi to grasp it.”

Aithne shrugged. “I’m a fast learner. Now, are you too overwhelmed by my perspicacity to continue, or would you like to try again?”

The levity and arrogance of the statement was frustrating, but the intent behind it an effectual jibe. Bastila stared at the woman across from her, the faint smile of challenge upon her lips, and felt Aithne’s eagerness to sense the wider galaxy again in this way, and to do so with Bastila herself.

She found herself agreeing, to her surprise. “Very well.” She was perhaps not so surprised when, this time, once Aithne had quieted her mind and stretched out with her feelings, she reached out across their bond. Part of Bastila quailed to feel the entirety of that vast, wild mind trained upon her, upon their connection and its significance. She was forced to forget the feeling almost immediately, lest Aithne trace it to its source. She was forced to empty her mind as she had never done before, leaving it quiescent, empty. Instead, she focused on the feeling of the deck beneath her buttocks, the cold hardness of the flooring, the freshness of air drawn in from the planet of Dantooine, rather than recycled by the ship’s life support systems. She recited the Jedi Code inside her mind and began one of the youngling meditations upon its meaning, recalling to her memory not merely the words but the very look of the datapad screen upon which she had first viewed them.

Only when she felt Aithne’s attention move on from her to applying some of those meditative principles in her own practice did she dare to let her mind reconnect with Aithne’s in any active capacity. “Yes,” she said, bringing her shields up once again. “You have the sense of it now. I’m going to withdraw, and we shall practice individually, though side by side.”

She did not withdraw, however, or not completely. Rather, passively, she tried to wrap her consciousness around Aithne’s, as Aithne had wrapped the Jedi of the enclave within hers, touching Aithne’s surface thoughts and emotions, reading her Force signature.

She wanted to know what this woman was, was really, behind the stories, behind the mission. And within the hurricane of the Force swirling around Aithne Moran, what Bastila did see troubled her, more because in and of itself, none of it was what even the most stringent Jedi Masters could call evil. Oh, the capacity was there, certainly, but side by side with that capacity and at times inextricable from it was just as much capacity for great good. And that was the danger of the woman, Bastila thought: the paradox she represented, lifted beyond and away from the similar paradoxes presented by every other living thing in the galaxy by the profundity of her giftings. To ignore the threat she represented in an admiration of her virtues was to become vulnerable; to forget those virtues for fear of the threat was to make a perhaps unnecessary enemy, almost to write a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the edge between light and dark was sharp and subtle, and it was all too easy to cut one’s feet walking the line.

So do not, Bastila thought to herself, and embraced one of the simpler meanings of meditation. She left Aithne alone to be what she was and what she would, and elected to do the same, returning simply to the pattern of her breathing, the wave of the prairie grasses in the wind, the beat of the brith wings. Where the edge of light and dark did not exist, just the wholeness of the Force. And as she did, along their bond, she felt Aithne Moran’s mind finally settle into peace.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

Months of research, what felt like years of searching, and now, here we were, standing in front of the heavy black door that led to the culmination of all of it. As a Jedi, I would have suppressed my excitement, or else rationalized it all away. Now, I took time to revel in the sensation, to savor the moment—because I could, and because I knew it would all be so anticlimactic once I passed through the door.

One thing Alek always was good for was the hype. “The Dark Side is strong in this place,” he mused, with that charming talent he’d always possessed for stating the blatantly obvious. “I can feel its power!”

There was a little—a very little—merit among both Sith and Jedi to experiencing each new sensation as it came, identifying it as it came, but it was a youngling’s exercise. More experienced practitioners moved on to classifying sensations: what was the nature of the Dark Side that filled this place, and what effect would it have on those that came here? Masters moved on to application: how could one purify the energy here, or use it to fuel achievement?

With prodding, Alek could reach the second level. I doubted he would ever attain the third. That was why we—I—had decided that he should be the apprentice and I the master as we journeyed together along new paths unknown to either of us. The Force was with him, he was a better swordsperson than I was and a decent enough military commander, but he lacked vision, and sometimes courage.

He proved it once again as I finally decided there’d been enough savoring and moved to open the door. “Is this wise? If we pass through this door, we can never go back. The Jedi will surely banish us. Are the secrets of the Star Forge so valuable? It its power truly worth the risk?”

I looked back at him, wondering why in the galaxy he wanted to have this conversation again now, as if we hadn’t had it eighteen times before and determined that there was no way of knowing, that with all great discoveries—or rediscoveries, in this case—the resultant power and profit were always unknowable before the jump. But without the jump, no gain was ever made.

Alek’s questions weren’t even worth an answer at this point, but it didn’t matter. I would make the jump for both of us.

I opened the door.

CARTH

There was something about mornings that made it hard to stay angry. When Carth woke up the day after receiving his new assignment, he wasn’t any happier about it than he had been when he had first got it, but at least he was able to talk a walk outside the ship and appreciate that Dantooine was probably the nicest planet he’d been to in a while. If he had to be stuck somewhere, it was nice that it was a planet with clean air, open landscape, and the rule of law.

Not that Dantooine didn’t have its problems. Population-wise, it was hardly more than a colony, mostly agrarian. The enclave basically served as the center of government, and there were a lot of places in between homesteads where there could be some trouble from time to time. Just in the enclave docking area and the Aratech general store, Carth heard about a few packs of kath hounds that could go after livestock or anyone traveling on foot without protection. Some Mandalorian deserters from the war had camps here too, and a few of them preferred raiding the farms of the settlers to earning their own way. None of that would be problematic within the confines of the Jedi enclave itself, but signing up for rotations on peace-keeping duty could be a way to stave off the boredom for however long Bastila stayed here, or to earn a few extra credits.

Big Z had been the first up on Ebon Hawk. Carth ran into him outside the ship, talking with a Jedi runner from the enclave about a complimentary barrel of foodstuffs and basic supplies the Jedi quartermaster had sent over—not the stuff Ordo was negotiating with Aratech for, supplies for a longer journey, but enough to keep them fed for the next week or so. It was just as well; they were about out of synthetic protein and the dried meat and fruit the Exchange had supplied Hawk with to begin with.

Carth helped Zaalbar carry the supplies inside, and the two of them began a datapad catalog. Carth couldn’t understand the Wookiee language like Mission or Aithne, but he’d found out Big Z was fluent in spacer sign, a language aliens who frequently traveled used to communicate with others who didn’t—or couldn’t—speak or understand their verbal speech. It let him and Zaalbar talk to one another, at least over simple topics like the ship food supply.

Once they’d stored the food, Zaalbar went to the ship garage with some jerky to work on his bowcaster some more, and Carth put on a pot of caffa for the crew and got together bowl of fresh Dantooine grains and fruit. Fresh, real food wasn’t a luxury he enjoyed often as a pilot for the Republic, and he was just sitting down to eat when Bastila came out of the portside dormitories like a whirlwind. Her robes were wrinkled, her hair was disarranged, and she was about as white as the chalk in an unofficial landing zone. Carth stood.

“Bastila! Is something wrong?”

She shook her head at him. “Carth, forgive me, I cannot speak with you now. I must see the Council. Immediately.” She spoke in a rush, attaching her lightsaber to her belt upside-down. She started toward the exit ramp, then stopped and looked back at him. “Carth, when Aithne comes out, see that she follows me to the Council chambers. It’s very important. Do you understand?”

Carth blinked. “Yeah,” he answered, and before he could ask another question, she was gone. Carth sat back down. He picked up his fruit and took a bite, but the sweet juice that ran out of it only had about a third of his attention now. Something was up. If he had to guess, some Jedi mind thing that had to do with why Bastila and the Jedi here were so fixated on Aithne. Well. It could mean something happened with Padawan Shan sooner rather than later.

Mission walked out then, frowning. “Carth. What’s up?” she asked.

“Food,” he said. “Have a cup of caffa. There’s fruit too, courtesy of the Jedi.”

Mission’s eyes widened. “Real fruit?” She gave a little laugh. “Like fresh, undried? I’ve uh . . . I’ve heard of the stuff. Saw a black-market dealer selling some in a back alley once for a fortune. I can just . . . have some?”

She stopped at the bowl where Carth and Zaalbar had stocked the fruit, just staring at it. “Yeah, I guess they didn’t have a lot of fruit trees back on Taris,” Carth realized.

“A lot! Try ‘any!’” Mission corrected him. “Just a whole lot of seafood. Any agri products had to be flown in from off-world. Usually ended up in the Upper City.”

“Land-based agri products aren’t as rare on worlds with the space to grow them,” Carth said, “and Dantooine is still a farm-based society. They’ve got a lot of grain, vegetables, and orchards. Someone has to eat what they produce. Go on. You’ll like it.”

Mission eyed the fruit bowl doubtfully, half hope and fascination, half skepticism and incredulity. Then she picked up a fruit and started to smile. “And caffa too, huh? I know about that, but probably only the synthetic variety. ‘Bout the whole galaxy is addicted to the stuff, right?”

She made up the rest of her breakfast and sat down next to Carth. Then Aithne came out, looking about as pale as Bastila had three minutes ago. She was better dressed than Bastila had been, but on her, the pallor looked worse. She hadn’t looked too different back on Taris, unconscious with a head injury.

Mission swore loudly, and Carth looked sideways to see her making horrible faces and glaring at her caffa cup. “People drink this stuff?!” she demanded of him. “It’s awful! Even if it didn’t half burn your tongue off to drink it!”

“So, drink it slower,” Carth told her, passing over a can of creamer. “And put some of this in for the taste until you’re used to it.”

“Nuh-uh,” Mission declared. “I’m sticking to water, thanks.” She shoved her caffa cup away, and Aithne took it.

“Careful!” Aithne scolded. “This stuff goes for fifty credits to the half-kilo hub worlds where it hasn’t been adapted! Force, and it smells like this stuff’s real! The Jedi?” she asked Carth, taking a sip and closing her eyes appreciatively.

“Dropped it off with a crate of other stuff,” Carth confirmed. “There’s fruit too, and grains for porridge, or a pan bread, I guess, if you want to make it. Even got a dozen eggs.”

Aithne selected her own piece of fruit and leaned up against the bulkhead, eyes still closed.

“What’s eating you?” Mission asked her. “Mmm, this stuff’s actually good,” she remarked happily, licking her lips after tasting her fruit. “Better ‘n’ candied kelp. All cold and juicy!”

Carth was more concerned about Aithne than the kid’s first experiences with non-Tarisian fresh foodstuffs by now. “You look like you should sit down,” he told Aithne. “This morning’s getting stranger by the minute. First Bastila comes out looking like she saw a ghost, and now you.”

“Bad dreams?” Mission asked sympathetically.

“I’m fine,” Aithne said shortly, though she did come sit down near them. She sipped Mission’s caffa in silence and nibbled on her fruit. Some color came back to her face as she did. She pointed at Mission. “We’ve got stuff to do today, Vao,” she said. “You, me, and Zaalbar. I want to check with the Jedi clinic and the Aratech pharmaceuticals division. We should get you both physicals and the vaccinations for any major diseases transmissible to either of you on Dantooine or any of the major hub worlds, and there’s some other stuff you and I should take care of.”

“No way,” Mission complained. “First landing on an alien planet, and the first thing you want to do is go get shots? Won’t that mean I spend the whole rest of the day feeling sick? I wanna explore!”

“We can explore after I know you won’t come home with some Twi’lek-adapted Rodian plague,” Aithne said. “Then we’d have to get medicine, which means we’d need to find medicine, which isn’t always as easy as you’d think. And I might have to deal with Big Z fussing over you for a couple weeks instead of just today and tomorrow. Trust me—the shots are the better option.”

“You might want to hold off on that doctor trip until this afternoon,” Carth said. “When Bastila left the ship this morning, she said you should follow her to the Council Chambers, Aithne. Apparently, it’s urgent.”

Aithne looked sour. “Of course it is,” she muttered. She closed her eyes again. “I didn’t ask for dreams or visions or a freaky Force connection with Bastila Shan!” she murmured under her breath.

“Dreams?” Mission repeated. “You and Bastila both had nightmares last night. I was just happy it wasn’t me this time. You’re saying they were somehow . . . what?”

Aithne shook her head. “I don’t know, but enough for Bastila to get up and run straight to the Jedi Council again, apparently. She’s going to use this as proof for her ‘Aithne-should-join-the-Jedi’ argument, I know it.”

“I thought you’d decided to at least think about it,” Carth said.

“I know!” Aithne snapped. “I should, I know. Bastila made some points, and I meditated with her yesterday, and it didn’t feel that bad, but . . . I don’t know. It’s early, and I’m grumpy, and this whole thing freaks me out, is all. Okay. Okay.” She seemed to think a minute. “Where’s Zaalbar?” she asked then.

“He’s in the garage,” Carth answered.

“Could you grab him, Mission?” Aithne asked. “I want all three of you to come with me to the Council this morning. Carth needs to submit the Republic’s request for him to remain close to Bastila, so the Council should know that whatever they do with her will concern both him and the Republic, and I want you and Zaalbar present in that room with me so they can’t ignore that whatever they want with me, you guys are part of it.”

“Right,” Mission said, and ran into the other room.

Carth looked at Aithne. “You alright?” he asked.

Aithne drained the rest of her caffa and grimaced. “I’m not sure it matters whether I am or not. Got a destiny, and all that, which apparently means the Jedi can do whatever they want to do with me. Cheers to the free galaxy. Don’t happen to know about the Jedi medical plan, do you?”

“Hah, well, Jedi aren’t meant to have families, if you were thinking about a discount on the shots for Mission and Zaalbar.”

“So, selling out won’t even get my friends discount medical care. Guess it’s better to know up front,” Aithne mused. Mission and Zaalbar came in, armed up and ready to go, and Aithne tilted her head and led the way out of the ship.

Mission was impressed at the fountains and cool stone walls of the enclave. “Wow,” she remarked. “For people who don’t care about material gain or worldly pleasures and so on, the Jedi do pretty well for themselves.”

Aithne looked amused. “When you tell one of them that, let me watch,” she said.

Mission grinned. “Deal.”

“Gonna make annoying Jedi a hobby now, beautiful?” Carth asked her.

“Look, if I join up and don’t even get medical discounts, I’m gonna make it worth my while,” Aithne answered. “When it’s the Republic press-ganging me, I get to lecture their majors about superior Mandalorian infrastructure. When it’s the Jedi, I think I can at least sit back while my friend tells them their ideals of poverty and spiritual enlightenment are a bit flawed in their execution. When all that’s left to you is passive aggression, you really have to make the most of it.”

Her face was tight. Her voice was light and joking, but her expression looked . . . cornered. Frightened and angry. Aithne’d spent her life spacing, freelancing, going wherever she wanted. From what he could tell, she didn’t go in for long-term contracts or commitments. Now, for whatever reason, the Jedi were trying to nail her to the wall. She didn’t like it. She didn’t approve of the Jedi, he remembered. She’d said something about finding their rules backward and restrictive too. But now, part of her was convinced—either that she needed to join the Jedi after all or that there was no escape. But that just made her antsier—grumpy, and a little bit nasty.

She led them all down the corridors and to the door where Carth had been ordered off yesterday. “Here we are,” she said. “Everybody in.”

“You sure?” Mission asked, hesitating. “This kinda looks like an important-Jedi-business-only kind of place, you know?”

“If they’re making me important Jedi business, they’re making you important Jedi business,” Aithne answered. “And the Republic very much wants to be involved in Bastila’s important Jedi business, so Onasi’s coming too.”

Carth looked at her and shrugged. It was probably a horrible idea, but he wasn’t saying he wasn’t glad of the excuse. “If you say so, beautiful.”

He, Zaalbar, and Mission followed after her into the Council chamber, a domed rotunda with three human men, Bastila, and a small green alien standing in a semicircle at the center.

One of the humans, a man in orange, scowled as they approached. “Why have you brought these outsiders to our council, Aithne Moran?” he demanded.

Aithne cocked an eyebrow back at Carth, silently letting him know that this was one of the ones who hadn’t liked her. “Our talk concerns them,” she replied simply. “These are Mission Vao and the Wookiee Zaalbar. They’re with me, and any arrangements you want to make with me have to include provisions for them as well. This is Major Carth Onasi of the Republic Fleet, whom I’m sure figured largely in Bastila’s report to you regarding the happenings on Taris. The Republic would like him to continue on as a liaison to the Padawan, so if anything you have to say involves her current assignments or posting, Carth has an interest.”

She was hoping to stall for time, Carth thought, to throw a wrench into the Council proceedings or make it too difficult for them to work with her. If so, it didn’t work. Though the guy in the orange tunic looked offended, the younger human—still in his fifties, by the look of him—just looked faintly amused. He exchanged glances with the Twi’lek and the little green alien, and then the Twi’lek spoke. “Very well. If it is your choice to bring these companions into our councils, we shall abide by your wish. Major Onasi, welcome, and to you, Miss Vao and Zaalbar, welcome as well. I am Master Zhar Lestin. This is Master Vrook Lamar, Master Dorak, and the head of our council, Master Vandar Tokare.” Here he indicated the man in the orange tunic, the younger human, and the small green alien in turn. “Padawan Bastila Shan you know already.

“Miss Moran, Bastila has told us of a most unusual development,” he said then. “She claims you and she have shared a dream, a vision of Malak and Revan in the ancient ruins here on Dantooine.”

Carth turned to look at Aithne. She’d gone pale again, and her jaw was tighter than ever. More visions of Revan? he thought. The one she’d told him about before made sense, sort of, but as far as Carth knew, Bastila didn’t have any memories of Revan from before the assault on Revan’s flagship last year. The only times Malak and Revan would have been here together would have been years before that, maybe even before their attack on the Republic.

But Aithne just gave a short, stiff little nod.

“These ruins have long been known to us,” offered the man Master Zhar had called Master Dorak. “But we believed them to be merely burial mounds. Perhaps they are more than we first suspected if Revan and Malak found something there.”

“Bastila has described this shared dream to the Council in great detail,” the small Master Vandar said then. “We feel it is more than a dream: it is a vision. The Force is acting through you, as it acts through Bastila.”

“Cut to the chase,” Aithne said. “What significance does the Council see in what just happened?”

“You and Bastila share a powerful connection to the Force . . . and each other,” Master Zhar explained. “This is not unheard of. Connections often form between master and student, but rarely does a bond develop so quickly.”

“Whatever dangers may lie ahead,” Master Vandar added, “we cannot ignore the destiny that brought you and Bastila here to us. Together.”

“And, to cut to the chase . . .” Aithne prompted again.

“You and she are linked,” Vandar said, “as is your fate to hers. Together, you may be able to stop Darth Malak and the Sith.”

Everyone stood up a little straighter at that. To be honest, Carth hadn’t fully bought into Aithne’s take on how the Jedi Council saw her yesterday. Now, he started to believe her. The Jedi Council thought Aithne was powerful, alright. If he was hearing this right, about as important as Bastila was. If they were right about what the two of them were capable of, any help he could give to Bastila and Aithne would be worth it.

“But do not let your head be filled with visions of glory and power!” Master Vrook warned, glaring at Aithne, and confirming her read that the Council was also more than a little bit nervous about her. “Such thoughts are the path to the Dark Side! The way of the light is long and difficult, as you must learn. Are you ready for such hardship?”

Aithne hesitated. “Honestly, I still don’t see why either of us have to bother with Dark or Light,” she answered. “If I’m connected to Bastila and having these visions regardless of training status, it could be more efficient and cost effective just to pack me off with her to go save the galaxy as is. You sure you don’t just want to draw up a freelance contract and hire me on as adjunct talent?” She scanned the faces of the Jedi Council and sighed. “It’s a no-go, huh?”

“Know there is little choice in this matter, for you or us,” Vandar told her. “Across the galaxy the numbers of our order dwindle. We have sent many Jedi in quest of a way to thwart Malak’s advance.” He lowered his head. “Many have not returned. The Sith hunt the Jedi down like animals, ambushing and assassinating our brothers wherever they are found. We fear it is only a matter of time before they discover even this hidden refuge.”

Aithne wrinkled her nose. “Still not hearing an argument on how training me in the ways of the Jedi is supposed to help me and Bastila stop Malak. Sounds to me like your Jedi are running into more trouble than they can handle. It might be time for some unconventional thinking.”

The Council was silent for a moment. “Perhaps our hope lies in the dream you and Bastila shared,” Master Vrook said at last, and almost because he seemed to be the Council member wariest of Aithne, Carth respected him the most for it. Somehow, he seemed the most honest. Master Zhar was too eager to please, and both Vandar and Dorak felt secretive. “The Council has come to the conclusion that you and Bastila must investigate the ancient ruins you dreamed of.”

“Perhaps there you will find some clue, some explanation of how Revan and Malak were corrupted,” said Dorak. “And perhaps there you will find a way to stop them.”

“The dream seemed pretty clear that Revan and Malak were already on the path to the Dark Side before they ever set foot behind that door in the ruins,” Aithne remarked, “or I’d ask why you aren’t worried that going there might corrupt me and Bastila. But sure, I’ll be happy to scout out some ruins with Padawan Shan. What’s the catch?”

Again, silence from the nut gallery. “The Force flows through you like no student we have ever seen,” Vrook answered finally, “but you are willful and headstrong, a dangerous combination.”

“Before we send you to investigate the ruins, you must be trained in the ways of the Jedi so that you can resist the darkness within yourself . . . within us all,” Vandar pronounced.

Aithne folded her arms. “There it is,” she said, without surprise. “Took you long enough to get there.” She shifted her weight, and then, to his surprise, she turned to look back at him. Her face twisted in guilt and apology, and she made a small, weak gesture.

He shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he told her. “I have my orders regardless. But if I . . . if I had the power to maybe be the one that could end this, I’d think whatever price I had to pay would be worth it.” He knew saying it might mean he paid years while Bastila helped Aithne through her training. He also knew his personal vengeance didn’t matter when it came to stopping Malak completely.

“Carth’s right!” Mission exclaimed. “If the Council thinks you and Bastila could stop Darth Malak, you should do whatever you have to! Don’t worry about us! We’ll be alright!” Zaalbar roared in what Carth could only assume was agreement.

Aithne looked hard at the kid, pursed her lips, then turned to Bastila, who had yet to say anything at all. “What about you, Bas?” she asked. “I know what you told me yesterday, but are you okay with this? If I agree to this, it sounds like you and I could be stuck together for the long haul.”

“I shall try to temper my disappointment,” Bastila answered, with a small smile. “No. In truth, I feel as the others—whatever sacrifices we must make to stop Darth Malak must be worthwhile in the end. It has been some time since I have studied with another; if you agree to undergo Jedi training, I will do my best to assist you on the way. Not as your master, of course. Though that is the closest analogue the Jedi have for the bond between us, it is not entirely applicable in our case. I remain a Padawan. I would function more as a tutor and companion.”

Aithne looked surprised by this, but it also seemed to relax her. Carth guessed it would have been hard for her to agree to be an apprentice to a woman several years younger than she was. Then she turned back to the Jedi Council. “Then we need to discuss terms,” she said. “When a child comes to you for training, they understandably don’t have many responsibilities to consider. But, as you yourself have noted, I’m a special case. I have incurred certain obligations recently that cannot—and shall not—be forsworn.”

“Oh, Aithne, you don’t have to—” Mission started, but Zaalbar cut her off. This time, his remark sounded negative, like he was disagreeing with Mission.

“‘A place at my table,’” Aithne quoted, without looking at Mission. “When I give my word, I keep it, Mish, and if the Jedi want me to follow the Light Side, they don’t want to start by making me break a promise. I want a contract of employment drawn up for Zaalbar,” she told the Council. “He should receive comparable benefits and wages to any of your skilled workers attached to but not part of the Jedi Order—a mechanic, droid technician, or pilot, not custodial staff. If labor laws on Dantooine allow Mission Vao to be employed, I would like the same for her. If not, she should be considered a ward of the Jedi Order until such a time as she is employable, and I want a stipend for her upkeep. I also demand quarter and board for them wherever I am quartered or assigned.”

Mission was shocked. Carth wondered if she’d ever had anyone fight for her like Aithne was. A kid who’d never known her parents, whose brother had abandoned her at nine to eleven years old. Considering Aithne’d been her guardian for less than two weeks, she was doing a hell of a job.

“We will draw up the necessary paperwork and bring it to you by this evening,” Master Dorak promised her.

“What about quarters?” Aithne asked. “Padawan Shan claimed you have a room shortage at the moment, but Ebon Hawk is not our vessel, and Canderous Ordo could elect to leave at any time.”

“Ordo is the name of a Mandalorian clan, is it not?” Master Dorak asked.

Aithne nodded.

“Return to Ebon Hawk and speak with this Canderous Ordo, then,” Dorak suggested. “Tell him what we have decided. You may be surprised by his decision. It may be that this temporary companion of yours is more eager than you believe for a chance to fight in a war again.”

Aithne tilted her head and made a face. “Now there’s an angle I hadn’t considered: Ordo might want to help us save the galaxy, just for the challenge of it. But you’re right. I’ll see what he has to say and report back to you this afternoon.”

“Return to us as soon as may be,” Master Zhar instructed. “We must begin your training at once. You have a destiny on you that you must be prepared to face. The entire fate of the galaxy is on you.”

“But no pressure,” Aithne muttered under her breath, and Carth smiled more because he needed to than anything else. It did sound like they wanted Aithne out and fighting as soon as possible. Maybe he’d only be stuck here a little over a year. He’d stuck out yearlong assignments before, though hearing that the Jedi Council wanted to bring Canderous as well as the rest of them in might make it harder.

Aithne Moran dropped a bow to the Council. It was basically dripping in irony, but it was a bow. Then she turned around and headed back toward Ebon Hawk. Carth turned to follow her. He had a feeling he was going to have to get used to that and reflected that if he was going to be following the woman around until she became a Jedi and saved the galaxy, the view was pretty nice at least.

MISSION

That Jedi guy was right about Canderous. Once he heard that Bastila and Aithne might have a destiny to stop Malak, he decided he didn’t mind staying on Dantooine a while, and that they were all welcome to stay on Ebon Hawk too. Carth didn’t like it, but Mission thought the old bounty hunter actually liked having the rest of them around. He liked getting under Carth and Bastila’s skin, riling them up a little, and Mission thought he actually respected Zaalbar and Aithne. He didn’t care one way or the other about her, but Mission was used to that.

Mission had expected she and Zaalbar might catch a little bit of a break when it came to the shots and the physicals, since Aithne needed to start training right away and all. But no, as soon as Aithne had those papers from the Council saying Zaalbar was an employee of the Jedi Order and Mission was some kind of ward, whatever that meant, Aithne insisted the three of them march right over to the enclave infirmary together. Zaalbar’s physical and shots turned out to be a piece of cake in comparison to Mission’s, though; the number of diseases adapted to infect Wookiees turned out to be a lot smaller than the number of diseases that infected Twi’leks. The droid doctor at the infirmary had an explanation for that—apparently Twi’leks were genetically close enough to humans that a lot of human diseases had been able to jump the species barrier, and humans were walking petri dishes. The battery of shots that droid wanted to stick Mission with was impressive.

“You aren’t scared, are you, Mission?” Aithne teased her.

Mission scoffed, even though she really was. “Of a few little needles? Please. I don’t understand why you’re doing all this for me, though. I got along fine on Taris without any fancy shots from a doctor.”

“Yeah? And how often were you sick in a flophouse for a couple weeks you could’ve been doing something else? Or running around with your nose streaming, hacking your head off?” Aithne challenged her.

Mission made a face at her. “They make ‘em tough in the Lower City! I was never really sick. Not bad, anyway.” 

“And with these shots, when we’re off saving the galaxy and we run into some weird space disease that never made it to the Tarisian Lower City, you won’t be,” Aithne told her. She nodded at the droid doctor, and he started prepping the first round of shots for Mission. But before Mission could tell him to wait, or get too nervous, Aithne was talking again. “There’s other stuff you’ll need. Are you cycling yet?” She gestured down there, and Mission turned hot.

“Geez, Aithne, there’s some stuff it’s just not polite to talk about, you know!?”

“Not when we need to plan the quantity of supplies we ask the quartermaster for,” Aithne answered. She tilted her head at the droid doctor, who had just come up next to Mission. Mission only then noticed he was right there with the first shot. She hissed as he injected her with it. “Well?” Aithne asked her.

“Yeah, alright? I started having to deal with that mess last year. Not that you can really call it a cycle, I think. Never know when I’m going to have to make a deal for some pain meds and bandages. It’s the worst!”

Aithne looked at the droid doctor. “Is the irregularity a function of her age, her body type, or nutrition?” she asked.

“Likely a mixture of the three, Apprentice,” the droid doctor replied. “I can offer a more likely hypothesis once I have processed her blood work and urine sample, but it is statistically probable that given the passage of a standard year or longer and the implementation of a vitamin-enriched and nutritionally appropriate diet, Miss Vao’s courses shall auto-regulate. If the problem is a serious concern, I can provide medication to assist.” The droid doctor had thrown away the first empty syringe and suctioned the second full one into its syringe attachment. It hovered over to Mission again, and she braced herself for the stick.

“Geez!” Mission said again. “I’m just going to die of embarrassment over here, if that’s okay.”

“Don’t tense up like that,” Aithne told her, “It makes it worse. Just stay relaxed. Do you want meds to regularize your cycle?” she asked.

“No! What I want is to stop talking about it! Stop laughing, Big Z!” she snapped at the Wookiee, who was sitting on the next cot over, laughing his head off. “This wouldn’t be so funny if you were a girl!”

“Alright. I’ll stop humiliating you in a second,” Aithne said. “There’s a subdermal implant you can get here, or at Aratech if the Jedi are too high and mighty to carry it. Needs to be replaced every three years or so, but if you make . . . um . . . certain choices with guys, it keeps those . . . choices . . . from having inconvenient consequences you may otherwise have to deal with.”

“We’re talking about sex and kids now?” Mission moaned. “Aithne, I don’t do that stuff! Guys are creeps! Anyone who tries to touch me, I kick him where it hurts and run, or get Big Z to scare him good!”

Aithne was quiet a moment. “Somehow I’m both happy and sad to hear that,” she said then, as Mission glared at the droid doctor, who had got her really good on his last pass. “I had to ask, Mish. And it is your choice. I’m getting my implant replaced while we’re here. Not all guys are going to be like the ones you might be thinking of back on Taris, or not forever. If you meet a nice apprentice while we’re staying on Dantooine or something—” she shrugged. “So long as he’s not more than three years older than you and you don’t try to run off and get married or something stupid like that, I don’t care. But if anyone on Ebon Hawk ever does try to touch you, run it the same way you did back on Taris, and tell me besides.”

Mission was feeling a little woozy from all the shots by now. She looked and saw the droid doctor just had two more left. “You really care, don’t you?” she asked Aithne. “You’re really going to look after me and Big Z as long as we need you—whether we like it or not.” She knew she was probably more likely to mind than Zaalbar, but she also knew Big Z didn’t care if she included him just to make herself feel better. “Back there in the Council Chambers, you said all that stuff to the Jedi Council just so we could stay with you, making sure Zaalbar gets paid, even! Back on Taris, my br—people let us hang out, sometimes, like at the Bek base, you know? Sometimes gave us a discount if there was an open room in the flophouse. But they never went out of their way to make sure we’d be alright. And it’s fine! I didn’t need ‘em! Me and Big Z, we can look out for ourselves, or look out for each other, when we can’t. But . . . it’s kind of nice having someone take the trouble, you know?”

/This is the way families are supposed to treat one another, Mission,/ Zaalbar said, kicking his legs beneath the med table he sat on. /Aithne Moran understands that, if others have not./ He looked over at Aithne. /Rather than allowing me to pay it, you continue only to increase the debt I owe you, for Mission as well as for myself./

“Since they’re saying I have to save the entire galaxy now, I’m guessing you’ll get your chances to pay me back,” Aithne said. She looked over. “Last one,” she told Mission. Mission’s arm had actually gone almost numb from how many times it had been stuck, she looked down in surprise to see the droid doctor injecting the last syringe into her and a row of neat, brightly colored bandages down her bicep. He ejected the empty syringe and added one more—a green one.

“Are we done now?” Mission demanded.

“Almost,” Aithne promised. “I’m not quite done.” She looked at the droid doctor. “Do you guys have the fertility blocker in stock here?”

“That implant requires a special dispensation from the quartermaster for me to place inside a Jedi and is generally reserved for those species which require regular sexual release for health reasons,” the droid doctor answered primly. “Humans are not classified among them, as the Council believes they may control their urges through nonsentient aids and masturbatory exercise, or become stronger through the act of self-denial. The Jedi Code does not forbid sexual congress among members of the Order, but the Council feels encouraging access to regular sexual activity without consequence for species which do not require it for health reasons promotes moral dissipation and attachment, which both lead to the Dark Side.”

“I suppose I am living in what is basically a monastery,” Aithne muttered.

“The fertility blocker implant is sometimes available from the Aratech general store’s pharmaceutical offerings,” the droid doctor offered. “Members of the Jedi Order without dispensation for the implant from the quartermaster are simply required to purchase it and pay for implantation or implant replacement services from Aratech, rather than undergoing the procedure at the enclave infirmary free of charge.”

Aithne blinked. “That’s . . . oddly helpful. Thank you, C9-D5,”

“I am programmed to assist.” The droid doctor turned to Mission and Zaalbar. “Both of you should return to Ebon Hawk and remain there for a period of forty-eight standard hours. You may experience fatigue, nausea, or mild fever. These symptoms are normal and will abate. However, if you begin vomiting, if you experience diarrhea, swelling, hives, or a fever above—” he roared something in Shyriiwook to Zaalbar— “or 39.4 degrees for you, Miss Vao, you should return to the infirmary immediately, as these may be symptomatic of a dangerous reaction to one or more of the vaccines you have received today. Be sure to drink plenty of fluids and get plenty of rest. Mr. Zaalbar should eat eight small meals each day, and Miss Vao three main meals with at least two snacks. I have transferred the details onto this datapad.” He waved it in their faces, and Mission took it from his claw attachment.

“Yeah, yeah, thanks a lot.”

“You are both cleared for normal activity once forty-eight hours have passed, but there are certain changes that should be made to each of your diets for optimal health and nutrition. Mr. Zaalbar has not been consuming nearly enough protein, while Miss Vao’s scans show traces of several vitamin deficiencies. Details are on the datapad. The two of you are in otherwise excellent health. The Jedi Order bids you both good day. Enjoy a healthier tomorrow.”

The droid doctor turned around and hovered over to the corner of the infirmary. Then he powered off. Mission considered him a moment. “You know, I like Teethree better,” she said then. “Come on, let’s go.” She jumped down off the med table, but she was still woozy from the shots, and she tripped.

Aithne caught her good arm and steadied her. “Take it easy, Mission. I just put your system through a lot. You handled it like a pro, but you’re gonna be a little weak for a while. Just . . . take it slow, okay?”

Mission shrugged her off. But she didn’t do it too hard. The three of them started out of the infirmary, in a dark, quiet corner of the Jedi enclave, right above the Archives. “This implant—the fertility blocker,” Mission said. “Why do you want something like that, anyway? You planning on getting some as a Jedi?”

Aithne made a face. “As far as I’m concerned, I agreed to train as a Jedi this morning, not become one. And anyway, you heard Ceenine, the Jedi aren’t quite so tyrannical as to ban sex. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just figure I’d rather be prepared than not, and my implant’s due for an update.”

“You just go around sleeping with people?” Mission asked, skeptical. Aithne didn’t seem to be the type.

“Hah, no, I’m not that adventurous,” Aithne said. She made another face, this time of dissatisfaction. “I’ve been living within Council-approved lines a lot longer than I want to admit, really. But I’m also smart enough to know that when you do connect with somebody, you don’t always have the time to set up an appointment with a technician at the Aratech pharmaceutical office. There’s not always an Aratech pharmaceutical office available.”

“Uh-huh,” Mission said, unimpressed. “Any reason you want to ‘be prepared’ just now?”

But Aithne wasn’t biting. “My body, my business, Mission. Soon as you know how to take care of yours when you’ve got the credits or the benefits, it’ll be the same way for you. Next time you go in to see the doctor, you don’t even have to let me in the room if you don’t want, let alone tell me what they say.”

“You don’t have a great concept of gossip, do you?” Mission noted. “Well, if you ever want to tell me about your secret passion for Carth and all those gross Jedi-unapproved things you want to do with him, I’m there.”

Aithne didn’t say anything, but Mission was satisfied with her response. Her cheeks had gone pink, and her freckles stood out, and once again, Zaalbar was just about laughing his head off, in that quiet way Wookiees had. The boot was on the other foot now, Mission thought. She could embarrass Aithne too! Payback for the whole cycle thing in the infirmary.

They left the enclave and were crossing by the Aratech general store when a girl stopped to stare at them. “Mission?” she called. “Mission? Is that you?!”

Mission glanced over to see another Twi’lek, then scowled. She knew that cantina rat! Yellow skin—like sunshine, Griff had called it; like piss, Mission thought! Way too much goo on her face, as curvy as Aithne, but shorter, and letting it all hang out for everyone to see in her dancer’s costume. And grinning like she was Mission’s best friend in the world! “It’s me, Lena,” she said. “Remember? I was dating your brother back on Taris.”

Was! So, she’d dumped him! She was an even bigger loser than Mission thought! Mission folded her arms across her chest. “Lena? What are you doing here? Where’s Griff?”

Aithne stepped closer behind her. “I’m just passing through,” Lena told her. “Griff and I broke up a few months after we left Taris together. Probably for the best. Your brother can be charming, Mission, but he’s bad news.”

Mission saw red. “Don’t you start trashing my brother, you cantina rat!” she yelled. “You take that back, or I’ll smack you so hard your head-tails pop off!” She swayed, feeling sick, and wasn’t sure if it was all the shots or seeing Lena’s painted face again.

Lena stepped back. “Wha—Mission, what’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Why are you acting this way?”

“I think Griff’s become something of a sore spot over the years,” Aithne said quietly from behind Mission.

Lena glanced back at Aithne. “Yeah, I know how she feels,” she said. “Griff can be pretty frustrating. I guess that’s why Mission didn’t want to come with us when we left Taris.”

Mission surged forward, but Big Z caught her, held her back from hauling off and punching Lena. “You . . . you liar!” she sputtered. “Griff told me you didn’t want his little sister tagging along—that’s why he had to leave me behind!”

Lena’s green eyes flashed. “Is that what the Hutt-spawn told you?” she demanded. She stepped forward, almost like she wanted to hug Mission or something. Mission drew back, closer to Big Z and Aithne. “I wanted you to come, Mission,” Lena told her. “I even offered to pay for your ticket! Why not?” Her face twisted. “I paid for everything else when I was with that freeloader! But Griff told me you didn’t want to leave Taris. I said we shouldn’t even go then. But he said we’d come back for you after we struck it rich on Tatooine—just another one of his lies!”

The courtyard was spinning now. Mission clutched at Big Z so she could keep standing. “No,” she said. “You—you’re the one who’s lying! Griff wouldn’t—he wouldn’t try to leave me behind!”

Looking at Lena, though, suddenly Mission didn’t feel so sure. She was remembering all Griff’s debts, the way always sweet-talked people into paying his way or was off on his next get-rich-quick scheme. He’d complained about Mission a lot, those last couple years, now she thought about it. But he couldn’t—he wouldn’t try to leave her, right? Not his own sister!

Aithne’s hand closed over his shoulder. “You know those worlds Carth mentioned, worse than Taris?” she said. “Tatooine is one of them. Griff might’ve thought you’d be better off on Taris, or happier or something. Idiot move, but . . .”

But Lena put her hands on her hips and shook her head-tails. “Think about it: If Griff wasn’t trying to ditch you, Mission, then why didn’t he tell you where we were going? After we left Taris, he told me looking after you was holding him back; Griff’s always looking to blame other people for his own problems. That’s why he abandoned you. He did the same thing to me too, as soon as I ran out of money. He started blaming me for all his problems. Like it’s my fault his get-rich-quick schemes never work out!”

Mission stared. Griff had dumped Lena? But she thought . . . she thought . . .

“So where is Griff now?” Aithne asked.

Lena shrugged. “Still on Tatooine, as far as I know. Not that I really care anymore. And if Mission was smart, she’d forget about that no-good con artist!”

Mission looked up at Aithne. “But . . . Griff is my brother. I can’t just pretend he doesn’t exist!” She put a hand to her forehead. She was sweating, clammy and hot at the same time. There was that fever Ceenine had warned her about. She shook the sticky sweat off her palm. “If he was here to defend himself, Lena wouldn’t be saying all this bad stuff about him.”

Lena made a disgusted noise. “Hey, if you want to talk to Griff, go ahead. Last I heard he was going to make a fortune working the Czerka Corp mines on Tatooine. But as far as I’m concerned, he’s out of my life forever!”

Mission glared at Lena. “Griff’s better off without you anyway, you table-dancing, brother-stealing homewrecker!”

Lena sighed. “I guess that’s my cue to leave then,” she said. She extended a hand toward Mission, then dropped it. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Mission. But one day you’ll see I’m right about your brother. I only hope it’s not too late.” She walked away, out toward the settler’s dock that Canderous said was a little ways outside the Jedi enclave.

“Mission,” Aithne said, after she’d gone. “You alright?”

“I need to lie down,” Mission said. She let Big Z and Aithne help her into Ebon Hawk and down the halls to her bunk in the portside dormitory. “But don’t tell me you believe Lena’s lies, okay?” she asked them both. “Griff might be working as a miner on Tatooine, but the . . . the rest of her story is bantha poodoo. You can’t . . . can’t trust someone like her!”

“She seemed like she was happy to see you before you went off on her,” Aithne said.

“Just stupid mind games, probably,” Mission insisted. She sat down on her bunk. “Hey, I’m really thirsty all of a sudden,” she said. “Before you head back to the Jedi, could you . . . could you get me some water?”

“Sure, Mish,” Aithne said.

Everything was going kinda fuzzy. Mission was glad about that. She didn’t want to think about Lena anymore, or Taris, or anything but being on Ebon Hawk with friends who cared about her. “At least Griff’s free of her clutches,” she mumbled to Zaalbar. “Hey, you think Aithne might take us to Tatooine someday, when she’s done with her training and out saving the galaxy? Maybe I can talk with a Czerka rep on Tatooine. Find out what happened to my brother.”

/If you need to go, we will find some way to make it happen, Mission,/ Zaalbar said. /But I do not think this Lena is as much a liar as you think. You may want to consider that things with your brother were not as you believe. Not all family is as kind as Aithne Moran./

“Yeah, she’s something else, isn’t she?” Mission murmured, as Aithne came back with a canteen full of water, but she only had time to take a couple of sips before she fell asleep.

Stupid shots.

AITHNE

The next six weeks passed quickly. Aithne was busier than she could remember being in her life. There was a lot of ground to cover with her Jedi training, and the Council weren’t inclined to give her years to pass through her apprenticeship with Malak out there burning the galaxy. And indeed, Aithne didn’t seem to need it. She found there was a symmetry and a rhythm to most of what the masters wanted to teach her, and within the first few weeks, she started picking up new exercises almost by instinct. The lightsaber forms they showed her appeared to be mere variations of the vibrosword techniques she already used in combat, though it took her time to adjust to the sensation of wielding the lightsaber itself, the quickness of the blade and how anything but Mandalorian beskar had very little resistance against it. Jedi senses—stretching out with her feelings—was just another name for something Aithne had often done before, though she hadn’t thought so. Actively making use of the Force as channeled and directed energy fields at rest or in combat was something she hadn’t done before, but it still came naturally, once she named the impulses and auras she felt around her all the time as the Force.

The other apprentices and Padawans talked about her behind her back. There were a lot of rumors about how she might have acquired her skills. That she secretly was a Mandalorian, instead of just traveling with one and speaking the language, and had gotten her knowledge of the Jedi from fighting and killing them in the Mandalorian Wars. That she’d been a Dark Jedi before she came to Dantooine and might be a spy for the Sith. Most of it was ridiculous, and Aithne wrote it off as such.

She didn’t spend a whole lot of time with Jedi other than Bastila and the training masters anyway. Zhar was a constant presence, advising her, pushing her—when she needed it, praising her every now and then. Bastila was, as she had said, tutor and companion. She was Aithne’s most frequent sparring partner, and after the masters had gone over a new concept or Force technique with Aithne, she’d spend hours discussing ideas or practicing with Bastila. They argued over the meaning of good and evil, the purpose of the Force, and the Jedi’s place in the galaxy. Bastila had led a very sheltered life, and Aithne found their relationship ended up being far from a one-way space lane. Bastila was always interested to hear about life out on the Rim, how people survived outside of the Republic and the Jedi’s normal stomping grounds. She liked hearing about alien cultures Aithne had seen, and practicing some of the languages Aithne knew, with the Force to help her understand them. In turn, she told Aithne that her gift with languages actually was due to her Force Sensitivity, and she showed Aithne that while the Jedi didn’t live up to everything that Aithne thought they should be, they did try to help where they could. She introduced Mission and Aithne to other wards of the order, orphans the Jedi were educating at the enclave to place out in the Service Corps, with jobs that would support them and their families all their lives. She took Aithne to the chamber a few times when the Council intervened in feuds between the settlers, using the Force to make fair judgments between them.

When Aithne wasn’t with Bastila or the training masters, she spent a lot of time in the Archives, devouring datapads on the Order’s history, epic poems on famous Jedi of the past, and more. She downloaded several holovids onto Teethree and took them back to Ebon Hawk to watch with the others.

The rest of the time, she was on Ebon Hawk, building up her strange new family. She arranged for Mission to have access to some of the Archive records, writings, and novels. Spent a little over a week of evenings writing a learning plan for her, which she talked Carth into implementing mostly, though days the Council gave her a break, she’d take a hand. Remedial Huttese, to build the girl’s skills back up in one of the most useful second languages in the galaxy. Star charts and astrogation, as well as crash courses in the culture and politics of the Republic and some of the major clans, corporations, and hub worlds. Basic arithmetic and algebra, as well as the sort of domestic economics that were useful if you lived your life on a starship. Also, marksmanship, use of a second blaster, and hand-to-hand fighting for when Mission happened to in a bad situation unarmed or away from Big Z.

There were limits to what Mission was willing to be taught. She knew that back on Taris she hadn’t learned a lot of what they wanted to teach her now, and she was smart enough to see how most of it could help her working, when she was legally allowed, take care of herself in a way that didn’t involve scrounging in places crawling with things like rhakghouls or picking anybody’s pockets. But if they tried to teach her too much at once, she started feeling like a kid. She got stubborn or said a girl like her was too dumb to learn all that anyway—patently false, as she was an incredibly bright and capable individual, not just for her age but for anyone. When she got that way, Aithne and the others quickly learned to let her teach herself for a while, from the Order datapads or holovids—or better yet, to ask Mission to teach them something; the kid really was a genius with mines, salvaging, and security tech.

Aithne debated different ideas of honor with Ordo and Zaalbar. She made up a chore rotation for cooking, cleaning, and maintenance on Ebon Hawk. Some of them fell into roles more naturally than others; Ordo was the best cook aboard, and Carth knew starship systems better than anybody, but Aithne didn’t like letting Bastila and Mission slide just because they weren’t used to doing chores in space. And sometimes, Aithne spent time in the hold just doing upgrades and maintenance on T3-M4. It was relaxing, in the middle of all the other things she had to do. Sometimes it felt more meditative than meditation, and Bastila told her that there were indeed Jedi who had certain affinities for droids and nonorganic systems.

At first, Aithne often talked and joked with Carth too. She liked him as much as she ever had, and working with him was often easier for her than working with any of the others. There were cultural barriers with Ordo and Zaalbar. Bastila could be prickly about Order principles, and Mission could be prickly about her age. But Onasi was generally friendly and easy-going, and when they had minor disagreements about the division of labor on Hawk; Mission’s tutoring; or Aithne’s somewhat informal, disrespectful approach to her training, Carth continued to actually enjoy them.

But as the weeks passed, Onasi got quieter. He wasn’t happy, Aithne could tell. He’d told her from the outset he wasn’t thrilled about being assigned to Bastila, away from the front, and she began to see the toll it was taking on him. He started pacing around the ship at nights, looking up at the stars and muttering to himself. He put his differences aside with Canderous and started going on hunts with him and Zaalbar in the mornings sometimes, which would’ve been a good thing—the Jedi started getting reports of settlers the three of them had helped with kath or raiders on the plains, and Aithne knew that was down to Carth—except she also knew his disapproval of Ordo was rooted in his ideas about life, and that he was apathetic enough to stop bickering with the Mandalorian, just to get out of the enclave, was a bad sign.

She wanted to talk at length with him about it, but she didn’t really have the time to do so in private. Bastila watched her with the flyboy. So did Mission, but Mission was just nosy. Bastila disapproved. Padawan Shan seemed to think her half self-appointed position as Aithne’s Jedi tutor also made her Aithne’s moral guardian. Since their first meditation session, she’d occasionally taken it upon herself to lecture Aithne on the Jedi views on attachment and how it led to the Dark Side, especially when Aithne spent too much time talking with Onasi. Bastila’s discouragement did not lead Aithne to agree with the Jedi philosophy on attachment. Indeed, perversely, it made her want to spend more time with Carth, even if the two of them were just friends—just to get Bastila’s back up and make Master Vrook look like he’d smelled something rotten. But Bastila’s discouragement did make things awkward and difficult, which was probably all she meant to do in the first place.

But with one thing and another, soon, they’d been on Dantooine several weeks, and one afternoon, Master Zhar told Aithne she was ready to take the trials to ascend to Padawan, the same rank Bastila possessed within the Order. Once she had, she knew, her time at the enclave would end, and she and Bastila would be dispatched off to the ruins they’d dreamed about and then out to save the galaxy. She wouldn’t have the Jedi around anymore to teach and advise her, even when she disagreed with them and told them so.

It left Aithne thinking. People around the enclave were edgy about Revan, and what with that and the fact that the memory Bastila had bled into her brain back on Taris, the dreams she’d had for weeks before that, and the dream she’d shared with Bastila upon her arrival to Dantooine that had served as the catalyst for her training with the Jedi had all involved Darth Revan, Aithne was starting to sense in all the most Jedi ways that Darth Revan was going to be pretty important to whatever her and Bastila’s destiny was supposed to be. When she and Bastila finally went to the ruins they had dreamed of, they’d be following Revan’s journey. And even though Aithne got a vague feeling of dread anytime Bastila or anyone spoke Revan’s name, she suddenly felt that if she didn’t take this opportunity to learn more about the hero of the Mandalorian Wars and the terror of the Republic—as the Jedi saw them, she was bound to fail at whatever she was supposed to do. In the back of her mind, too, Aithne wanted to know why it was that she seemed to be so associated with Revan, in Bastila’s mind in particular, but also vaguely with every Jedi who mentioned Revan to her.

So, the day Zhar told her that her trials would be the next day and dismissed her to return to Ebon Hawk, Aithne broke protocol and stayed, legs crossed on meditation mat where she had spent the last couple hours studying. “Master Zhar? Without intending to trespass, I did have a few questions. About Revan and Malak.”

Zhar let out a long, slow breath. He sank to his knees to kneel on a mat opposite hers and stared at the ground between them. “Few mention those names around here anymore,” he said, “but I suppose it is just as dangerous to deny they were ever a part of the Order. When I was still on Coruscant, Revan and Malak often came to me for additional training. Revan in particular seemed to have an insatiable hunger to learn. I should have recognized this as a warning sign. But I perceived the young Padawan’s lust for knowledge as simple exuberance and eagerness. Revan was my most promising pupil. One I felt sure would someday become a champion of the Jedi Order.”

He spoke as though Revan’s training had happened in another life, Aithne thought. So much had happened in the past decade. The Revanchist movement had only begun eight years ago. “What happened to Revan?” she asked. “From your perspective.”

“The Jedi Order moved too slowly for Revan and Malak,” Zhar explained. “We were too cautious in their eyes. They always sought to learn far quicker than their masters felt was prudent. It is one thing to understand a lesson, but to truly comprehend it takes a wisdom that only comes with time. Several years ago, when the Mandalorian threat first arose, Revan and Malak were eager to journey to the Outer Rim to defeat the enemy of the Republic. But the Council felt it best if we moved with care and caution. The true threat, the Council feared, had not yet manifested itself. But Revan would not be dissuaded.”

Zhar bowed his head. “Charismatic and powerful, it was inevitable that many of the Order would flock to Revan’s seemingly noble cause. Malak was the first to join his closest friend. Others soon followed, many of our youngest and brightest, intent on saving the galaxy from the Mandalorian threat.”

Aithne frowned, frustrated, trying to understand. “They disobeyed the Council and saved the galaxy. And that was . . . bad?” She thought of the worlds she’d seen where the Mandalorians had been—cities destroyed down to the last man, woman, and child. Genocides in every sense of the word. The Republic stretched to the limit trying to protect people screaming for their protection—and the Jedi knights, supposed help to the helpless, bastions of empathy and compassion, remaining on the sidelines. Some of the battlefields across the galaxy were still smoking. Entire ecosystems had yet to recover.

Zhar’s eyes flashed. “Have a care of your feelings, apprentice. They were foolish to disregard the Council’s wishes. I do not know what happened to Revan, Malak, and their followers on the farthest reaches of the Outer Rim, but something corrupted them. Their ideals became twisted, their spirits were tainted, and they fell to the dark side. There is a lesson in this, a lesson you would do well to take to heart: the Dark Side can corrupt even the most noble of Jedi.”

There was a nuance to his words that did dissipate her growing irritation, even if his warning hadn’t. Aithne looked hard at Master Zhar. “So, Revan was noble, even when they went to fight the Mandalorians. Master Zhar, you’ve said Revan was foolish. Do you think Revan was wrong?”

There was a difference, Aithne knew, between stupid and wrong. Sometimes the smartest, most pragmatic move in the galaxy could be completely immoral. Zhar was one of the kinder, more compassionate Jedi masters at the enclave. And he didn’t answer her, just looked down at his hands atop his thighs. She felt a deep sadness in him—one that contained both sorrow and regret.

Aithne was suddenly terribly aware of the fact that Zhar had known Revan, known and loved them, taken enormous pride in them as only a truly dedicated teacher can in a brilliant pupil, and she took a chance and asked a more personal question. “Master, what was Revan like before? Back when Revan was just another Jedi Knight, or a Padawan? What was Revan like before they were Revan, before anyone ever called them the Revanchist or had any idea what could happen? ‘Insatiable lust for knowledge,’ you’ve said, but what else?”

An energy seemed to crackle between them, and Master Zhar’s eyes flicked up, caught Aithne’s, and held them. She had a sense of the Twi’lek taking an incredible chance. Then, after a moment that seemed to last forever, he said, “Do you not know? Have you not sensed the reason behind the Council’s ambivalence toward you, apprentice?”

A shiver went through Aithne from the tips of her toes to the top of her skull. The thought seemed too big to comprehend. “Me,” she whispered. “Before Revan went off to the Mandalorian Wars, before Revan fell, Revan was like me. So much so that the Jedi who shun fear as a matter of religion are sometimes scared out of their minds to look at me. Is the resemblance just . . . mental, or in my Force signature or whatever, or is it . . . physical as well?” She was supposed to shun fear as well now, but now she felt frozen stiff with it. Paralyzed.

In Republic histories and media, Revan wasn’t really identified with a specific gender, or even a species, just that mask of the Mandalorian Dissenter, the cause Revan had taken up on Cathar, and then the relic of their absolute conquest of the Mandalorian people, to the point where the culture would likely never be the same again—a symbol of Revan’s power. “At Cathar, Revan renounced her personhood,” Zhar said, echoing the train of Aithne’s own thoughts. “Her name, her gender, her very species, to become the embodiment of an idea. She had already begun to discover an ideal, a figurehead, can wield far more power than a simple person, even a Jedi Knight. People had already begun to discard the name she was born with, to both reduce and magnify the human woman to something both simpler and more terrifying: the Revanchist, the Revan. Malak’s transformation was far clumsier in comparison, but a shadow of Revan’s own, and he has followed this pattern every step along the way.

“Yes,” Zhar said finally. “Before Cathar, before the Revanchist, Revan was a human woman very much like you, apprentice. The resemblance is more in your Force signatures than it is in anything else; Revan was raised within the Jedi Order, and she was more than ten years your junior at the start, little more than a girl and younger than Bastila is now, though already a Jedi Knight. She did not speak as you speak or think as you think. But the Force was with her in the same way it is with you, and in as great a measure. She exhibited the same voracious curiosity, the same unconventional perspective, the same confidence in her power.” He sighed. “She could have been a Jedi Master greater by far than I, or than any of us, had she just chosen wisdom.

“I will not speak the name she used before,” Zhar added. “Revan herself murdered the woman she used to be on Cathar, years before I believe she fell to the Dark Side, and that choice is as worthy of respect as it is of sorrow. But we have spoken enough of this. Learn from Revan’s fate, apprentice, the mistakes of a woman with whom you do have so much in common, and do better than this, my former pupil. Now, leave me.”

Aithne stood. She could feel the disturbance within Master Zhar’s spirit. He was a Jedi Master. He would want to meditate now, to restore order to his thoughts. But she bowed before she left. “Master—thank you,” she said. “And—I’m sorry.”

Chapter Text

AITHNE

“I’m taking the trials to pass to Padawan today,” Aithne told Bastila at breakfast.

Bastila inclined her head. “I suspected you might soon enough.”

“But that would make her, like, the Jedi with the fastest training time ever, right?” Mission asked. When everyone in the hold stared at her, Mission shrugged. “One of the datapads I wheedled off Master Dorak’s a book of records,” she explained. “I got bored, alright?”

Six weeks from their landing on Dantooine had done a lot for Mission. She’d stopped collapsing into tears at the drop of a hat, and though she still had nightmares and Aithne suspected she always would, they were fewer and farther between. She’d begun fighting Carth and Aithne’s attempts to teach her things more often, going out on the plains with Big Z, Carth, and Canderous to explore and serve as peacekeeper to the settlers, which Aithne took to be a good sign. She was less apathetic, returning more to the personality she’d had when they’d first met. Sometimes, Aithne caught the girl staring out into the distance and knew she was flashing back on Taris, or thinking about what Lena had said, of her brother and what information about him might be waiting on Tatooine, but the healing had begun.

“Yes, Mission,” Bastila answered, “in reference to your question, if Aithne should pass her trials, she will be the quickest apprentice to have done so. I worry what that may mean for her—” she began, in the tone that Aithne had begun to refer to as Bastila’s Tutor Voice inside her head.

She cut off Padawan Shan. “No doubt that my head will swell up like a summer melon and I will fall to the Dark Side,” she said sarcastically, trying to forget about how all the Jedi half thought she was bound to do just that. “Bastila, if I promise to be very, very humble all day, can we save the lecture for tomorrow?” she asked. “Or, in honor of the occasion, would you consider letting me deliver it? I’m sure I’ve got it memorized by now.”

“Have you?” Bastila asked. “Very well then: Proceed.” She gave a regal wave of her hand and one of her trademark little half-smiles. Although years of Jedi training had done its absolute best to suffocate Bastila’s sense of humor, it hadn’t completely managed it. Every time the Padawan managed to be a good sport or crack a joke, Aithne did her best to encourage the behavior, especially since she knew she had a tendency to take her own jokes a little too far.

So, accordingly, she sat up very straight, folded her hands primly on the table, and pursed her mouth into an expression halfway between earnest entreaty and disapproval. “Aithne, we must practice constant vigilance against the Dark Side!” she said in her best imitation of Padawan Shan’s Core accent. “We must always be wary, for the path to evil can lurk within seemingly harmless feelings—pride in a job well done, a catechism well answered. The warm, fuzzy sensation we feel when seeing baby animals can itself be an insidious lure to attachment—to joy and happiness and everything we shun as Jedi!” 

When she’d gone off-book, Mission had sniggered, and now even Canderous was chuckling. Bastila herself was smiling. “You laugh,” she said, “but until that nonsense about baby animals, that was a reasonable approximation of what I have been trying to tell you. I only wish you would listen, instead of turning everything into the opportunity for a joke.”

“Believe it or not, Bas, it is possible to do both,” Aithne told her gently.

“Overconfidence and pride can be some of the biggest pitfalls for a Jedi,” Bastila insisted.

“I’m humble!” Aithne cried, irritated. “I’m very, very humble! You would not believe my humility! I’m probably the humblest trainee Jedi in the history of the Jedi Order—” Carth snorted, and Mission was giggling again— “as well as the one with the quickest training time. Can we be done with it? Can we go now?”

Bastila glared, then sighed. “As you wish, then, you impossible, ridiculous, clown of a woman. You enjoy taunting me, don’t you?”

“One of the greatest pleasures remaining in my life, since the Jedi Council banned all the really fun ones, like laughing maniacally and stealing candy from babies,” Aithne confirmed. “Would you care to accompany me through the trials?”

Bastila’s expression hadn’t changed when Aithne made the “laughing maniacally” crack, but Aithne still felt the Jedi’s shields go up. As Bastila herself had told Aithne—at times the shields were as big of a giveaway as emotions themselves. She didn’t need to feel Bastila’s anxiety that Vrook’s darkest fears were justified, their dreams were prophetic, and Aithne would indeed turn out to be the second coming of the Dark Lord Revan to know that it was there. She kept her own mask firmly in place and thought determinedly of Master Zhar and the coming trials.

“Did you think that I would not?” Bastila asked. “I have gone with you each day to the enclave, have I not?”

Aithne turned to the others. “Anyone else?” Ordo shook his head, and Teethree gave a negative-sounding beep too. Zaalbar roared his excuses. No surprises there—all three of them were decidedly uninterested in the doings of the Jedi and in Aithne’s training. Carth and Mission were the only ones who sometimes took an interest. For Onasi, Aithne thought it mostly came down to his orders, though he was more comfortable with the Jedi than any of the rest, but Mission was often genuinely curious. She’d stopped idolizing the Jedi so much over the weeks they’d been on Dantooine, through sharing living quarters with Aithne and Bastila, and through her talks with Master Dorak and some of the Jedi apprentices near her own age, but she still tended to be more impressed with them than not. Today, both Carth and Mission wanted to go to the enclave.

Aithne, Bastila, Carth, and Mission jogged through the enclave to the training room. Zhar stood there waiting, with no trace of the emotion he had had during their conversation yesterday remaining on his face or in his aura. It made Aithne a little sad.

Zhar greeted her ritually, opening the conversation with the beginning of the trials. “Aithne Moran, you have come. Soon your apprenticeship will end, and you will be granted the title of Padawan, the lowest rank of those within the Jedi Order. Yet first you must prove yourself worthy. First, I shall test your knowledge of the Jedi Code. I will speak, and you will complete each sentence.”

“I am ready, Master Zhar,” said Aithne, bowing. And indeed, she was. She had studied the Jedi Code and meditated on its meaning until she thought her eyeballs would fall out. Debated it with Bastila too.

“Indeed. Begin. There is no emotion—”

“—there is peace.” The very first precept of the Code in its current iteration was the one that most drew Aithne to older texts, where the Code was often written and interpreted instead as Emotion, yet peace. The current trend the Jedi had of repressing or dismissing all emotion often seemed to Aithne like a reaction to the Sith—both Exar Kun’s and Revan and Malak’s, who drew upon emotion to make them stronger. But as she saw it, the Jedi shouldn’t react at all—it was a failure in their role within the Force, which was usually to stand firm. The Force did bring peace, and Aithne saw a lot of value in not being moved by emotion, but emotion itself she often thought as much or more a part of the Force than anything else. Fortunately, six weeks ago, she had not expressly agreed to adopt the Jedi religion herself, though she wasn’t sure most of the masters realized this. She had agreed only to study the Jedi ways so as to learn to control her strength within the Force and resist the Dark Side. Her passage to Padawan today didn’t depend on her agreement with Jedi philosophy, as it was currently practiced or at all, just her understanding of it.

“There is no ignorance—” Zhar continued.

“—there is knowledge,” Aithne replied. That particular precept was one she couldn’t imagine disagreeing with. She could live her life in pursuit of understanding, except since her discussion with Zhar yesterday, she now wondered if that very pursuit could be a type of greed. Bastila warned her against overconfidence and pride, but to Aithne’s mind, Bastila’s warnings were more a reflection of failings Bastila perceived in herself than they were of Aithne’s own faults. Aithne remembered the way Revan had felt in her latest dream—that hunger for the power and insight each new discovery could bring—and recognized it in herself. She tried to keep her discomfort from Zhar and Bastila.

“There is no passion—” Zhar said.

“—There is serenity.” Aithne answered. Less problematic than the denial of emotion, the denial of passion was very consistent with what Aithne saw as the Jedi’s role. A Jedi proper didn’t allow themselves to be moved by the transient, the passing, the ephemeral. They didn’t let their emotions pilot, even noble ones like compassion or generosity. That was what passion was, really: a driving emotion, like Carth’s paranoia and the anger he had at the Republic soldiers who had deserted to join the Sith. Driving emotions could be noble and head in noble directions, but they could also distract, go off course, or pickle and ferment into something sour and ugly. It was better to dismiss or work through emotions for serenity before they ever wound up in charge, to let emotions serve as advisors but never pilots.

“There is no chaos—” Zhar intoned.

“—there is harmony.” That particular principle was something Jedi training had taught her: that there were patterns to the universe, even if it wasn’t always possible to discern them from the ground. The Force ran through everything that lived and everything that happened, and even in the middle of a seeming cacophony, there was rhyme, rhythm, and music to the noise.

“There is no death—” Zhar prompted her, in the last line of the Code.

“There is the Force,” Aithne finished. Something about that last line pricked at her. She thought it was the battlefields she had crossed as a scout, something in them that didn’t always add up to this understanding of the Force. Since she hadn’t visited them since training as a Jedi, she couldn’t be sure, but she felt that there were some acts of evil and moral bankruptcy that were absent of the Force, denials or even negations of its presence. She wanted to return to those places she had seen, to see what she felt there now, but she didn’t too, because she remembered them being terrible. In a way, the pat last line of the Jedi Code was much more comforting.

Zhar bowed, indicating she’d completed the ritual recitation to satisfaction. “Very good. Now for your next test. The lightsaber is the traditional weapon of our Order. It is a symbol of a Jedi’s skill, dedication, and authority, and each lightsaber is as individual as the Jedi who wields it. The blade is made of pure energy, focused by polished crystals in the hilt. As the second test, each Jedi must construct her lightsaber with her own hands. And now it is your time. Go. Speak with Master Dorak, and he will guide you through the choosing of a crystal.”

There were records in the archives that said that the choosing of a kyber crystal for a Jedi lightsaber had once been a much more rigorous ordeal for Jedi apprentices. Jedi apprentices had once gone to certain caves strong with the Force and searched for hours and hours through privation and difficulty to find just the right crystals for their lightsabers. However, it hadn’t been unusual for apprentices to be injured in these trials, or to fail completely. Now, each apprentice was too precious to the Order at war for the Jedi to waste time testing them to obtain their own crystal. Instead, this part of the ritual was signified only by a conversation with the Jedi Archivist, and each apprentice was given a crystal from an enclave supply. They still had to design and create their own lightsabers, and sometimes the first lightsabers came out a bit wonky, but lightsaber creation in and of itself wasn’t a particularly hazardous trial.

Still, Aithne bowed and left Zhar, and Carth, Mission, and Bastila followed her through the halls to the Archives. “Tell me, Aithne,” Bastila said as they walked. “Exactly how much of the Jedi Code do you believe, and how much did you just regurgitate to Zhar to complete the trial?”

“I probably believe a lot more of it than you think I do,” Aithne said, “but a lot less of it than you want.”

“Well,” Bastila replied. “At least I can count on your telling the truth to me.”

“He didn’t ask me if I believe it,” Aithne pointed out. “Only what it was.”

She walked inside the wide double doors of the Archives. She smiled up at the stacks of datapads, books, and holocrons, six times taller than a human being. There weren’t ladders in the Archives; a Jedi had to use the Force to take down records on the highest shelves. Mission bounced up to Master Dorak. The kid liked the Jedi Archivist, and Dorak returned the sentiment, treating her with a lot of warmth for someone who wasn’t a part of the Order. “Hey there,” she said. “I brought back those datapads you let me borrow a few days ago. And your apprentice for testing.”

 “Miss Vao, thank you,” Dorak said. “We might choose a few more tomes for you later.” He turned to Aithne. “You have come, apprentice, at Master Zhar’s bidding. He sees great promise in you . . . as do I. The time has come for you to choose the color of your lightsaber. This color also reflects your demeanor and position within the Order.”

“Wait, so I have to pick my career when I graduate to Padawan?” Aithne said, affecting horror. “No one told me that! Can I change my mind later? This is a lot of pressure; maybe I should come back later.”

Bastila scowled, but Dorak and Mission grinned.

“I am confident the Force will guide you down the correct path,” Dorak said. “Would you like to hear your choices?”

Aithne sighed dramatically. “If I must determine the entire trajectory of my destiny within the next two minutes. Shoot.”

“The first position within the Order is that of the Jedi Guardian,” Dorak answered. “These Jedi traditionally carry blue lightsabers. They are the Jedi warriors, battling against the forces of evil and the Dark Side, and their focus is more upon combat training and the use of the lightsaber.

“There are also Jedi Sentinels, like young Bastila,” Dorak continued. “The Jedi travelers and investigators, these Jedi ferret out deceit and injustice, bringing it to light, and they carry yellow lightsabers. Their focus is less upon combat and more upon other skills and abilities.

“Finally, there are the Jedi Consulars, who traditionally carry green lightsabers. They are teachers and scholars who seek to bring balance to the universe. They mediate between other groups, using their powers to end conflict and preserve peace.”

Aithne leaned up against one of the study tables in the Archives, thinking. There were aspects of each position that sounded like her, or like who the Jedi wanted her to be. She’d been a traveler and investigator all her life. If she wanted to keep on, being a Sentinel like Bastila might be the best call, but then again, she wasn’t particularly drawn to being like Bastila. The Council and Bastila both were very eager that she battle the forces of evil and the Dark Side, both within herself and as represented by Malak and the Dark Side, and while she had vowed that she owed Malak, lightsaber combat and muscling her way through the powers of darkness had never been as interesting to her as more subtle maneuver. She didn’t want to set herself up as any kind of leader and open herself up to more accusations of overconfidence and pride, and yet— “I think I’d be a better Consular than anything else,” she admitted, quietly.

To her surprise, she felt an immediate wave of shock and relief from Bastila through their Force bond, as though that hadn’t at all been the choice she was expecting and dreading Aithne to make. Not Revan, then, Aithne thought, with satisfaction and increased conviction.

Dorak, too, seemed a little taken aback, though she sensed no obvious emotion emanating from him. “Indeed,” he said. “We shall see. I will ask you a few questions, apprentice, to see which color and path you tend most toward. Are you ready?”

Aithne shrugged. She wasn’t going to change her mind now.

“Begin. A woman and her small child are beset by a desperate gang of thugs. They cry to you for help. What do you do?”

Aithne wondered if Master Dorak had considered that she could answer according to what he had told her of the Jedi positions and reflected he was probably monitoring her through the Force for signs of deceit. It’s what I would do. So, she answered honestly. “Stop the altercation and get answers. You said the attackers looked desperate—are they poor? Looking for something? The grammar of your question also leaves it ambiguous as to whether the woman and her child or the attackers are the ones who asked for my help. There may be more going on than’s immediately obvious, and at any rate, Jedi are supposed to stop violence where possible, not participate in it, or so I’ve been told.”

Her phrasing made it clear what she thought of both the question and the ideals behind it, and Carth made a noise that could have been disapproval or amusement. But Dorak wasn’t fazed. “Indeed. Next question. You are in combat with a Dark Jedi allied with the Sith. There is a pause in the fighting. What do you do?”

“Make the most of it,” Aithne replied. “Get the Dark Jedi talking. Everyone has a story. I try and get them to tell me theirs. Best-case scenario, I find out why they became Sith and convince them to change their allegiance. At the least, I distract them, and they’re unprepared when I reinitiate the attack, enabling me to achieve a swifter, surer win.”

“Manipulative,” Carth commented.

“Love and war,” Aithne retorted, shortening the common aphorism but keeping her eyes and senses trained on the Jedi. Both Bastila and Dorak seemed somewhat uncomfortable with her answer. The Jedi didn’t forbid deception in combat as such; in fact, some of their most celebrated leaders and warriors were masters of deceit and cunning. The Jedi just didn’t like it when she got comfortable with deception, which really wasn’t fair.

“Next question, then,” Dorak said then, after a pause. “There is a locked door, and your goal lies on the other side of it. What do you do?”

“Knock,” Aithne said immediately. “Who says what’s on the other side is an enemy?”

“I’d pick the lock, personally,” Mission said. “No one says there’s anybody at all on the other side either. You could wait outside that locked door all day.”

“Also true,” Aithne admitted, “but still.”

Dorak smiled. “I’m beginning to see a pattern here, apprentice. But now, the final question. You are the head of an enclave on a contested world. The Sith have been causing chaos. What do you do?”

Aithne wrinkled her nose. “If the world’s contested, I don’t necessarily have the authority to take independent action, do I? Instead, I try and work with the planetary government to strengthen our position and build up our alliance. Only when I have their support do I move to stop any Sith acts of sedition or terrorism.”

“Strategy,” Bastila murmured. “Diplomacy, cunning. A preference for creative problem-solving and bridge-building, as opposed to violence. As well as a certain pedantry, ironically manifested in subverting the pedantry and ambiguity of others and a fondness for being the cleverest person in the room.”

“Ooh, ouch,” Aithne said appreciatively. “Well done, Bastila!”

“It does pretty much sum you up, though, beaut—uh, Aithne,” Carth said.

“As well as many Jedi Consulars,” Dorak noted, with another smile. He fished a small crystal out of a pocket of his robe and handed it to Aithne. “You have good instincts, apprentice.”

Aithne took the crystal, feeling its irregular shape in her hand, the way its facets resonated within the Force. She bowed. “Thank you, Master Dorak.”

“You’re going to go make your lightsaber now, right?” Mission asked. “Doesn’t that involve a lot of meditating and sitting still? Like, hours of it?”

“It can,” Aithne confirmed.

“Can I stay here then?” Mission asked. “I want to borrow some more books from Master Dorak. I want to see your lightsaber when you’re done with it, but I don’t really want to sit there while you make it.”

“Fair enough,” Aithne said. “Be back before dinner, and don’t go out on the plains without a comlink and taking someone else with you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know the drill,” Mission said.

“You’ll be alright with her?” Aithne asked Dorak.

“Miss Vao is always welcome here,” he answered.

They left Mission in the Archives. “So, how does a Jedi design and make their lightsaber?” Carth wanted to know.

“The Jedi keep several blueprints, schema, and components on record,” Aithne explained. “But it’s up to each individual apprentice to decide the kind of blade that will suit them best—both in regard to their personal fighting style and to resonance within the Force. A curved hilt or a straight one, synthetic or natural materials, designs upon the grip or not. Do they want a short blade, a double saberstaff like Bastila carries, a beam that is more or less stable, or one that has special cutting or burning properties? I’ve spent a good portion of the last couple of weeks researching it and thinking about it, trying different combat styles in sparring matches with Bastila and the Jedi masters. I’ve drawn up a few rough plans. I may alter them as I work this morning. The Jedi apprentice has to build their lightsaber with the Force, and in the end, it’s gonna come down to what feels right.”

“Well, what design are you starting with?” Carth asked.

“Without getting overly technical, I’m starting with a curved hilt design in banded and bonded durasteel and bronze, with a raised leather scrollwork grip. I’ll be adding a little weight to the hilt to mimic the balance of a vibroblade but tightening the focus from the standard saber design for something that is faster and more precise.”

 “An aggressive design,” Bastila noted. “Yet you do not often choose aggressive forms while sparring.”

“Well, no,” Aithne replied, “because I’m usually facing you, and you do. Best counter is to start in Form II, and if that doesn’t work, adapt to VI to confuse you or III to wear you down through attrition.” Bastila looked disgruntled, but Carth seemed interested. “Mostly, I want my lightsaber to be both fast and versatile,” Aithne explained to him. “So I can kill something fast if I need to, but adjust to different combat conditions as they arise.”

“How is she developing as a duelist?” Carth asked Bastila, “According to Jedi standards? On Taris, she used a couple different styles.”

“She’s much the same with the lightsaber. As you might expect, she has a preference for Form VI, which lends itself most easily to dual blades, wielded in tandem, and also, as she has implied, to creativity and adaptability in combat as opposed to any textbook offense or defense. It is something of a bastard style, a mixture of the others, and Aithne uses it as is intended, without any rigid adherence to the form, instead switching fluidly to the other forms as she thinks will work best to her advantage. She is often right, but not always, and her dedication to versatility in combat will, I think, prohibit her from gaining any true mastery as a lightsaber duelist.”

“Says the girl who still mostly prefers Form Youngling,” Aithne said.

“Better to attain true mastery of the basics than be mediocre in more advanced forms and present sloppily in both attack and defense,” Bastila retorted.

“Better a mastery of my opponent than any one lightsaber form,” Aithne shot back. “There is no one-size-fits-all fencing style.” It was an old argument.

“Huh,” Carth noted. “So, which of you is better?”

Aithne hesitated, looking sideways at Bastila. The younger Jedi waited, eyebrows raised. “Bastila’s had about fifteen more years’ experience with lightsabers than I have,” Aithne said finally. “Do you think I’d say I outclass her already and open myself up to her revenge lecture on my pride and all the ways she’s let me win, just to build up my confidence in new styles of combat?”

“A careful answer, but an avoidance of the question,” Bastila pointed out.

“Funny how that works, isn’t it?” Aithne agreed, “Oh, look, we’re back in the training room.”

She left Carth and Bastila behind to greet Master Zhar again. He welcomed her back solemnly with the materials she’d selected for her design, already laid out upon the training room workbench. Carth and Bastila sat down on the benches at the perimeter of the room, and Aithne put them entirely out of her head as she focused on leather, durasteel, and bronze; electric circuits and focuses and one small, irregular kyber crystal.

She turned the elements of her design over and over in her head, feeling how they interacted in and through the Force. She had drawn out a design of elaborate scrollwork for the grip in her initial plans, but now that the time had come, it felt . . . wrong. The lightsaber was a weapon meant to kill. The purpose of the leather grip she had drawn out raised above the bronze and durasteel circuit casing was sound—she wanted a weapon that wouldn’t slip in her hand—but did the grip have to be pretty? Aithne sensed through the Force, feeling out a shape that would be better. She caught hold of it in her mind and attached the bonding material. The casing of the lightsaber took shape. She held it away from the actual circuitry of the saber itself with her mind. Rotating the focusing lens, the emitter matrix, the kyber crystal itself in the air, she viewed them from every angle, making sure all the components aligned exactly. She could feel the strain of it, the weariness that came with concentrating the Force in this way for an extended period of time. Then—the circuits connected. She embedded them within the weighted core she had designed, then within the lightsaber hilt.

Aithne held out her hand. Her finished lightsaber fell with a soft smack into her open palm. Aithne looked at it with a vague feeling of unease. The leather grip of the curved hilt now rose in a much more severe pattern than the one she had initially planned above the ringed and bonded bronze and durasteel, and it was broken right through the middle with a diagonal slash of leather. She felt within the Force it was a symbol of division, of disunity, and of dissonance, both within her past and within herself. The different sides of her life, before and after joining the Jedi, the different perspectives she tried to hold on things, sometimes incompatible with one another, sometimes conflicting. The grip—the lightsaber itself—wasn’t pretty . . . but the hilt fit perfectly within her hand. 

She ignited the blade. Part of her expected the very disunity of the final design to have corrupted the crystal inside, to see the blade extend Sith red, proving to every Jedi in the enclave who’d ever had doubts about her that they were right to have them. But the blade extended, pure emerald green. On the side of the training room, Carth exclaimed.

“Hey, she’s finished!”

She saw Bastila jump a little, as if Padawan Shan had drifted off while Aithne was working with her lightsaber.

“So she has,” Master Zhar said, walking over. He extended his own hand. Aithne switched off her blade and handed the hilt to the Twi’lek for inspection. He turned it over in his hand for several moments, examining the design, feeling the alignment of the components within the Force. His index finger traced the diagonal slash on the grip, and he looked up and met Aithne’s eyes. “Hmm. You have done extremely well in constructing your lightsaber, apprentice. The crystal seems to have been set perfectly. It is rare indeed for that to happen the first time one constructs their lightsaber. Your lightsaber identifies you as a member of the Jedi Order,” he continued. “With such recognition comes honor and respect . . . and the attention of dangerous enemies. The Sith and Dark Jedi will seek to destroy you, apprentice, and you must prove yourself worthy against a foe who also wields a lightsaber. Are you ready to face your final trial?”

Aithne was a little surprised. She’d thought constructing her lightsaber would be the end of the trials. “What, you keep Dark Jedi around in a cage somewhere to test graduating apprentices?” When Zhar didn’t laugh, Aithne stared. “Okay,” she said. “Hit me with it: what am I doing?”

“For every Jedi, the threat of the Dark Side is always present,” Zhar told her. “You must truly understand this before you are accepted into the Order. You must see the corruption of the Dark Side for yourself. Even here on Dantooine there are places where the Dark Side holds sway, twisting and tainting nature itself. The ancient grove once used for deep meditation by the Jedi is now tainted. A wave of darkness perverts the region around it. The kath hounds in the area have become savage and ruthless. They have become a threat to the settlers, a threat the Jedi have promised to stop.”

Aithne looked over at Carth. “Yeah, the boys have been out killing kath hounds a lot,” she said, referring to Canderous and Zaalbar as well as to Carth. “You want me to go with them?”

Zhar shook his head. “The kath hounds are but a symptom of the true problem. You must journey into the grove and confront the true source of the darkness. That is your task.”

Aithne tilted her head. “Confront,” she repeated. “Not ‘destroy’ or even ‘defeat,’ though this darkness might be wielding its own lightsaber.”

But Zhar was done giving her instructions. “I can say no more,” he told her. “Some things you must work out for yourself. None of the other Jedi at the academy are permitted to help you in this task. But remember this, my young apprentice,” he said, eyes full of meaning. “A Jedi acts with patience and care, and those on the dark path are not always lost forever. As long as the Dark Side taints the ancient grove, your lessons cannot continue. Stop the corruption of the Dark Side. This is your task, apprentice. May the Force be with you.”

Aithne turned to her companions. “Guess you can’t come with me, Bas, huh?” She had mixed feelings about this; Bastila had been such a constant fixture at her side since she’d first started Jedi training.

“I’m afraid not,” Bastila answered. Aithne felt a trace of guilt and another of apprehension over their link before the Padawan’s shields came up again and she lost their connection.

“Right then,” Aithne said, looking at Carth. “It’s getting on in the afternoon. Want to head back to Ebon Hawk for lunch then see who back there might want to take me out on the plains?”

“Canderous will want to go,” Carth said. “He’s bored stiff of the Jedi, but he’s been dying to see what they’ve been teaching you in combat. Big Z might go too. I will.”

Aithne smiled at him. If she had to leave Bastila behind at the enclave in this final trial, at least Carth would still be with her. They left Bastila with Zhar and headed back to Ebon Hawk.

CANDEROUS

Canderous wasn’t sure he knew what came next. With the clans destroyed or dispersed, and Davik rotting under a pile of rebar and ash on Taris, there wasn’t a whole lot left for him. Sure, he had a ship—Ebon Hawk, one of the fastest freighters in the galaxy. Could set up as a bounty hunter, maybe. She had a reputation in the Exchange. But he’d just got done being cheated by a petty crime lord. He wasn’t too keen to take up the job again, only under the Hutts or worse. He was better than serving as lackey and petty thug to all the worst scum in the galaxy. He wanted a war! A fight where there was honor and glory to be had, not a bunch of sniveling debtors and cowards to be crushed. He wasn’t about to sign up with the Republic, even if any recruitment office in the galaxy would take him. But . . . had to make credits somehow.

The Wookiee wouldn’t have been a bad partner if he hadn’t already sworn a lifedebt. Honest, good with a vibrosword. And he didn’t talk too much. He came with a Twi’lek dependent, or as much of one as he could considering Moran was the one who’d made the adoption vows for her, or getting pretty close for an aruetii. Vao was young and stupid enough she still thought she didn’t need anybody. She idolized Moran by now, sure, but she didn’t want her like she wanted the Wookiee, who liked her, who was her friend, but who’d never taken half as much trouble for her, as far as Canderous could see. It was fine. The Twi’lek had her uses too. Good technician and salvager for a girl her age; an expert demolitionist for anybody. She didn’t really need all that education Moran and Onasi kept shoving down her throat. She could make her way in the galaxy just fine without it, and make a pretty good living too.

Canderous would’ve been willing to take both of them on after Telos, and since the girl had half-ownership of that astromech Janice Nall had built, he might’ve wound up with a droid in the bargain. But the Wookiee and the girl were too bound up in the Jedi now. Zaalbar might’ve been better off teaming up with Canderous; probably would’ve had a better time, but his honor wouldn’t let him abandon Moran now, even though Canderous needed him and the aruetii didn’t. And without Zaalbar, Vao wouldn’t be coming, even if Moran—or Onasi, for that matter—let her.

Ebon Hawk was pretty useless without a crew, though. She was too big to fly and man solo, even if Canderous ever had been any pilot. He could hire a new crew for her, maybe, but not on Dantooine, and not with the funds he’d had when they’d landed. So, ever since they’d touched down on this backwater farm planet, Canderous had been effectively grounded, unless he up and abandoned the ship he’d taken all that trouble to steal and booked passage on a shuttle off-world, giving up all the freedom having your own ship was supposed to bring you.

Hah. Nothing was ever all it was cracked up to be.

Canderous had more or less decided to bide his time and see if the Jedi had any use for his skills. Something was up with the Aruetii. They wanted her and Bastila right in the middle of their war with the Sith. And since he was pretty sure Moran at least already trusted him, she was probably his best bet for getting back into a fight worth having.

He hadn’t seen Moran much the past six weeks. They’d wanted her for Jedi training, like she could get through everything a Jedi needed to know in a time frame like that. Except apparently the Jedi were more desperate than he’d thought, because they were trying to pass her up to the same rank as Bastila Shan. But there was something she had to do out on the plains first.

She asked for his help heading out there. Shan was forbidden to go by the other Jedi, and everyone knew no one should head out to the plains alone. Not that she would have even without his help; Onasi was going with her. That di’kut had been wound tight over Moran being cooped up in the Jedi enclave for weeks. Now that that looked like it might be over, Canderous would bet a hundred credits Onasi wouldn’t leave Moran’s tail for five minutes together. Carth thought it was because he was trying to figure her out—he saw something was up with her and the Jedi too, and it was itching at him like a venereal disease, but what was really happening there was a whole lot simpler than that. Not a lot of human aruetiise knew the way families were meant to be run, that a spouse and children were as integral to what a warrior was as anything they did on the battlefield—unless the warrior was a failure and a disgrace to them already. Onasi was the type of man who did, but he’d also been widowed in the wars. Hadn’t said, but it was obvious enough he might as well have had it tattooed across his face.

Onasi wanted a woman, and it was obvious as the fact that he was a widower that he hadn’t found a woman he’d wanted even a quarter as much as Moran since the Sith had torched Telos, and that much as anything was driving him ‘round the bend crazy.

Moran, to her credit, seemed to know Onasi came with enough baggage to stuff Ebon Hawk’s cargo hold and so far, she wasn’t having it. It hadn’t kept her from buying the nice guy act Onasi put on for her, making him her best friend on the crew, deputizing him as coparent to Vao, and letting him follow her around like an overgrown pup, though. Still, at least Moran knew enough to know that a man who’d fought most of his career on starships wasn’t the best partner for fighting kath in navel-high grassy terrain.

With Vao on the ship with a bunch of datapad novels she’d got off the Jedi Archivist and Shan bound to the Enclave, that left him, Moran, Onasi, and Zaalbar headed out across the plains. Canderous snuck looks at the Aruetii as they tramped. She carried a single-hilt lightsaber instead of dual vibroblades now, but it was already the type that would work well with a dual wielding style. She just didn’t have a second lightsaber yet. She’d ditched the combat suits too, in favor of Jedi work robes, really a tunic and leggings. Some Jedi said they could feel the Force better outside of armor; it’d always seemed stupid to Canderous. Feeling the Force didn’t do squat when you were shot in the back by a sniper with a blaster rifle. Revan and Malak’s people, and the Sith before Revan and Malak’s people had absorbed them, had always had more sense in that regard.

Besides, the saber and robes didn’t suit the Aruetii. She looked swallowed up by them. They weren’t her natural gear, and you could see it. It was a good thing she’d come out on the plains with the rest of them. Some of the deserting cowards living off the weak settlers on this world liked to pretend they were warriors by ambushing Jedi from the enclave, reliving the glory days—alone, Moran might seem like a good target. Not that she was likely to go down easy; Canderous was willing to bet she could put up a good fight even without her usual gear, but he’d spent enough time trying to keep the Aruetii’s ass alive that he wasn’t ready to see her get killed yet. She could be a glib, assuming, smug little nuisance, not to mention half-crazy and now a Jetii to boot, but she could fight, and sometimes it was nice to hear Mando’a outside his own head, even from an outsider.

He led her and the others past the pathetic group of supplicants outside the enclave doors—sniveling weaklings begging for scraps from the Jedi because they weren’t strong enough to solve their own damn problems. A couple of them tried to waylay Moran to ask for favors; Canderous was able to help her get free of them a little sooner. They all hated him anyway, but he was used to that.

Of course, while Carth and Zaalbar knew the value of staying quiet, the Aruetii was one who liked to chat. As they waded out into the grass beyond the enclave, she looked around, sized all of them up, and seemed to decide he was the best bet for some idle conversation.

“Haven’t heard from you in a while, Ordo,” she said. “We past ‘we will never again speak of this’ yet? Want to tell us a little more about your past while we’re out here?”

Canderous glanced at her. She wasn’t looking at him, scanning the grass instead for hostile kath hounds or other enemies. If he’d thought she was just out for some idle entertainment, he might’ve shut her down right there. But her back was to Onasi, a little stiff, and so he read her game. She wanted him to talk to Republic, not to her. Trying to build bridges the clans had burned a decade back. It wouldn’t work, but if he was going to stick with her and get in on the war, they could all be working together a while, and the sooner she knew that, the better. Besides, he never minded getting under Republic’s skin.

“Have it your way,” he said. He spotted a horned kath and two of the ordinary variety headed their way. He brought his blaster round and fired. One of the small ones yelped and flew back half a meter, blood spurting from a new cavity in its chest, but because kath were too dumb to know when they should back off, it got right back up and tried to charge. The Wookiee leapt at the big one with the Aruetii while Onasi took on the hound Canderous didn’t have covered. In another few seconds, they were free and clear.

Moran shoved some hair back from her face and looked at him like they’d never been interrupted. Canderous almost laughed at her, but he nodded.

“I was one of the best youth warriors in Clan Ordo in my time,” he said. “No one before me had mastered the power of our Basilisk war droids as quickly as I had. Except Mandalore himself, of course. In those days we were sweeping across the Outer Rim, destroying all who fought us. Young Mandalores would prove themselves in real combat with unknown opponents above a thousand worlds. Each brought back the story of his achievements.”

“Huh. Guess I’m out here doing the same thing for the Jedi today,” Moran observed. “They won’t tell me what we’re up against out in the grove, anyway. What was your story?”

Canderous thought back to the day—fifteen years old, his first real battle. He’d slipped into Mando’a before he thought about it. /I remember it well—orbiting high above a placid world, its defenses just stirring. As was tradition, I would go ahead of the first wave to find enemies in the thickest fighting. I remember sitting there in my armor, linked directly with the Basilisk thrumming beneath me, my heart racing with fear at the coming battle./

Aithne was silent a moment, then she began speaking in Basic—to the Wookiee, he thought. He’d never had confirmation, but he thought the pilot understood Mando’a.

“High above the sleeping planet

Gleaming in the star-rise,

Battle below, warrior’s first trial,

The droid and I are one

And yet I fear.”

She spoke in a melodic, chanting sing-song, a Basic poetic rendition of the sense of his words in Mando’a. Canderous was silent a moment. The Wookiee made a small sound of appreciation, and Onasi’s face had gone blank. After a second, Moran prompted Canderous. “And then?”

Canderous swallowed. /The doors opened in front of me, and the air was sucked out of the drop bay,/ he answered, /scattering crystals of frozen vapor across my path. I can’t describe what it feels like to look directly down at a world, falling continuously as you circle it, with barely fifteen centimeters of armor plate protecting you. When the magnetic locks disengaged on my droid, I plunged out of the drop bay towards the battle that waited below./

Moran seemed to think a moment, then she translated in a murmur,

“High enough above a world,

The air can turn to diamonds,

With nothing left to breathe.

Is it the cold? Or my panting breaths?

The ground rolls away beneath me

Magnetic locks disengage.

I fall—an aircraft of one and droid.”

Canderous licked his lips, now wanting to phrase his story perfectly, to tell it in a way these outsiders would remember, through Moran’s translation. /The exhilaration, the euphoria, I felt as I streaked into the atmosphere, dodging self-guided projectile and beam weapons, was unmatched. An eighty-kilometer plunge through the atmosphere, dodging and weaving, the outside of my armor glowing like the sun with the heat of re-entry. With barely thirty meters to spare, I twisted and skimmed the surface, firing at the giant beam generators that were in my path. The explosion from that sent shockwaves that leveled the entire complex around it. It was the moment of my life./

Moran shot him a glare—he’d given her a bit much for the Wookiee that time. He raised an eyebrow at her; it’d been her choice to try to do a sense translation instead of a literal one. But he had to hand it to her, she didn’t back down.

“Like a meteor toward the planet

Glowing, burning, blazing,

I hurtle toward the earth.

Heart in mouth, lives of my brothers in hand.

Enemy defiance screams in my ears

A shot over my shoulder, another near my leg,

But all enemy shots are futile.

Twisting, turning, curving,

There is no cratered Mando today.

I take my shot: an explosion like a nova.

Victory in a single shot:

A boy becomes a man.”

Moran finished softly. Canderous grunted. “Pretty clumsy, that last verse,” he remarked.

Moran’s brown eyes flashed gold with annoyance. “You try translating a foreign language battle chant into Basic in less than two minutes while preserving all the poetry of the original,” she retorted.

“I didn’t ask you to do that,” Canderous pointed out.

“You also didn’t bother telling the story so Zaalbar could understand it,” Moran shot back, confirming Canderous’s suspicions that the pilot would’ve understood it anyway. “I get composing the tale afterward for the vode and the future Mando’ade is an essential part of a Mandalorian coming-of-age, but if you were going to tell that one, he deserved to know what you were saying, close to the way you said it.”

The Wookiee said something then. Moran listened, and reported, “He says you are a brave warrior and a mighty hunter, Canderous, but warring merely for glory and plunder isn’t worth the bloodshed. Still, he honors your people’s storytelling, and my respect for your traditions.”

“Yeah, you people have a talent for romanticizing genocide, I’ll give you that,” Onasi muttered.

“If their defenses had picked us up in time or their missiles had worked better, it wouldn’t have been a genocide now, would it?” Canderous answered. “As exhilarating as total victory can be, it’s not as worthy as when someone offers a genuine challenge. Maybe that’s why we liked fighting your Republic so much—at least later, when they grew some backbone.”

“Now, listen here—”

“It’s a compliment, Carth,” Moran interjected quietly. “But he also wants you to take it like an insult. Ordo, can we just fight the kath hounds, please?”

“Huh. Onasi’d put up a better fight,” Canderous grunted.

“I told him when we first met you he’s not allowed to pick a fight and let you kill him,” Moran answered. “Anyway, we’re done with that war.”

“You think he’d kill me?” Onasi demanded.

 Moran glanced over the two of them. “I think we’re done with that war,” she said again, in a voice like ice. It was a commander’s voice if Canderous had ever heard one. And even though Moran had next to no rank in the Republic and barely any with the Jedi, Onasi listened.

They fought a couple more groups of kath hounds in silence. Then Canderous asked, “That translation from before. Would you ever write it down?”

“Clumsy last verse and all?” Moran challenged him.

Canderous stomped a hillock of grass out of their path. “Yeah,” he admitted.

“If you want,” Moran said. “Any other chants or sagas you remember too, whether they’re yours, your clan’s, or someone else’s. I’ll work on the translation of that last verse.”

“I’ll pay,” Canderous offered. “When I’ve got the credits.”

Moran shook her head. “It’s culturally valuable material, whether the galaxy at large is ready to admit it yet or not. Useful history, from a perspective not a lot of people will hear. The truth is, you could probably get other people to pay you for it. The Jedi Archivists for one, and probably a few Core academics too.”

“I’m not gonna sit in some paper-skinned professor’s office and recite the history of my people for credits,” Canderous told her.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” the Aruetii answered, still peering straight ahead. “But if you want me to transcribe and translate some of your battle chants for the dispersed Mando’ade, or so the galaxy remembers you now, I will, and I’m not averse to helping you get paid for it either.”

Canderous grunted. “And what do you get out of it?” he demanded.

Moran shrugged. “I could take a cut from the Republic academics if it would make you feel better.”

Canderous sighted down on a lone kath hound, saw it was just lying down in the grass, and let it be for now. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

He wasn’t out for friends, just partners, just a way into the war, but the Aruetii made it hard to hold her at a distance. Within four or five run-ins with kath hounds, it was clear she was about as good with that shiny new lightsaber as she had been with vibroblades, or better. He hadn’t really noticed she fought like a Jetii before, but now he realized Moran had always had a style like a bastardized version of one of Revan’s people back in the war, or the Sith. Worked better now her blade could actually cut most anything. Wondered where she’d picked up the forms, though. She used them too naturally to have learned in just six weeks, but they didn’t often leave the Jedi and Sith academies. Against the kath hounds, she looked like one of Revan’s people too, storming a line of four or five vode at once. Had the same aggressive, brutal look to her movements. Butchered the dogs like a veteran.

She was a warrior and a woman worthy of respect, and more, she’d shown she understood his people as well as any outsider could. Onasi would be fun to fight. So would the Padawan, Shan. But she’d be the real challenge, Aithne Moran. Decent Mandalorian, too, if she’d been adopted into a clan soon enough. Sometimes he wondered if she had been, and that was where she got it. More likely she’d fought in a lot more of the war than Onasi and them thought. You saw enough action, and your enemies started to seem like friends. Even Onasi hadn’t seen that much combat, and Shan was way too young, but Moran . . . there was something about her.

They finally made it to the sacred grove the Jetiise wanted her to purify. She paused as they entered the boundary-line. “Any ideas how one goes about detecting, locating, and stopping corruption?” she asked rhetorically.

“I don’t know,” Onasi answered. “You could try using those senses the Jedi have been hammering into you for the past six weeks.”

Canderous caught sight of the sun on red-painted beskar a few meters out. “We got bigger problems right now,” he said, jerking his head at the deserters.

“Oh. Fantastic,” Moran muttered, activating an energy shield. The Wookiee roared a challenge.

These scum wore beskar because they’d fled, abandoned the clans before the final battle with Darth Revan. They conquered farmholds now instead of taking worlds because settlers with rusted shotguns and a bevy of children under ten years old were the only enemies they could face. Just looking at them made Canderous sick, and he’d taken positive pleasure in exterminating the rats wherever he’d found them these past six weeks. They’d gotten to know his face.

The former vode and their Duros lackeys let him approach with the others. “So, this is the Ordo,” a Mandalorian in red sneered as he drew near. “Preserving the purity of our glorious past as he stands beside a walking throw rug and this piece of Republic osik. And now a Jedi.”

“You cowardly cretins,” Canderous threw back. “Want some more, do you?”

“You’ve caused a lot of trouble for a gray-haired has-been, Dar’manda.” 

Canderous laughed. /Oh, I’m going to enjoy gutting you,/ he said.

“I will pin your hands and feet to the dirt, old-timer. You will watch, alive, and shit your pants as we skin the Wookiee and behead your bitch Jetii, and when I claim her lightsaber as my own, I will gut you upon it.”

Blaster fire broke out, but it was Onasi who had fired. Then Moran was in the center of the fray, a whirlwind of limbs and lightsaber, disemboweling the Duros, stabbing at the joins of the deserters’ armor. “Here,” Canderous said, handing the Wookiee his rifle. Zaalbar saw what he wanted and traded him the vibrosword, and Canderous rushed into battle. This was one enemy he wanted to kill face to face.

He locked blades with the man in red. Dar’manda, he had called Canderous, but he and his kind were the true soulless, the ones who had forgotten what it meant to be Mandalorian. One day Canderous and every vod like him would earn back their armor, and then the galaxy would quake again, but until the day they did that, everyone would know who the real traitors were, the ones who had left their brothers to death in those last years of the war, humiliation by Revan’s army. The cowards who’d never looked straight into hell or faced down the Butcher of Malachor, that diminutive Jetii demon who had ripped a hole through the fabric of reality then disappeared without a trace.

The son of a bitch had a helmet to cover his face, but Canderous felt when he started to be afraid. The others had killed all his Duros and traitor companions by then, but they were standing back on Moran’s order. Canderous found a break in the coward’s defenses and let the Wookiee’s sword fall, into a join on Red’s right gauntlet. He ripped and tore, tearing the beskar away in a feat of brute strength and rage. Then he slashed, and as the enemy roared in pain and fury, Canderous kicked out with his boot and connected with Red’s armored breastplate. Then in another mighty swing, he took off the traitor’s head.

Canderous stood there, heaving, watching the corpse spurting blood over the plain. It took him two seconds to fall completely to the ground. Canderous flared his nostrils and inhaled a fetid stench. “Looks like you’re the one who crapped your pants in the end, hut’tuun,” he muttered.

/Alright?/ Moran asked after a moment.

Canderous grunted. “Whatever. I’m pretty sure these were the ringleaders for the raiders on this world,” he said. “With them dead, maybe those farmers at the enclave will stop their whining for a few days anyway.”

“But are you okay?” Moran repeated, in Basic.

“It’s all crap,” Canderous told her. “Hate those damn deserters worse than any Jedi or Republic I ever met.”

“I know,” she murmured.

/Excuse me,/ someone said in Huttese. Canderous sighed and turned around to see a Twi’lek male, dressed in Jedi robes. /I have no wish to interrupt./

“Yeah, well, you’re putting on a pretty good impression of it,” Canderous growled.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

Aithne didn’t need this. Ordo was centimeters away from losing it, she had a grove to purify, and suddenly this Jedi looking so modest and unassuming he had to want something. She held up her hand to keep the Mandalorian from starting another fight—not that she wasn’t glad the raiders on the ground were dead. /What is it?/ she asked the Twi’lek in Huttese.

/I am Bolook, a Jedi from the enclave,/ the Twi’lek said. /I witnessed your altercation from afar and came to see if I could lend my aid, but by the time I arrived, the fight had concluded. May I assume these are the raiders who have been plaguing the settlers near here?/

/They were some of them,/ Aithne confirmed. /My companions have been dealing with others for the past several weeks./

Carth had been searching the bodies, presumably for ID or some of the settlers’ belongings. He now handed her a small sack. She looked inside and breathed through a sudden surge of outrage. She handed the bag to the Twi’lek knight. /We have several lightsabers here, it seems. If you could take them back to the enclave, perhaps the Council could identify their owners and conduct the appropriate rites of farewell./

/I will do so,/ Bolook promised, /but before I do, I was sent by the Jedi Council to investigate another injustice upon these plains. A murder which occurred nearby only a few hours ago. Communication does not pose a problem, as both the subjects and I speak Basic and Huttese. I was going to handle this case myself, but since you have arrived, apprentice, this could be an excellent opportunity for you to demonstrate how well you have been learning your lessons at the academy. Though you are not yet a full Jedi, perhaps you could assist me in sorting out the truth from the lies./

“This lazy di’kut wants you to do his job for him,” Canderous burst out. “Is that what I’m hearing here?”

“Seems so,” Carth agreed, crossing his arms and glaring at the Twi’lek. “Master Jedi, we’re a little busy. You don’t think maybe all of us could take care of our own business here, do you?”

Bolook only smiled. /We could,/ he agreed, /but I would be forced to report the apprentice’s refusal to help a fellow Jedi to the Council. They might see it as incapability on her part./

Jedi or not, Aithne had seen this guy’s type before, and she was more than a little annoyed. /And they might see you’re a lazy weasel who likes to blackmail the new kids into doing your homework for you, after they’ve been fighting for their lives and when they have their own jobs to do. Still. I suppose I’m meant to be ‘purifying the Grove.’ That could mean ridding it of your incompetence. Take us to the scene./

Bolook seemed satisfied, even with all of them glaring daggers at his back. He turned around and led them over a footbridge that crossed a shallow, noisy brook into another field. Behind Aithne, Canderous and Zaalbar exchanged weapons again. Bolook led Aithne up to two human men and a droid waiting. There was another corpse on the ground—a third human man.

/Listen to the stories given by the suspects,/ Bolook said. /I have brought an information retrieval droid with access to the archives both at the Jedi Enclave and the planetary capital. I will use my wisdom and experience to offer you some guidance, but I will not solve the case for you. There is little benefit if you do not solve the problem yourself./

“Little benefit to whom?” Carth muttered under his breath. Aithne looked back at him in acknowledgment of the barb but said nothing.

/Consider each man’s account and check the facts with the information droid,/ Bolook told her. /Once you have gathered all the evidence you think you need, run through the possible scenario with me. If you are unable to come up with a satisfactory resolution, then I will take these men to the enclave and deal with this myself./ Then he pointed at the men in the field—both the corpse and the two live ones. /According to the accounts of the participants, these three men, were out here in the field together earlier, before the clouds broke. I find that very odd, for most people would seek shelter indoors when the sky is filled with dark storm clouds as it was earlier today. But that is not the most puzzling aspect of the case. The dead man, Calder Nettic, was shot in the back with a blaster rifle. A rifle was found lying near his body with blood stains on it. It has been sent back to the enclave for analysis. These other men were found at the scene when I arrived. One was Handon Guld. He was unarmed. The other was Rickard Lusoff, who was carrying a hunting laser. Both men say they did not do anything, and that they came across the body. But both men also accuse the other. Obviously, there is more to this than what we have been told./

/And you can’t sense which one is lying?/ Aithne scoffed. She sighed. “Guys, do you mind handling this for a while?”

“This guy doesn’t deserve it,” Carth answered bluntly. “But it’s still more than we’ve been doing the past month.”

“Let him tell his tales to the Council, I say,” Canderous said. “I doubt he could come up with a story that makes this feeble extortion attempt look any better.”

/If this man cannot solve the murder, justice is not served by walking away,/ Zaalbar said. /An innocent could be punished./

Aithne translated for the others. “Yeah, you’re right,” she said with a sigh. /You’re lucky my friend’s a little nicer than I am,/ she told Bolook. /Anything else we should know?/

The Twi’lek’s smile had melted away now, at least. His lekku twitched. If they hadn’t convinced him to actually do his own work, at least they’d succeeded in embarrassing and annoying him. /When I arrived, Mr. Guld was holding his side, and Mr. Lusoff was favoring one of his legs,/ he answered finally, after a moment, his voice much less genial than before. /If there is anything else you need, I will remain here while you question the witnesses./

/Really the least you could do,/ Aithne agreed, and stalked away to investigate a murder.

Rickard Lusoff, the hunter, turned out to be a surly man. He was bored and more than a little annoyed at being detained. He was also aware Aithne had been brought in because Bolook was floundering. He repeated the story he had given the other Jedi. “I was out hunting iriaz when I spotted one over here by the bridge. I pull out my rifle and aim at it. I couldn’t see it that well, mind you, ‘cause the damn sun was in my eyes. So, I shoot it, and it drops. I walk over here and find Handon standing over Calder’s body! So why don’t you get this whole farce over with and send that whiner Handon to the prison he belongs in!”

“My presence here might be a farce, but this murder isn’t,” Aithne answered. Something about Lusoff’s story had already caught her attention, given what Bolook had told her. She’d been locked up in the enclave this morning talking to Zhar and Dorak and making her lightsaber, but still . . .

“Stay here,” Aithne told Lusoff, “and maybe cool it with the profanity, huh? Not usually the best way to get what you want from the authorities.”

As she turned, she heard Rickard mumble several derogatory comments in her direction. She decided to ignore them for the moment.

Handon Guld was more polite but also much more nervous than Lusoff. The aura of fear and guilt emanating from him was overwhelming. He was also sweating like a pig, and often did move his hand to his side, touching it beneath his jacket.

“I’m sure that you’ll agree that Rickard is quite obviously guilty of murder,” he said. “You see, I was out here running earlier today—yes, running,” he clarified, as if expecting her to disagree. “I do that a lot. Can’t stand speeders. Never use them. Keeps me in shape, too, you know! Anyway, I was out running on the other side of that bridge there when all of a sudden, I heard a shot coming from over here. I ran over here and found this man, Calder, lying on the ground, dead!”

“Okay. What happened next?”

“I saw Rickard come skulking out of the shadows of the rocks south of the river, and I knew something was wrong. I hit my emergency button and called the enclave right away. Well . . . there,” Handon finished, rather awkwardly. “That’s my story. Now please, hurry this up and arrest Rickard so I can get on with my day.”

“You know a bit more about handling authorities than Lusoff,” Aithne conceded, “but no, Guld, I don’t think I’ll be letting you go just yet. Wait here.”

She went over to talk to the information droid. Bolook had claimed that when he arrived at the scene, Guld was unarmed, but Aithne was of the opinion that the rifle found at the scene had to belong to either him or to the victim, and whichever one it didn’t belong to was an idiot. The information droid confirmed everything she’d heard the past six weeks—heading out on the plains alone without a weapon was tantamount to suicide. The droid also confirmed Bolook’s report on the weather this morning.

Bolook caught her eye then, and Aithne walked over to him. /What?/ she asked.

/I was wondering if you wanted to review the case, apprentice./

/Not particularly, at least not with you,/ Aithne answered. /Rickard’s story’s flawed. He says he fired into the sun, but you and the droid both say there wouldn’t have been sun this morning due to the weather, so he’s lying. Suspicious, and indicative he was up to something, but I’m much more interested in the weapon at the scene and what either of these guys had to do with Nettic./

/It seems I was correct in assuming you could help me with this case, apprentice,/ Bolook said. /Proceed, then./

Aithne shot the others an apologetic glance. Zaalbar growled a reassurance, Canderous grunted, and Carth just shrugged. Aithne returned to Guld. “So, this man, Calder. Did you know him?”

“I knew him a little bit, but I wasn’t any sort of great friend to him or anything,” Guld answered. “I never really associated with him that much. In truth, I didn’t really want to. He had a . . . reputation.” His face darkened. “Very inconsiderate of family, I heard.” He looked up, and his eyebrows flew up again. “But merely having heard unkind things about someone wouldn’t make me want to kill him!”

In that instant, Aithne was almost certain Guld was the murderer. “No one’s said you killed him yet,” she said slowly.

Handon let out a nervous laugh. “I’m sorry, I’m . . . I’m getting a bit agitated. Why must we remain here? Can’t . . . can’t you see that Rickard must have shot him?”

“Why would anyone want to shoot him?” Aithne replied, putting her hands on her hips.

Handon looked even more uncomfortable. “Um . . . you see, Calder was involved in some pretty sordid business from time to time.” He seemed to relax a bit. “More often than not, I’ve heard. Disreputable business practices, even more disreputable clients. I’ve even heard he had dealings with a Hutt! A Hutt, here on Dantooine! Now, I bet you’re wondering if I had any reasons to kill the man,” Handon said, getting defensive again, “but I tell you, I hardly knew him! Saw him once or twice, yes, and I have heard some pretty unkind things about him, but certainly nothing that would make me want to kill him!”

“Then why were you out here this morning, unarmed, in the storm?” Aithne asked, staring steadily at Guld. He squirmed like a worm on a hook, and his hand came up to touch his side again.

“I was out taking my daily constitutional,” he said. “I heard a shot, ran over, and found Calder’s body lying there.”

“That’s your story and you’re sticking to it,” murmured Aithne. “Fine. You’re holding your side,” she observed, switching tactics. “Are you injured?”

“I—injured?” Guld forced another laugh, removing his hand from his side as if it had been burned. “No, of course not! Why would I have been? Fit as a bantha!” He laughed again, a high, strained sound that made Aithne positive that he was, in fact, injured, and that the injury had something to do with the murder. “I run . . .” Guld repeated. “I don’t know if I mentioned that.”

“Only about three times,” Aithne murmured. “If you run as often as all that, you’d think you wouldn’t still have a stitch after what—two or three hours since you’ve been here?” As Guld opened his mouth to issue yet another protest, she cut him off. “That will be all for now. Thank you. Please remain here.”

She moved to the other man. “Lusoff, let’s have it,” she said. “Did you know Calder?”

“Yeah, I know him,” Lusoff admitted. “Hell, we’ve known each other for a good long time. Doesn’t mean I really have to have liked the slimeball.” He sighed, seeming to realize the harshness of his words. “Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on him, especially now that he’s dead. We actually got along pretty well most of the time. We just had our . . . differences. We were actually business partners. We were involved in some orbit-to-ground transport operations for Aratech. Can I leave now? I should probably be the one to give the news to his wife.”

Aithne hummed. “Maybe later. First, tell me why someone would want to kill Nettic.”

Rickard threw up his hands, disgusted. “You Jedi are so predictable,” he sneered. “Always seeing some greater purpose behind everything when the simple answer is usually the right one. Can’t you see that it must have been Handon? I found him standing over the damned body! I don’t know why this is causing you so much trouble. You almost seem as lost as this Bolook guy!”

“It may have been Handon,” Aithne answered, “though any evidence for that so far is purely circumstantial, and right now I’m not prepared to take your word on anything. You’ve already lied to me once, so I’m willing to bet things are a little more complicated than they look.” She noted Rickard changing color, then abruptly changed her own tone and smiled brightly. “So. Bolook said you were limping earlier. Are you injured?”

Rickard blinked, seeming genuinely taken aback. “Well . . . uh . . . I kind of sprained my ankle running through the bush before I found the body, but it’s nothing that serious.” Aithne looked at him for a moment. On this, she didn’t sense any dishonesty from him. He was telling the truth.

“Carth?” she called. Onasi came up to her. She tossed him her pack. “Can you help bind up Lusoff’s ankle with one of our bandages, please? It’s been sprained.”

“You got it,” Onasi told her.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” she told them both.

Once again, she checked both suspects’ stories with the information droid, which revealed Guld had definitely been lying and the true extent of Lusoff’s “differences” with Nettic. Guld had claimed he disliked speeders, but administrative records from the settlement center revealed he and Nettic had been renting a speeder together for the past month, and Lusoff had been in a bar fight with Nettic last week, accusing Nettic of cheating him in a business deal.

Bolook caught her eye again. Aithne walked over. /Checking my work, Teacher?/ she asked.

/I noticed your man is binding up Rickard’s leg, and wondered what you have discovered,/ Bolook said.

/His ankle’s sprained,/ Aithne reported. /Getting to the body this morning. Pretty sure he’s telling the truth about that, but he’s also the only one I’ve established clear motive for yet. Nettic cheated Lusoff in a business deal recently; they had a bar fight over it. But Guld’s lying about the full extent of his relationship with the victim too; he says he barely knew him, but they’ve been renting a speeder together for a month. I need to press Guld on that, and I want to find out about that blaster. Think you could leave me alone while I do your work for you?/

Without waiting for an answer, she turned away to Guld again. She was invested in the drama now, and honestly, Bolook’s blackmail didn’t matter. “Okay, Guld,” she told him. “You and Lusoff have pulled me into your holovid soap. So, tell me: why’d the information droid over there tell me you’ve been renting one of those infernal speeders with Calder for weeks?”

Guld blanched. “But I . . . I realize this must seem like a motive to you, but I assure you it isn’t. I dislike Calder, true. I would punch his face in,” he said, eyes darkening and voice dropping again, “given the opportunity, but I would not kill him!”

“So, the rented speeder isn’t evidence of your secret homosexual affair?” Aithne asked, raising her eyebrows.

Guld scowled. “Not my affair,” he growled. “My wife’s. They were in my own bed while I was in the next room, and that . . . they used my name to rent the speeder for Nettic’s transportation! But . . . as much as I may hate Calder for that, I could not kill him,” he finished, coming down from a wave of sick, black rage Aithne had sensed in him through the Force. “It may have been my own fault for driving my wife away. I must not try to take the law in my own hands. I was just out running, trying to clear my head for the divorce proceedings, not stalking him to kill him! Running is not a crime!”

“Uh-huh. If you don’t like speeders, and I buy that now, and you often run, you have to know that’s a bad idea out here without a weapon. So, tell me—the rifle by the body, is it yours?”

“Yes,” Guld sputtered. “But . . . but it was stolen from my house last week! I never knew what happened to it! You’re right—even an iriaz out here can take a man down if it gets in the mood; every settler has a weapon. It’s our most prized possession, but I hardly have enough money to afford a single blaster, let alone another. I just—I wasn’t thinking this morning when I headed out. I just . . . had to get out of the house, to clear my head, like I said!”

Aithne narrowed her eyes. “Right,” she muttered. Then she walked straight over to the information droid. If blasters were so valuable and Guld normally walked across the plains, Guld would’ve reported the theft of his rifle, but as she suspected, the droid had no report on record.

So. Nettic’s a speeder person. His being unarmed makes sense, but not on foot, unless he was the one who was really running this morning, because Guld only just discovered Nettic screwing around with his wife. There was a confrontation. Nettic couldn’t get back to the speeder. He fled across the plains, and Guld did stalk him, with his own rifle, and then—

Her eyes went to Rickard’s hunting laser, and she sucked in a breath. She blinked at the droid. “Hey, there was a blood sample on the blaster rifle found by the body. Bolook sent it off to be analyzed. What can you tell me about it?” she asked.

“I have just received the analysis back,” the droid reported. “The blood on the weapon is definitely not Calder’s. Unfortunately, there was a chemical contaminant in the sample that had been taken back to the laboratory, and it had become degraded. We cannot get any more specific analysis from that sample than the fact that it did not belong to Calder.”

Aithne nodded, unsurprised. She walked back over to Bolook. /You want a ballistics report,/ she told him. /That’s going to be what’ll give you the evidence you need. That and the fact that there is no report on that blaster rifle—Handon Guld’s—being stolen. I think if you head to Guld’s property, you’ll find a rented speeder there, unless Mrs. Guld has returned it or tried to drive it elsewhere in a panic. She and Nettic have been having an affair. Guld found out this morning. Caught them in the act in the marriage bed. He chased Calder out into the storm, and . . ./ she shrugged.

/And what of Rickard?/ Bolook demanded.

/He was out here,/ Aithne confirmed. /Probably hunting iriaz like he claimed, or it’s possible he knew where Nettic would be this morning and came on purpose; he knew Calder better than Guld did, if not better than Guld’s wife. At any rate, he sighted down on Nettic—but Guld had already fired. Lusoff’s shot hit or grazed Guld. He’s been clutching his side all morning whenever he thinks we’re not looking, and unlike Lusoff, he won’t admit to being hurt, because the second he does, we can prove he was here when the murder occurred and that he was holding the murder weapon. The wound patterns from blaster rifles and hunting lasers are really quite a bit different. Like I said: ballistics./

Bolook hummed. Then he strode over to Guld. /Handon has been moving oddly since I arrived. Perhaps we should examine him more closely./ He moved to check Handon’s side, and Handon moved away rather violently.

“Hey! What are you doing?” But Guld suddenly found his shoulder gripped rather firmly by a Wookiee head and shoulders taller than he was. He shrank back, and Bolook peered beneath his jacket, then let the jacket fall.

/There is blood!/ he called. /You say it proves Handon’s possession of the murder weapon, and also Rickard’s own attempted murder of the victim?/

/That’d be my guess,/ Aithne confirmed, as Onasi and Ordo moved up to flank Lusoff. /Guld called the enclave, and here we are. Guld is guilty of murdering Calder Nettic, and Lusoff is guilty of attempting to. And also of miserable aim./

“You’re telling me,” Ordo said. “Not only is Guld hardly grazed, he’s the wrong man. Now this idiot gets to go to trial for shooting a guy he had nothing against!”

“Damn you,” Lusoff spat, as Bolook handed first Zaalbar then Carth sets of cuffs to bind both men.

/Mr. Lusoff, Mr. Guld, I place you both under the arrest of the Jedi Order and will escort you to holding facilities in the Jedi enclave. Well done, Aithne Moran,/ Bolook added. /I will be sure to inform the Jedi Council of your performance in this little test./

/Wait, you’re not going to take all the credit?/ Aithne asked, raising her eyebrows. Bolook’s lekku waved, and Aithne made a disgusted noise. /Go on, get out of here./

She and the others watched as Bolook and the two criminals disappeared over the bridge. “I guess you did good,” Onasi said. “You might just make a proper Jedi yet. Who knows?”

Aithne glared at him. “Gonna bring that down on my head, are you?” she grumbled. “You know, that puffed-up, bullying incompetent is probably considered a proper Jedi.”

Carth laughed, but Zaalbar smiled with his eyes. /You did the right thing, regardless of his attempted blackmail. I honor you, Aithne Moran./

Aithne sighed. “Thanks, Big Z.” She glanced over at the horizon. “Sun’s going down,” she noted. “We should really try and find this corruption they want us to get rid of.” If it was here, both the raiders and the murder could be symptomatic.

“Finally,” Canderous growled. “I’ve been itching for some action.”

“We’ve been quiet for forty-five minutes solving a murder,” Aithne said aloud, “and already the Mandalorian wishes we’d been out committing more murders ourselves.” She reached out with her senses, then moved back across the footbridge, past the place they’d fought the raiders and toward a stand of trees.

“We’re close,” she said, catching sight of an old, ruined pavilion. “There.”

“That’s the place?” Carth asked.

Aithne looked at the stone pillars. Emanating from the ruins was a nimbus of emotional energy—rage and guilt and sorrow and despair. “That’s the place,” she muttered. She grabbed her lightsaber and started forward.

“I will be your doom!”

Aithne ignited her lightsaber, taking up a Makashi guard, as a Cathar woman leapt out from the ruins. Behind her, she saw all three of her companions frozen, put into Force Stasis by her adversary.

She caught the Cathar’s red lightsaber on hers and grunted; the Dark Jedi was brutally strong and using the Force to augment her strength, and she was taller and more muscular than Aithne herself. Aithne backed up, disengaging, considering.

The Cathar’s yellow eyes blazed at her. She was young, maybe a year or two older than Bastila, but not much. There was a braided strand of red yarn in her pulled-back mane—she’d been a Padawan. She came at Aithne again—Form IV, a form that relied heavily on the Force to physically boost attacks. The best counter was to prolong the fight, and not just from a physical perspective. Aggression, when met with no resistance, often burned itself out. Aithne let herself widen into a Soresu stance. She raised her chin at the Cathar, beckoning.

They reengaged. Aithne let the Cathar chase her, moving away from Carth, Canderous, and Zaalbar so the woman wouldn’t attack her allies, leading her further into the ruins. She built a wall of her blade, often deflecting or sliding the Cathar’s blows off of her saber instead of catching them and withstanding the full force of the blow. The Cathar began to hiss and sputter in frustration as the battle went on. Aithne watched her chest, the rise and fall of her breathing, the reach and precision of her movements, and the tightness around her eyes, waiting her out. The Cathar was using her rage and desperation to fuel her aggression, pushing it through the Force into her lightsaber combat at the same time she was trying to keep Carth, Canderous, and Zaalbar held in check. Her head wasn’t in this fight, or she would switch to Niman or Makashi to spare her strength or get out. She was outmatched.

Finally, when the Cathar was gasping and heaving, she made a leap overhead, and Aithne saw she was going to land more than half a handspan out of line. Her guard went wide too. Aithne flicked her wrist. The smell of burnt cloth and fur filled the air, and the Cathar’s red saber went spinning away to land humming like an angry wasp atop the stones. Aithne leveled her own saber at the woman’s face. Its green light illuminated the Cathar’s orange-and-yellow features, her glowing golden eyes in the growing darkness. The woman placed a hand over the burn on her saber-side forearm—Aithne had just grazed her, but she could have taken half the forearm, and the Cathar knew it.

Slowly, she brought both arms behind her head and sank to her knees. Aithne’s saber followed her all the way, and across the ruins, Aithne heard angry yells and a roar, indicating, Carth, Canderous, and Zaalbar had been released.

Boots and claws pounded on the stone. “Hold!” Aithne ordered sharply.

“This is the enemy?” Ordo demanded.

“She is, and I say, hold,” Aithne repeated.

“You . . . you are strong,” the Dark Jedi panted in heavily accented Basic. “Stronger than me, even in my darkness.”

“Who are you?” Aithne demanded, without lowering her lightsaber for a moment.

“I am Juhani,” the Cathar answered. “This is my grove! This is the place of my dark power. This is the place you have invaded. When I embraced the Dark Side, this is where I sought my solace. It is mine!”

Aithne narrowed her eyes at the woman. “If you embraced the Dark Side, why did you feel the need to seek your solace?” she challenged the Cathar.

Juhani closed her eyes, and Aithne felt the pain and guilt within the ruin surge. “When I slew my master, Quatra, I knew I could never go back,” she answered. Then her eyes opened, flashing, “And now I revel in my dark power! Power to crush to life from one such as you—or so I had thought.”

That sounded like bluster to Aithne. What was real was I knew I could never go back, and Master Zhar’s instruction this morning for Aithne to confront the source of the darkness, not destroy it, his reminder that not all those who went dark were lost forever. The Jedi wanted this one back. Aithne switched off her lightsaber, hooked it to her belt, and knelt in front of Juhani, mirroring her position, albeit without her hands behind her head. The Cathar’s hands came down, and her head tilted curiously.

“The Force is the Force,” Aithne told her plainly. “A Fallen Jedi can channel it to inflame her attacks, empower her strokes against an enemy. A Jedi can do the same thing to make herself like a cliff or the breaking waves of the sea, impervious to the fire.” It was a paraphrase of something in the Jedi texts, and Juhani’s shoulders seemed to droop. “Sith like to talk up the power of the Dark Side,” Aithne shrugged. “As far as I can tell, it can help, in some situations. But there are Light Side counters every bit as effective.”

Juhani sighed. “What is it you want? Why do you bother me?” Her voice ached with raw pain. The first twinkling star appeared in the sky.

“My name is Aithne, Juhani. I’m an apprentice down at the enclave. Or I’m training as one, anyway. I’m pretty sure we both know I’m here because the Council sent me to you. What isn’t clear is what’s going to happen next. I’d like to talk,” Aithne said. “You’re not hurting anyone but yourself with all this nonsense about reveling in your dark power. You’re unhappy.”

“What of it?!” Juhani cried, tears spilling from her eyes and into the fur of her face. “What if I am unhappy? Do your duty, apprentice! Kill me now, while you still have the power!”

Aithne shook her head. “That’s the easy way out. Not but that it doesn’t seem like you’re fond of that, since you’ve run out here instead of facing the music back at the enclave or jumping a shuttle to go join the Sith. Don’t snarl at me,” she added, as the Cathar’s face contorted, her muscles spasmed, and she half seemed as though she’d rise. “You won’t be killing anyone for a while yet with that arm, least of all me. I beat you fighting with your dominant hand. It wouldn’t take as long with the off hand—that is, if I didn’t cut you down before your lightsaber made it back to you.

“I’m not inclined to give way to your despair and cowardice,” Aithne continued, “and I don’t have to kill you to prove my superiority.”

“I know,” Juhani said then, bowing her head. “I am pathetic. I sit here and think myself to be great by embracing the Dark Side, but I am nothing! There is no way I could be turned back!” She sobbed. “I always thought they held me back, were jealous of my power. But it is only because I was not good enough to meet their standards. I never have been.”

Aithne waited until the girl had finished. “News for you, Juhani,” she said then, “You have not embraced the Dark Side. No one who does is as miserable about it as you are. When they rant and rave about the ‘power of the Dark Side,’ they mean it. They’re like ads for this great new drug. Also, you ever noticed that there is no one actually good enough to meet the Jedi standards?”

Juhani looked up at her, wide-eyed. Behind her, Aithne felt Onasi and Ordo both staring too. She thought she felt Zaalbar’s approval, but the Cathar’s anguish was too thick to really tell.

Aithne shrugged. “My friend, Bastila, has problems with pride and impatience. Me? I don’t buy into every chapter and verse of the dogma, and that has every one of them up there half convinced I’m destined to be the next Dark Lord. Even Master Vrook on the Council has some serious anger issues. As far as I’m concerned, if we all just stopped trying to pretend we’re perfect and started trying to be the best we can every day, as we are, we’d all be a lot better off.”

“You do not seem like a Dark Lord,” Juhani told her. “You seem wise. I seem to have much to learn—both about being a Jedi and about myself. But I wish the cost of my ignorance had not been so high! I wish that my master had not suffered because of me!”

“Yeah, why’d you kill her again?” Aithne asked. “If you regret it so much now?”

“She . . . she angered me,” Juhani said. “Said I would never—but it does not matter! My attacking her, injuring her so severely, killing her is unforgivable!”

“It’s bad, but if she’s dead, she’s gone back to the Cosmic Force, and she will know you regret her death,” Aithne said.

Juhani shifted positions, sitting on her rear end instead and hugging her knees to her. She looked up at the stars rising overhead. “If she were alive now, there would be so much I would say to her,” the Cathar whispered. “So much I would apologize for. I loved her, you know. She had been my master for years. It was why I was so angry when she said—you believe the Council may have sent you to retrieve me?” She looked back at Aithne, eyes flashing. “They can never take me back.”

“What, like you’re so far gone?” Aithne challenged her. “A couple klicks away and just about drowning in the guilt for what you did? Suicidal over it? Please. I’m almost certain Zhar at the least is just dying to give you a big hug and kiss that Dark Side booboo better. That’s his less-than-Jedi failing, by the way: he’s carrying his own burden of guilt, regardless of what the Code says about that. You can use that.”

When Juhani looked hurt and uncertain, Aithne sighed.

“You got angry, Juhani. It sounds like your master intentionally provoked you. You may have used the Dark Side, with regrettable results, but you didn’t fall. You didn’t embrace it. You’re scared and despairing—which, again, Dark Side emotions, not necessarily equal to a fall. Embracing the Dark Side is an action. You’re still caught up in reaction. Now, you could choose to embrace the Dark Side, say your master had it coming, all this crap isn’t worth it, and you want to be on the next shuttle to a Sith academy. But you’re not. Instead, you’re here, thinking about how much you loved your master, how much you wish you could go back to the Jedi. Well, guess what? You can. Might not be easy, might not be without consequences, but the only person keeping you here is you.”

“If I show them I am free of passion,” said Juhani, talking mostly to herself now, “that I am serene . . . That I am willing to forsake the Dark Side . . . Maybe, just maybe, they would take me back. Do you think they would?” she asked suddenly. She reached out with her injured arm for Aithne’s wrist, then hissed. The motion pulled at her burn. She cradled it to her chest. “Could it be possible after what I have done?” she asked.

Aithne shrugged again. She stood. “I’ve already told you that you have a shot with Zhar. I’ll also remind you that they’re really short on warriors to fight Malak, enough that they trained a twenty-eight-year-old apprentice.”

Juhani shook her head. “You are no mere apprentice,” she said. “I have never . . . I have not fought or spoken with anyone like you.”

Aithne wrinkled her nose. “Don’t go idealizing me too hard,” she advised. “Like I said, they don’t like me up there. They’re training me because they need me, not because they want me. Bastila thinks I’m doing this Jedi thing all wrong. She’s right, but I don’t want to course-correct. You want to head back to the enclave with us?”

She held her hand down to Juhani, and the Cathar took it, accepting her help to rise. “No,” she answered. “I will return to the Council. I shall submit myself to their judgment and hope that they will forgive me. But I think I should do this on my own. But . . . I thank you. I am sure I will hear great things about you in the future.”

“Put in a good word for me someday if it ends up being that I’m the next Dark Lord,” Aithne said, and the Cathar smiled at her shyly in return. “May the Force be with you,” Aithne added.

Juhani turned. The Force gathered to her, and she set off, and within seconds, she was beyond Aithne’s sight, having used to Force to speed her beyond the horizon in a few leaps and bounds.

“That woman is a murderess,” Carth said quietly after a moment.

“She’s also a Cathar,” Canderous said. “She’s a fighter through and through. She probably didn’t kill her master in cold blood.”

“I don’t think she did,” Aithne answered, looking after Juhani. “But I have no idea why Master Quatra pushed the girl that hard.”

Canderous grunted then. “She may be a fighter, but she was also a coward. You could’ve crushed her easily. Why didn’t you?”

“Maybe because Aithne’s not a bloodthirsty killing machine,” Carth snapped.

Aithne stepped between the two humans. “Leave it, Carth, it was a fair question. I think the Jedi wanted her back, but they would’ve been fine if I killed her too. Whether she meant to or not, Juhani struck a lethal blow at her master in what was effectively a temper tantrum. She wasn’t a committed Sith or Dark Jedi—far from it—but she’s been flirting with those naughty emotions alright, and giving way to them too, in pretty dangerous ways.”

She fell silent, considering Ordo’s question. “I think, mostly, I didn’t kill her because she’s a coward,” she answered finally. “Once we’d found her here, and once she knew she couldn’t beat me, she wanted to die. Better that than face up to what she’d done. Like I told her, that’s too easy. She doesn’t get to get off looking this in the face. If she does it right, she’ll be better for it. Killing her would just be a waste.”

“Huh. You know, you were right,” Carth said. “I think you are doing this Jedi thing wrong. But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, either. It was . . . it was pretty incredible, the way you talked her down like that.”

“Anyone who got the Cathar to stop lying to herself could’ve done that,” Canderous said. “Come on. The kath hounds’ll be sleeping now, but we should be heading back.”

JUHANI

Juhani left the Council chambers, staring at the new lightsaber within her hand. The kyber crystal within was pure, uncorrupted. She activated the saber, and it shone clear Guardian blue. She had thought she was fallen, condemned. Now she was a Jedi Knight.

Quatra was gone—not slain as she had thought but healed. She had broken the student bond and set Juhani free. She was out among the stars again now, searching out new apprentices. Juhani still wished she might apologize, might beg Master Quatra for forgiveness—still she understood why Quatra had made the choice she had done. Juhani’s very attachment to her was as much a weakness as the anger that had arisen when Quatra had criticized her sentimentality, her volatility, claimed she could never rise to greatness. Provoked her, Juhani now realized, into confronting her own fragility.

Oh, yes, she was fragile. She had believed that she was stronger than the Order’s innumerable restrictions, that so many were unnecessary to achieve true enlightenment within the Force. When she had first joined the Order, she had been devoted to every precept; she had vowed to never put a foot out of line and become the greatest Jedi of all time! But . . . these past few years, she had grown complacent, impatient. She had allowed arrogance to creep into her practice, let passions invade . . . and the result was precisely what her masters had always warned.

The Darkness was just a breath away, always. From now on, she would be more careful . . . but she would also have to walk the path alone, without Quatra . . . and without those who had been her companions in dancing across the borderlines. One was already gone. The other . . .

Juhani closed her eyes. She would love Belaya forever, but she also saw now how that in itself could be a danger. If Belaya ever pressed her as Quatra had done, how long would it take her to break again? A Jedi lived free of passion.

It was how she had been beaten in the sacred grove today, she realized now. Her fear and rage had fueled her in the Force; the Sith did not lie when they said the Dark Side could make you strong. They did not say how it could also make you foolish: rash, reckless, and unobservant, crashing that strength without discrimination upon a stillness that could dash it to pieces. The apprentice in the grove—Aithne Moran, friend to Bastila—had dictated the terms of her combat with Juhani from the start. Aithne Moran had had little to do but defend herself and wait until Juhani had overextended herself. If Juhani had not been so blinded by fury and desperation, could she perhaps have seen it?

She was unworthy of her knighthood; of the clemency she had been granted. But then, perhaps that was the point. She remembered the words of Aithne Moran: that there was no one who did meet the Jedi standards. Perhaps they were more a goal to be strived for than one to be reached.

Across the courtyard, Juhani saw Aithne Moran now. At her side, the human male in the bright orange jacket Juhani had seen in the grove and another Juhani had not seen before: a Twi’lek girl, still a child. Neither dressed in the robes of the Jedi. The larger, older human male and the Wookiee were nowhere to be seen.

“Aithne Moran,” she hailed the woman. The apprentice raised her head. “I must give you my thanks,” Juhani told her. “Because of you, I am once again welcome within the Jedi Order.”

Aithne smiled, though she looked weary. “What did I tell you? I don’t think I got a chance to introduce you to my friend before in the grove—this is Carth.” She indicated the human male, then the Twi’lek on her other side. “And this is my ward and associate, Mission Vao. Carth, Mission? Juhani.”

Juhani bowed to the human and the Twi’lek girl each in turn. “I have spoken with the Council,” she told Aithne then. “They have helped me see the truth.” She explained what had happened. Aithne listened, and so did her companions. When she had finished, the Twi’lek smiled.

“Hey, I’m glad you’re not getting hung up on all this. The past is in the past, you know?” Juhani smiled back into the girl’s earnest face. This Mission Vao was a friendly sort, she saw, and she could sense the girl had a pure and generous spirit, though she was blind to the Force. She wondered what circumstances had come together to make her the ward of a Jedi apprentice.

But the male frowned. “First the Jedi trick you into becoming an enemy, and then they welcome you back as a friend. I can’t say I approve of their training methods.”

Juhani bristled at the slight to Quatra. “It was necessary,” she insisted. “I would not have believed I could fall so far through any lesser test. Now I know. I shall not be so complacent in the future. I can keep a watch upon my inner Darkness—my passion, my anger and arrogance.”

“So long as you don’t fear it,” Aithne murmured. “Fear too can lead to the Dark Side, or so the story goes.”

Juhani gazed at the human woman. She sensed this time, Aithne Moran spoke as much about herself as about Juhani. “This was a trial for both of us,” she said. “If you proceed to the Council, I believe I will not be the only one receiving a new rank this night.” She raised her hand to indicate the place where her Padawan braid had once been tied but was not longer.

“Ooh, I get a tragic new hair accessory?” Aithne said, clapping her hands together in faux excitement. Juhani blinked at her, puzzled.

“You are an unusual Jedi,” she remarked, “and I believe a very odd woman. Still—once again, I thank you.”

She bowed, and Aithne, instead of bowing in return, tipped a mock salute that nevertheless had no true feeling of disrespect about it. The Twi’lek girl, Mission, waved, and the man, Carth Onasi, gave Juhani a nod, and all three passed onward.

Juhani watched them go. In the Dantooine dusk upon the plains, she had not seen that Aithne Moran was beautiful, or realized the true power of the Force aura surrounding her, even more powerful than that of Bastila, the Padawan Aithne claimed as her friend, and the Council’s darling. But still . . . very odd.

Chapter Text

BASTILA

Despite her exertions of the day before, Aithne was ready to return to the Council early the morning after her trials. Bastila had risen before her, of course. She had finished her breakfast and was onto her second cup of tea by the time Aithne emerged into the main hold dressed in a belted, sleeveless rust-red tunic, with khaki arm bindings and leggings. The colors and style suited her somewhat better than yesterday’s plainer fare. Her hair was plaited back away from her face at the top and sides but left to tumble freely down her back, and there was another, smaller braid pinned atop the larger. Alas, Bastila did not think any one master had bound it there, accepting this one as a pupil for however brief a time. There was a sad shortage of teachers nowadays. Like Bastila after her master had been slain aboard Revan’s flagship, Aithne would have to serve as Padawan to the Order as a whole. But even if there had been teachers aplenty, Bastila wondered if any Jedi would have been willing to risk Aithne Moran as a Padawan, as desperately as they all needed her.

 She would begin to address that need today. “Eat quickly, please,” Bastila told Aithne. “We have been ordered to the Council for assignment.”

“You’d think they would have seen enough of me lately,” Aithne said, and before Bastila could rebuke her, the golden eyes flashed up and caught hers. “Relax, Bastila. I’m almost done. You think the Council would let us bring help out to the ruins today? Yesterday made for a nice change, but everyone around here has been bored to tears lately.”

“Hear, hear!” Mission piped up from her seat next to Aithne.

Bastila hesitated, twisting her hands. “I don’t know,” she said.

“It might be nice if one of us could go to keep informed of the situation,” Carth said, rather too casually to be believed.

Aithne glanced at him. “Carth, would you like to come along with me and Bastila?” she asked, as if responding to his cue.

“Well, it is my assignment from the Republic,” Carth told them.

“Oh, don’t even ask me,” Mission said, folding her arms and pretending to pout, but when Aithne turned to her, the child grinned and waved a hand. “Please. It’s fine. I wanna do some more reading anyway. Later me and Big Z will probably go out shooting more kath hounds with Canderous.”

The Wookiee glanced at Aithne for release, and she nodded her agreement. “Just don’t be too disappointed if they aren’t as aggressive, or there aren’t as many. We’ve beat them pretty bad the past few weeks and got rid of a nasty stressor in the immediate area.”

“Take a shield anyway,” Carth advised, and when Mission started to turn violet, he swept his gaze over to include the Wookiee. “Both of you.”

“We should fully equip as well,” Bastila said. “Doubtless the Council intends to send us to the ruins Aithne and I dreamed of, and we should be prepared for whatever may await us.”

“Gotcha,” Carth agreed. Aithne said nothing, but she threw a fruit rind into the ship’s compactor and did move to obey. It was nice to know she was not always pert and insubordinate.

The Council was waiting for them when they arrived, talking among themselves when Bastila, Carth, and Aithne walked in. Before they were within earshot, however, the talk all ceased, proof positive it had been about them, or, more likely, about Aithne. No doubt she herself would realize this. Bastila did wish the Council had been somewhat more circumspect about their doubts the first day they had arrived. Aithne had been suspicious of the Jedi since before their arrival, thanks to Carth, and perhaps to other factors that were actually working in their favor, but since they had arrived, Bastila had sensed a wholly new wariness and apprehension within her feelings. It was mostly self-directed, and again, could possibly work in their favor, putting Aithne on guard against her inner Darkness, but it could easily backfire as well.

Vandar opened the conversation. “It is good to see Juhani has returned to the way of the Light,” he told Aithne. “You are to be commended for your role in this. Your actions give us great hope for the future. Your training is now complete, young Padawan, and perhaps now it is time we dealt with the matter of the dream you and Bastila shared.”

Actually, within the ranks of the Order, attaining the rank of Padawan did not mean that one’s training was complete, only that one progressed to a stage of learning best accomplished within the field, outside the walls of the Jedi academies. Padawans were considered full members of the Jedi Order, yes, but they were always supervised, guided until the day they passed a new trial to become true Jedi Knights. Aithne knew this, but to Bastila’s great relief, she did not choose this moment to prove she knew Master Vandar had misspoken. She simply bowed and waited.

“When we heard of the ruins in your dreams,” Master Tokare continued, speaking to them both now, “Master Dorak recognized it as one of a series of ancient structures here on Dantooine. This one in particular lies to the east of the Enclave. We sent a Jedi to investigate . . . but he has not returned. Perhaps sending him in the first place was a mistake.” Master Tokare paused, and Bastila felt his sadness within the Force. “The Force is guiding your visions; it may be that exploring the ruins is a task tied to your destiny. That is why the Council has decided you should be the one to investigate this. The secrets to stopping Malak may be hidden in those ruins. You must investigate them and find what Revan and Malak were looking for.”

“You mean that thing that had Malak convinced the two of them could never return to the Jedi Order and might have been tied to their fall to the Dark Side,” Aithne said, face neutral. “That thing?”

“Yes. That thing,” Master Lamar said, eyes flashing with irritation.

“You two must travel to the ruins together,” Master Tokare said. “There is a powerful link between you, and you will need to draw strength from each other during the trials ahead.”

That was partially true—the Council did not believe Aithne Moran could now attain the information they would require without her bond to Bastila, and it was possible that Bastila would be unable to withstand the strain of what they were to face without her bond to Aithne. But the Council also wanted to make sure Aithne Moran was aware of the importance of keeping Bastila as near to her as possible. She was to serve as an early warning system in case Aithne Moran fell to the Dark Side, and hopefully an anchor that bound her to the Light. They had impressed upon Bastila privately how crucial the link she had forged with Aithne Moran was to her task—she would be the first to recognize anything at all amiss with Aithne, not only those things which might be apparent to anyone, and their bond might also give her more sway with Aithne than anyone else could have. The difficulty was, of course, accomplishing this part of her task without Aithne realizing. The woman was cleverer than Bastila, more experienced, and stronger with the Force. The Council had said she must never forget this, and indeed, Bastila had seen for herself that she must not.

Even now, Aithne was looking intently at the Council. “Trials. Plural. Do you want to give me a hint as to what comes after Bastila and I investigate the—”

But then the chamber doors burst open, and an angry, middle-aged human male strode in, despite the protests of the apprentice outside. “I demand justice!” the man cried out. “The Sandral family is a blight upon Dantooine! They must be punished!”

Master Tokare seemed displeased, but he answered the man wan with patience and kindness. “The Council will look into this matter, Mr. Matale. You must be patient. Your accusations have no proof, and we do not want you stirring up trouble with the Sandrals if there is some mistake.”

“Mistake?” Matale demanded, outraged, “My son Shen is missing! How can there be any doubt the Sandrals are to blame?”

Bastila sighed. It was possible the situation between the Sandrals and the Matales had indeed escalated to kidnapping. It was a blood feud in the making if she had ever seen one, but if the Sandrals were not to blame for Shen’s recent disappearance and Matale acted, the feud would break out for sure. Master Tokare explained this. “There are other possible explanations for your son’s disappearance.”

“Bah!” spat Matale. “You Jedi are good for nothing but talk! I shall only wait so long before I take action on my own!”

At that, he stormed out of the Council Chamber with as much rudeness as he had entered.

Master Tokare seemed troubled. “As dangerous as the threat from Darth Malak and the Sith may be,” he said, “we Jedi cannot simply abandon our other responsibilities. The Council has promised Ahlan Matale we will look into his son’s disappearance. Should you have time, Padawans, you may want to investigate this matter.”

“I don’t know,” Aithne muttered, “Is Shen Matale politer than his daddy?” Carth smiled at this, and Bastila intervened before their banter could start up again.

“Yes, in fact, though I fail to see what bearing that should have on whether he is abandoned to kidnap or a fate that is possibly worse.”

Aithne looked annoyed. “You really know how to kill a joke, Bas,” she remarked. She bowed to the Council. “We’ll see what we can find out.”

Master Lamar explained the significance of the Matale-Sandral relations upon Dantooine. “The Jedi are not a cloistered order,” he added. “Our influence and teachings must spread beyond the walls of our academies. It is in the real world that we truly prove ourselves worthy of the title ‘Jedi.’ You would do well to remember this, young Padawan,” he finished.

“Not to mention that I wouldn’t mind getting out of this enclave for a while,” Carth put in. “I mean, c’mon, how bad could it be?”

“Potential blood feud?” Aithne answered, with a look. “Bad. But never mind. Jedi intervention: not okay until it is. Got it. Carth, Bastila, let’s go.”

As the three of them left the enclave, Aithne asked her about the dream. She was somewhat guarded as she did so, and Bastila felt she could hazard a guess as to why. Any knowledge they gained of Revan and Malak might prove . . . problematic. She would have to handle this with care. “It was less of a dream and more of a vision,” Bastila said, “a vision the two of us shared. But I am certainly willing to answer any questions the Council did not.”

“Careful with those promises, Bas,” Aithne murmured. “I may have more questions than you are willing to answer.” As she spoke, Bastila felt a slight pressure on the shields between their minds, then an awareness pushed deliberately across their link from Aithne. She looked sharply at the taller woman, and Aithne merely raised her eyebrows.

As irritating as Aithne’s levity could be, her mockery of every small flaw and fallacy she detected, it was these moments of seriousness and terrifying insight that were the more unnerving, Bastila thought. “Very well, perhaps I should clarify,” she said. “I will answer any questions that I can, both within the bounds of my own knowledge and my authority from the Council.”

She felt a brief flicker of contempt, but also gratitude for the honesty. Unfortunately, she also saw Carth focus in upon their conversation. She wished desperately that she and Aithne were in private. Letting Aithne know only as much as she needed to know would be difficult enough without having to consider the suspicions of Carth Onasi and his own bond with Aithne Moran, how the two of them could compare notes later and get even further than either could get independently. She wished she had grounds to request a new liaison from the Republic, or none at all, but there was no way for her to do this without doing more harm than good.

“Let’s start, then,” Aithne said, “with why you believe that we shared this vision.”

“Are you wondering why we shared the vision?” Bastila asked, “Or why we even received it in the first place? To the first, I can only repeat the answer that the Council told us. Our fates are linked, and for two as strong as we are in the Force that amounts to a near physical bond.” Again, it was a partial truth. She relied upon that to shield her, for the time being. The lie would be more difficult. “As for the second, I don’t truly have an answer for you. The Force works as it will, and perhaps we should be grateful for what we have been given.”

Aithne pursed her lips. “Next question, then. Do you buy the Council’s line that our bond started at the swoop track?” Her eyes were keen.

“How else do you imagine it originated?” Bastila bluffed. “Believe me, I certainly don’t find the prospect of being joined to you to be enjoyable in any fashion.”

Aithne smiled at that. “Oh, you’re breaking my heart, Bas,” she murmured.

Bastila flushed, but better Aithne’s mind had moved to crude insinuations than her imagination to the other ways their bond could have originated. “Please forgive me. I did not mean to imply that you are repulsive in any sense of the word,” she said. “That we shared something so personal is just not something I’m used to.”

“Well, now that we’ve established we’re not homophobic in any sense of the word,” Aithne murmured, mouth twitching, and when Bastila opened her mouth to stutter another protest, she groaned. “No, Bastila, I don’t want you. We can just be friends, and our bond kinda freaks me out too. Okay? We good?”

Bastila couldn’t help her gaze from sliding to Carth, who looked like he was making a valiant effort not to laugh. How she wished he wasn’t here! He caught her eye, closed his eyes, and lost his battle, letting loose a low chuckle. And she was flaming with embarrassment.

Of course, that was the moment when Aithne decided to push her on the immediate topic again. “So—you’ve said you don’t know, but I’m going to invite you to speculate: why do you think we dreamed of Revan and Malak?”

Bastila tried to collect herself, looking ahead at the ruins now rising up on the horizon. “Perhaps because we desired to. Perhaps because they came to this planet and were strong enough in the Force to leave a . . . a trace.”

She kept her shields up, her mind focused solely upon the line of the broken stones against the rising sun, but she could sense all Aithne’s attention upon her and everything she wasn’t saying once again.

“And you don’t find it a bit convenient the pair of us are dreaming about the lords of the Sith?”

Bastila rounded on her. “What else should we dream about except that which is most important to our fate? We dreamed about Revan and Malak either because we were meant to or because we needed to. There is no other way to look at it.”

“Don’t limit yourself to multiple-choice solutions,” Aithne advised her, looking ahead herself now. “Cuts out all the both-and options and any multilateral thinking.” Once again, Bastila could feel that terrifying awareness from the other side of the bond, could feel Aithne letting her feel it. She did not think Aithne had guessed the truth—but Aithne knew that she lied. “We’ll leave it for now. Don’t want to push your ability to speculate on origins of visions and powers you don’t understand or your loyalty to the Council too far for one day.”

Beside them, Carth’s eyes had narrowed, and he was gazing between them as though he understood some of what Aithne was implying, even without access to the Force bond between her and Bastila.

“What do you think Revan and Malak were doing?” Aithne asked then, in a welcome change of subject.

“I have no idea. It was obviously important, however.”

“Yeah, the whole ‘if we pass through this door we can never go back’ bit was rather ominous,” remarked Aithne.

“And that is why we must investigate this further. Is that all you wished to know?”

“And we’re back here again,” Aithne sighed. “No. It’s not all I want to know. It’s so far from all I want to know I don’t even know where to start. But it’s all I think you’re going to tell me, at least for now. And it’s perhaps all I’m ready to hear.”

That last sentence showed a self-awareness that was paradoxically as comforting as it was deeply troubling. As was Carth’s decision to interject at this point. “You don’t think we should maybe explore this more?” he asked.

“I get the feeling if I poke this more now, this is the kind of thing that either starts bleeding or gets broken,” Aithne answered. “Since a good portion of it is happening in our heads—” she gestured between them— “I’m okay not taking it as far as I could, for now.”

“Well, that’s fair,” Carth admitted. “Guess it’s a better idea not to mess too much with the effects the Force and freaky Force bonds can have on minds—or yank too hard on where a bond like yours and Bastila’s started. Still—it’s . . . it’s a little strange.”

“Agreed,” Aithne said shortly. She nodded her head at the path ahead. “Kath hounds.”

Her intervention in the grove the day before had definitely had a positive impact. It was the first time they had encountered the kath this morning. Within the next two minutes, they had passed the kath hounds and through the pillars which marked the entrance to the ruin they had dreamed of. Aithne stared at a massive black door made of a metal difficult to identify.

“There doesn’t seem to be a keypad,” Bastila said.

“I don’t see any handle,” Carth seconded.

Aithne walked up to the door. She ran her fingers over it and closed her eyes. Then, she depressed a button in its very center. The door divided into columns and separated like teeth, retreating into the floor and ceiling of the ruin.

Aithne led the way into a low, wide hall, in surprisingly good repair. There was another door like the first at the end of the corridor. When they opened it, they were faced with an ancient, corroded droid. It was shoulder height, with four long, sharp legs. Its central processing unit turned with a shriek of unoiled metal and spoke in a groaning shriek impossible to comprehend.

Aithne turned to Bastila. Bastila spread her hands.

“What language is that?” Aithne ventured at last. “What are you trying to say?”

The droid clicked and whirred for a few seconds. Then it began speaking again, this time in a whining growl similar to Shyriiwook but far enough removed to be unintelligible.

Aithne looked back at Bastila. “Get anything there?”

“I think the droid is trying to communicate with us by cycling through a variety of ancient languages,” Bastila guessed. “Each time it spoke it was using a very different alien dialect. The droid can probably understand us. The only problem is it may not have been programmed with the phenomes of a language we can understand.”

/I can reproduce any of the languages spoken by the slaves of the Builders,/ said the droid in a gurgling croak.

Aithne straightened. “Droid, I understood that.”

“I recognize this language as well,” Bastila said.

“That makes two of you,” grumbled Carth.

“It is an archaic variant of the Selkath dialect spoken on Manaan,” Bastila explained. “The droid claims it was a language spoken by the slaves of the Builders, whoever they were. Why would a droid on Dantooine be programmed to speak ancient Selkath?”

/Communication was vital to ensure that the slaves constructed this temple according to the wishes of the Builders,/ the droid answered. Behind Bastila, Aithne translated in an undertone for Carth. /But you are not of the slave species,/ the droid continued, turning its processing unit so its ancient sensors faced Aithne. /You are like the one who came before./

“The droid must be referring to Revan,” Bastila mused. “The Dark Lord and Malak most likely encountered this droid when they explored these ruins.”

Aithne’s face twisted. “Any particular reason why I’m like—” she began, under her breath, then cut off. “Never mind. Droid, what are you? Why are you here?”

/I am the Overseer,/ the droid replied. /The Builders programmed me to enforce discipline among the slaves while this monument to the power of the Star Forge was constructed. At project completion all slaves were executed. I was reprogrammed to serve should a Builder ever return to search for knowledge of the Star Forge./

“And how long have you been here?” Aithne wanted to know.

/My chronological circuits have marked over ten full revolutions of this system’s outermost planet around its sun since the Builders left,/ the droid answered.

Bastila calculated the time in her head in a moment. “Ten revolutions—that would take more than twenty thousand years! If this is true, then this droid is nearly five thousand years older than the Republic itself! There must be some mistake.”

Carth whistled. And the droid answered, /There is no mistake. The Builders constructed my chronological circuitry using the technology of the Star Forge itself. My calculations are infallible./

Aithne’s face was a study. “Who are these Builders you keep talking about?” she asked.

/The Builders are the great masters of the galaxy, the conquerors of all worlds, the rulers of the Infinite Empire, and the creators of the Star Forge,/ the droid said.

A list of titles appropriate to the creators of a slaveholding, monument-constructing empire, but ultimately meaningless. The droid might not have been programmed with any information to answer Aithne’s question. “These Builders must have been an extinct people,” Bastila said, “though it is strange there is no record of their existence. Even the archives at the Jedi Academy make no mention of them. In the years before the Republic, the Hutts were a dominant force in the galaxy, but they never constructed an empire. In fact, I know of no species that would fit this description.”

“Neither do I,” Aithne answered. “Just because we don’t know about them doesn’t mean they never existed. I’ve seen some pretty strange things. Maybe something happened to wipe out the Builders and their records.”

The droid objected. /The Empire of the Builders is infinite and everlasting. None can stand against their might and the power of the Star Forge./

Aithne put her hands upon her hips. “Well, have you seen a Builder recently?” she asked the droid.

The droid skittered about on its claws for a few seconds. /I have been here ever since the completion of this monument. In all this time, no Builder has returned to seek information on the Star Forge./

“If a Builder doesn’t seek information on the Star Forge, can you provide it to other species?” Aithne asked.

/Now that the slaves are gone, my purpose is to aid those who seek knowledge of the Star Forge,/ the droid confirmed. /If they are worthy./

“Okay, before we get into the questions of who’s worthy and who’s not and how they prove that, can you tell us what a Star Forge is?” Aithne asked.

/The Star Forge is the glory of the Builders, the apex of their Infinite Empire. It is a machine of invincible might, a tool of unstoppable conquest,/ the droid answered.

Another list of titles. They waited for the droid to continue, when it did not, Aithne looked at it. “You’re just the propaganda poster, aren’t you? You don’t really know what it is.”

The droid started speaking again. /The . . . the Star Forge is the glory of the Builders, the apex of their Infinite Empire. It is a machine of invincible might, a tool of unstoppable conquest./

“I believe you are correct about the extent of the Overseer’s programming,” Bastila told Aithne. “The Star Forge sounds as though it could be a kind of weapon, though in fact it could be anything.”

Aithne wrinkled her nose. “If ‘Forge’ is the correct translation, I doubt it’s a weapon as such. More likely, it’s a means of producing them.”

“Maybe,” Bastila agreed, her mind going to the strange design of many of Revan and Malak’s ships, weapons, and armor since the war had begun. “That might explain how the Sith were able to amass a fleet so quickly. But I suspect the Star Forge is more powerful than a mere factory. Maybe the droid has more information we can use. It seems to respond to you; perhaps you should ask it something else.”

Aithne leveled a look at her, and Bastila detected a reluctance across their bond. But Aithne made no protest. Instead, she turned back to the droid. “Let’s get back to what aid you can provide. What’s this about worthiness?”

/The ones who came before you—the ones like you, not Builders, but not slaves—sought knowledge of the Star Forge and its origins. They proved themselves worthy. They discovered the secrets of the Star Forge locked beyond the sealed door behind me./ The droid turned its sensors to another door immediately opposite them. /But there was another who failed to unlock the secrets and paid the ultimate price./

Bastila then saw a corpse lying in a shadowed corner. She walked over to it, steeling herself against the tiny insects that had already begun to feed upon the flesh. She rolled the body over, repulsed as her hands made imprints within the corpse’s robed arms. And then she recognized the body. It was severely burned, charred on one side almost beyond recognition. But beneath the busily working scavengers on the unburned side were the features of a human Jedi Knight she knew.

“It is Nemo,” she told the others. “The Council sent him here to investigate, and it cost him his life. This saddens me. He was kind to me when I was just a youngling.”

Using the Force, she pushed the insects away from the body and put the corpse into Stasis, freezing it so it could not be defiled further.

“We’ll report his death when we return to the Council,” Carth said. “They can send a speeder and a team back for the body.”

Bastila stood and went to rejoin the others. Aithne reached out and squeezed her arm. She said nothing, but a sensation of strength, sympathy, and comfort flowed across their bond. Aithne faced the droid. “What can we do to prove ourselves worthy?”

/Enter the proving grounds to the East and West,/ the droid commanded. /Within them, those who understand the will of the Builders can unlock the secrets and open the doors. But those who fail will be destroyed by the power of the temple itself. More than this, I am not programmed to say./

Bastila looked at Aithne. “Revan and Malak unlocked the sealed door and uncovered the secrets of the Star Forge,” she said. “Now Malak must be using the Star Forge to fuel his conquest of the Republic. We have to find out what they uncovered. We have to find a way to unseal these doors to learn more about the Star Forge! The Republic is depending on us!”

Aithne looked back at her. She waited a moment. “You done?” she said then. She sighed, then muttered. “Enemy intelligence. I could’ve done this without the Jedi training. Come on, then.”

She unhooked her lightsaber from her belt and walked away from Bastila toward the room to the west.

A droid that looked much like the Overseer was waiting there. Unfortunately, this droid was not programmed to assist them but to test them. Bastila knew within moments how Nemo had died. A lightsaber defense was no good at all against a flamethrower. Bastila and Aithne were instead obliged to use the Force in acrobatics to dodge the flames and the droid’s sharpened legs, moving to the rear and the side of wherever the droid aimed its flame. But soon they found that the metal the droid was made of, like Mandalorian beskar, was invulnerable to the beams of their lightsabers. Only Carth’s blaster fire made any impact.

 “Carth! Vibroblade!” Aithne shouted, somersaulting under a gout of flame and kicking out at a spindly leg to strike the droid off its balance. “Or a blaster! Anything!”

Fortunately, it had become common practice for Carth to carry at least one extra weapon within his pack at all times. It took another feverish seconds of leaping out of the droid’s sights, able to rotate 360 degrees around its body, but a vibroblade came sailing from the doorway. Carth had thrown it at where Aithne had just been rather than the place she had been forced to move to, but she caught it with the Force and switched the vibrational field on. The droid’s protective shielding was not built to resist the thrust of the vibroblade’s point into its joints and, indeed, the spout of its flamethrower weapon itself. In another tense few moments, Aithne had dismembered the relic and left its exploded central processing unit sparking on the ground.

She stared down at it for a moment. “Are there any other barbarian weapons in your pack, Onasi?” she asked.

“I got a spare ion blaster,” Carth offered, holding it up.

Without a word, Aithne passed her vibroblade over to Bastila and accepted the blaster herself. Bastila appreciated the gesture. Indeed, when she was not wielding her lightsaber, she was better trained with melee weapons than she was with firearms. “There’s probably another one of these on the other side,” Aithne explained. She nodded at the vibroblade. “I want that back.”

“Of course,” Bastila agreed.

Aithne regarded the ancient console past the remains of the broken droid. It hummed with power, but the symbols upon the keys were all corroded, worn away, or incomprehensible. Aithne pressed a key regardless.

Strange words filled the screen, although the dust made them difficult to make out regardless of the different alphanumeric characters. At the same time, a voice spoke in a language none of them recognized. “Spoken and written components,” Aithne observed.

As soon as she had said it, the computer whirred and beeped. Suddenly, a tray shot out, a receptacle of sorts. “The computer seems to want something from me,” Aithne said.

“I think it’s trying to convert to our language,” said Bastila. “Just like the Overseer back there.”

“Why don’t you give it a datapad or something?” suggested Carth.

Aithne shrugged. She did customarily carry the party’s intelligence reserves. She shouldered her pack off her back, rummaged through it, and selected what seemed to be a novel. She placed it into the receptacle. The tray withdrew back into the computer, and the computer seemed to process.

New characters appeared on the screen. These were letters and numerals recognizably in Basic, but the words were nonsense.

“It wasn’t enough,” Aithne said. She studied the display. “How can I help you understand me?” she asked.

Suddenly, the tray containing her datapad shot out once more. “Language conversion complete,” said the computer in perfect Basic. Aithne retrieved her datapad and studied the characters on the screen.

“It’s asking me about life-bearing worlds.” She wrinkled her nose. “The droid guardian was a challenge, but this—it’s a multiple-choice quiz. A five-year-old could pass it.”

“Would you prefer access to the knowledge we require to be unobtainable?” Bastila asked, amused.

“Intellectually challenging to obtain, anyway,” Aithne grumbled. She pressed a few keys. “Alright. The door past the Overseer has two seals. I’ve just opened the first one. Let’s go face the proving chamber on the other side.”

The second guardian attacked them with an ice beam instead of a flamethrower, but the fight was otherwise much the same. It progressed more smoothly with all three of them attacking with weapons the droid was vulnerable to, however. The ion blaster in particular proved effective. Aithne had another conversation with a console that was exactly like the first and answered another question—this time about barren worlds.

Aithne pressed the final keys. “And . . . second seal unlocked. Secrets of the Star Forge, prepare to yield to my power.”

Bastila cringed. “Does it ever occur to you that some topics are not appropriate ones for levity?” she asked.

“I usually make jokes about them,” Aithne answered, and Bastila sensed a sort of grim resolve as well as a kind of vindictiveness and nonrepentance from the other side of their bond. Aithne was not pleased to be here doing this, and indeed was harboring a level of apprehension equal to or greater to Bastila’s own, Bastila realized. She was taking what vengeance she could by being deliberately unpleasant and provocative.

As they fell in line behind Aithne, Carth muttered, “Nice that I’m not the one she’s mad at for a change.”

“For you, perhaps.”

“You want to tell me just what it was you did?”

“No.”

They were now standing on the very spot Revan and Malak had stood at the start of their path down to the Dark. Bastila recognized it from their vision, and she was reciting the Code inside her mind to bridle her growing feelings of dread. But where Revan had hesitated, letting the tension build, savoring it like a delicacy, Aithne simply depressed the button in the now-unlocked door’s center to let them pass inside.

They walked into a small, low-ceilinged square chamber. Nothing was inside, save a triangular column made of the same metal as the doors to the monument.

“Well, that’s impressive,” Carth scoffed.

“Shut up, Onasi,” Aithne said in a strange, distant voice. Like a woman in a dream, she approached the column, hand outstretched, and as she did so, the column opened. Out soared a luminescent hologram, which began to turn on the spot. It projected out stars and planets in a bluish haze—a view of their galaxy.

“This . . . this must be what Revan and Malak found when they entered this temple,” Bastila said. “This must be where their journey down the dark path began.”

“I doubt it,” Aithne muttered. “They came looking for this and thought they’d be thrown out of the Order for it, which means they were probably well down the road to supervillainy. The question is, what is it?”

Bastila stared at the device. “This is a—a map. Some sort of intergalactic navigational chart. Revan and Malak must have used this to lead them to the Star Forge. We could use this map to follow their path and find the Star Forge ourselves. But we must be wary. They may have laid traps or concealed what they found.”

“If they set up operations there or found something vital to their efforts against the Republic, I’d say the likelihood of that is pretty high, yes,” Aithne said.

“Perhaps the Council can tell us more about the nature of the Star Forge,” Bastila said, “but I believe it is clear that this map is our key to finding it.” Certain worlds on the map were glowing, highlighted like brighter suns amid the starscape. “See this world here? This looks like Korriban, a Sith world. And if that’s Korriban, then this is . . . Kashyyyk, and Tatooine . . . and here’s Manaan.”

Bastila frowned. “But there are pieces missing. Incomplete hyperspace coordinates, corrupted data, and there doesn’t seem to be anything indicating where the Star Forge itself might be.” She held out her hand for a datapad, and Aithne obligingly placed a blank one inside. Bastila began to enter the hyperspace coordinates this map provided.

She confessed she was disappointed. She had hoped to find the data they required as soon as possible. Now she had a feeling her road with Aithne Moran was going to be much longer than any of the Jedi would prefer—or Aithne herself, for that matter.

Sure enough, Aithne was looking sour. “Why do I get the feeling that I’m about to go on a Star Map hunt with you across the galaxy?”

Bastila handed the Star Map datapad back to Aithne and looked her in the face. “I know that Revan and Malak visited Korriban at least once. Perhaps they discovered something more there. They may have found something on each of the other worlds that completed this map. Maybe if we find all the pieces, they will lead us to the Star Forge and some way to destroy it.”

Carth wasn’t liking the idea any more than Aithne. “That sounds like quite a supposition,” he said. “What if you’re wrong?”

Bastila looked over at Carth now, annoyed. Sometimes it felt as if the two of them were in league against her. “What if I’m right? We can’t ignore this. Finding the Star Forge might very well be the key to defeating the Sith. We must inform the Council of what we have discovered. They must decide our next course of action, though I suspect our task has only just begun.”

Her companions said nothing as they exited the ruin, but Bastila didn’t care. She was already imagining the road that led to the Star Forge—to the defeat of Malak and the Sith, once and for all.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

Aithne didn’t want to turn around and report right to the Council. She had a bad feeling about the whole thing—the visions she was sharing with Bastila, the origins of their bond, the way the droid in the ruins had supposedly “responded” to her—everything. She could sense Bastila and the Council holding back—and since Carth had put her onto the trail in the first place and heard her on it this morning, she also knew his own discomfort mirrored hers. She needed time to think and process, away from Bastila, who was currently completely occupied with daydreams of glory and heroism.

“We need to investigate the disappearance of Shen Matale,” Aithne said. “We promised we’d look into it if we had time. We have time today, but I’m betting as soon as we report back, we won’t. Still. I think you’re right, Bastila. We should tell the Council about what we found as soon as possible. And you need to be able to lift that Stasis on Nemo’s body. I say the three of us split up. Bastila, you should report back to the Council and arrange a retrieval for Nemo’s remains. You can help the detail attend to him and tell them I’m going to attempt an independent resolution of the Matale-Sandral affair. Carth, you should go with her.”

Carth refused this absolutely. “I’m not leaving you alone out here.”

“You’re assigned to Bastila, not to me,” Aithne told him. “Besides, since our intervention with Juhani yesterday and all the cleanup you and the others have done these past few weeks, any kath hounds left out here should be pretty easy to avoid.”

“He’s right,” Bastila said. “I can see your reasoning, Aithne. Unless I lift the Stasis upon Nemo’s remains, I will tire soon, and we should not delay the search for Shen Matale. But you have only recently completed your training as an apprentice, and the plains are far too dangerous for you to remain alone. I mastered the art of Force speed at thirteen years of age; you have yet to master any similarly evasive abilities, nor do you possess any stealth abilities to speak of that could enable you to hide from hostile enemies or creatures. I will return to the enclave alone and do as you say. Carth can remain with you. And if you wish it, I will send one or two of the others ahead on speeders to join you at the Matale mansion. Even just the two of you alone presents more risk than is necessarily wise.”

“You should stay with Bastila,” Aithne tried again.

“It’s not happening, Aithne,” Carth told her. “If you want to mull over everything that just happened back there on your own, I’m not going to stop you. But I can keep a kath hound pack from surprising you while you’re stuck up in your head.”

Aithne glared at him, then looked back at Bastila, who now looked like she understood things a little better. Then she fished the Star Map datapad back out of her pack and handed it right back to Bastila. “Send Zaalbar, please,” she said. “Just one of the others, though. Then we can double up on the speeders on the way back. I don’t care if you send Mission or Canderous. Unless Mission can’t drive a speeder. Did you teach her to drive a speeder?” she asked Carth.

“Yeah,” Carth said. “Second week we were here, and she’s practiced a few times since then.”

“Very well,” Bastila agreed. “We will both use the time apart to reflect on what has happened before making a full report to the Council tonight.”

“Fine,” Aithne said.

Bastila looked hard at her, then shot off toward the west in a cloud of dust and uprooted grass.

Aithne watched the cloud for a moment, then jerked her head northward. “Matale lands are this way,” she said, having noticed signs on various gateposts the day before.

“Yeah, I know,” Carth answered, watching her. “You alright?”

“No,” Aithne told him. “But you said if you came, you’d let me brood in silence. So . . .”

Carth was just one more thing to worry about. She could sense his turmoil through the Force. Not in the same way that she sensed Bastila, an almost physical presence through a tether that she could picture inside her head, or a kind of holoterminal that could both send and receive psychic impressions. The connection was much fainter, harder to pinpoint. But it was there, nevertheless. She didn’t think she could send feelings or impressions to him through it, the way she had found she could with Bastila. There wasn’t a receiver on his end, or if there was, it was so full of static he might not have any conscious idea of what he was getting from her. But somehow, he was transmitting, alright, and doing so through the Force, and she was receiving from him.

After reading up some on what he’d told her on Taris about Telos and the Service Corps, she understood his ability to connect like this just fine, especially with a Jedi or a Force Adept, and it didn’t concern her. She was more than a little concerned about why he had connected with her like this, or perhaps, vice versa, even though she doubted it had been consciously done on either of their parts. And since he’d viewed connections like this as massive invasions of privacy, she didn’t really want to tell him he was transmitting and she was receiving, because her own psychic shields were spotty and imperfect after only eight weeks or so of practice, and she didn’t think he had any. She didn’t want to tell him she thought they might have accidentally formed a weak Force bond until she knew how to sever it or consistently make sure nothing he didn’t want to get through to her did. It would just make him more uncomfortable and paranoid than ever.

“Huh. Brooding in silence is supposed to be my gig,” Carth remarked after a while. She could sense her silence bothered him, the feeling that she was cutting him out just like Bastila and the Council were cutting her out.

She paced faster. The Dantooine grass whipped against her leggings, stinging slightly. She welcomed the pain. Focused on a brith, drifting above the plain. Tried to send her mind with it, instead of keeping it inside her body where there was so much unsorted confusion and anxiety. “Don’t get possessive over the brooding, flyboy,” she said. “A girl has to have her own time to stew and mutter at the sky.”

“Hah,” he said. “Guess I’ve been doing a little of that the past few weeks.”

“I’m not trying to lock you out,” Aithne said. “At least, not in that sense. I just . . . can’t talk about it yet. You kicked off a lot of it, anyway, so to some extent it’d just be like shouting into an echo chamber.”

“I didn’t mean to start anything,” Carth said, watching her, concerned. “Back on Taris, a lot of it was what I said—you’re just so capable, it’s . . . it’s hard not to get caught up in the memories. I certainly never wanted you to end up distrusting the Jedi.”

She looked at him then. “You don’t trust them either,” she pointed out. “You know there’s stuff they’re not telling us—more specifically, me—when I’m apparently right at the crux of their plan to stop Malak and the Sith. And you can see as well as I do that everything they tell us about that and my supposed bond with Bastila is full of holes.”

“Okay—yes,” Carth admitted. “And it’s got me nervous as hell, but—”

“Me too,” Aithne said. “Like I said—echo chamber. There’s more, too, but I don’t want to talk about it. Just—please respect that. Unlike your trust issues, mine actually have nothing to do with you, except for the fact that you alerted me to the fact that there were issues. You’re probably the only person I do trust right now. Someday soon, I might want to discuss everything with you. When I know more, or when I have more of an idea exactly what it is I’m sensing. But for now—”

“Okay,” Carth agreed. “Alright, beautiful. Just—I’m here. You know that, right?”

Aithne glanced over at him. “You like being the hero too,” she observed, calling back to a conversation they’d had on Taris.

Carth laughed, a little self-consciously. “Well. To be fair, that’s something I have in common with a lot of guys.”

“Step off, Onasi,” Aithne advised him. “You tend to take too much on, anyway.”

Carth looked confused for a moment, then his face cleared. “What, you mean Mission? I—I had the time. You didn’t. And it’s not like I could let her go through . . . go through everything alone. I mean, I care about her too.”

“I know,” Aithne told him, as the Matale mansion came into sight in the distance. “And I know everything you two have been doing together has probably been a distraction for you both. But I also know you’ve been barely bearing up under your own grief and strain after Telos, even four years down the line, and you’ve been taking on a lot of Mission’s too. Doing it better than I ever could, mind, or anyone who hasn’t been there. But still. I feel bad enough for all that. Don’t need you to be my shoulder too, especially if you’re only doing it to save the damsel in distress.”

“I don’t—I’m not—”

Aithne looked at him. He was blushing now. “You are,” she said gently. “And I appreciate the sentiment. I’m grateful for Mission more than I can even start to tell you. But I don’t need a hero.” Whether she wanted one or not was a different matter. She still remembered the way it had felt to have him hold her back on Taris, hold her like he meant it, shutting out everything and everyone else in the entire galaxy, with his fingers on the back of her neck and his lips centimeters from her ear. Completely safe except for the bottom of her stomach dropping out, her lungs forgetting to breathe, her heart starting up like the beginning of a swoop race, and her knees turning to jelly. More, the way he’d hugged her or held her hand later and actually meant it, times she’d been looking out into the dark and just needed to feel someone was there.

She nodded at two speeder bikes up ahead, a tall shaggy figure and a smaller, girlish one beside it. “Conversation’s over,” she said, and if she hadn’t minded talking as much as she’d thought she would, that was just one more thing she didn’t need.

“Hey there,” Mission said as they walked up. “So, I hear we’re trying to stop a Dantooinian blood feud or something?”

Carth explained the situation to Mission and Zaalbar as the four of them walked up the paved path to the entrance to the Matale mansion. It was huge to the point of being ostentatious. There was nothing understated or unassuming. Everything was ornate and in the best of taste, but the sheer muchness of it was rather overwhelming, Aithne thought. Still, it did make for a nice distraction.

Aithne alerted the doorkeeper droid to their presence, and the master of the property was duly fetched. Ahlan Matale emerged from his household accompanied by no less than four security droids. The entourage echoed the muchness of the house, but the implication that Matale expected an attack from an envoy of the Jedi Council was yet another indication of the ego he’d displayed in the Council chamber.

“My protocol droid tells me you are here on behalf of the Council,” he said. “I was beginning to think my demands had been ignored. Though I think your time would be better spent interrogating the Sandrals as to the whereabouts of my son Shen!”

“Are you so certain the Sandrals are to blame?” Aithne asked.

“Many years ago, I brought my family here to Dantooine to escape the crush of humanity on the Core Worlds,” Mr. Matale explained, with some impatience. He tapped his foot just enough for Aithne to clearly see the movement. “Soon after we settled here, the Sandrals arrived. And they have been a plague on my house ever since!”

“Somehow, I imagine the story from the Sandrals would sound about the same, don’t you?” Carth remarked.

Matale glared. “The injustices the Sandrals have committed against the Matales are far too numerous to name, but the Council is aware of our many disputes. Recently, I discovered several Sandral droids trespassing on my land.”

“Did the droids communicate their purpose?” Aithne asked, hoping the man had come to a point.

“I have no idea what nefarious purpose lay behind their arrival,” Matale shrugged. “My own assassination, perhaps. Destruction of my property. Maybe a simple spy mission. I wasn’t about to find out. My own security droids destroyed the invaders; not a single one survived. It was shortly after this that Shen, my only son and heir to the Matale estate, vanished. Obviously Nurik, the unscrupulous head of the Sandral clan, has abducted my son in retaliation for the destruction of his droids!”

That would be a fairly ridiculous escalation of the situation, Aithne thought, but if Sandral had anything like Matale’s temper, it could be true. She only said, “We shall go speak to Nurik Sandral.”

This seemed to anger Ahlan Matale for some reason. “The only resolution possible is the immediate return of my son!” he cried. “Why does the Council insist on stalling? The life of my son is at stake! Is it possible . . .” abruptly Mr. Matale’s face went still. “Yes,” he said, in quite a different tone. “Of course. Now I understand. I am a man of the world. I know how things are done. I will make a . . . contribution . . . of one thousand credits to the Council in exchange for rescuing Shen from the Sandrals. I will present the credits directly to you, of course. Whether the Council ever learns of this ‘donation’ is completely up to you.”

If anything, Aithne was amused. “If you ‘understand’ due process as playing for a bribe, I’m afraid you’ve understood the wrong message,” she said. “The Council couldn’t investigate, and then they could. I’m here to take your statement and then find out what there is to find. No lubrication of the wheels of justice needed here.”

Matale smiled, as if he did not believe her. “Nevertheless,” he replied, “my offer still stands. One thousand credits for Shen’s safe return. Know, however,” he said, now in a threatening tone, “that I will not sit idly by much longer. Eventually, I will take whatever action is necessary to rescue my son . . . including razing the entire Sandral estate!”

Carth stepped forward, gaze challenging the rich landowner. “You would be willing to risk open war over this?” he asked.

“It is the Sandrals who have started this!” he declared, “Not I!”

“And here I thought you would blame us, if we failed,” replied Carth in a reasonable tone. His gaze hardened, and he continued. “It seems everyone is responsible for your actions except for you.”

“Bravo, Carth,” Aithne muttered.

Ahlan Matale stepped back, offended. “I don’t need to stand here and listen to . . . such . . . such impertinence!”

“I’ve seen men like this before,” Carth said. “He’s so convinced that his hatred is justified, he’s prepared to do anything, and if we don’t intervene, there will be war.”

Ahlan Matale seemed to feel that he’d been ignored enough. “Until you find Shen, Jedi,” he spat. “We have nothing further to discuss. I suggest you hurry south to their estate, lest I take matters into my own hands.” With a dramatic flourish worthy of a professional actor, he retreated into his mansion.

“Wanna take bets that Shen just up and left?” Mission muttered. “I would if I were him.”

They made their way back to the speeders. Mission looked at Aithne and Carth from underneath her eyelashes, then moved to get on one of the speeders with Big Z. Her machinations were ridiculously transparent, but since Big Z sharing with Mission was also the most efficient weight distribution for the speeders, Aithne didn’t protest. “You driving, or am I?” Carth asked.

Aithne considered. She wouldn’t be able to see anything ahead if he drove; he was just enough taller and bigger than she was to pretty much completely obstruct her view. On the other hand, if she drove, a lot more of him could end up wrapped around a lot more of her than she was necessarily comfortable with. She thought she could avoid a similar situation if she was in back. So . . . “You’re the pilot,” she said.

Carth got on the speeder and hung his pack from a horn in front of the seat, and then Aithne got up onto the seat behind him. She grabbed his belt with one hand and the underside of the seat with the other. Her thighs were touching his, but that couldn’t really be helped. Her torso was a good few centimeters away, and she could balance with the Force.

“Ugh, you’re hopeless,” she heard from a certain teenage Twi’lek’s direction, but then the speeder bikes were running and they were moving further north and east toward the grove and, eventually, the Sandral estates.

Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, Aithne told herself, looking off to the side into the seemingly endless sea of grass instead of studying Carth’s back and head. That was when she saw the knot of kath hounds huddled around a kill. At first, she thought it was an iriaz or a baby piket or something. Then she caught a glimpse of fabric.

“To the left!” she yelled out. Carth and Mission, who was piloting her and Zaalbar’s speeder, turned instantly. With two speeders bearing down on them, the kath hounds fled, and Aithne sprang off her and Carth’s speeder to the grisly remains of the kath hounds’ meal.

The corpse was in worse shape than Nemo at the Builder ruin. This had obviously not been the first meal the kath hound pack had made of the corpse—an entire leg and arm and large portions of the torso had been completely gnawed away from the skeleton, and flies and slime and saliva had gathered on the rest. Parasites crawled in the eye sockets of a boy of about eighteen years old.

Mission took one look and went pale. She dashed off to the side and vomited. When she was finished, she stood shakily. “It’s . . . uh . . . different out here from the Undercity,” she explained. “Everything’s all peaceful and pretty and . . . I’ll just . . . uh . . . I’ll keep watch for the kath hounds.”

Aithne nodded. “Shen?” she asked Carth and Zaalbar in an undertone.

Zaalbar had been poking through the boy’s pack lying nearby—bloodied and with a torn shoulder strap, but untouched by the kath hounds otherwise. /Here,/ he said, holding up a datapad. /A diary. It is not Shen, but Casus Sandral./

Aithne translated. “Those droids Sandral sent then, they were probably looking for him,” Carth guessed.

/Casus’s intentions here were not violent,/ Zaalbar said. /The final entry says he had been exploring some of the ruins near here. He was like Mission and I—or had an interest in things of that nature./

“He went missing,” Aithne said. “And when Sandral’s droids came looking for him, and Matale’s droids destroyed the search party, Sandral must have assumed Matale had either killed or kidnapped Casus.”

“So, Mr. Matale’s probably right that Sandral’s responsible for Shen’s disappearance,” Carth concluded. “We should hurry.”

“Zaalbar, give me the datapad,” Aithne said. “But—before we go—”

She ignited her lightsaber, and with it, cut a rectangle about 1 meter by 1.8 meters square into the dry Dantooinian earth. Concentrating with all her might, she used the Force to shift the earth within away from the spot. She didn’t do it perfectly. Earth crumbled and fell away from the mass, showering underneath. Quite a lot of it ended up on her. Then she had to repeat the whole process twice more before she had a deep enough hole. She was shaking and sweating with the strain before she was finished. She started to stoop for Casus’s body then, but Zaalbar stopped her, picking up what was left of the boy’s oozing corpse himself and lowering it gently into the pit. Then he started to manually push the dirt Aithne had moved back into the makeshift grave. Carth joined him. Once she had a drink from her canteen, so did Aithne, and once the corpse was hidden from view, Mission came last of all. They all packed the earth tight with their boots, then looked at one another—satisfied the kath hounds wouldn’t be eating any more of Casus Sandral.

They climbed back on the speeders, and this time, Aithne went ahead and wrapped her arms around Carth’s waist and leaned her head up against his back. She was still shaking; she was so tired. She didn’t care that she was filthy and stinking—so was he. She even fell asleep on the way to the Sandrals.

She woke up when he shook her knee. “Aithne.”

“I’m up,” she said. “Where are we?”

She saw before he could answer. The Sandral house was smaller than the Matale’s, but the grounds were nicer. “What’s our approach?” Carth was asking. “The man’s a kidnapper.”

Aithne fished Casus Sandral’s diary from her pack and swung down from the speeder. She was dizzy. She needed dinner and to go back to sleep, but there wasn’t time for that. “We tell him about his son,” she answered. “Get inside the house. See what happens.”

Although Sandral had a protocol droid doorman just like Matale, when Aithne gave her name and purpose to Sandral’s droid, they were escorted inside the house. The interior was comfortable and well furnished without being elaborate, but Aithne saw an up-to-the-minute alarm system at the door and another equally high-tech service droid around the corner. There would be more inside.

Presently, a man who looked to be in his mid-fifties came out of rooms further inside the house. A tangible miasma of grief surrounded him. While Matale had seemed to view the disappearance of his son mostly as an excuse to fight with Sandral, it was immediately obvious that Sandral missed his son terribly.

“I have been informed by my protocol droid that you have news of my son Casus,” Nurik Sandral said, looking from Aithne to the rest of them, taking in their disheveled appearances.

Aithne stepped forward and handed Sandral the datapad. “Mr. Sandral, I’m very sorry. Your son is dead. He was killed by kath hounds while exploring some ruins to the south. We would have brought his body as well as this datapad to you—but I’m not sure you would have wanted to see it. I can give you the coordinates of the grave, however, if your family would like to retrieve his remains.”

“You buried him, and brought his diary home to us,” Sandral repeated, reeling. “Kath hounds . . . I was so certain the Matale family was to blame. Please, let me give you something for your trouble. I have one hundred credits . . .” He rummaged in his pockets.

“Keep your credits,” Carth said. “We only did what anyone would.”

“You’re kind, but I . . .” Sandral’s face began to crumple. “Please,” he said, voice breaking. “Leave me to my grief.”

He staggered away and back through the door which he had come in by. “Poor guy,” Mission said. “Should we . . . go, or something? I mean, you think Shen is really here? Mr. Sandral seems a lot nicer than Mr. Matale.”

Aithne paused, but as she started to agree, another person strode through the doors leading deeper into the house. A young woman, maybe nineteen. She had Nurik’s coloring, and had obviously been crying as well. Her features were too strong for classical beauty, but her face had character, and Aithne liked her on sight.

“You are here from the Council, are you not? Looking for Shen Matale?” she asked them in a low voice.

“That’s not the official story—” Aithne began.

The girl cut her off. “My name is Rahasia. Nurik is my father.”

“Aithne Moran,” said the same. “I’m a Padawan from the Council. My companions are Zaalbar, Major Carth Onasi, and Mission Vao. We’d shake your hand, but—” she emphasized her filthy palms with a grimace.

“We don’t have time for the formalities. You must listen to me, quickly,” Rahasia said, speaking in a fast, very quiet voice. “My father has not been himself since Casus disappeared. He is mad with grief, and he has been convinced the Matales were responsible. He is not thinking rationally.”

“The Matales had nothing to do with your brother’s disappearance, Ms. Sandral,” Aithne said. “We’ve just finished telling your father what happened. Casus ran into kath hounds on the plains. I’m sorry.”

“Yes, I know, but I’m afraid now it might not matter,” Rahasia answered. “Look, my father is a good man. When my mother died, he raised me and my brother by himself. He loves his children and we . . .” she hissed in a breath and bit her lip. “And I—I love him. I just don’t want you to judge him too harshly.”

“But now he’s done something you don’t approve of. What’s going on, Ms. Sandral?” Carth asked.

“You must understand that Father has been under a terrible strain,” Rahasia insisted. “I have no wish to disobey him, but there are matters where even my father’s authority is not absolute.”

“Just get to the point, already!” Mission burst out. “He’s taken Shen, hasn’t he?”

Rahasia hesitated. Then she bit her lip again and nodded. “After our droid search party was destroyed on Matale lands. Father was convinced it had to mean Mr. Matale had taken or killed Casus. He kept saying if Mr. Matale hurt Casus, he’d never see Shen again. And now that Casus is dead, I do not know if he will let Shen go, even though Mr. Matale had nothing to do with my brother’s disappearance. It may be enough that Casus died near Matale’s lands. Padawan Moran, I’m frightened. I don’t want my father to do something he will regret forever once he returns to himself.

“Shen is a prisoner in a cell on the northern side of the house,” Rahasia continued. She pressed a card into Aithne’s hand. “This key will open an unguarded door at the rear of the estate. You and Shen can make your escape through there, though there are many security droids guarding the halls. I would take you myself—”

“But you can’t be caught,” Aithne finished. “Understood.”

“Shen is an innocent victim in all this,” Rahasia said. “Please, rescue him!”

“Thank you, Rahasia,” Aithne said, and then, on a hunch— “Do you want us to tell Shen anything for you?”

Rahasia hesitated. “He will know,” she said. “Understand, Padawan Moran, Shen and I were taught to hate one another, just for being related to our fathers. But I met Shen alone one day in the capital, away from his father, and, and Shen was so charming. So sweet. He didn’t care at all that I was a Sandral, he just accepted me for who I was, with no reservations. We talked, and met again over months, and fell in love. My brother Casus met him too, and they were beginning to become friends . . .” Fresh tears welled up in her eyes, and her voice broke. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to see him again after this whole mess, but as long as he’s safe, I—it will have to be enough. Please, just save him!”

“We will,” Aithne promised. Rahasia gave them one last look and vanished back into the main house. Aithne led the others out the front door and around to the rear entrance Rahasia had mentioned.

/I do not like sneaking the Matale boy out in this fashion,/ Zaalbar growled. /It could be Rahasia Sandral who is punished for his disappearance from Sandral’s home./

“Did you have a better idea?” Mission asked. “We can’t just leave him here! If Mr. Sandral’s daughter says he might go crazy and hurt Shen, it’s a good bet she’s right. I mean, she seems to like her father. I don’t like bringing Shen back to that awful Mr. Matale, but I guess it’s probably better than being a prisoner.”

They keyed open the rear door. The first assault droid spotted them right away. Aithne activated her lightsaber and sprang at it, cutting it down in two strokes before it could sound the alarm. Sweeping the hallway, they found some mines, which Mission retrieved for them before they proceeded. This was obviously the wing of the house where Sandral kept most of his valuables, as well as his prisoner.

The first door they tried turned out to lead to the main security room and three more assault droids. Aithne and Zaalbar cut them down; they didn’t want the sound of blaster fire to alert any other droids, or Sandral, if he was nearby.

There was a security console in the room. Aithne walked over to it. “Mish, could I get a few computer spikes?” she asked presently.

Mission rummaged in her pack, then handed the requested items over. Aithne worked for a few moments. Then, throughout the house, there was the sound of several muffled explosions. Aithne smiled.

Mission grinned too. “Uh-oh. Don’t tell us. We can guess.”

“Did you just blow up every assault droid Sandral owns?” Carth demanded, incredulous.

“Just the assault droids,” Aithne confirmed. “I left the protocol droids and serving droids. I think the Jedi would approve of me making it a little harder for Sandral to fight his neighbors. If it makes you feel any better, if I’d had the chance, I would’ve blown up Matale’s droids too.”

“Would probably do a hell of a lot more good, as far as I can see,” Carth muttered.

“For all his threats, Matale’s only blown up trespassers on his property. Sandral’s the one who’s escalated to kidnap, even though he seems the nicer,” Aithne pointed out. “Come on. I found Shen’s prison on the cameras.”

She led the others through the halls. When they stood in front of the door, Aithne nodded to Mission. “You want to do the honors?”

“Want to? Please, I live for this stuff,” Mission said, stepping into place. In three seconds flat, she’d cracked the cell open. The door opened, and Aithne found herself face to face with a young man, perhaps twenty, who had been pacing up and down in his cell.

Aithne had to give Sandral credit for humane treatment of his hostages. The cell was tiny but well furnished, and Shen Matale didn’t appear to have a scratch on him. A meal lay finished on a small table to the right, and there were both sheets and a comforter on the low bed against the back wall. Shen was a handsome young man, Aithne thought, if a bit short. He must take after his mother, whoever she was, because the dark hair and regular features didn’t resemble his father.

Now, however, those features were twisted in confusion. “Who are you?” he asked. “What do you want with me? Are you working for my father?”

“Jedi Council,” Aithne corrected him, lifting her inactive lightsaber to show him and grimacing. “I know we probably don’t look it at the moment. This is Mission Vao, Major Carth Onasi, and Zaalbar. But we are here to rescue you.”

Shen raised his hands and stepped back. “Rescue me? No. I won’t leave. It’s too dangerous.”

Aithne raised her eyebrows. “The assault droids are all blown up,” she pointed out. “And there are four of us with weapons, and two speeders out front. I’d venture to say we’ll probably be fine.”

“It’s not my own safety I’m concerned about,” Shen clarified. “I am worried about the fate of Nurik’s daughter, Rahasia. She has been trying to convince her father to release me ever since I was captured. If I escape, Nurik will think Rahasia is to blame. Nurik is insane with grief over the loss of his son, Casus,” Shen explained, his face full of compassion. “If I leave with you, it is Rahasia who will suffer. I cannot allow that.”

Aithne looked at Zaalbar. “You called it, Big Z,” she sighed. She put her hands on her hips. “Okay, but we’ve got to get you out of here, Shen. How can I convince you to come with us?”

“If you can convince Rahasia to escape with us I will accompany you,” Shen promised. “Though I do not know if she would be willing to turn her back on her home and family. Who could imagine a Sandral doing such a thing for the sake of a Matale? But if she will not go, then I too shall stay. I would rather face my own death than have her face her father’s wrath because I escaped.”

“Sandral probably isn’t going to kill his only remaining child, however mad he gets with her,” Aithne pointed out. “Your odds aren’t so great.” But when Shen didn’t budge, she drooped. “Fine. We’ll go talk to Rahasia.”

They left Shen in his cell and went tromping through the house toward the main living quarters. “Starting to wish I had gone back with Bastila to report and left all this mess to someone else,” Aithne muttered.

“Yeah, love,” Mission said sarcastically. “Who needs it, right?”

Aithne glared at her. “I’ve got no problem with Rahasia,” she said. “She’s a wonderful girl who, even grieving her brother, is willing to expose her father’s criminal activity to the authorities and potentially give up her lover for good to keep him safe, because it’s smart. But Shen’s just being stupid. Sandral won’t do anything too bad to Rahasia. Now, if Shen was just making Rahasia an excuse not to head on home . . .”

“Yeah, I could get that,” Mission agreed. “Anyway, it didn’t look like Mr. Sandral was treating him too bad. It could be Rahasia’s as crazy as she says her dad is and in a little while, Mr. Sandral might see reason.”

“We can’t take that chance, though, Mission,” Carth pointed out. “Shen and Rahasia know their fathers a lot better than we do. If they think there’s a danger, there probably is.”

They got lucky enough to find Rahasia before they found her father; the security console hadn’t had cameras trained on the family quarters. When they found Rahasia, she looked terrified. “What are you doing here?” she whispered. “Haven’t you found Shen yet?”

“We found him,” Aithne confirmed. “Tried to rescue him and everything, but the idiot won’t leave without you, Rahasia.”

This, though, made the Sandral girl light up with smiles. “Shen can be so stubborn sometimes!” she said, delighted. “But if one of the security droids sees me wandering the halls, Father will get suspicious. I can’t risk it.”

Aithne cleared her throat. “Yeah, well . . . um, the security droids might not be much of a problem.”

Rahasia looked, if possible, even more worried than before. “I know Shen would rather die than leave me here alone to face the wrath of my father. And he’ll be angry—”

“Hey,” Mission reasoned. “You were worried you’d never see Shen again, right? If you run away with him now, at least that won’t be a problem.”

Rahasia hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “Alright. I’ll do it,” she said. “Tell Shen I will meet you outside the gates. Please hurry.” She turned to her dresser and began stuffing a bag with essentials. Aithne and the others wheeled around and went trotting back through the rear wing of the Sandral house. 

When they reached Shen, they found him pacing even more anxiously than before. “You keep that up, and you’ll wear a tunnel out so we don’t even need to go back through the door,” she observed. Shen turned.

“Have you spoken with Rahasia?”

“She promised to meet us outside the gates,” Aithne reported.

“I pray she is not just telling me what I want to hear,” murmured Shen. “But I will have to take that chance. Come. We must not keep Rahasia waiting.”

By the time they had left through the rear door and circled the house to the front again, Rahasia was waiting for them. The kids flew into one another’s arms. Aithne guessed they did probably need it. It sounded as though Sandral had kept his daughter locked up in her room almost as strictly as he’d kept Shen locked up in his cell since the beginning of the Matale kid’s imprisonment, and both had been more worried about the other than themselves, not to mention Casus Sandral.

“Quick tip,” Aithne advised them. “When running away, it’s usually a good idea to run first and hug later. Look, we’ve got two speeders, but we won’t fit three to a speeder. You two take one, and Carth and Mission can take the other to escort you back to the Jedi enclave. They offer housing to refugees, and you can probably buy your way onto an Aratech transport shuttle there if you need to, too. Zaalbar and I can stay behind to deal with any pursuit.”

“Thank you for all you have done,” Shen told them. “We know you must have gone to great personal risk to get us out of the Sandral estate undetected. Is there anything we can do for you?”

They hadn’t told him about the droids. “Look, ‘undetected’ is a stretch,” Aithne admitted. “You two need to go, now. It’s nothing, trust me.”

“But surely we can . . .” Shen began, but the grass swooshed, and a fallen branch cracked in the distance. They all looked south and saw a very angry-looking Ahlan Matale making his way up the trail, two assault droids in tow.

And of course, that was when the door behind them opened as well, and Nurik Sandral came out. He had clearly discovered the sabotage of his guards or the disappearance of the young people. He also had armed droids behind him, though his, Aithne noted with satisfaction, were protocol droids that looked very confused by their new function.

Matale had drawn close enough to see Shen. For a split second, relief darted across his face. But then anger and annoyance overtook it.

“There you are, Shen!” he shouted.

Shen moved between his father and Rahasia. “Father,” he said, sounding apprehensive.

“Mr. Matale,” Rahasia whimpered, clinging to her lover.

“Rahasia!” called Sandral, closing in on them. He gestured furiously to his side.

Rahasia only pressed in closer to Shen. “Father, I—”

“Mr. Sandral,” Shen began. “I can—”

But Matale had drawn level with the group. Aithne made a gesture to Carth and Zaalbar with her fingers and caught Mission’s eye. The four of them took up positions around Shen and Rahasia, facing off with the two old men.

“Nurik,” Matale spat.

“Ahlan,” Sandral said in the same tone of hatred.

“I knew this was all your doing,” Matale growled at Sandral, justly enough, Aithne supposed. “I knew you had captured my son!”

“You had taken my Casus from me long before that!” Sandral retorted, not justly at all. “You started it!”

“Sandral, he didn’t,” Aithne said. “Your son just happened to die near his lands. Matale didn’t even know Casus was missing. He destroyed your droid search party without bothering to ask any questions, which, granted, was rude, but you also had sent them trespassing on his lands without notice. As for you, Matale, Sandral’s acted rashly, but he hasn’t hurt your son.”

“Please, listen to Padawan Moran, Father,” Shen begged.

“Why should I listen to the Jedi?” Matale snarled. “Or to you? Look at you, standing beside that Sandral harlot!”

“My daughter is not a harlot, Matale dog!” cried Nurik Sandral from behind Aithne. Carth and Rahasia turned to face him, to stop him from making a move.

“Both of you,” called Aithne in a voice of command she didn’t know she had, “Calm down now!” She layered her voice with the Force, willing the two old patriarchs to obey her. “Your madness has brought your children to this. You were within a few moments of losing them both. If you’re prepared to listen, it might not come to that.”

“We are willing to be reasonable here,” Sandral said, controlling his tone with difficulty. “We are sensible people, after all. And, as you say, if Mr. Matale truly had nothing to do with Casus’s disappearance, and no knowledge of it—”

“Of course I didn’t, you paranoid old fossil!” Matale snapped. “I would never dream of kidnapping or harming a man’s only son! That treachery is something only a Sandral could dream up! Shen, leave that Sandral girl this moment! We’re going home!”

“I won’t, Father,” Shen said.

“Shen is capable of making decisions on his own,” Aithne said, layering her voice with the Force once again.

Ahlan seemed to wither. “But he is my son! I don’t want to lose him . . .”

“And I won’t let my daughter go with him!” Sandral cried. Aithne turned to face him.

“That’s her choice, Sandral,” she said. “She’s a grown woman, and this has been going on for months.” Rahasia barely qualified as a woman, but honestly, Aithne did believe she was better off with Shen than with either of the Matale-Sandral patriarchs.

“Rahasia,” Sandral pled, looking at his daughter. “So soon after Casus?”

Rahasia’s eyes shone, and a tear ran down her face. She left Shen and ran to Nurik, embracing him. “Oh, Father, I am sorry. I love you! But I—I love Shen more.”

Nurik bowed his head over his daughter’s shoulder and held her in silence for a long, long moment. “I—I understand,” he said brokenly then. “I—I felt the same . . . about your mother.” Then he looked up over Rahasia’s head at his rival. “I don’t know why we fight like this, Ahlan. We got along in the beginning, didn’t we?”

He released his daughter, and she returned to Shen’s side. The two watched their parents, waiting.

“I don’t know how you can think of that when we have our children trying to run away together,” grumped Ahlan.

“Your son—he isn’t so bad,” Sandral admitted. “He seems to genuinely care for my Rahasia. He might be a good husband for her someday.”

Matale looked over the two young people, and his hard face softened. “Humph. As much as I may dislike it, I think I see it too.”

“Then you’re willing to let them remain together?” Aithne asked.

Matale considered. “I suppose—I suppose I might be convinced to see that Sandral girl with my son,” he admitted. “If she is loyal to him. But I don’t trust you a centimeter further, old man!” He flung the words at Nurik like a challenge. “Your daughter may treat Shen well, but you will never see them. They will live with me!”

“Great, a custody battle,” Carth muttered. “This guy’s a real piece of work.”

“Of course not, you pompous old windbag!” Sandral cried, “They’ll be living with me!”

Neither man moved to hurt the other, though. They knew that were they to kill each other now, it would only distress their children. And if Aithne was sure of one thing by this point, it was that in their separate ways, both Matale and Sandral loved their children, though she still preferred Sandral.

“Why don’t you compromise?” she suggested.

“I will not have them set foot in a Sandral household!” declared Ahlan.

“They shall not live with the Matales!” Nurik responded, with equal vehemence.

Rahasia spoke up suddenly. “Do you propose to buy us a new house, then?” she asked, as if this was the only logical solution.

Both men opened their mouths to shout some more, then shut them. For a moment, both resembled nothing so much as a pair of gray old fish. Sandral was the first to speak. “Um . . . well, yes, actually that sounds like a good idea.”

Ahlan looked dazed. “I’m surprised—that does sound like a good idea.”

“A neutral territory where you both may visit your children and forget for a time about this pointless feud. I approve,” said Aithne.

“We should discuss this more,” Sandral said, beckoning to Ahlan. The droids forgotten, the two old men strode off into the fields to discuss the purchase of a Matale-Sandral household.

Shen and Rahasia sighed in relief. “Padawan Moran—thank you,” Shen said, after his father and Rahasia’s were out of earshot. “Thank you for bringing us together and getting our parents to accept us.”

“Thank you to all of you,” Rahasia said. “You were willing to stand in the middle ground between the assault droids of both our fathers. You were brave and good. Your names—Aithne, Mission, Carth, and Zaalbar?”

“Yes,” Aithne confirmed.

“We will praise you to the Council,” Rahasia promised, “and name our children after you.”

Aithne laughed at that. “A Dantooinian family with a human Aithne, Mission, Carth, and Zaalbar,” she said. “That’d be something to see.”

“I never had a namesake before,” Mission said, “We’ll have to come back to Dantooine someday to meet the little Sandral-Matales, you know?”

“Good luck,” Carth told Shen and Rahasia. “You both deserve it.”

“We will remember you always,” Shen promised in his turn.

Aithne and the others walked away from the happy couple. “Guess no one’s running away today,” Aithne remarked. “How boring.”

Zaalbar made a low rumbling sound that was his equivalent of laughter. /You did well, Aithne Moran. Had we not been there, two families would have been severed or a blood feud would have broken out. I for one will sleep well this night./

Remembering what waited for her back at the enclave, Aithne forced a smile. “Yeah. Wish I could say the same.” She got back on the speeder bike behind Carth. “If I promise not to drool, will you let me sleep on you again?” she asked.

She felt Carth’s chuckle. “Sure, beautiful,” he said. “All bets are off if you drool, though. You drool, I’m dumping you into the dirt.”

Aithne looked down at her robes and tangled hair. “Couldn’t make me look worse than I look already,” she said.

The sun was red over the Dantooine plains and little insects could be heard chirping in the brush when they all finally returned to the enclave. Aithne was tired and itchy and just about starving. She slid off the bike to the ground in front of Ebon Hawk. “I’ve got first turn in the fresher,” she said. “I need to head back to the Council to make my full report with Bastila.”

After showering and changing into an old combat suit for lack of a fresh robe to change into, Aithne trudged up to the enclave once again, stomach growling. Odd, how physical urges could distract from mental upset. Aithne knew she wasn’t going to like what the Council would tell her after she gave them the Star Map data from the ruins. She’d liked nothing they’d told her so far. But as hungry and as tired as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to care overmuch. Finding and burying Casus Sandral and sorting out Shen and Rahasia’s little melodrama had done that much.

She found Bastila meditating in the courtyard a few yards from the Council chambers, where she’d met Juhani the night before. The other Padawan rose as she entered. “Aithne, you’ve returned—though improperly dressed for a formal debrief with the Council.”

Aithne shook her head. “Trust me, the way I was dressed after today wasn’t suitable either, and I haven’t had time to do laundry. Figure the Council’s been waiting for hours, and they probably don’t want to wait for me to wash my clothes or requisition something new from the quartermaster. You take care of Nemo at the ruin?”

“Yes, and attended his farewell ceremony with several of his other friends from the enclave,” Bastila confirmed. “You solved the issue with the Matales and the Sandrals?”

“It could have been a holovid drama,” Aithne said. “I’ll tell you about it later. We should report.”

“The Council has waited this long,” Bastila said, catching Aithne’s arm. “They can wait for half an hour longer. You’re half dead upon your feet. Whatever occurred with the Matales and the Sandrals, I sense it took a still greater psychic and emotional toll upon you than our exertions of this morning. Have you eaten anything since this morning?”

Aithne shook her head wearily.

“Come,” Bastila said. She led Aithne to the cafeteria. She heaped a tray with meat, fruit, and vegetables for Aithne, and got a piece of fruit and a small tart for herself, having clearly already eaten her own evening meal. They sat at a vacant table, and for several minutes, Bastila let Aithne devour her meal in peace. But she stared intermittently at Aithne, poking at her tart with her fork rather than truly eating it.

Aithne swallowed a piece of bread, steaming and airy. “Go ahead,” she said finally.

Bastila, ever the dutiful Jedi, had only needed the permission. “Now that we have found the Star Map, the bond the Jedi have told us about becomes of much more consequence. It may be that the two of us shall be working together for quite some time. I do not dispute the fact that our bond exists. I can feel it, as I’m sure you can. But how this may affect any mission we undertake in the future remains in question.”

Aithne sighed. “I’m tired, Bastila. Cut to the chase, please.”

“I admit, I’m a little disturbed that we are bonded in such a way—that the bond exists in the first place,” Bastila said.

“Yes, and you said so this morning.”

“Please, hear me out,” Bastila said. “I saw your service records when you were transferred aboard Endar Spire. I have observed you on Taris and throughout your training, but I confess I know very little about your history. I suppose I just . . . want to get to know you better.”

Aithne chewed her forkful of steak, swallowed, and laid down her fork. “You saw my service records when the Jedi asked for my transfer, you mean,” she said. She groaned, rubbed her temples, and closed her eyes.

“I explained—we were short on reconnaissance personnel,” Bastila began. “You were stationed closer than anyone of comparable skill—” Aithne heard the flustered edge to the Jedi’s voice and tried to suss out whether it was because she, Aithne, was pressing again or because Bastila was lying.

She couldn’t decide, but she knew one thing. “Look, sorting through what’s true, what’s a half-truth, and what’s a load of crap after this day is giving me a headache. Your dessert is forfeit.” She snatched Bastila’s poor abused tart over to her own tray. Bastila’s mouth dropped open, her cheeks turned pink, but then she actually smiled, held up her hands, and allowed it. Aithne picked up a forkful of tart and pointed it at Bastila. “I’m holding off Carth for now, mostly because I don’t want to deal with the mountain of stuff you and the Council aren’t telling me either, but I can tell you right now, our reprieve from Republic won’t last.”

Aithne shoved her forkful of tart into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. The flavor burst in her mouth, and she did her best to savor it. She had a feeling it would be some of the last, fresh real food she would get for a while.

“Carth’s inclusion in our doings for the Council is merely a courtesy to the Republic,” Bastila said. “If you mean to threaten me with his prying, it may be an irritation, but it will be little more than that.”

Aithne shrugged. “A little bit of irritation can go a long way to ruining someone’s day, week, month, and life. Just saying. You never caught him at his worst back on Taris.”

“No, that, I believe, is something that is reserved for you.”

“Everyone reserves their worst suspicions for me,” Aithne said. “Like I’m walking around in a big black cloak with ‘treacherous snake’ tattooed across my forehead. I’d like to know just what it is I’m supposed to have done or to be, except with you Jedi, when you get past all the dark hints and dire warnings, I’m scared you might actually be able to tell me. Now, before you key up the lecture, I know fear isn’t the Jedi way, but I also only agreed to train as a Jedi, not to become one, and at any rate, I’ve only been here six weeks.

“So. I am practicing Jedi patience with whatever it is you and the Jedi aren’t telling me until I can work through my fear and be ready to make you talk. But I will not make you talk until I’m no longer scared or I judge that knowing has become so vital I can’t ignore it anymore. However, you should also know I’m keeping a log of all the times I think you’re lying or trying to jerk me around and a log of the patterns I see in those times, and that when it becomes particularly annoying, I will take petty or passive-aggressive vengeance, which in its mildest forms may simply mean refusing to take the crap and in more serious forms might mean deliberately doing my utmost to drive you up the wall.”

“And you’re surprised we fear your Dark Side?” Bastila demanded, cheeks pink, “When you joke about torture and vengeance, as if they were laughing matters?!”

Aithne blinked. “See? That, right there. I never said I would torture you. I said I would make you talk, which could involve any number of ways or methods. Your mind went to torture.”

She’d been trying to speak lightly, but the weight she’d been feeling for weeks in her chest suddenly felt too much to bear. She’d been feeling it through her bond with Bastila, through the warnings of Master Vrook and the way the other Council members took his fear-mongering seriously, even if they didn’t repeat it to her face. She’d felt it after waking from her visions of Revan, in the ruin today with the droid who said she was like Revan. 

Her temples pounded, and she tried to shield so Bastila wouldn’t sense how truly distressed she was, but she’d only been shielding six weeks and couldn’t always manage it. “What did you want to know about me?” she asked, as a cover.

“Well—everything,” Bastila said. “I have known you only a few weeks, and we have been fighting for our lives or incredibly busy the entire time. Perhaps we could start with your background, with some of planets, corporations, and causes for which you have worked. Your file is somewhat sketchy, apart from the list of alien languages.”

Aithne shrugged. “I’ve been all over,” she answered. “Done a lot of work on Rim Worlds and around upcoming and recent battlefields in the Mandalorian Wars. I was a freelancer. I worked for corporate suppliers, bankers—scouting out safe routes for deliveries. Ran a few hostage and POW exchanges after the fighting ended on different worlds. In the past five years, I did some negotiations for isolated groups of Mandos trying to work out a deal on worlds they had to give back to the locals. Sometimes I got intel for bounty hunters when times were bad. Also did a lot of escort work for travelers navigating treacherous terrain—deserts and swamps, trackless wastes, and the like. Whatever legal work I could get that paid the bills and didn’t get me tied into any major factions.”

Listing it off calmed her down, thinking of all the trouble she’d got herself in and out of in the past. There’d been other jobs she thought would never end but had. There’d been other jobs she’d thought would kill her but hadn’t. Nothing was ever as bad or dramatic as it seemed. It would be the same way with this saving-the-galaxy gig.

“And before that?” Bastila pressed. “You grew up on Deralia?”

“Till I was nineteen, yeah,” Aithne said. “It’s the hind end of nowhere on the Rim, but at least it’s not a Hutt- or Exchange-controlled world like some of them.” She finished Bastila’s tart and went back to work on her own steak. “You want to tell me what you’re looking for in all this personal information?”

There was a flash of anxiety from Bastila, and the other Jedi licked her lips. “Our backgrounds form our characters,” she answered. “With a Jedi who joined the Order at the more usual time, I can make a reasonable guess at what their background might hold. You, however, are a mystery in that regard. Our connection allows us glimpses into each other’s minds. We can feel some of what the other feels, and what I feel within you can sometimes trouble me. A Padawan must receive considerable training. They must learn to control their emotions and darker impulses. Often it takes years before using the Force can be considered safe. The fact that you are so strong in the Force and have had such relatively little training could have terrible consequences. For you, and for everyone around you. So, I want to know you, to see if I can . . . can begin to predict how you might act. I must confess, merely watching you, and only receiving passing glimpses of your mind over our bond—you are often beyond me, Aithne.”

Aithne probed. She sensed only sincerity in Bastila’s words. Sincerity, and an odd, shy earnestness, a confusion, what could be a budding fondness, tinged with apprehension. But all of it together just made her sad and frustrated. So, she looked straight into Bastila’s wide blue eyes and let her shields down completely. “You all halfway think I’m bound to go bad,” she said, very clearly and distinctly. “I’ve sensed it in you from the moment we first met, before I even knew that sensing was what I was doing, and it’s the same with every master on the Council, even though Master Lamar is the only one who says so openly. Master Zhar is, on the whole, optimistic, but even he thinks I’m high risk. And you guys don’t just think I’m going to go bad. You think I’m going to go Revan, Dark-Lord-of-the-Sith bad. And when I’m not pretending I don’t notice, I joke and pretend like it doesn’t bother me instead, but not only does it scare me, it hurts. I can’t even excuse you and the Council the way I excuse Carth—when he thinks I’m about to stab him in the back, it really isn’t personal; he’s just got baggage. But as far as I can tell, this thing you and the Council have about me going Dark Side is very personal and based off of nothing more than the fact that I happen to have a similar power in the Force and a similar Force signature to a dead woman.

“Bastila, that’s not good enough. I’m not out to screw anyone over. I’m not a traitor. I’ve never lied to you, and I’m not out to conquer the galaxy. I’m not perfect, and I’m not about your Jedi rules and Jedi religion even if I do have Jedi powers and training now. But I don’t think I’m evil, and I like to think I have a choice to go that way.”

She felt a wave of compassion, pity, and sympathy from Bastila. The younger woman reached across and gripped her hand. “Forgive us,” she said. “In this time of war and conflict, when we have lost so many good Jedi to the Dark Side, it can be difficult not to be wary, especially when a Jedi’s circumstances are . . . unusual, as yours are. You are unique, both in your sheer power and in your situation. When Carth suspects you of treachery, you forgive him, because he has experience of others he has known and admired who have betrayed him. You claim things are different here among the Jedi, but do you truly believe that is the case? Through your training, you yourself have often observed that we Jedi are individuals with passions, regrets, and failings just like those outside of our enclaves. We train to be better, we strive to do better, but we cannot always succeed. Think of how many pupils the masters here have seen fall, abandon their teachings and become the worst possible versions of themselves. Then imagine someone like you coming along—a veritable aurora within the Force. They cannot do without you, but if you fall, how much damage could someone like you do? The Republic’s efforts against Malak and the Sith are already balanced upon a knife’s edge! You and you alone could tip the scale, one way or the other.”

“But no pressure,” Aithne muttered.

“But you have a choice,” Bastila continued, pressing her hand. “Of course you have a choice, always and forever. You must simply remain aware that the choices you make matter—not only to the war effort, but to my fate as well. There is much at stake. I believe there is a possibility that those who doubt you are wrong; with Master Lestin, I believe you could be our salvation. But I sense your struggles—with fear and frustration, with selfishness, arrogance, and calculation. I also sense the Light within you. I see you working through your Dark impulses to follow the Light! Maintain your self-awareness and self-control. We must all resist the influence of the Dark Side! It is everything we are fighting against! This is doubly important for you, with your natural affinity to the Force!”

Aithne shook Bastila’s hand off. “Don’t try to save me, Bas,” she warned. “Believing there’s a possibility those who doubt me might be wrong is also believing they’re probably right. But no, you ‘see the good in me,’ so you’re going to make sure I don’t fall to that horrifically Dark fate. I don’t need your help. I need you to actually believe in me, to get past what all those other Jedi have done and get it through your head that I’m not them, and I’m not Darth Revan, and a little eccentricity or weirdness in my circumstances doesn’t have to turn me into a Dark Jedi either.”

“Do not discount the risks!” Bastila warned. “Please. I am only concerned for you, for our mission, and for myself as well. Our destinies are intertwined. Everything one of us does will have consequences for the other. Any reckless behavior on your part is likely to affect me as well.”

“And you call me calculating,” Aithne said, disgusted. “Tell me, Bastila, is it your standing in the Order or your soul that’s in jeopardy when I go off the deep end?”

She’d asked it sarcastically, but Bastila answered quite seriously. “Quite possibly both. I’ve staked a great deal upon your value to our Order, Aithne, and to our efforts against Malak and the Sith. But beyond that, you’ve spoken how the psychic overflow from my spirit can overwhelm yours, up to and including causing you physical pain. The bond between us does work both ways. And where you go, I am, to some extent, bound to follow.”

That stopped Aithne up short. She searched the younger woman’s face for any sign of deception, probed behind those sky-blue eyes. Bastila, too, had let her shields fall completely. She was telling Aithne nothing but the absolute truth right now. Aithne wrinkled her nose. “Well, don’t do that!” she said. “I may not be evil or planning to head that way, but I’m never going to be the good-girl Jedi the Council’s going to entirely approve of either. I am crazy. You know I’m crazy. I don’t want to pull you there too.”

“Consider that I may, without ever trying to ‘save you,’ actually manage to pull you up to sane,” Bastila sniffed. “As I said, the bond does work both ways.”

“Bas, if we’re gonna play tug-of-war, you think you’re gonna win?” Aithne asked, gently and not unkindly, but very seriously.

And in an instant, the shields were back, and so was the status quo. Despite Bastila’s “belief” in her, despite the fact that she actually had vouched for Aithne and Aithne had seen her do it, Bastila was no less terrified of her than any of the Jedi Council when push came to shove. Aithne pushed aside the remnants of her supper. “Let’s go,” she said. “See what the Council has to say about your proposed Star Map hunt across the galaxy.”

She and Bastila returned Aithne’s tray to the cleanup line for the cafeteria droids, then walked down the hall and to the Council chambers. Sometimes Aithne wondered if the Council ever left, if the times she’d met Zhar in the training room or Dorak in the Archives were just figments of her imagination. They seemed to spend every waking hour just standing in a semicircle in the rotunda, waiting for her reports.

“Padawan Moran,” Vandar greeted her. “Bastila has reported to us on your trip to the ruins this morning. You have done well in discovering the Star Map hidden there. But there is more you must do in the battle against Malak and the Sith.”

“Color me shocked,” Aithne said.

“We Jedi know victory over the Sith will not come through martial might,” Vandar continued. “The Council has a mission for you.”

“I have consulted our vast archives in an effort to discover the nature of this ‘Star Forge,’” Dorak said, “but all my efforts have been in vain.”

“Still,” put in Vrook, “the Council is in agreement. The Star Forge must be found. Revan and Malak sought it out when they began their tragic fall; the Star Forge is surely a powerful tool of the Dark Side.”

Vandar continued, “The Star Map in the ruins showed you four planets, but it was incomplete. It did not show the location of the Star Forge itself. We believe there may be similar Star Maps on other planets. Each Star Map is likely a small piece of a larger puzzle. Find the Star Maps on Kashyyyk, Tatooine, Manaan, and Korriban, and we believe they will lead you to the Star Forge.”

Aithne looked from one to the other of the Council members. “You want me to do this?” she asked. “Not Bastila and a senior Jedi or two, assisted by me? You’re putting me in charge?” That had been the last thing she expected, and it knocked her feet out from under her and made her feel more off-balance and apprehensive than ever. She glanced at Bastila, checking for signs of outrage or humiliation, but the Jedi’s face was placid, and over their bond, there wasn’t a single indicator of either surprise or distress. Bastila had expected her to be put in charge this time, or had already been told that she would be.

“It is a weighty responsibility for one so new to the Order,” Vandar said, “but the Jedi have been ravaged by this war—by defections to Malak’s cause and by Sith assassins. We realize the importance of this mission. Yet if we sent a company of Jedi Knights with you, we would surely draw the full attention of Malak and the Sith, dooming your efforts to failure. Although Bastila is the senior Padawan among you, her Battle Meditation can make her more suited to a support role than to the constant vigilance required of a commander. You were the leader of your efforts on Taris. You will continue in that role in your search for the Star Maps.”

“I won’t leave Zaalbar and Mission,” Aithne said.

“We did not expect it,” Vrook said.

“If any of your companions from Taris wish it, they may accompany you on this mission,” Vandar added. “They possess skills you may find useful in your quest. Remember that secrecy and discretion are paramount to your success. You will not be able to hide the fact that you are a Jedi, nor should you. But the true nature of your mission must not reach Malak’s ears. Nevertheless, you will not be without Jedi help either. We are also sending Bastila, for there is a powerful connection between you two, a connection that might be the key to unraveling the mysteries uncovered by Revan. And Juhani has also asked to accompany you,” he added. “After long deliberation, we have granted her request.”

Aithne blinked. The Cathar from the grove. She’d made knight, so at least the Jedi had acknowledged that she had completed her training missions. Theoretically, she had the seniority of both Aithne and Bastila, but Aithne didn’t believe she was more capable, and it seemed like the Council agreed—if Juhani had had to request to join their mission, she was unambiguously coming on in a subordinate role despite her rank. Still, she was a strong warrior with at least a few more years’ experience than Bastila had and a whole lot more than Aithne, and Aithne would be happy to have her along.

“Juhani nearly fell to the Dark Side,” Vrook said. “Perhaps her presence will serve as a reminder of the dangers of that path.”

“Yes, yes, ‘don’t turn evil, you reckless, feckless, arrogant degenerate.’ I’ve heard you the 87 times you’ve told me and the 137 you haven’t,” Aithne told Vrook. She bowed to Master Vandar. “Thank you. We’ll be glad of Juhani’s aid.”

Vandar bowed as well. “You may return here at any time. Dantooine will be a sanctuary for you, a safe haven. Here you can find supplies and whatever advice or other aid we may give you.”

“When should we leave?” Aithne asked.

“You can leave whenever you wish,” Vrook replied. “The sooner the better. The longer you wait, the stronger Malak becomes. But first, a warning, Padawan Moran—”

“‘Don’t turn evil, you reckless, feckless, arrogant degenerate’?” Aithne guessed.

Vrook met her eyes, and for once, Aithne could see the raw terror behind the constant veneer of harsh disapproval. She remembered Bastila’s words: Think of how many pupils the masters here have seen fall, abandon their teachings and become the worst possible versions of themselves. Then imagine someone like you coming along—a veritable aurora within the Force. They cannot do without you, but if you fall, how much damage could someone like you do?

She shuddered, and Vrook spoke. “You jest, but the lure of the Dark Side may be more difficult to resist than you believe. I fear this quest to find the Star Forge could lead you down an all-too familiar path. The fate of the galaxy is in your hands, young Padawan. We pray you are up to the challenge. May the Force be with you.”

Aithne and Bastila bowed again and left the Council chambers for what would be the last time in a while. They walked out into the courtyard, heading toward Ebon Hawk.

“You are troubled,” observed Bastila presently.

“I expected to be sent out with you chasing Star Maps. I didn’t expect to be put in charge,” Aithne said. “I was nervous as a loth-cat this morning. Now, I’m—” she broke off. “Now, I feel like the Council just tossed me into the sea in the middle of a storm. Without a life preserver.”

“Not without a life preserver,” Bastila replied. “That is why I am accompanying you, Aithne, and Juhani as well. What are your orders?”

Aithne stopped just outside the ship, wondering if they’d still have it in the morning. On the whole, she thought so. She thought everyone aboard Ebon Hawk would sign up for this new mission she’d been assigned, but that just added a new weight to all that she bore already—the responsibility not only for making the decisions for two senior Jedi on a quest to save the galaxy but also for four more lives. And an astromech. She shook her head. “No orders,” she said. “We’ll call a crew meeting in the morning. Put the question to everyone: Do they want to come on a highly dangerous covert intelligence mission to try and track down an ancient Dark Side artifact of untold power that might be the secret behind the Sith war machine? Juhani had to sign up. Everyone else does to. Everyone gets a choice. If one or more of the others doesn’t swing the way I think they will, we’ll deal with it then, whether that means finding a secure boarding school for Mission, new transport and a reliable flow of credits to support regular shuttles to different worlds, or a new pilot.”

“Understood, Aithne,” Bastila said. Then the younger Jedi put a hand on Aithne’s shoulder. “Try and get some sleep,” she advised. “We will all need it before morning.”

Chapter Text

AITHNE

Aithne slept like the dead all night, and when she rose the next morning, she felt slow and stupid in the way people only do who have had an excellent sleep after overexerting physically and emotionally the day before. She took her time at breakfast, eating alone and downing two cups of caffa as she considered her approach to the others. She still believed all of them would choose to accompany her and the other Jedi on the quest for the Star Maps, but she didn’t want to seem as though she took their acceptance for granted.

Canderous would be going where Mandalorians most loved to be—into the heart of a war—but he would be going with his enemies and for his enemies’ sake, which would create some inevitable tension in him. It wouldn’t come even close to causing him to reject their request for his company and the use of Ebon Hawk, but it could prove problematic. Their usage of Ebon Hawk could also be problematic; the fact the ship was Canderous’s could give him more power than anyone aboard would necessarily want him to have. He’d been unexpectedly gracious so far, which was to say that he hadn’t made any objections or complaints about their living on his ship and the ship staying parked the last six weeks, in a location which would have made it very difficult for him to find and hire another crew to get her flying again, and not to say that he’d been particularly welcoming or even friendly to anyone aboard. He seemed to have a certain level of respect for Aithne, though he still called her a name in Mando’a that meant “traitor” in the common use as much as it did “foreigner” or “outsider” in its literal definition. He also seemed to have some regard for Zaalbar, and oddly enough, for Mission, though he clearly viewed them more as temporary business associates than as friends. She thought he actually liked having Carth and Bastila around, but what that meant for Canderous was that he enjoyed picking fights with the pair of them: he held them both in obvious contempt, and both Carth and Bastila disliked him. Juhani could be more of the same and worse—the Mandalorians had been particularly brutal to the Cathar people, and the Jedi Knight’s hot temper would probably present as an irresistible amusement to Ordo. Aithne didn’t want Canderous using his ownership of Ebon Hawk to antagonize or gain an advantage over the others. She hoped he would view accompanying them as a trade and be accommodating—they needed transportation; and he needed a pilot, a good fight, and a place to go—but she couldn’t be certain.

Zaalbar and Mission had already promised to go with her wherever she went, and for Mission, in addition, accompanying Aithne now would take her where she wanted to be—Tatooine was one of the four worlds they were to investigate for Star Maps, and the last word of Mission’s brother was from Tatooine. Zaalbar should be gratified at the prospect of getting into some trouble; he was anxious every day for occasions to make good on his lifedebt, she knew, and felt restless and useless when she didn’t need him. But Big Z would also be more aware than Mission would be of the danger Mission would be in on this assignment, and it might distract and worry him. Lifedebt or not, he was more protective of his best friend than he ever could be of Aithne. The weeks on Dantooine and the access to speeders, fresh air, and books from the Jedi Archives had also been really good for Mission. Aithne would have to make sure she got the same kind of care hopping around the galaxy after Star Maps.

Carth would find the assignment hardest. He’d be grateful to be moving again, Aithne knew, but he wouldn’t like her being in charge any more than she did. It would set off all of his internal alarms. And while she thought he’d be happier flying Ebon Hawk than being assigned as an advisor on another cruiser, she also knew he preferred missions on the front lines to intelligence gathering. What Carth Onasi really wanted was to go straight for Saul Karath, and their party would be aiming to avoid the attention of Karath or anyone like him at any cost. Onasi would do his duty, but he wasn’t going to like it. Her instinct would be to make things easier for him, but he wouldn’t like being coddled any more than she liked being rescued. She’d have to think on it.

Aithne finished her second cup of caffa and clapped her hands. She knew the noise would sound through the metallic corridors of Ebon Hawk. She called out then, “All hands, room to the right off the cockpit to talk about the What’s Next of it all! Five minutes, please!”

The room off the corridor that led to the cockpit had probably been originally intended as a secondary astrogation or communications suite for use with a crew of professional spacers. There had been several inactive terminals inside that were, as far as Aithne and T3-M4 had been able to determine on the voyage from Taris, completely unnecessary for Ebon Hawk’s functioning, though they might be helpful for multitasking if the pilot, copilot, and ship’s captain were all busy. As such, after a conversation with Canderous, all but one of the terminals had been stripped out of the room and hawked to Aratech for extra credits. Mission sometimes trained on the final one, but all the other stools that had originally stood at the terminals had been sawn off and resoldered in a rectangle around a table Aithne had asked Mission and Zaalbar with finding one day. The table had been similarly soldered to the deck, and now, with the introduction of a few empty cargo containers from the hold around the table to serve as extra seats, Ebon Hawk had a proper dining room and briefing area. As the main hold only had a functional seating for two or three of them, this had come in handy for communal mealtimes. It had also, as Aithne had pointed out to Canderous, served as a decent upgrade for the ship if he ever got together a crew of bounty hunters or a crack merc team who needed to be given orders all at once but weren’t much for the tech.

Mission—and surprisingly Bastila—had also found some hangings for the walls, so that the briefing room was currently the coziest room on the ship, though with trophy horn from an albino kath hound now affixed to the wall in the portside dormitory and a plush iriaz and an orange silk pillowcase having recently appeared on Mission’s bed in the starboard dorm, Aithne thought if they all stayed, it would only be a matter of time before Ebon Hawk made a full transition to a civ-class ship.

Aithne put their fruit bowl in the table’s center, as well as the caff pot, some mugs, a wheel of cheese, and the cheese knife. She wanted to make the space as welcoming as possible. Then she sat—deliberately not at the head of the table, which might irk everyone but Mission and Zaalbar, but on one of the uncomfortable spare cargo crates set at the center of the long side of the table, where the seats all faced the open door.

Mission was the first to enter the room, still in the tank and leggings she’d picked up to wear to sleep, and without her usual headdress. She yawned, waved to Aithne, cut a slice of cheese for herself, and sat down with it a couple of seats down the table at the short end to Aithne’s left. Zaalbar came in a little later, growled at the caff pot, and went out to go get water from their stores instead before returning and sitting next to Mission, diagonally to Aithne and near the door.

Bastila and Canderous arrived after that, both fully groomed and dressed. Canderous poured himself a mug of caffa and sat on the end of the table to Aithne’s right, directly across from Mission, at the traditional head of the table. Bastila smiled at the fruit bowl and took a griza. She shined it on a corner of her tunic, smelled it, then sat down on Aithne’s side of the table, in between Aithne and Mission.  Teethree came in after that, rolling in and taking up position a little ways away from the table near the sole remaining terminal. As Juhani had not yet reported for duty and was due to join Aithne and Bastila later in the day, Carth made up the tail end of the party. Like Canderous, he stuck to caffa. He sat down to Aithne’s immediate left.

“Well, we’re here. What’s going on?” Canderous grunted.

“I’ve got an assignment,” Aithne answered, without beating around the bush, “and like I said earlier, we need to talk about the What’s Next of it all.”

“We’re leaving Dantooine?” Mission asked.

“That,” Aithne answered, “will depend on each of you. Our assignment—Bastila’s and mine, as well as another Jedi, Juhani’s, has a lot of unknowns right now, but one thing we do know is that it’ll probably be dangerous. So. Here’s the deal—yesterday morning, Bastila, Carth, and I went to some ancient ruins here on Dantooine. Bastila and I had shared a vision through the Force suggesting that Revan and Malak had once chosen to permanently depart the Jedi Order there for the secret of something called a Star Forge. The Jedi Council wanted us to investigate.

“We discovered an ancient Star Map there, along with intelligence that Revan and Malak indeed visited the ruin several years ago, looking for knowledge on the whereabouts and operation of the Star Forge. We do not know what the Star Forge is yet, but the evidence we do have suggests that it is an immensely powerful tool, weapon, or factory, and that Malak may even now be using it to help fuel the war against the Republic.

“The Jedi want the Star Forge found and ultimately destroyed, and making sure this happens is probably also in the best interests of the Republic. Unfortunately, the Star Map in the ruins here only had incomplete coordinates, though it did provide direction to four other planets—Kashyyyk, Korriban, Tatooine, and Manaan. The Council thinks if Bastila and I fly to these planets, we could find more Star Maps and more coordinates that could lead to the Star Forge. They think it could be a decisive blow in the war against Malak.”

Aithne took a deep breath, then continued. “They have also, for reasons which boil down to ‘Battle Meditation is better in the copilot’s seat, but you are also having visions of Star Maps,’ elected to put me in command of this initiative, with Bastila as my partner and Juhani as advisory-support.” Carth did focus in hard at that, as Aithne had known he would. From beside her, she felt his regard increase, the way his mind immediately went into overdrive. In her periphery, she saw him look away and frown into his caffa mug.

“Aithne Moran, in command!” Mission cheered. “You’re gonna do great. It’ll be just like it was back on Taris, you know? And hey, if we’re going to Tatooine, maybe I can find Griff!”

“We gotta talk logistics before we get to sidequests, Mish,” Aithne said. She looked past Carth to Canderous. “We could use a ship, Ordo,” she told him. “You got us a nice one here, if you want to sign on for the duration. I got a desperate mission in need of some hands like yours, with pretty much a guarantee that the moment someone figures out Bastila’s still alive or we’re sniffing around for the Star Forge, a whole lot of Sith and bounty hunters are going to drop out of the sky trying to kill us. The Jedi will take on the cost of fuel and supplies for anywhere we need to go. The only downsides are you have to share your ship with a bunch of losers and barbarians and help them save the Republic. You in?”

Canderous laughed, a dangerous, anticipatory sound. “Am I in? Free food and worthy enemies to fight, with the bonus of getting to rub it in the faces of all you Republics and Jedi that you had to come to a Mando to end your war with Malak right. Sounds like the best deal I’ve made in years, Aruetii. You’ve got yourself a ship. I’ll even call you ‘captain,’ if you want. I’m in.”

“Oya!” Aithne said. She then placed her hands over her breast and bowed, smiling. “Vor’e, Canderous.” She turned to Onasi. “Ebon Hawk needs a pilot. I know you were assigned to Bastila, not to me. She’s coming with me, but if you need to check with the Republic to make sure everything’s still good, we can wait half a day for your answer before we’ll need to coordinate with Aratech or the Jedi enclave to see about bringing on another Jedi or an enclave attache to pilot or hiring a freelance transport pilot. But we do need to arrange for a departure as soon as possible; the Council made it clear our mission is urgent.”

For a long moment, Carth said nothing. Aithne could sense the conflict inside him—his distrust of the Jedi’s decision to place her in command after a mere six weeks of training; his distaste for any type of covert mission when he wanted to head straight for the front lines and Karath; his dislike of flying a Mandalorian-owned ship, as much as he admired Ebon Hawk herself. “You and Bastila,” he said then, “Canderous. Mission and Zaalbar?”

He looked at the two across the table questioningly.

/I have given my oath to follow Aithne Moran wherever she goes,/ Zaalbar answered.

Mission translated, “Yeah, we promised!” she added. “Besides, even if we weren’t going to Tatooine and I wasn’t looking for Griff there, if the Jedi say this mission could take down Malak, I want to be there! For everyone on Taris—and your homeworld, Carth—and everyone the Sith could still kill or conquer, we need to take that piece of poodoo down! I don’t have a ship or a lightsaber or any powers with the Force, but I’ve got a couple blasters. I’ve got the other half of the cutest, best little astromech in space—” Teethree beeped happily at this— “and more skills every day I can use to help you guys against the Sith. I’m in!”

Aithne regarded the teenager for a long, long moment. “I’m gonna give you a work-study stipend or something,” she decided. “I know the Jedi say I can’t pay you like Zaalbar yet because of child labor laws in Republic space, but you are worth the credits, Mish. You’d be worth them for enthusiasm alone, even if you weren’t a pro-level demolitionist and stealth op already.”

“Damn right,” Mission boasted, preening.

“Language, please,” Aithne told her, turning back to Onasi. “Carth?”

“The other Jedi coming with us,” he said, “Juhani. She’s the one who almost turned to the Dark Side, wounding her master, then tried to kill out in that ruin—the one inside the grove, not the one where we found the Star Map.”

“Carth, if we held a grudge against everyone who ever tried to kill us . . .” Aithne joked, but seeing Onasi wasn’t having it, she sighed. “She’s not Dark Side, Carth. Not really. She never was. Her master deliberately provoked her to make a point. It worked a little too well, Juhani got scared, and from her perspective, we were trying to hunt down and kill her. It could’ve worked out that way, by the way. Now she’s a knight with something to prove, and she wants to prove it with us. As far as I’m concerned, she’s another Jedi with more experience than either Bastila or I have got. We need her. I’m not saying I’m not going to be watching out for her temper, but I’m not turning her away.”

Aithne paused. “Hey, you said ‘the other Jedi coming with us’ just now.”

Canderous snorted. “Just pick up on that now, did you?”

Aithne’s heart lifted, and so did the right corner of her mouth. She couldn’t help it. “You’re in too?” she asked Carth.

Carth tapped his first three fingers on the rim of his mug before he answered. “The Republic gave me a mission,” he answered finally. “The parameters aren’t what I thought they’d be, but they haven’t changed enough to change the assignment. I’ll go. I’ll see this through, Aithne. I promise.”

Mission cheered again, and Bastila looked satisfied. “Very good,” she said. “That’s a ship and a full crew to man her—technicians, gunners, pilot, astromech, and three Jedi. We should spend the next few hours making sure we’re well stocked and fueled for the journey. Have you decided on our first destination, Aithne?”

Aithne hesitated. Although she knew her decision was likely to be unpopular with the Twi’lek, she knew where she wanted to go. Aithne had been to Tatooine before on jobs with bounty hunters and the like. It was a brutal world—a scorching desert Rim planet under the control of the Hutts. A lot of the colonists or speculators who lived there were there because they’d ruined their lives everywhere else, and the aboriginals were violent and hostile to the colonists. Aithne didn’t have high hopes for finding Griff Vao there, and if they managed it at all, she wasn’t sure about Mission’s ability to handle what they found yet. Griff could be in pretty bad shape, and he almost certainly was precisely what Lena had said he was. Mission wasn’t ready for that. She needed a few more weeks at least to heal from Taris, to bond with the rest of the crew and make a safety net before learning her brother was long gone—or that he truly had abandoned her years before.

None of them were ready for Korriban—it was a Sith world, and if they went there and got caught, the Jedi and the Republic could lose out on all the information they wouldn’t have had time to gather yet.

That left Kashyyyk or Manaan. Aithne’s decision there came down to a single, frivolous fact: she didn’t want to have to eat seafood again for another several weeks.

“I want to head to Kashyyyk,” she said. “I feel like we’re least likely to make waves there, and the more information we can get without setting off alarms, the better.”

She’d expected Mission to protest, but instead, the girl retreated. She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. Her lekku twitched. Aithne met the teenager’s eyes and raised her eyebrows, trying to convey without words that the two of them would talk later. Mission glared and lifted her chin, but then she gave a miniscule shrug and nod. She’d let Aithne explain later. Aithne’d earned that much credit with her.

But then she saw Big Z. Carth, Canderous, and Bastila had had no visible reaction to Aithne’s announcement that they’d head to Kashyyyk first—to the three of them, one planet was as good as any other. But Big Z, like his best friend, seemed unhappy. Aithne sensed something hot and troubled around him. He stared at the table as though he was looking through it. Aithne frowned. Mission had indicated once that she thought something had happened in Zaalbar’s past to make him leave the Wookiee homeworld. Zaalbar himself had refused to talk about it, but Aithne suddenly had a feeling that heading to Kashyyyk might not be as drama-free as she hoped. But she’d made her decision and told the entire crew. She couldn’t back down now or risk losing face in her first five minutes as captain.

So instead, she handed out the assignments for takeoff resupply and the standard maintenance checks on Ebon Hawk before their departure then dismissed the meeting. The crew dispersed to handle their various tasks. Mission and Bastila were running errands to the enclave and the Aratech general store to requisition any final personal gear the crew needed before departure. Teethree would be running systems checks for hours. Carth was astrogating the most efficient course to Kashyyyk and calculating their needs for fuel, water, and food accordingly. He would pass those calculations on to Canderous, Zaalbar, and Aithne respectively. The three of them would be dealing with waste disposal this morning—both from the fresher’s septic systems and the ship’s compactor—and transporting the waste to the appropriate drops and recycling centers on Dantooine. Once they had done this, they would separate—Canderous to purchase the requisite fuel, plus enough extra for emergencies; Zaalbar for a fresh water supply usable in their fresher, in the kitchen area of the main hold, and for drinking purposes; and Aithne to pick up Juhani and the supplies of dried food and synthetic protein necessary for the journey.

They would all return, and Bastila would do the accounts, while Zaalbar and Aithne together did a final supply inventory and rationing for Carth’s proposed trip to Kashyyyk. Carth and Teethree together would run preflight checks on the thrusters, engines, and hyperdrive, and they’d leave for the Wookiee homeworld. At some point, Aithne would need to write up a new chore rotation for the flight to Kashyyyk, including Juhani and covering cooking, cleaning, and plumbing duties for the course of their journey, but that could be handled after they were off the ground.

Things progressed more or less smoothly the rest of that morning and into early afternoon. The Jedi didn’t want to provide everything Mission and Bastila asked for—the books and computer programs Carth and Aithne wanted for Mission, Canderous’s requested liquor reserves and most of his requested arms, and some of Bastila’s requested datapads and holocrons from the Archives were deemed nonessentials and denied by the quartermaster. There were difficulties supplying all of the lack from Aratech general, sometimes due to a lack of supply and sometimes to their own lack of funds from the Council-provided stipend for the journey to Kashyyyk. Teethree, according to Carth, complained of a catch in the hyperdrive and only having the time and materials for a quick and dirty fix, rather than something that would solve the problem permanently. And while cleaning the septic systems, Zaalbar turned the flow knob the wrong way at one point, resulting in a mess that required a quarter hour to clean and Aithne’s insistence on the Wookiee having a shower, regardless of his protestations that it ill fit his dignity. But by an hour after lunch, Aithne was on her way back to the enclave to pick up the preordered food supplies and their final crew member.

She met Juhani by the barrels for transport to Ebon Hawk. The Cathar was dressed in a teal and orange warrior’s jumpsuit and carrying a small pack of her own personal belongings and effects. She bowed to Aithne as Aithne came into sight.

“Padawan, I am grateful you are allowing me to join your company after what I tried to do,” she said.

Aithne shrugged. “Making friends with people who try to kill me saves me a lot of time and mess. Frankly, I’m glad to have someone along who isn’t just out of Jedi daycare.”

“It is unfortunate that the Order is spread too thin for you and Bastila to have the opportunity to spend your Padawan years in the field under the guidance of a master, as is tradition,” Juhani agreed. “But Bastila’s original master was killed in the attack on Revan, and she has not been chosen by another, though she also has not passed the trials to become a Jedi Knight. My own trials were . . . unconventional, to say the least. I fear your time as Padawan will be unconventional as well. But you and Bastila miss a great deal.”

“I can understand that. Will you be willing to help us out from time to time?”

Juhani shrank back, trying to hide behind the barrel she was placing on the tractor. “I—I do not know if that is the best strategy,” she said. “There is much I do not know; much I now realize I have yet to battle within myself. I hope to be a help to you—to make up for what I did, and to prove that I do have what it takes to walk within the Light. But to serve as an example? To two such as you and Bastila? I believe it is beyond me.”

Aithne lifted the last barrel onto the tractor, then looked over at the taller woman. She could sense Juhani’s apprehension, her fear she would fall again, and it was a little bit too familiar for her to joke about. “Relax, Juhani,” she said instead. “I guess we’ll all just do the best we can. And don’t be too overawed of me or Bastila. Our placement on this assignment has more to do with freaky Force bonds and unpredictable visions than any innate talent either one of us possesses—also, the Council hopes the Sith will see a couple of Padawans as insignificant compared to Jedi Masters with half a dozen great battles under their belts. A little stupid, since Malak destroyed a whole planet trying to kill Bastila, but hey.”

Juhani seemed to tense at that. Aithne paused, but when the Cathar said nothing, Aithne gestured for her to swing up into the tractor trailer bed. Juhani did so, and Aithne climbed into the tractor’s driver’s seat. She put the tractor in gear and started driving it back toward Ebon Hawk. “It might be good for you to get away from the enclave a while,” Aithne told Juhani eventually. “I mean, we’ll be bushwhacking through jungles, out on desert safaris, and trying not to get killed on a planet full of Sith, so you could hardly call it a vacation, but a change of scenery can sometimes be just as good.”

She heard Juhani laugh a furry, nervous laugh. “Yes, I agree,” she said. “Forgive me if I am quiet. I am still somewhat shaken.”

Aithne understood. “Gotcha,” she said. “We can talk when you’re ready, and if you want to wait to meet the crew until you get settled in, that’s fine too. Just help me unload when we get back to the ship, and you can wander off and do whatever you feel like doing. You’ll be rooming with me, Bastila, and Mission, the Twi’lek you met earlier. Starboard-side dormitory. It’s easy enough to find.”

“Thank you,” Juhani said, and they lapsed into silence, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable.

CARTH

Off with the Jedi, to claim intelligence that could turn the tide in the war against Malak and his Sith. Actually flying a ship—one of the fastest of her class in the galaxy—instead of sitting on her, useless, in some secret Jedi enclave on some backwater farming planet. Back in action, doing what he loved, instead of kicked upstairs to an advisory role. Carth knew he should be thrilled. Instead, he was antsier than ever.

The Jedi were acting in ways that seemed absolutely insane. Putting Bastila in charge of a cruiser had been bad enough—Battle Meditation or not, she was basically the equivalent of a rookie just out of flight academy, and she acted it too. Inexperienced, temperamental, prickly as all get out—she clearly had good intentions, but sometimes it could be a time and a half just to get her to listen. Maybe the Jedi knew that. From a military personnel perspective, putting Aithne in charge had to be better than Bastila or a Jedi who had almost killed her former master a few days ago—Jedi-approved trial or not, there was no way Juhani was ready yet to assume her own command, and Carth wasn’t ready to trust her with one after what he’d seen. Aithne was older than both of the others. She was stable, levelheaded, charming, and a damn good fighter. Even Canderous liked Aithne, and Canderous didn’t like anybody. But from a rank and training perspective, from her placement in the Jedi Order, Aithne had graduated from being an apprentice two days ago. The Jedi were sending her out with no supervision, no mentor, and more than that, they were putting her in charge of a mission so important it could change the outcome of the war. Why?

It was probably related to the reason they’d wanted Aithne in the first place, whatever that was. They were hiding something. Bastila was in on at least some of it, and at the very least, she wasn’t talking. Carth was pretty sure she’d lied outright once or twice. Aithne knew it too, but for some reason, she’d shut down recently. She used to . . . she used to tell him things.

Used to. Carth almost laughed at himself. Like they’d known one another forever. Their circumstances had forced a kind of intimacy—the crash on Taris, working together to get out, going through the destruction of the planet together. Living on Ebon Hawk together all this time. Hell, they were practically coparenting Mission, and conspiring together and with Big Z and the Jedi Archivist not to let the kid know it too much. But when Carth really thought about it, he realized he hardly knew Aithne Moran. Or—that wasn’t right. He knew her. The way she fought, the way she thought and felt, the way she picked at things that bothered her and joked when she felt exposed. How she could see through anybody in a matter of hours. How she liked to pretend she didn’t care, that she was this calculating droid of a woman, but behind the logic and utilitarianism, she got desperate when she saw people hurting, needed people to touch her when she got scared, and went light-years out of her way to help others and keep her promises. What he didn’t know was her favorite color, a lot about her past, or any reason she should actually tell him anything. 

But he worried about her. She also scared the crap out of him—a couple different ways.

He was still thinking about it hours after the departure from Dantooine. Bastila had left the copilot’s seat—he didn’t actually need her, but she liked to feel she was important, and so far, there hadn’t been a reason to kick her out whenever she wanted to come up and press a few buttons. The ship was on autopilot, now though, tunneling through hyperspace to an exit-and-turn point around an asteroid field they were due to hit in ten hours or so. It’d be days before they hit Kashyyyk—a long, boring ride. But in the meantime, the cockpit, minus Bastila, was a nice, quiet place to think.

Until Aithne herself walked up the hallway behind him. She tapped on the rim of the open door with her knuckles. “Knock-knock.”

Carth swiveled his chair to look at her. She’d changed out of the Jedi robes a couple hours into the voyage into one of the shirts she’d had down on Taris—loose, white, and long sleeved—and a pair of her old scout pants. Her hair was down, her feet were bare, and she was gorgeous enough he wanted to shoot something.  

“Wanted to check on you after this morning,” she said. “Got the sense you aren’t exactly thrilled to be here, whatever you agreed to.”

“I knew enough this morning to know the Republic would want me to volunteer my services for this, as much for you as for Bastila at this point. I mean, you’re clearly becoming a valuable asset to the Jedi. When I radioed in during preparations for departure to report, Admiral Dadonna just affirmed my decision. I’m a soldier of the Republic, and I’ll do my duty. I also want . . . I want to help you. I guess I just don’t like being left out of the loop.”

Aithne sank into the copilot’s chair and swiveled around to face him, leaning forward and bracing herself on her knees. “Here we go,” she murmured. “I told Bastila you wouldn’t wait long.” She paused, then laughed. “Still. Not even forty-eight hours from the ruins? You’re a little bit pushy, Carth. Didn’t your mama ever tell you the girls don’t like it when you’re needy?”

The joking tone just irritated Carth. “You came up here,” he pointed out shortly. “Look, I know you told me to step off, that you weren’t ready to talk about it, that you didn’t know enough yet, but I just—things aren’t adding up for me, and until I get some answers, I don’t know I’ll be comfortable here. I’ll do my duty, but I won’t—I’m not going to be able to turn this off, Aithne.”

Aithne looked at him for a long time over her clasped hands. “I know,” she said finally, and he got the sense that she did. He relaxed a little, as she went on. “Unfortunately, I don’t have all of the answers for you. I don’t know if you’d believe me if I told you that if I did, I’d share. Honestly, I don’t know if I would share, because I don’t know the nature of what all it is Bastila and the Jedi Council aren’t telling me either. All I have right now are a whole lot of questions, some observations, some guesses, and at least as much anxiety as you have.”

Aithne’s frankness was a little refreshing, even if she didn’t have the answers. It was good to hear that he wasn’t the only one being left out of the loop—though, on the other hand, it was disturbing. If Aithne wasn’t in on what the Jedi wanted from her either—well, he’d thought once she’d be a good special operative. He liked the idea of her as a spec ops asset much less. He could tell she did too: she’d been as upset as he’d ever seen her yesterday, though now he saw she’d diverted his attention from it, thanking him for helping out with Mission until Mission and Big Z themselves had shown up and made further private conversation impossible. But he could sense that same apprehension she’d shown out on the plains—really, almost dread—in her now, and this time, he decided he wasn’t going to be put off.

He leaned forward, catching her eye. “Let’s start with the questions then, compare our observations, and see if we can’t work together to work this out.”

The right corner of Aithne’s mouth turned up. “And there’s the heart of it, Carth: I’m not sure I want to work it out. I have this feeling that when we do, we’re both going to really hate what we find out.”

Carth shook his head. “Maybe so, but I’d rather know what the he—just what the Jedi want with you.” He corrected himself at the last minute—Aithne didn’t often make an issue of it and sometimes even used it herself, but she didn’t like profanity. “If there’s something . . . if there’s something horrible hanging over us, it’s probably better to be prepared.”

He saw the moment she decided to trust him, and he was . . . he was a little humbled by it. She leaned back in her chair, moving her hands forward on her knees and breathing deep. “Alright—so, point one and probably most crucial: The Jedi say my bond with Bastila was forged on Taris, in the scuffle after the swoop race. But I know that’s a lie. I—” she hesitated. “I’d been dreaming about her for weeks before that. Had no idea who she was before the race, but the dreams themselves—I now realize they were of her confrontation with Darth Revan a year back. I didn’t get Revan’s name in the dream or any context for what I was dreaming until we did meet, just . . . flashes of Bastila’s face and lightsaber on the ship. Pain and anger and betrayal. They were . . . they were nightmares.”

Carth remembered Aithne thrashing around in her sleep on Taris and wondered if he’d seen her have one of these nightmares. His mind started working. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “How could you be dreaming about Bastila before you even met her?”

“And that’s the resulting question,” Aithne agreed, nodding. “There are Force-wielders gifted with precognition, of course—people who have visions or impressions of the future, or just realize someone or something will be important or that there are certain vulnerabilities or hingepoints around a person or moment in time. But this is different. I didn’t dream of Bastila in my future. I dreamed of Bastila in Revan’s past.”

“Revan’s past?” Carth echoed, surprised.

“That’s point two,” Aithne said. “Every supposed Force-filled dream or vision I’ve had has been about Revan. The dreams of Bastila on Revan’s ship from a year ago, the vision of Revan in the Dantooine ruins. Bastila isn’t always there, but Revan is. What’s more, I experience the visions from Revan’s point of view. That’s why I didn’t realize the dreams I’d been having were of Bastila’s confrontation with Revan until I met Bastila. A few minutes after we met, I got what I can only describe as a full flashback to that day—Bastila’s face, as usual, her in a fighting stance on the deck of a warship, ready to battle. But this time, I realized I was seeing the scene from the perspective of her opponent. Then, Bastila spoke and called me Revan. And the vision didn’t end with Bastila defeating Revan—or me-as-Revan. It ended with someone else firing on the ship, and Revan or me-as-Revan in pain, feeling a sense of shock and betrayal, and Bastila looking down at the scene.

“In the vision of the ruins, same thing. The vision wasn’t of Revan and Malak. It was of the ruins, and Malak, and I was Revan, doing what Revan did and thinking Revan’s thoughts. If Bastila and I really had the exact same vision, we might’ve both been Revan that time. But still—Revan’s past, not the future, and more like . . . like a memory than anything else.”

Carth’s mind whirred like a hyperdrive engine. “That’s why you said what you said the day we landed on Dantooine. You said it probably sounded really conceited, but you’ve been having visions where . . . where you’re Darth Revan all this time.” He stared at Aithne, trying to see her with a red lightsaber, a big black cloak, and a Mandalorian mask. Suddenly, all her anxiety made a lot of sense. He wondered if he’d be managing sane if he were her. “I can’t imagine how that must feel for you.”

“Disorienting, to say the least,” Aithne said. “For one, I don’t know why it’s happening. The best explanation I can come up with for the dreams of what happened last year is that Bastila’s somehow conflated me with Revan in her mind and put me in Revan’s place in her own memories, but—”

“—But if that’s true, how could she have done that before you met?” Carth finished, following. “And what’s the explanation for the vision you two had of the ruins, where she wasn’t even a part of what happened?” He was starting to get the same bad feeling Aithne talked about, to understand why she might not want to look too deep into this.

But she continued, nodding. “Point three, Vrook Lamar’s reservations when taking me on for training—that if they did, the Dark Lord Revan might somehow return. Have no idea what that means, but I feel it’s worth consideration. Point four, Zhar Lestin’s confirmation, when I asked, that there’s a certain similarity between my ability and presence in the Force—my Force signature—and Revan’s, and between our personalities as well, or at least my personality and the personality Revan had as a Padawan and young Knight, before the Mandalorian Wars.” Aithne shrugged. “Probably irrelevant to me as such, but possibly not to the way the masters who knew Revan see and approach me. Or Bastila, because she was trained by those masters.

“Point five, and now we move from facts and into what I’ve just observed—Bastila gets very evasive when I approach the origins or nature of the Force bond between us. Point six—I believe she is also lying when she claims I was recruited onto Endar Spire by the Jedi simply because my skillset matched a need for recon personnel in the crew and I happened to be the closest qualified operative. Point seven, if the Jedi feared my falling to the Dark Side, empowering me by training me to use the Force was a bad strategic move. They did it anyway.”

“Point eight, you’re pretty advanced for someone with only six weeks of training,” Carth added. “I mean, you defeated Juhani, and she’s a Jedi Knight.”

He hadn’t expected Aithne to react to this; she’d drawn numerous parallels between herself and the most dangerous Sith Lord in decades, the person who’d destroyed Telos and corrupted half the Republic armada. Or suggested the Jedi or the Force did, anyway. But when he brought up something else that had confused him the past couple of months, she paused, and there was a new tension in the air.  

“If you’re implying I might have trained as a Jedi before, or with an ex-Jedi or Sith, I haven’t,” she said after a moment. “A lot of what they taught me at the enclave just seemed to . . . make sense, I guess. Not that I can convince you if you don’t want to believe me.”

Carth tried to make her understand. It wasn’t that he distrusted her anymore, or not exactly. She’d been up front with him from the start. She was a skilled, brilliant woman and a good leader. He liked her—more than liked her. But some things about her just didn’t make sense. “You can’t blame a guy for wondering,” he said. “I mean, you’re pretty good with that lightsaber. I’m pretty sure you’re better than Bastila and you know it, whatever you said to make her feel better when the three of us were talking about it. And the way you talk sometimes—it’s . . . it’s hard to believe a . . . a scout could see all that, would think like that.”

Aithne’s face was a study. “The way I talk . . . how? Give an example.”

“Well, about the Mandalorians, or the quality and quantity of the gear the Sith and Republic give their soldiers,” Carth explained, listing off things that had struck him from the moment they’d met. “About battle strategies or . . . there’s a lot, actually. You say you were a scout, but sometimes it’s like you think like a general or a senator. You don’t talk like one, but—I don’t know. I mean, you knew Malak was going to bombard Taris before the first shots fell.”

“So did you,” Aithne pointed out, folding her arms.

He was getting into worse and worse trouble. He’d offended her now, but somehow, he couldn’t stop. He felt like he was on the cusp of something. “Yeah, because of you, and because you saw it first.”

But Aithne looked like she’d just eaten something seriously disgusting. “Okay,” she said finally. “So, in your mind, I’m another question that needs to be answered here: ‘How is it that what Aithne Moran says she is and what she can do don’t match up? Is she lying about her past? Is she a Sith plant into the Order? Or just a lifelong underachiever who always saw more wrong with the galaxy than she was willing to work to fix?’”

Carth recognized some of the uglier rumors that had floated around the Jedi enclave about the origins of Aithne’s abilities. “No! I mean, kind of, but it’s more like an idle—that isn’t how I mean it. I’m not trying to insult you. All I’m saying is that . . . you’re a complicated woman, and part of me is still trying to figure you out.”

The atmosphere changed completely for the second time. “I’m complicated,” Aithne repeated. “And you want to figure me out.” Her arms came down to rest on her thighs, and she leaned forward again, peering at him. Then she laughed, a low, throaty chuckle that did things to his stomach.

There was a look in her eyes he understood a little too well, but it didn’t make sense right now. They didn’t have time for it, but Carth couldn’t help responding. He swallowed.

“Carth, you ever want to just put our collective paranoia up on the shelf for a minute, put all the questions and anxiety off until tomorrow, and just do it?” Aithne asked. She raised an eyebrow at him, a smile playing about her lips.

The question came out of nowhere, but the sentiment . . . that’d been something he’d been trying to shove into a drawer since Taris. Suddenly, he couldn’t take his eyes off her lips, the sheer fullness of them, the way they curved and teased. She’d whipped that right out of the drawer, hadn’t she? And there it was, sizzling between them and plain as the noses on both their faces and the heat flooding down in his gut through his thighs. Carth shifted in his chair, uncomfortable. “You mean . . . you and me?”

Aithne’s golden brown eyes gleamed. A lot of people liked blue or green eyes better, but just now, Carth was having trouble imagining how blue or green eyes could carry off the kind of heat and intelligence of Aithne’s brown. Her lashes were black and pretty long, too, for someone who wasn’t, as far as he could tell, wearing any cosmetics or extensions. “No strings, no Jedi-unapproved ‘attachment,’ no complications,” she said. “Just two friends, holding each other against the dark—because I’m lonely, you’re lonely, and all this is insane. Because I could use a minute to relax, and you definitely could.”

Her pupils were expanding. Carth had only just managed to tear his gaze away from her lips to focus on her eyes, but now those weren’t safe either. They were too big and brown, and it was too obvious, looking at her, that she meant what she was saying. None of her was safe. He could just about stay professional when she was covered in blood and sweat, with her hair frizzing out of her braids or bun, or when she was in Jedi robes—though he never forgot how gorgeous she was underneath. But now, with those thick, rich brown curls left to tumble around her shoulders; with her clear, freckled face scrubbed clean; leaning forward the way she was so he could just get a glimpse of her cleavage through her shirt—and the neckline was pretty modest, she was just that well endowed, enough to kill a man with her curves before she ever switched on her lightsaber—oh, damn.

She wasn’t anything like Morgana, really—Morgana had been a small, dark woman. Everything about her had been neat and precise—beautiful, but in a way she kept for her closest friends. And for him. Aithne wasn’t exactly holovid actress beautiful either. Everything about her was too much, from the height to the curves to the curls to the spirit she had inside, from right out there on the surface to deeper than he thought almost anyone would be able to go. But it’d been a balancing act for weeks, trying to pretend like he didn’t want her anyway, and failing more than half the time.

But she’d been pretty . . . she’d been pretty vocal about not wanting him, and that saved him. He cleared his throat and shifted again. “I . . . uh, but you said—”

Aithne interrupted him. “I know what I said. I stand by it. You’re way too complicated to take on every day, or in any serious, permanent, or quasi-permanent way. But—” she shrugged and gave him a little, self-conscious smile.

Carth nodded, feeling like he was about to be the galaxy’s biggest idiot. His mouth was dry, and he met her eyes, steeling himself. “But,” he repeated, with emphasis.

It was all he had to say. She froze. For a moment, she didn’t say anything, then she nodded. “That irrational but. Yours or mine?”

Carth felt a stabbing pain somewhere in his chest, and his hindbrain was screaming at him that he hadn’t been with a woman in years, let alone had an opportunity like this, that he damn well could use a minute to relax and if he turned this down now, there was no guarantee Aithne would ever be interested again. Probably she’d hate him. “Does it . . . does it really matter?” he asked.

Aithne searched his face. “I guess not,” she said. Her cheeks went pink, and she leaned back in her chair again, this time pulling her knees up into it so her whole body was curled up, closed off. “I—I’m sorry. If that was out of line.”

She was embarrassed, mortified. “No!” Carth hastened to tell her. “No! And I’d love to, Aithne, I just—” he couldn’t help a laugh, strained and broken. “I would love to, and I’m grateful and . . . and flattered beyond measure. I, uh, a woman like you . . . a chance like that doesn’t come around every day, and I, uh, I want you bad enough it hurts sometimes. Have ever since you took that first shower back on Taris.”

“Me too,” Aithne murmured, eyes downcast. “It’s a hundred kinds of idiotic. Tried to get myself to stop, told myself ‘he’s not interested, he’s too professional for that kind of stupidity,’ and there’s the Jacket of Doom and all—except I fixated on that so much trying to stop myself that horrible thing’s actually turned into a turn-on—and you’re a mess, you’re just a mess, and I know it’s probably 85 percent our circumstances—”

“No,” Carth said again. “I told you before: if I’d met you on shore leave somewhere, minus living together for weeks, the shared trauma, and all the Sith trying to kill us, I’d’ve . . . I’d’ve still thought you’re one of the smartest, most desirable women I’ve ever met.” The words were pouring out of his mouth, but he was just so desperate she didn’t withdraw, didn’t think he was rejecting her anything but two or three damn good reasons, even if just now those reasons didn’t seem like enough, not nearly enough . . .“Back when I was first assigned to stay with Bastila, I was upset not just because I want to get back to the front but because things were already hard enough with you, and I have been trying to stay professional. I needed some distance, and it didn’t look like I was going to get it. But that’s just it—if . . . if you think I’m a mess, and that any attraction you’ve been feeling is a hundred kinds of idiotic, and I’ve been trying to stay professional, and not . . . not just to be professional, I don’t think either one of us should compromise.”

Aithne smiled again. This time the smile was a little bit sad. “I’d be ‘giving into passion,’ whether or not I let myself attach,” she summarized. “And you’re not ready for anything, whether it’s because of the family you lost on Telos or because part of you would still be wondering if I was trying to seduce you in order to lure you into a false sense of security. Okay.”

“That and . . . and if anything happened with the two of us, I’d . . . I’d want you to attach,” Carth admitted, mirroring her smile, a little guilty, a little sad. “I mean, I’d hope you would. That we would find some way to work past ‘complicated’ and just—do it. Everything. With you a Jedi now, I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen. From everything . . . from everything you’ve said, I’m not sure it would have even if you never trained with the Jedi.”

Aithne closed her eyes, and guilt and regret were written across her entire face for a moment. Then she said, “I wouldn’t have wanted it to, and that’s enough. I’m sorry.”

Carth shook his head again. “Don’t be. And don’t be sorry for . . . for asking, either. I mean it: I’m flattered. I hope . . . I hope this won’t change anything between us. I’d hate it if you felt we couldn’t talk anymore, or like I was embarrassed, or judging you, or anything but honored and half hating and kicking myself for turning you down.”

Aithne made a face and jumped up out of the chair. “Oh, stop,” she said. “If we’re going to be boring and sensible adults about this, might as well get on with it. You don’t need to let me down quite that easy.”

Damn it, she was going to run. He couldn’t let it happen. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d stood and seized her hand. “Aithne—” She flushed then blanched. Her every muscle had gone tense, but she didn’t jerk away. Carth stared at her. He had to convince her, had to make her understand he wasn’t insulting her. Without crossing any boundaries, he just had to let her know how much he wanted to. Heart pounding, he stepped closer to her, until there was just a few centimeters between them. He wanted to close that distance, but he didn’t—not completely. He just reached up and touched her cheek, cupping it in his hand. He ran his thumb across her cheekbone. Her skin was soft, but cool under his hand, so he felt it when she blushed again. He let his thumb skim down over that damned full mouth, a little open now as she stared back at him. His stomach clenched again, and his hindbrain screamed at him louder than ever. “I’m not,” he insisted.

His voice came out strangled and hoarse. He felt her shiver all over as he moved away, and her eyes darkened even more. They flicked down to his mouth, then away. But then she nodded, several times. “Alright then,” she breathed. “Exercise in self-denial and restraint. The Jedi will be proud. I’ll just log—this whole thing—” she gestured between them, “with all the other things driving me crazy.”

Carth laughed again. “Yeah, you and me both, sister.” He ran his hands through his hair and sat down in the pilot’s seat. He turned away as she started heading down the corridor, then turned back to her. “The Jacket of Doom?” he asked. “Really?”

She laughed too, a rueful sound, and looked him over once in a way he didn’t hate, even if they weren’t doing anything about it. “Like you wouldn’t believe.” She tipped him an ironic salute and left.

It took him ten minutes of cursing himself, wishing he’d said something different and knowing he couldn’t have today without betraying himself and probably getting her in trouble with the Jedi besides before he realized she’d distracted him again, turned him right off from tracing out all the questions about what was going on with the Jedi and her dreams about Darth Revan. She’d even brought up he might think that, he realized—part of you will still wonder if I’m seducing you to lure you into a false sense of security, she’d said, or something like that. Was it consciousness or a double bluff?

Damn it, had she propositioned him just to get him off balance and away from the stuff she didn’t want to talk about? And if he’d taken her up on it, would she have . . . would she have slept with him to keep him quiet? He didn’t think so, hoped he knew her better than that, but . . .

Poison suspicion coiled around his ribcage. He couldn’t be sure. There was no way to know. He thought she was attracted to him; he didn’t think she’d been faking that. But she’d said more than once she didn’t want to act on it. Was she now willing to use the fact he was attracted to her and she knew it just to distract him?

Chapter Text

AITHNE

She’d misstepped. She’d misstepped badly. Aithne left the cockpit of Ebon Hawk wanting to burn up into a crisp and die, and pretty sure that the fact that she wasn’t was just further evidence that there wasn’t any justice in the galaxy.

She could feel Carth over the fledgling Force bond she still hadn’t put together the guts to tell him about—that he’d kill her when she did tell him about. She hadn’t had any idea he liked her that much, but he was so hot and bothered right now that she was positive it wouldn’t even be fair to be alone with him anytime in the next five days, even if she wasn’t too thoroughly mortified to seek him out. Force, if she’d just turned her head that last second, pressed her lips against his palm—

She could break him. She could really break him. She might’ve already done it, because she knew well enough he’d get past lust and discombobulation soon and move right back into worse paranoia than ever, because she’d left him there after he’d turned her down. She’d done it because she had to get out, and she couldn’t go back now, but he wouldn’t see it that way. He’d come right back to them being in the middle of a conversation about all the things wrong on their mission and her saying something that threw that tram right off the tracks. And maybe she had been trying to put him off, just a little, but she was scared, and she was scared of the same things he was, but he made her less scared, and she’d just wanted—she’d just wanted him to hold her. Something simple, easy, and hot enough to shut everything else out. Just for tonight.

Except it was wrong, because that wasn’t what Carth wanted, and she hadn’t even considered that when she’d made her proposition.

Her face was still hot, that last blush in the cockpit with Carth written all over it for anyone and their droid to see. She wanted to go to bed, but there was no privacy there. No privacy anywhere, really, except the med bay or the cargo hold. Aithne chose the med bay: it was closer. She strode inside and shut and sealed the door behind her. She braced herself on the cot, staring at the bulkhead.

She’d told him multiple times he was complicated; that she thought anything between them was artificial, a product of their circumstances; that she wanted him to step off. She thought he was cute, nice, easy to talk to, yes. She couldn’t help liking him, couldn’t help trusting him, however he felt about her, but she’d been wary of anything else since they first started talking on Taris. She’d been protesting a little too loudly and a little too much, and he’d been listening.

Except he did want her, as badly as she wanted him and worse. He knew it was a bad idea. He was normally a professional, he still obviously had a lot of loyalty to whatever family he’d lost on Telos, even if he hadn’t told her about them in any detail, but he wanted her anyway. All of her, and not just her body.

I’d want you to attach.

By the Force, she’d felt so small when he’d said that. Selfish and petty and cowardly. Steering clear of any emotional entanglement with a man with problems like Onasi had was just basic good sense—Aithne was nothing if not sensible—and yet . . . he was worth the damn in damn complicated. He was so worth the damn, especially if he wanted it. He deserved someone who could be enthusiastic about all of him. Someone who could commit to more than liking him and wanting to scratch a quick and dirty itch on the floor or against a bulkhead in one of the rare places on Ebon Hawk that people could be alone. Carth deserved someone who would think about what he wanted before outright asking him to do it. He was honest and trustworthy, which was rare enough, but he was also good, kind, and generous, with a brain that worked under a full head of hair, and a body he kept in shape. He was basically a space whale: so unusual he might as well be mythic. And she’d made him feel like that wasn’t enough. Why? Because of his past? None of that was his fault.

Force, he was going to hate her in the morning. She could already feel the consternation, panic, and lust she’d stirred up back there hardening into suspicion up in the cockpit. She groaned.

So, of course, that was when Bastila knocked on the door. She could sense it was Bastila, even before the Jedi girl called out. “Aithne? Aithne, are you well?”

Her shields were in complete disarray, Aithne realized, starting to panic. She’d let them drop completely, and there was Bastila on the other side of their bond, beaming concern and alarm into her head. A wave of relief she hadn’t slept with Carth swept over her—if his rejecting her had done this, she could only imagine what it would have been like if he’d taken her up on her offer. She didn’t want to end up in some weird, psychic threesome!

She took a deep breath in and started building her shields up once again. Only when she’d managed it did she open the door to let Bastila into the med bay. “Haven’t turned to the Dark Side in the past twelve hours, if that’s what you want to know,” she said.

Bastila’s eyes were fixed on her face. “I did not believe that you had done so,” she said, “but the intensity of the shame and guilt I felt from you just now indicates you are nonetheless deeply disturbed. What is it that you feel you have done? Is there anything I can do?”

Aithne laughed. “You’re probably the last person who can help me right now, Bas.”

Bastila stepped inside. She shut the door behind her again. “Is it Carth?” she asked. “Have the two of you had a . . . confrontation?”

“That your best guess, or did you get it from my head?” Aithne asked.

As upset as she was, she did notice that Bastila actually looked relieved. “I’ve been aware for some time that matters are . . . precarious between you and Carth Onasi,” she said. “Unresolved, with reservations on both sides, but a dangerously mutual attraction, and one that goes beyond mere physical components. It is not something that requires a Force bond to see, though the fact that until tonight, you kept your feelings about him tightly under guard has been a clue in its own right, as I believe I have mentioned. I had hoped that both of you would be mature enough to set your personal feelings aside for the sake of the mission. Tell me: do you feel guilty now for rejecting him, or—”

Bastila was digging at their bond over the link. Aithne gave an enormous psychic shove, and Bastila actually staggered back about a meter. Aithne had accidentally shoved her physically with the Force as well. Aithne stood up from her place against the cot and reached out to Bastila. “That was an accident,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m still a little worked up. I need time to collect myself by myself, not your snooping inside my head, even if you’re doing it out out of friendship or simple curiosity.”

Bastila was quiet for a moment. She looked shaken, but also like she got it. “I understand. I apologize. That was an invasion of your privacy. I have never had such a strong psychic connection with another Jedi. I would not have expected I would be tempted to abuse it, and yet . . .”

She spread her hands, then let them fall to her sides. Aithne sighed. “It’s power, to be able to know, to feel, what someone else is feeling, rather than just guess and muddle along without the extra help. I’ve definitely taken advantage of our bond from time to time to get a sense of things you wouldn’t tell me otherwise.”

“But to force an intimacy that hasn’t been freely given is to steal it,” Bastila finished, though she’d turned even paler for a moment. “We both must be more conscientious. Will you accept my apology for just now?” She extended her hand, and Aithne took it.

“Yeah. Don’t do it again. And again—I’m sorry for pushing you. And for the bleedover that got you here. Can’t have been very pleasant.”

“In truth, it wasn’t,” Bastila admitted. She looked up, seemed to gnaw on her tongue a moment, then added, “There is a reason the Jedi discourage emotional entanglements. They can impair rational thought, lead to outbursts of uncontrolled emotion. The Jedi aspire to be above such things.”

Aithne thought of Juhani in the ruins, Bastila’s own discomfiture after the swoop race, and the excuses she’d made for the Jedi Council. “And are we?” she asked.

Bastila gestured to the cot. “Shall we?” she suggested. Aithne shrugged and sat down next to Bastila like the infirmary cot was a sofa. “It can be one of the hardest lessons to learn,” Bastila told her. “I myself have never struggled with sexual or romantic attachment—or never yet—but I struggled a great deal as a child, when my family first gave me up to the Order.”

Aithne looked away. The practical reasons behind why the Jedi took their apprentices away from their families when they were young were easy to understand. Ability with the Force had strong locative and hereditary components, but sectarianism, dynasties, and family blood feuds had devastated the galaxy and the Order in past millennia. It was also easier to indoctrinate a small child than an adult or adolescent—and Jedi indoctrination did have theoretical benefits in keeping more Force wielders from becoming mystical, superpowered abominations capable of wreaking havoc wherever they went in pursuit of whatever they wanted. You still got Exar Kuns, Revans, Malaks, and Mandalorian Wars—but she could see it wasn’t constant chaos. Still, she thought ripping kids away from their parents and homeworlds had to be one of the coldest, worst things the supposedly good-guy Jedi Order did.

“Where were you from?” she asked.

“Talravin,” Bastila answered, naming one of the Core worlds. “My family is still there, the last that I heard. I have had little contact with them, as it is discouraged. I was not on good terms with all of them, but I missed my father terribly for a very long time.”

“Who weren’t you on good terms with?” Aithne asked.

Bastila shifted and stiffened beside her. “I was not on good terms with my mother,” she answered, and Aithne could hear the hardness in her voice. “I was only a little girl when I left, but I was old enough to resent her and the way she treated my father. She pushed my father into treasure hunting. I spent all my young life on ships traveling from one false lead to the next. She whittled away my father’s entire fortune, and I hated her for it.”

“Hatred?” Aithne asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Yes, well, I was not a Jedi at the time,” Bastila said. “And it illustrates my point: relationships with family members are fraught with powerful emotions. Such extremes are to be avoided. Anger and hate are the worst, but even love can lead to folly. I think my mother was relieved to give me to the Jedi, but my father was heartbroken.”

“And you never tried to get in touch with him again?” Aithne asked.

For a long moment, Bastila didn’t answer. Then she said, “A child is too young to understand the sacrifices that must be made. It is better if children have no contact with their family once they are removed. My letters never reached my father. Once I was older, I realized the wisdom of this policy. A Jedi must do what is needed, personal desires notwithstanding. Love can only obscure and confuse the matter.” She looked over at Aithne, studying her face. “And, though I do have limited experience, I believe what is true in familial relationships holds true in romantic ones as well. It may be painful now—to have to refuse a man you wish you could accept . . .” she hesitated. “Or, perhaps, to be refused,” she added, making Aithne grimace. Was it really that obvious? “But you will find it is ultimately for the best.”

“I’m not sure if you’ll believe me,” Aithne said after a moment, “but I wasn’t trying to step all over Jedi tradition my first day out from the enclave.” She made another face. “I wanted to act within what’s generally permissible, if . . . not necessarily recommended. Trying to address the bantha on the ship without—it doesn’t matter.”

“I see,” Bastila said. She said nothing else, but Aithne could sense her discomfort through the air and through their bond. The Jedi didn’t ban sex, and in fact many of them occasionally engaged in the odd casual liaison. Sexual release had several stress-relieving benefits that were helpful to individuals encouraged to work through their anger and frustration, and some species outright needed it for health reasons. It was just marriage and procreation that was poo-pooed by the Order, and even that hadn’t always been the case according to the archives. But several Jedi philosophers posited that carnal passions too easily led to emotional ones, and that the higher an individual could rise above them, the closer they would be to true enlightenment and the heart of the Light Side—an all-encompassing compassion and empathy for others that had nothing to do with the pleasures of the flesh. It was the prevailing teaching among the Order these days, with sex more often viewed as a practical concession to weakness and imperfection than anything else. Aithne’d got the spiel from Vrook, Dorak, and a few of the others these past weeks, and it would have been what Bastila had grown up with. Considering she and the Council already thought Aithne was weak, Bastila would be very uneasy with the idea of Aithne playing with any sexy fire.

“I don’t think you do,” Aithne sighed. “You’re probably thinking I wanted some sort of Jedi-acceptable tension release, but that I’m not trained enough to handle that kind of compromise. You’re probably right, on both counts, but I can tell you, sitting here, I’m not feeling guilty or ashamed of wanting to sex up Carth Onasi. A bit relieved I didn’t, because if you felt him rejecting me, you might’ve felt my—”

“Please don’t go there,” Bastila broke in, turning scarlet, obviously as mortified by the idea of a psychic threesome as Aithne herself had been.

Aithne smiled ruefully. At least she could enjoy Bas’s embarrassment. “Yeah. I’m gonna work on my shields,” she promised. She pointed toward the cockpit. “But my point was in the conversation we just had up there, I realized holding back to no-strings-attached, at least for me, has a lot more to do with fear and selfishness than any Jedi-like restraint. And had nothing at all to do with Jedi-like compassion or empathy for Carth and what he wants.”

Bastila was silent. Aithne could feel her confusion through the Force. The younger woman swung her legs under the medical cot, staring down at the floor. “I—I think I see your meaning. You mean to say that the motives behind our choices have as much significance as the choices themselves. That a person may do everything according to the teachings and precepts of our Order—yet fail if the reasons behind their actions are not pure and honorable. It is a good thing to keep in mind. But Aithne—” she looked up. “I cannot feel that following the ways and traditions of the Order is not most often the best way to avoid temptation. Perhaps you should be more mindful of your feelings, but flouting convention is surely the more dangerous path.”

Aithne grimaced again. “Don’t worry. Carth didn’t want to flout convention with me tonight, and after tonight, he’s not likely to anytime soon. Or ever.” She could sense him now—anger, fear, and humiliation had almost entirely replaced his earlier lust and consternation. Like she’d thought he would after she’d left, he thought she’d been manipulating him, and she wouldn’t have the nerve to sort things out for days.

Bastila pursed her lips. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short. You can have . . . you can have quite the impact. Even without wanting to kiss you, I have felt it. You’ve the Mandalorian’s respect, the devotion of Mission and Zaalbar. Juhani says but little, and much of it is your praise. From the moment we all united on Taris, it’s been clear Carth admires you.”

“Kind of you to say so, seeing as you’d rather he didn’t.”

“I would much rather he didn’t,” Bastila agreed. “We cannot afford the distraction. I believe our fate will eventually drive us into a confrontation with the Dark Lord, and I would like nothing interfering with your resolve or focus that day. I remember how hard it was when I first faced Revan.”

Aithne looked sharply over at Bastila, her dreams and that one vivid flashback on Taris flooding back to her mind. “Did you know Revan?” she asked. “Before Revan became the Dark Lord, put on that mask on Cathar, or people even started calling her the Revanchist? What was she called before?”

Bastila shook her head. “I was a mere apprentice at the time. Not only had my Battle Meditation not yet manifested itself, I had yet to construct my first lightsaber. I was far more interested in one-upping the other younglings at my lessons than I was in affairs upon the Rim or in the doings of Jedi far too young to ever take me on as a Padawan. When the schism occurred, of course I became interested in Revan—one of the youngest Jedi Knights in history, stubborn and powerful enough to defy the entire Jedi Council and lead dozens, hundreds, after her on a grand crusade to help the helpless. I was too young to see how reckless, how foolish it was, and fortunate only that I was also too young to join her. But by then, people already only called her the Revanchist. By the time I was chosen by a master, my Battle Meditation had manifested itself, and my master had begun taking me out into the field, it was Darth Revan, and even many of the younger Jedi had begun to forget Darth Revan was a human woman behind the mask. Revan was such a terrific figure, so iconic—yet I was crushed when she turned to the Dark Side.”

Aithne hesitated. “Bas—what happened the day you faced her?” she asked. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Bastila.

“Because of my Battle Meditation, my master and I were chosen to go with the strike team that boarded her ship,” Bastila said. “Our mission was to capture the Dark Lord and not to kill her, and the Council believed my Battle Meditation offered us the best possible chance.” Bastila went silent. “Even so, for a moment, I felt sure we would fail. One of Revan’s Dark Jedi guards cut down Master Ines, though he died himself doing so. I—In point of fact, by the time we stood before Revan, there were only three of us remaining, and both of the others were wounded. Completely spent. Yet I knew it was the will of the Force I press on, do everything I could to bring in the Dark Lord. In the end, I never got the chance.”

Aithne remembered the impact, the pain from her dream, the feeling of betrayal, of self-castigation that Revan hadn’t seen it coming. “Malak,” she murmured.

Bastila nodded. “He had sensed our presence aboard Revan’s vessel, or perhaps had a report from his own bridge staff. He turned on his master, firing upon the ship while we were still onboard. It was his desire to kill us and his master both. Thankfully, we narrowly escaped the vessel as it exploded.”

“But not before you watched her die,” Aithne murmured. “The flashback on Taris, when we first met,” she explained. “That was what I saw. Like I told the Council our first day on Dantooine. I saw you, right when Malak fired on that flagship, looking down at Revan, watching her die.”

“It’s—one of my more intense memories,” Bastila said. “It is never far from my mind, particularly when unsettled. That, as much as a scarcity of masters, is why I have yet to be reassigned as a Padawan Learner to someone else. Master Ines was killed, and I—the Jedi do not believe in killing their prisoners. No one deserves execution, no matter what their crimes. Seeing Revan on the deck of her burning vessel—she and Malak were great Jedi once, heroes in every sense of the word. It has proven impossible to forget—how far those heroes may fall, and the end to which it can lead.”

“You pitied her,” Aithne realized, awestruck. “Even after her guards killed your master, you were sorry to see her die. You’re still sorry she died.” Bastila Shan was a much nicer person than she was, Aithne thought. She didn’t seem it; she was so prim and officious, but when when Aithne imagined her on that ship, with her de facto Jedi parent dead behind her, looking at a traitor to the Order who’d corrupted Force knew how many Jedi and Republics and killed a million others, and feeling pity . . . she couldn’t fathom that kind of compassion.

Bastila looked both pained and embarrassed. “Please. We really shouldn’t speak of this anymore. The memory of my confrontation with Revan, of Master Ines’s death—and of the others—is . . . painful. I should . . . I should go.”

She stood, and Aithne looked up at her, concerned. “Seems I can’t do anything right tonight,” she said. “Go, if you need to. I’m sorry.”

Bastila shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry—for everything.” She practically fled the med bay, and Aithne flopped over on the cot, staring at the bulkhead. Her first day as captain of Ebon Hawk was going swimmingly, and she hadn’t even tried talking to Mission yet.

She caught the Twi’lek on her own the next day, looking up communication protocols in the briefing room after breakfast. “Mission. I was hoping we could talk.”

The girl swiveled on her stool. “Yeah?” she said. “You want to explain why we’re leaving my brother on that dust ball Tatooine?”

Aithne leaned up against the table. “Aside from the fact he chose to go there and might still want to be there?” she asked.

Mission blushed, and her lekku twitched, but she raised her chin and folded her arms. “That doesn’t mean we can’t look him up. I got the feeling you don’t even want to, Aithne. I’m not saying I’m gonna leave you or anything. He left me! I’m staying with Big Z, and I want to fight the Sith, but come on! He’s my brother!”

“And he left you,” Aithne retorted. “You were nine years old—”

“Ten,” Mission snapped.

“Right, because that’s so much better. Ten years old, and he went off with his girlfriend and left you alone with every perv, user, criminal, and gang member in the Lower City. Frankly, I don’t care if it was Griff’s idea or Lena’s, it was indefensible. Twi’lek ten is just the same as a human ten, and it was too young. You can look out for yourself now, most of the time. You shouldn’t have to, but you can. How well were you doing then?”

Mission looked furious. “I did alright! Griff taught me what I needed to know. I never starved or nothing. I steered clear of the spice runners and trash like the Vulkars. I didn’t get raped. I never had to think about selling myself into slavery, and I was smart enough to avoid the losers who’d try to make me a slave anyways, which means I did a little better than a Jedi down there. I never even got beaten up too bad, so there!”

“Believe it or not, most girls your age don’t consider dodging starvation, rape, addiction, and slavery to be ‘doing alright,’” Aithne said grimly. “Any of it could have happened. Your brother left you to it, and part of you knows it. Forgive me if I don’t think flying off to face that is the best thing for you right after Taris.”

 Mission’s eyes were shining with angry tears. “He knew I’d be okay,” she said rebelliously. “He must have. He wouldn’t have—he wouldn’t just—”

Aithne raised her eyebrow at the girl. Mission’s chin wobbled. Her lekku thrashed. “You believe Lena!” she accused Aithne. “Everything she said about my brother! He was going to come back for me! He was! Even if it was his idea to leave me behind, it wouldn’t have been permanent! He probably was just trying to skip out on his debts when he left Taris and wanted to trick the creditors by leaving me behind for a while. I’m sure he meant to come back! He promised! It’s just that things didn’t work out how he planned!”

“And what if you’re wrong about that?” Aithne challenged her. “Or we find out he’s long gone from Tatooine, and we can’t find any record of where he went? From what Lena said, it sounded like she and Griff have been broken up for a while.”

Mission swallowed. A tear fell down her cheek, then another. “I have to find him,” she whispered. “Aithne—I gotta know, one way or the other. Look, what if you’re right? What if you and Lena are both right? I been idolizing him all this time, maybe ignoring some of his faults, but he raised me. What if . . . what if that’s all I am too?”

Aithne reached out and seized the girl’s hands. “It’s not!” she ground out. “Mission, you ran through a pit full of rhakghouls screaming at the top of your lungs for someone to help your best friend. You asked everyone you could think of and even begged a couple of near strangers for help. Then you followed him right into a life debt and a war rather than abandon him. You’re one of the bravest and most loyal people I’ve ever known. You are so much more than your brother.”

Mission rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I knew you and Carth would help me,” she said. “I knew you guys wouldn’t let those Gamorreans sell no one into slavery. I knew you two would risk your lives rather than let something like that happen, right from the start. You’re good, both of you. I never expected you to do all you done for us, though. Saving us from the Sith on Taris, getting Big Z a salary so the life debt ain’t ever anything like slavery, all the stuff you guys are teaching me. If I ever do leave you guys—I—I’ll be able to do anything, and there won’t be no staying in flophouses or skifting newbies at pazaak either. I could—I could make some big money, and legal, and don’t you think I don’t know it, Aithne Moran! Be more than any Twi’lek from Taris’s Lower City I ever met. I—I know I don’t really deserve it.”

Aithne was so angry at a world who’d let this girl believe she didn’t deserve consideration, wasn’t good enough for an education, that she had to cheat and scrounge just to survive and that was fine. She could half believe anger led to the Dark Side, because she half wanted to burn down Taris all over again, and kill Griff Vao for good measure.

“You deserve a life,” she said. “Everyone does. A life where they don’t have to worry about slavers or drug runners or gang wars, where they’re going to sleep next or what they’re going to eat next. A life with dignity, where they can learn what they need to make a decent living within the confines of laws designed to look out for them, instead of laws that make victims of people like them. And everyone deserves to have at least one person they can count on to make sure they get that life. None of that is anything you should have to be grateful for.”

Mission looked up at her. She’d stopped crying, but her gray eyes were still haunted. “Yeah, but you don’t understand, Aithne—life isn’t like that, not for almost anybody, and especially not for me and Big Z, before you and Carth showed up. So we do have to be grateful. That’s why Big Z swore you that lifedebt, and that’s why I did too, sort of. Almost as much as me not wanting to leave him. When people like us find people like you, we have to hold on with both hands—or claws. Whatever. I ain’t never leaving you, or not for years and years. But I have to find Griff too, even if he did abandon me. Can you—can you try to understand that, just a little?”

Her eyes were enormous, her face somber and pleading. Aithne sighed. “Can you understand why I don’t want to look for him right now?” she countered, as gently as she could.

Mission sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I guess,” she said. “I’m still crying every five minutes and yelling at you whenever Griff comes up—you! I guess I get that you might not want to head to Tatooine right now. I couldn’t . . . I might not be a lot of help finding that Star Map thing. Maybe I need a little more time to think.”

“That’s all I want for you, Mish,” Aithne told the girl. “A little more time to settle, to prepare for whatever we could find out on Tatooine. I want you to be ready when we finally do start looking for Griff.”

Mission hesitated. “Okay,” she said. “I don’t like it. But I get it, you know?” Her lekku twitched, and she folded her arms around herself, then unfolded them. “Can I—could I get a—” she broke off, but Aithne knew what she wanted. She stood, crossed the distance to Mission, and folded the girl into her arms. Mission clung to her, burying her face in Aithne’s shoulder for a long moment. Mission didn’t like to admit she liked hugs, that she needed anybody, but she was fourteen years old, and she’d been toughing it out longer than any kid should have to, going through things no kid should go through. Aithne felt Mission shudder against her twice, then the Twi’lek pulled away, smiling shakily.

“So. What are you working on today?” Aithne asked her.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

From the forest floor on Kashyyyk, you could not see the place where the branches met their end. You could not see the sky. That was why the Wookiees that populated this planet called it the Shadowlands. Here, shadows were the only things that existed. Shadows, and the eyes that glinted in the dark, reflecting the scant light that made its way from above. Shadows, and the paws and claws and exoskeletons that went with the eyes.

And now, one holointerface. I wanted to lock down at least one of the maps to the Star Forge, to make sure there was some sort of security in the case of inevitable pursuit. This particular interface would guard against even Malak, a precaution I felt was necessary after our disagreement over Telos IV. I had lost a world containing tens of thousands of potential recruits to the cause, not to mention a garden world and top agricultural producer. Malak had lost his jaw. I had chosen to spare his life. With Leona broken and worse than dead, and defected in any event, he was too valuable a commander to lose. Supposedly. In theory. Or perhaps I had spared him because I felt owed him something for our history. But it was the last thing that I owed him, and I did not delude myself that he had any love left for me now. Perhaps now he would finally come into his own, free of his dependence upon me. But if he chose to do so—I needed safeguards in place.

If I decided one day to take the Star Forge and leave him behind, he could not follow me. If we left it where it was, in the location we had yet to fully discover, it would be safe from our enemies. I gathered my tools, placed them inside my pack, and turned to go.

The morning they arrived on Kashyyyk, Aithne woke feeling she wanted nothing so much as to vomit. Whether it was Bastila and the Jedi’s concept of her; her own imagination now, reacting to too many coincidences; or some weird freak of the Force, she hated, hated, hated feeling like she was in Darth Revan’s head. She hated feeling like some part of her understood or was similar to Revan. Hated what she seemed to feel in these visions, the overall sense of being one of the most dangerous Sith in living memory and not feeling anything that she, Aithne, could identify as outright evil and other. She knew Revan had committed atrocities, even before ostensibly turning to the Dark Side, but in these dreams and visions, Revan wasn’t insane. Revan wasn’t a monster. Revan wasn’t full to the brim with rage or hatred or anything truly alien at all, and that was the worst, most chilling part of it.

Bastila and the Jedi or Aithne’s own imagination or some weird freak of the Force conceptualized Darth Revan as rational. Arrogant, yes. Sometimes. Cold. But also logical, analytical, sensible—and not at all lost to pity, poetry, compassion, or even some affection. Aithne could fit within that concept, and it terrified her. It nauseated her.

Mission’s voice sounded from the bunk diagonal to Aithne’s, above Juhani’s and next to Bastila’s. “Another Force vision, huh?” Aithne swung her legs down to the floor and looked up at Mission. Mission was the only other person still in the starboard dormitory. She was cross-legged on her comforter, shuffling her pazaak deck. She met Aithne’s eyes. “You were kicking and whimpering all night. So was Bastila. Are you okay?”

Aithne shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Carth says we’re due to land in about half an hour,” Mission reported. “Czerka’s given us clearance to set down on a docking pad, but they want some kind of docking fee when we get there.”

“Because on the Wookiee homeworld, we really need to be paying Czerka Corp for permission to set our ship down,” Aithne muttered. She wasn’t fond of the Czerka Corporation. They were officially neutral in the current war, but their contracts were much firmer with the Sith than with the Republic. They strip-mined planets to depletion; didn’t care much about local ecosystems, flora, or fauna; had a history of violence with populations of species that weren’t noteworthy for spacefaring or a particular presence on the galactic stage; and they dealt in both indentured servitude and harder forms of slavery. They were ruthless, slimy, world-destroying capitalists in the worst, most amoral sense. But without their presence on Kashyyyk, finding a place to land even a freighter as small as Ebon Hawk might have been tricky. The Wookiee homeworld was notoriously undeveloped.

She dressed in a loose green tunic, brown breeches, and her toughest all-weather boots, fixing her lightsaber to a bracer under her tunic’s long sleeves instead of to her belt. She didn’t want to advertise to every Czerka employee she was a Jedi; no telling how quick the information could get to the Sith that way. She sat down and started braiding her hair into a crown around her head. “I’m gonna have to talk to Bastila,” she muttered. “Dissect and analyze every detail of these latest ‘visitations of the Force.’”

“Could you talk with Big Z after?” Mission asked. “He’s been fussing over the supplies since late last night.”

“We didn’t miscalculate, did we?” Aithne asked, a little absently. “Zaalbar not getting his eight squares daily?”

Mission shook her head. “He sure can eat, can’t he? Nah, we haven’t had any shortages, but I think Big Z likes how you’ve been letting him help make up the inventory. Makes him feel all responsible and important, you know? He wants to help you as much as he can, because of his life debt, but sometimes it’s kinda hard to know how to help a Jedi. So, he keeps watch over the supplies, like anyone here is going to sneak extra rations.” She rolled her eyes. “Except, I think he thinks that someone is. Just check in with Big Z. He probably can talk more about food than he can about anything else.”

Aithne frowned then. She knew Zaalbar had felt largely out of things since they had touched down on Dantooine. She had tried to help him by sharing inventory duties with him. Figuring out how he would fit into their operations moving forward was an ongoing concern. For now, the best she could probably do was listen to his concerns. “Thanks for the heads up,” Aithne said. And thanks for leaving primary communications up to Zaalbar, she thought, but didn’t say. “As soon as I talk with Bas, I’ll look him up.”

She gave Mish a nod and left the dormitory. The truth was, Aithne was rather eager to talk with Bastila, uneasiness about another Revan vision aside. Things had been unbalanced all through their voyage to Kashyyyk, and Bas’s unusual reticence was a big part of the dynamic.

A couple weeks from Taris and six weeks on Dantooine. That was all it had taken for Bastila Shan to become a fixture in Aithne’s life. She’d never been far away, physically or mentally. She was always available—tutor, verbal and martial sparring partner, unwanted lecturer, nuisance, and occasional friend. Entering with uncertain but persistent knocks into Aithne’s space and into her head, no matter the reception she met there. Aithne didn’t always welcome her. Even aside from the fact that Bastila bought into the Jedi Council’s distrust of her and had never denied keeping certain things from Aithne on their orders, Bastila could be annoying. She could be prim, officious, and ridiculously naïve. But the truth was, Aithne had got used to her. Bastila was also scrupulously fair, and it hadn’t taken Aithne long to see that beneath the dogmatic Jedi lectures, she was a kind, thoughtful, and well-intentioned person. Her mental presence had taken on a quality similar to the hum of Ebon Hawk’s hyperdrive in Aithne’s head, a constant background noise of emotion. And whether that emotion was anxiety, pleasure, peace, goodwill, or disapproval, when it was absent, things felt too quiet.

Lately, it’d been absent. Bastila had retreated firmly behind her mental shields. She left the dormitory before Aithne got up and did her best to be asleep before Aithne got back. Where she’d used to seek Aithne out for one-on-one conversations at every conceivable opportunity, she now seemed to be taking pains to never be alone with her. Meditations and exercise sessions now included Juhani. Since these were practically the only times any of them could draw out the Jedi Guardian, Aithne didn’t mind. She did mind the way Bastila slipped from the room faster than the shy Cathar afterward. Bastila seemed to spend most of her time physically in the cockpit with Carth, whether or not he needed her, and Aithne had dark suspicions she was doing it because she knew Aithne didn’t have the guts to step to Onasi again yet—or to make sure Aithne couldn’t.

Since Aithne hadn’t had the guts to go up to Carth’s domain again yet, she didn’t know if Bastila was still stewing over her encounter with Revan or reverting to her self-appointed duty as moral guardian. But she didn’t think she had the luxury of waiting to find out which one it was anymore.

It turned out she didn’t have to beard Onasi in his den this morning, though—she found Bas in the dining room, cupping a mug of caffa and staring down at her uneaten breakfast, some teal and yellow synth slop that looked far too fluorescent to actually taste like anything worth eating. Aithne grimaced. She’d be glad when they could stock up on fresh supplies on Kashyyyk. Outside of the emergency stores, they were down to synth slop, hardtack, some dried meat that was more salt than savor, and the ever-palatable high-protein ration bars. Carth hadn’t calculated their rations wrong, but he hadn’t been overly generous either, something Aithne put down to military economy.

She still scraped up some synth slop to put on her own plate and filled her own mug with caffa. She sat beside Bastila and waited.

“So. The Force has given us another vision,” Bastila said eventually. “Like the one we shared on Dantooine.”

“As useful as it might be, I kinda wish it’d stop,” Aithne said.

“I am disturbed as well,” Bastila said. “Yet it seems clear that these visions will eventually lead us to our goal. Kashyyyk is a lush but simple and undeveloped world. I would not have expected to find the alien technology of a Star Map here.”

“On the forest floor,” Aithne said. “The Shadowlands. And I don’t think it’s undefended.”

“It would not be,” Bastila replied. “The Wookiees of Kashyyyk make their home high among the wroshyr branches. Only their bravest warriors dare to descend into the forbidding depths of the forest. There are creatures far more frightening than mere kath hounds there. If the Star Map is located far beneath us on the planet’s surface, as our vision seems to suggest, it is unlikely the Wookiees even know of its existence. No doubt things will become clearer once we discover the Star Map’s location.”

Aithne pursed her lips. It didn’t seem that Bastila experienced the visions in the same way she did, precisely. She might have seen the Star Map, maybe even the holointerface that Revan had installed, but she hadn’t recognized it or realized what it meant. She had seen through Revan’s eyes, perhaps, but without standing in Revan’s boots. That particular gift of the Force seemed to be granted to Aithne alone. Point nine, she thought, feeling sick again.

Instead of mentioning her thoughts to Bastila, she decided to nitpick at Bastila’s phraseology. “You do realize you can say that about anything. ‘Once we find what we’re looking for, we’ll know how to go at it.’ Of course when we’ve found the Star Map we won’t wonder where it is anymore. We’ll be there.”

“Someday when this is all over, you really should look into becoming a creche instructor,” Bastila said, nettled. “You have the same anal fixation on minor details, the same insufferable sense of intellectual superiority.”

“Lock me up with the most annoying members of the Jedi Order, why don’t you?”

“I must say, sometimes you deserve it!”

“Aren’t Jedi supposed to learn precision of speech along with all those tenets of diplomacy?”

Bastila huffed, but then she smiled, and Aithne knew she wasn’t really offended, and that maybe Padawan Shan had missed her too the past several days. Just a little. “Apparently, I have to see Zaalbar about a supplies situation before we land or go anywhere on Kashyyyk,” she said. “But when we do, I think you should stay onboard with Carth, Canderous, Juhani, and Teethree for a while.”

Bastila stiffened. “Is there a reason you wish to leave me behind?”

“Yes; I’m glad you asked,” Aithne answered, popping a spoonful of synth slop into her mouth and swallowing with a grimace. “Your rule of three, back on Taris. I think it’s still a good idea. Making sure no one leaves alone, but we always have a force in reserve to rescue the scouting party or forward force. Czerka Corporation is officially neutral in the war, but they deal Malak and the Sith. I don’t trust them as far as I could throw them. Quite a bit less now, actually, with the Force. You want to run a bet one or the other of them won’t sqeal to some Sith official for a hefty payout if they figure out what we’re doing here? There’s the Wookiees too. They aren’t wild about Czerka either, and one or the other of the pair of them could go volatile at any point while we’re here. If that happens, we should have a guard on the ship and someone who can report on the situation to the others.”

Bastila looked disgruntled. “You speak with wisdom, though I fail to see why you want me to remain upon the ship. The Council gave this mission to both of us.”

“When we have a lead on the Star Map, I’ll come back and pick you up,” Aithne promised. “Maybe Ordo or Juhani too. It’ll depend. But until then? This is Big Z’s homeworld.” She shrugged. “He deserves a chance to go look around. And Mission is his best friend. I think he’d want to share this with her, and I’m not averse to letting him while we ask around the port.”

She also thought it was probably a good idea if Bastila didn’t go around telling the Wookiees about their simple, undeveloped world, but she didn’t say this. She reflected that friendship with Bastila was coming to involve not talking with her about a whole lot of things. At any rate, Bastila agreed to her plan, they finished breakfast in a not uncompanionable silence, and Aithne went to find Big Z.

She found him in the garage, and he came to her as soon as she entered. “Mission said you had something to tell me?”

/I was checking our supplies in the cargo hold,/ Zaalbar said. /Something’s not right./

“No one’s been into the ordinary rations,” Aithne said. “We’re fine there.”

/Yes, but someone’s been into the emergency stash of food,/ Zaalbar told her. /Mission and I asked everyone, but nobody knows anything about it. You might want to check out the food stores the next time you’re in the cargo hold./

Aithne promised to look into it and thanked him. It was, of course, possible that one of the crew was lying and had been sneaking extra rations. Even that they had a sleepwalker aboard who didn’t remember their midnight snacks. Aithne had heard of both cases. It also wasn’t an enormous concern, as they’d be landing on Kashyyyk this morning and would be able to resupply. But the Disappearing Rations were a mystery, and Aithne had always liked a mystery.

Accordingly, she headed to the cargo hold. While they did keep supplies here, it was becoming more of a combination gymnasium and armory than Davik Kang and other previous owners had probably intended. Their supplies fit in a few crates and barrels near the bulkhead farthest from the door. By the door, Aithne and Bastila had put down a large mat that offered more traction than the ordinary deck. They meditated with Juhani here in the open space, and when anyone wanted to exercise, they came here. There was a mannequin on the far end of the hold they occasionally set up and used for blaster target practice, and Ordo had fitted the walls around the door with a selection of brackets to hold various rifles, swords, shock sticks, and blaster pistols they’d picked up or bought during their time together.

Aithne ignored the practice mat and the weapons for now. Instead, she crossed to the part of the room they were still using to hold their cargo and opened one of the two barrels holding their emergency foodstuffs. She saw what Zaalbar had seen at once. Several packages had been opened and emptied—in ways an animal pest couldn’t have managed. Aithne frowned. She examined the area around the container and saw several crumbs scattered across the deck. Their thief, whoever it was, was smart enough to open tin cans and hard plastic packages, but not particularly tidy or subtle.

Aithne swept the hold, centimeter by centimeter, panel by panel. Before too long, she found something. There was a hidden compartment in the center of the far-right bulkhead—there was a place to enter a passcode that she didn’t know. Smuggling compartment. And if there was one, there could be others. Aithne began to feel around every panel in the hold. Finally, she found a panel that pulled away easily at her tug.

She stood back, feeling grim. The compartment she was looking at wasn’t large enough for an adult human, though it was possible the person who had been sleeping there was an adult of a species like Vandar that ran a lot smaller than humans did. There were two empty food packages there, though, and a worn blanket that had once been blue but was now more of a brownish off-white was folded neatly at the bottom.

Aithne heard a scraping sound behind her. She turned and saw a flash of brown and tan by the door, too small for Zaalbar. She leaped.

The child, a human, let out a shriek as Aithne seized her arm and pulled her back into the hold, preventing her escape. Aithne hit the panel to close the cargo hold door on the two of them and looked down at her captive, who was tugging at her and sniveling in a language she didn’t know. She let the girl go, and she fell to her knees, crying and lifting her hands in a piteous, supplicating manner.

The girl was human, maybe eight years old. She wore a tattered brown men’s tunic wrapped around her dangerously thin, dirty body, and very little else. Her hair was matted, tangled and filthy. Aithne thought maybe it was supposed to be blonde, but there was too much dust and mud in it to be sure—and something that looked a lot like dried blood.

She recognized some of what the child was saying now—it was a pidgin language made up of Mando’a and Basic. Slave speech, and that of a kid who had been taken very, very young. Aithne closed her eyes for a moment. Then she knelt beside the child, holding her hands up in the universal gesture for someone who intends no harm.

“Hey kid,” she said, keeping her voice as gentle as she possibly could. “I’m sorry I grabbed you just now. Please don’t cry. I’m not going to hurt you.” She noticed a fading yellow bruise on the girl’s left arm, and silently cursed herself. Then, she repeated her message in Mando’a.

The girl stopped her mangled pleas for mercy almost at once, though it took her a while to stop gasping and sobbing. Aithne had terrified her just now. Her eyes were huge and hollow and blue in her too-thin face. She stared at Aithne for a long time, chin wobbling, shoulders shaking. Then she asked in Mando’a if Aithne was sure she wouldn’t hurt her.

/I promise,/ Aithne told her. /How are you called?/

The girl didn’t answer. Aithne placed a hand upon her own chest. /I’m called ‘Aithne,’/ she said. /How are you called?/

“Sasha,” the girl whispered.

It was a long, long time before Aithne got the whole story from Sasha. She had hardly any Basic, leading Aithne to believe she had been three at most when she’d been taken, but her Mando’a was poor and broken. She seemed to have been more shouted and grunted at than anything else, and she communicated better with gestures than anything. Then when Ebon Hawk began to land on Kashyyyk, the little girl got scared all over again and wouldn’t talk for another several minutes. But eventually, and with bribes from the emergency stores, Aithne learned where she had come from. She’d been a slave to some of the traitors and deserters Canderous and the others had killed on Dantooine, taken from her parents during a raid years ago. The raiders had treated her badly, except for one or two of their women, who had taught Sasha what she knew of Mando’a and given her treats when the men weren’t around. When Ordo and the others had begun killing the raiders, Sasha had eventually found a chance to escape from her camp. She’d hidden on Ebon Hawk.

No one on Ebon Hawk shouted or hit, Sasha explained. She liked the laughing blue girl with headtails and her big, furry monster. Sometimes she snuck out of her hiding place and watched them from the shadows. She liked the little beeping droid and the stories Aithne told and the songs she sang. She liked how the crew fought in the cargo hold without hurting each other. Ebon Hawk was her home now. She didn’t want to leave.

Even the compliment to her singing—which sometimes irritated the others—didn’t change Aithne’s mind, though. She already had one child aboard. Mission was a teenager. She’d been on her own for years, knew how to shoot a blaster and disarm a mine, and was at least marginally prepared for what they were doing here. Sasha was eight. At the absolute oldest. She was abused and malnourished and needed far more education and care than any of them could provide her on Ebon Hawk. She couldn’t stay with them.

On the other hand, they could hardly leave her on Kashyyyk. The Wookiee homeworld was no place for a runaway human slave girl, and Czerka was also a horrible place to leave her. No. They’d have to take her back to Dantooine. It was possible that some of her immediate relatives had survived the Mandalorian raid on her homestead. If they hadn’t, they might be able to find an aunt, uncle, cousin, or grandparent, or the Jedi could take her as an Enclave ward. They would have medicine and healing regimens to treat whatever health or nourishment issues she had after years as a Mandalorian captive, and language tutors that could teach her to improve her Basic or Mando’a or both, as well as reading and writing and other things a girl her age should know.

Until then, though, Sasha needed to be dealt with. After promising Sasha she didn’t need to hide anymore, Aithne called a crew meeting.

CANDEROUS

Canderous didn’t know what he’d expected when the Aruetii called the crew together about forty-five minutes after landing on the Wookiee planet. Orders, probably. Division into scouting parties, assignment to resupply. Not a half-starved, beaten slave girl. She’d apparently stowed away on the ship and been hiding onboard for going on three weeks.

Canderous tried to think when he’d last seen a more pathetic scrap of humanity. The kid—Sasha—looked like a mangy, vermin-ridden kath pup. She was wearing some cast-off scrap of cloth one of her masters had thrown at her like osik and could barely string three words together. But she already looked at the Aruetii like she was Ebon Hawk’s personal sun. Hugged Moran’s leg, nibbling on some freeze-dried cake while Moran brought everyone up to speed.

“She’s an escaped captive of the Dar’manda back on Dantooine,” Moran explained. “Taken with the rest of the plunder in a raid several years ago. She may have family still back there, or she may need to go to the Jedi. We’ll return to Dantooine immediately after we retrieve the Star Map here, but in any case, until then, Sasha needs to be cleaned, dressed, fed, watered, and generally taken care of. Canderous, I’m placing her within your charge.”

 “Surely you will not do this!” the Cathar burst out, stepping forward. “This . . . brute will doubtless only further torment the poor child!”

Canderous bristled. He liked pulling the Cathar’s ponytail; she was an idiot and a coward, and she deserved a lot worse after she’d frozen him and the others in those ruins. Anyway, she was a better bet for a good fight than Shan and Onasi put together. But there was such a thing as going too far. “Don’t confuse me with those Dar’manda scum,” he warned her.

“Are you saying you never enslaved and abused ones such as her?” the Cathar demanded.

Canderous glared at her. “I should take your head,” he snarled. He jerked his hand out toward the girl, disgusted, and she flinched and began gabbling at Moran in a language that wasn’t anything real, nothing any educated person could actually understand. Moran glared at him, gripping the girl’s shoulders reassuringly. and Canderous swore viciously and stalked away around the table. “She’s half starved. Filthy. Dumb. Worse than useless for any real work, let alone in a fight. You take a prisoner of war, if you aren’t warrior enough to take one any good for anything, you train them up so they will be. You don’t keep them like furniture, a drain on the camp just so you have someone to kick when you want to feel big and important. Those hut’tuun bastards . . .”

“So. You never abused your slaves. Merely trained them so their lives could be nothing but a drudgery. A paragon of virtue,” Juhani spat.

Canderous shot a glance at her. “What? Were you someone’s pet cat when you were her age?”

The Cathar lunged. “You insolent—”

“Juhani!!” Both the other Jedi delivered the reprimand at once, and Zaalbar and Onasi had leapt forward to hold the Cathar back. Canderous sneered.

“Looks like I hit a nerve there, Cathar.”

/Canderous! Stand down!/ the Aruetii ordered. Her voice was suddenly as hard and cold as ice, but when he looked back at her, standing in front of the terrified kid, her eyes were blazing gold. /You call me captain? Then obey my command! You are out of order. I grant Juhani offered you insult. You yourself have said the galaxy does not understand your people, and you yourself have just seen as well as I that Juhani may have reason to hate those who keep others in bondage. So: you are the senior warrior. Live up to it, and swallow her insult. Give her reason to know better in future./

The others were staring. Aside from Onasi and the kicked-kath kid, to some extent, none of the others understood Mando’a. Canderous wasn’t sure if Moran was doing him a kindness, trying to make sure none of them understood her calling him out like an errant recruit, or if she was speaking right to the part of his brain trained to answer to angry camp chiefs. At any rate, he didn’t have a lot of attention to spare for Shan hissing the Jedi Code to Juhani or the Cathar trying to catch her breath and relax. All he could think of was the Aruetii’s thrice-damned nerve.

There she was, half his age, not a speck of armored plating on her, an outsider, a damned Jedi, speaking to him in the speech of Mandalore like she had the right of command. Like she hadn’t known it was a joke when he said he’d call her captain. Only now, he wondered if he had been joking.

/You fought in the war,/ he said. /You had to have done. If you didn’t, you should have./

Her eyes flashed, and her jaw tightened. Then her eyes flicked to Onasi, who had released his hold on the calming Cathar and was watching them now, looking just like a loaded ballista. /What should I say to this, Ordo?/ she asked. /Onasi? I could stand here a day and a night denying it. Both of you will think I’m a liar, and one of you that I’m a coward besides. Should I confirm it and become a liar in fact? It will not make either of you trust me more, and perhaps less, though you might respect me more as a veteran of the wars, Canderous. No. I will say the truth, whether or not you believe me: I have eyes. I have ears, and a brain between them, and I know the Mandalor of old. So./

Abruptly, she switched to Basic, flicking her eyes away and to the Cathar, standing across the room with Shan. “Are you in control again, Juhani?”

“I am,” the Cathar confirmed. “I apologize for my . . . lapse.”

Moran brought the slave forward again. “See it doesn’t happen again. Sasha likes it here specifically because our crew doesn’t shout at and hurt one another. You don’t have to tell me why you’re so sensitive about slaves and slavery. We can leave it in the past. But the next time you imply Canderous is someone who would suffer his captives to exist in such a state, I might suggest you’ll be lucky if he does keep to a strictly verbal offense. This girl’s captors were not only obviously sloppy, lazy, and cowardly, they were deserters. To compare Ordo with the likes of them is a nice little cocktail of all the worst insults in his culture.”

“I don’t need your defense, Moran,” Canderous growled.

“I didn’t say you did,” Moran retorted, in a voice that had gone icy once again, without taking her gaze off of the Cathar. “And I am fairly certain Juhani meant to insult you.”

“I did no—”

“No?”

The Cathar broke off. She seethed, then turned and gave Canderous a Jedi bow. “I . . . apologize, Canderous. I have no great love for Mandalorians.”

“I could say the same about the Cathar,” Canderous returned. “I don’t mind a good fight now and then, but there are insults that are off-limits.”

“There are,” Juhani agreed from between grit teeth. “Perhaps we will discuss them, sometime when tempers are cooler.” She looked up at Moran. “I still wonder if Canderous is the best person to leave in charge of the child,” she said.

“There are three people onboard who might understand everything she says,” Moran answered, again looking back to Onasi. “Of the three of us, only one who is completely familiar with the culture in which she has spent the last several years, however barbarized and perverted. Canderous has the best chance of making her comfortable and beginning her transfer from what she has endured to a place of healing.”

Juhani’s yellow eyes narrowed. “He will not be able to care for the girl in all the ways she requires,” she said. “I ask permission to remain with them as long as the girl is in our charge.”

“Why not just say you don’t trust me and have done, Jedi,” Canderous sneered.

“I do not—wholly,” Juhani admitted. “Yet it is not that which was in my mind. Look at her: she will need help within the fresher, choosing new garments. Are you prepared to do this?”

Canderous hesitated. There was blood in the slave girl’s hair. Probably parasites too. There also wasn’t a damned bit of clothing that would fit her in the men’s dormitories. They’d have to cut down something of Vao’s, and even that would swamp the kid. She was old enough to start learning to fight, but that was something she should be taught by a woman too, at least initially.

He looked over at Moran. “Until we get her back to Dantooine, to her family or to the Jedi, she’s a foundling?” he asked.

Moran tilted her head in acknowledgment. Canderous grunted, folded his arms, and looked back at Juhani. “You can clean her up,” he said. “Get her dressed in something better than that rag. We’ll talk about teaching her to defend herself. At least the basics. But I’m in charge of her, understand? She was a prisoner of my people, if you could call them that. However dismally they handled it. That makes her my responsibility. I need to undo as much damage as I can before she goes back to her kind.”

The Cathar blinked her big, yellow eyes. She seemed confused. “I . . . of course.”

The human girl had been listening hard for the past several minutes, frowning. She tugged on Moran’s tunic and asked a question in her weird little language. It took Canderous a minute to understand what she was saying, asking whether she had to go with the scary Mandalorian and the strange furry lady.

Moran knelt. /They will not harm you,/ she promised in Mando’a. /They are angry because the others hurt you. Juhani is a Cathar and a Jedi. She will help you get clean and get you new clothes to wear. Canderous is Mandalorian, but he is from another clan—another camp—than the ones who hurt you. He is the one who killed them so they could never hurt anyone else. Until we return you to Dantooine, I am leaving him in charge of making you healthy and strong./

The girl, Sasha, eyed them both. “Na abds?” she asked.

Canderous stepped up to the girl. /I’m not going to hit you, kid,/ he said. /I might teach you how to hit other people, so no one you don’t want to hit you hits you ever again. I might teach you how to build a blaster or say a sentence longer than a performing bird can manage. How does that sound?/

The girl stared at him for a moment, then said, /Sasha like them,/ to Aithne. She reached out and patted Canderous on the shoulder. /Good Mando,/ she told him.

Canderous glared up at Aithne and rose, heart suddenly aching for clan and kin. He hadn’t helped train a foundling warrior for—he didn’t like to think about how long. And now he was doing it with a Cathar Jetii? “You owe me for this,” he hissed.

The Aruetii arched an eyebrow. “You think that’s how it’s gonna play out?” she asked. Her eyes slid past him to Juhani. “Control your temper around the kid. She’s been hurt. I’ve told her you’re not mad at her, but you can still scare her. And remember Ordo’s not an enemy on this ship and is Sasha’s best chance for closure and healing before returning to her people or the Jedi.”

“I . . . understand,” Juhani said. She started to move toward the kid, then stopped. “I—what did you say to him, and to Carth? Before?”

Moran’s eyes flicked to Onasi again. “Something I said to Canderous and to Carth,” she said. Her posture dared Onasi to talk. Republic didn’t take the bait. Canderous figured she wasn’t trying to spare him the humiliation. No, she was vulnerable. Didn’t want to spread it around the whole crew that he and Onasi had both expressed doubts about her past now or that she wasn’t sure she could convince them she wasn’t lying. He could use it someday, maybe. Wasn’t a lot of profit in it now though. There was a foundling to take care of for the next few weeks, and right now his only way into the war was right beside Aithne Moran. What might be more immediately useful was how nervous Shan was looking. Canderous glanced over at Onasi. Could be Republic’s conspiracy theories had some weight. Shan really didn’t want Moran saying anything she couldn’t understand. She also didn’t want Moran to know she didn’t like it, because she wasn’t going to come out and say anything.

Juhani only bowed though. “Very well,” she said. “Come along, Sasha.” She held out her hand to the kid, who looked from Aithne to Canderous.

/Go with Juhani,/ Canderous told her. /She’ll get you cleaned up./

He followed them from the room, leaving the Aruetii and all her secrets to take care of themselves.

AITHNE

Aithne wondered if there was a second reason Revan wore the mask, aside from all the idea-is-more-powerful-than-a-person, gender- and species-neutral PR stuff. A Mandalorian war mask would really come in handy when you’d just had to shout down two of your subordinates while keeping calm enough not to scare an abused child, when you could feel your pilot spiraling into a paranoid meltdown and your Force bondmate in a near panic over your holding private conversations with your shields up with people who weren’t her. Aithne was almost shaking. She kind of wanted to run away, or cry. But some Jedi idiots had put her in charge of this sideshow.

“Onasi, I want you to stay here with Bastila and the others,” she said. “Guard the ship, keep the comms open. Big Z, Mish, you’re with me. Scouting party. Zaalbar, take a weapons pack with a couple of swords sharp enough to cut through underbrush and a hunting rifle. Mission, slicer’s and demolition pack as usual.”

Mission blinked. “You want me?” she asked. “I mean, yeah, Big Z’s homeworld! Sign me up! Just didn’t expect it, you know?” She hurried away with Zaalbar to arm up.

“Mission?” Carth asked, folding his arms. “I mean, this is Zaalbar’s world. That makes sense. But we don’t know what’s out there. You don’t want to take a little more firepower?”

“Those two helped me take out an entire Sith base,” Aithne answered. “I’m not taking Mission down to the Shadowlands. Just scouting around the walkways up here. Zaalbar’s nervous about things here. I don’t know why, and he’s not talking, but I figure he’ll be happier if Mission’s with us, at least at first. Keep the comm open,” she repeated. “Just in case.”

Carth shot her a look full of distrust. Aithne met his stare, finally more annoyed than she was embarrassed about their last encounter. “Poke around the port if you must. Resupply with Czerka. Get some things for Sasha. Just don’t go far. We’ll all talk in a few hours.”

“Fine.”

Aithne met Zaalbar and Mission on the exit ramp five minutes later. They left the ship, and Aithne sighed. Kashyyyk. She could feel the moisture in the air, closing like an envelope around her skin. At least there wasn’t a smell of salt or fish in it, but she just knew her hair was already curling up like some kind of frizzy halo.

She was right too. Mission took one look at her and choked back a giggle. She blushed violet immediately, apologizing, but the damage was done. “Just because you’ve never had a bad hair day in your life,” Aithne muttered.

 “You could wear one of those big, mysterious Jedi cloaks,” Mission offered. “Throw the hood up, and no one would even notice.”

“Except Czerka, whose attention we are trying not to draw,” Aithne retorted. “Ease off the J-word while we’re here, okay?”

“That why you didn’t want to take Bastila out with you?” Mission asked.

“One of the reasons.”

The kid looked around. “A lot different from Taris or Dantooine here,” she observed. “Hey, what’s that noise?”

Aithne hadn’t even registered it. Now she did—the shrieking of primates in the trees. “Tachs,” she told Mission. “Brachiating, long-tailed, quadrupedal omnivores, about a third the size of a kath hound. Harmless nuisances, mostly. Doesn’t stop people wanting to hunt them nearly to extinction. They have a gland in their brains that can be prepared a couple different ways in different stimulants and intoxicants. They’re noisy, but they won’t hurt you.”

Mission walked to the edge of the platform. She looked down, then up at the arching branches overhead. “You can’t even see the ground from here, but the sun still don’t shine through the branches. How tall are these trees, anyway?”

“Excuse me,” said a man in a gray and green uniform, clearing his throat from the sidelines.

“Ah,” Aithne said. “You must be the tax man.”

Indeed, this was the man sent to collect the fee Onasi had said Czerka wanted. Aithne looked down her nose at the man. She thought she could probably use the Force to weasel out of paying the fee, which she didn’t particularly feel like giving to Czerka, but if she did that, the fee wouldn’t go into the books. Someone would notice, and they’d have to deal with someone else coming after them for the fee later. Better to pay up and avoid the trouble. She withdrew the credits the Czerka employee wanted and handed them over, then gave him Ebon Hawk’s registry information.

“And how long will you be staying?” he asked.

Aithne shook her head. “We’ll stay as long as we need to in order to settle our business here.”

“If you choose to occupy this landing pad for any extended period of time, we may need to negotiate an extended fee for the privilege,” the Czerka employee insisted.

Beside her, Zaalbar growled. Aithne followed the direction of his gaze. On the neighboring landing pad, five Wookiees were being loaded onto a transport ship in chains. Aithne went cold inside. “Don’t worry,” she nearly spat. “We’ve no desire to linger here.”

She shouldered past the Czerka representative, heading toward a walkway that led to a cluster of buildings further on.

“Aithne—they’re—they’ve made those Wookiees slaves,” Mission said. Her voice was small. “They’re taking them away to sell, aren’t they?”

/Kashyyyk, my home,/ Zaalbar said suddenly, with more sarcasm than Aithne had ever heard him use. /Carth told you there were worse places than Taris, Mission. This planet has become one, now that the Czerka are here./ His voice dipped low into a snarl, and his fists clenched. /I am sorry. I should have prepared you both for coming here. But I don’t know if I’ve prepared myself./

Aithne folded her arms. “If there’s anything we need to know, you better tell us now,” she said.

/I didn’t leave here voluntarily,/ Zaalbar admitted. He glanced sideways at Mission. /Mission must have told you how I was fleeing slavers, but there was more. I am an exile. The slavers on Kashyyyk only took me after I was forced to leave my village home, twenty years ago./

Mission started to protest, but Aithne held up a hand. “Why did they kick you out?” she asked. And is there going to be trouble?

/My brother made deals with the slavers and allowed them to get a foothold,/ Zaalbar told them. /I found out and attacked him. The fight was stopped, but my father did not believe me when I told him about my brother’s actions. I was made an exile, disowned by my home and people. I should not be here. They will not accept me back./

“Big Z, that’s awful!” Mission cried. “Why the hell didn’t your father believe you?”

Aithne waited.

After a long moment, Zaalbar spoke. /When I attacked my brother, I was so mad I . . . I used my claws./

Aithne breathed in. “Mad-claw,” she murmured. They were in trouble, alright. Zaalbar bowed his head with shame.

“So you used your claws,” Mission said, angry. “What’s the big deal?”

/You don’t understand what that means to a Wookiee, Mission,/ Zaalbar said, pacing away from them. /Our claws are tools, not weapons. To use them in battle is to become an animal. It is madness without honor. I am forever a mad-claw in the eyes of my people. Nothing I say is to be trusted. They were right to cast me out./

Mission frowned. “That seems a little harsh, Big Z. I mean, doesn’t everyone lose it sometimes? And you had plenty reason. Right, Aithne?” She glanced at Aithne, looking for support.

Aithne pursed her lips. “The situation supports that at least some of the Wookiees are aiding and abetting Czerka here and have been for a while,” she said at last, gesturing around at the walkway, the Czerka employees in uniform. “But for a Wookiee to attack someone else with their claws, let alone blood kin?” She shook her head. “Put it this way: if you hadn’t restricted yourself to insults with Lena, if you’d gone after her with your nails and teeth, actually tried to smack her headtails off, d’you think it would’ve mattered much to me what you had to say about her?” She paused. “You were provoked,” she told Zaalbar. “And I’m guessing you were pretty young at the time. Things could’ve changed here in the meantime.”

/The slavers are still here,/ Zaalbar answered. /This dock is theirs. I doubt anyone has risen to try and fight. Nothing has changed. I just hope I can prove myself to my people. It will be difficult to make them listen. I just don’t know./

“Do you want to return to the ship?” Aithne asked.

/My village is near here,/ Zaalbar answered. /They will know you have brought me with you and will judge you for it regardless of whether I go in your company or not. I would rather not leave you without my protection and abandon all my honor./

Aithne nodded. She extended her hand, and Zaalbar clasped her forearm. “Then we’ll deal with it,” Aithne promised, “and I’ll help you if I can.”

/I don’t have much hope,/ replied Zaalbar.

Mission stepped close to her friend. She reached out and took his hand. “There’s always hope, Big Z,” she told him. “You and me and Aithne’ll fix things. You’ll see!”

Aithne looked at Mission. She wanted to tell the teenager it was a bad idea to make promises they couldn’t deliver on, but the girl was trying to encourage her friend. Did she really want to step all over that kind of impulse? She sighed. “We need to get to the Shadowlands,” she said instead. “According to the vision Bastila and I had last night, the Star Map is located there. I want to ask around and see if anyone’s seen anything that seems out of place down there.”

Zaalbar growled. /I will take you to my village,/ he said after a long moment. /They will have guides there who can take you if I am welcome. And regardless, I think they will let me attend you there. Wookiees die in the Shadowlands all the time./

“Don’t talk like that Zaalbar,” Mission scolded him. “You’re not gonna die.”

“And you’re not going to the Shadowlands,” Aithne told her. “You can come to the village with us if you want, but I promised Carth and Bastila that once we find a lead on the Star Map, you’re heading back to the ship. There’s things a lot more dangerous than tachs out there.”

“So what? You’re gonna take me on an outing to the town, then pack me back to Ebon Hawk to wait with that Sasha kid?” Mission demanded.

“That’s right,” Aithne answered without flinching. “Hostile creatures don’t just come at you in two dimensions here. You have to look up and down too. This is a strange world for you. You haven’t trained anywhere like this. So, I’ll train you, but I’m not taking you down to the worst place on Kashyyyk any more than I’d take any civilian before I’d been back on the ground for at least three weeks. That going to be a problem?”

Mission was quiet for a second. Then she grumbled, “Not when you put it like that.”

“Great,” Aithne said.

The Czerka docking officer had given her a pass to leave the settlement. Aithne flashed it at the guard at the gate, in the direction Zaalbar told them they needed to take to get to the village.

“Hey, what did you say to Carth and Canderous back on the ship?” Mission asked before they’d gone a few steps outside the settlement.

“And what makes you think I’ll tell you? I didn’t tell Juhani and Bastila.”

“Yeah, but that’s Juhani and Bastila, right? You can trust us, right?”

Aithne looked over at the Twi’lek and the Wookiee. She sighed. She’d been a little too obvious about her feelings for the Jedi if Mission was asking questions like that. She didn’t want the kid putting the women who were supposed to be her partners on the outside. “Juhani’s new, and she has a temper, but we like her,” she told Mission. “She’s a Jedi Knight and a decent warrior, and what’s better than either, an honest woman, even if she doesn’t talk too much. We have no reason to distrust her. And Bastila’s supposed to be ‘dragging me up to sane,’ you know.”

Mission wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want you doing sane the way she does it. That lady’s nose is so far in the air it’s a wonder she can see to tie her boots on in the morning. Plus, she has almost no sense of humor.”

“Neither quality means she’s inherently untrustworthy,” Aithne pointed out.

Mission shot her a look. “But you don’t want her and Juhani hearing what you said to Carth and Canderous,” she pointed out.

“I didn’t want Carth hearing what I said to Canderous,” Aithne corrected. “If things had been less tense and I’d’ve thought of it, I’d’ve asked Ordo out into the hallway or the hold. But I didn’t think of it. Next time I will. It’s just my misfortune Onasi studied up on Mando’a during the wars.”

Mission blinked. “Oh,” she said, in a different tone. “So, it was like a commander thing. You didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the rest of us. That’s alright then. And what, you were telling Carth not to share either?”

“No,” Aithne admitted, “but I’m still not going to share with you.”

“Sheesh, you’re no fun when you get all moral and conscientious,” Mission complained. “Give me the petty gossip! Wait, uhh . . . what’s that?” Her voice rose sharply, and she stepped back and drew her blasters.

Aithne turned to see three tetrapod creatures about waist-high closing in on them. She ignited her lightsaber. “Kinrath,” she answered. “Cave-dwelling on Dantooine, arboreal here, venomous and aggressive with a natural armor. Aim for the joints or just avoid them! Zaalbar, to me!”

Against multiple beast opponents, Aithne adapted her preferred Form VI with some Form V strikes—it was useless trying to outsmart most beasts; the thing was to just get the fighting done as soon as possible while not leaving oneself vulnerable to several of them coming at once. Honestly, lightsaber combat was less about artistry and more about butchery when up against things like kinrath. Aithne was just glad she had a lightsaber instead of her double vibroblades, though she missed having a second blade available. She was going to have to find or make a second lightsaber eventually.

She noted Zaalbar falling into combat against the kinrath like a child falling into a traditional dance, one known from memory since the beginning of memory itself. She used part of her mind to observe his movements, filing them away for future reference as the way the Wookiees fought these things.

Every so often, Mission fired a shot, but most often, Aithne and Zaalbar were in her line of fire, and she just did her best to keep back from the fray. Finally, the last kinrath fell, smoking. Aithne inhaled the scent of it and made a face. They smelled like Tarisian seafood.

“I thought I was done charbroiling crustaceans for a while,” she muttered.

Zaalbar made the soft, burring noise that was his laugh. /But there is no stench of sea or city with it,/ he said. /Can you feel the wind through the trees? The sounds . . . the smells. I feel them all now that we are away from the spaceport./ He stamped on the ground. /This walkway is new, probably built by the slavers, but I remember the trees. My village is not far from here./

“Which way?” Aithne asked. Zaalbar pointed a massive shaggy claw off to the west.

/It has been so long since I left,/ he said. /I do not know what we may find there. I only know the way things were, and many things may have changed. I must warn you of one thing. I don’t know if I will be a help or a hindrance to you here. My father was very powerful . . . a chieftain./

Mission checked. “Woah. So, Big Z, you’re like a prince?”

Zaalbar laughed again, though this time, the sound had a touch of irony about it. /A disgraced and dishonored one, but yes, Mission. I was like a prince. Perhaps my father’s feelings have mellowed, but if my brother has had his ear all this time, I may be very unwelcome./

“Or, seeing how bad things have gotten, we may find you are just the opposite,” Aithne suggested.

Zaalbar shook his furry head. /I am dreading it, nonetheless. My shame was meant to be forgotten on some far away world. I never thought I’d come back. I’m sorry, I’ve taken enough of your time. We should press on./

But a few hundred feet down the path, they were obliged to stop. Three nervous-looking Czerka employees stood around a dead Wookiee, shot to death. The kill was fresh; the wound was still gushing blood. “This isn’t good,” one of the Czerka said. “I can’t afford this.”

“You think I can?” another snapped. “You know what they get for a healthy one of these things?!”

The third noticed them then. “We’ll work it out later. We’ve got company.” He stepped in front of the corpse and addressed Aithne. “What do you want, spacer? I’m Patrol Captain Dehno, and you’re interrupting Czerka Corporation business.”

“We have clearance from the docking authorities to leave the port. Last I checked, walking down the same street doesn’t qualify as an interruption,” Aithne said coolly. “Though, if your business is gunning down your stock, maybe we want to interrupt you anyway. You’re afraid we might file a report?”

“The slave got a little rebellious,” the captain told her defensively. “We had to put it down.”

Mission made a sound of indignation, but Zaalbar roared. /You put it down?!? We’re not animals!/

Aithne felt a cold fury at the core of her very being. “No,” she agreed. “But if we decide to put them down for the murder, they’ve got a whole host of friends back at the spaceport, mostly grouped around our friends on the ship.”

/But their disregard for the life of this Wookiee is too much!/ protested Zaalbar.

“I agree,” Aithne answered, without taking her eyes off of the patrol. “But attacking in anger has brought you to grief before, has it not?”

“That’s right, slave,” one of the patrollers said. “Know your place, or we’ll have another accident.”

Aithne’s laugh cut across even Zaalbar’s roar of outrage. “Oh, I’m not worried about your killing my friend—he is my friend, you know, not my slave, and I don’t claim the command of him. He can do what he likes with you; I’ve just been offering him some advice. If there’s an accident here, I’m pretty sure you’ll come out the worse for it. I hope we can avoid that. But you won’t avoid answering for this. Do your superiors approve of your killing Wookiees?”

“I don’t like your tone, spacer,” Dehno said, going white even as he tried to aim for an intimidating glare. “Do you mean to say your . . . friend . . . could murder us, and you would offer no objection?”

“Not no objection,” Aithne said. “I’ve told him I think it’s stupid. Then again, if all three of you go missing in the forest and no one ever finds you again, there’s no way your friends at the spaceport can prove what happened to you or why. I imagine patrols go missing all the time.”

Captain Dehno reached for the comlink at his belt, but Mission fired a single shot. Several things happened at once. The comlink went spinning away, blasted to pieces and sparking. Dehno swore loudly and clutched his hand to his chest, bleeding profusely but actually not blasted to pieces—Mission had used a low-powered shot. The two other patrol members drew their blasters, and Aithne activated her lightsaber, taking up a Soresu stance.

“Jedi!” all three Czerka said. Their faces had turned a rather interesting shade, Aithne thought—roughly the color of cold porridge.

“Nice shot,” Aithne told Mission.

“Thanks! You know, I really meant to hit—”

“Don’t tell them you’re surprised you actually pulled off that insanely cool move,” Aithne advised her, breaking in. “It just ruins the effect. Unless you’re trying to scare them, make it seem like the next shot could kill them and you don’t care if it does.”

“I really don’t,” Mission said, ostentatiously upping the setting on her blasters again. Aithne couldn’t have directed the girl better. She was so proud.

“Damn you,” Dehno said through grit teeth, still clutching his hand to his breast. “Are you going to kill us, Jedi? For this Wookiee? I stand by my patrol. The creature got out of hand and had to be put down!”

“Got out of hand,” Aithne repeated, as if mulling the words over. “Strikes me as an understandable response from a person you were attempting to forcibly take away from their home, friends, and family to be a slave on some other planet. At any rate, I’m almost certain you have protocols for Wookiee aggression that don’t involve shooting them dead. You’ll report this death to your superiors. You’ll have the cost taken from all of your paychecks and second my recommendation you all be not only removed from the duty of taking Wookiee slaves but forbidden from bringing them in even on a bounty basis. It won’t go near far enough, but you’ll keep your lives.”

It was a strong disciplinary measure for three Czerka who had killed a slave, Aithne knew, even a valuable one, but it was just plausible that a spacer threatening to raise an interstellar PR stink over Czerka slaving protocols could make it stick.

But she’d misjudged her man. “I—I won’t stand for this kind of extortion and intimidation!” Dehno sputtered. “You said it: anything can happen in the forest! And with my comlink destroyed—do you know what I think happened here? I think this Wookiee attacked this fool, and we arrived just a little too late to help.”

“Uh, Captain?” one of the patrolmen ventured. “That’s a Jedi. And, uh, we have blasters. Don’t Wookiees use those bowcaster things?”

Dehno was trying to draw his own blaster pistol with his offhand. “Would you just shut up and shoot?”

Zaalbar took three steps across the intervening space and cut down the captain, while his two men were still hesitating. As he did so, the patrolmen’s blasters swung around. “I’ve got the left!” Aithne shouted and used the Force to leap on one. She cut the blaster out of his hand, and in an extension of the same movement clove the man nearly in two. She turned to her right, but Mission had gunned him down as ordered.

The three of them looked down at the three uniformed bodies. “Come on,” Aithne said, seizing the ankle of one and dragging him toward the edge of the walkway. She heaved him over and watched him fall down into the fathomless depths of the forest. Zaalbar grabbed up Dehno and the third human corpse together and tossed them after Aithne’s kill. “‘What happened to Dehno’s patrol?’” Aithne asked rhetorically. “‘No idea. Must’ve run into a group of kinrath or something. We don’t have the resources for a search party. Send a note to their families and adjust the guard rotation.’” She turned to Zaalbar. “How would your people treat his body?” she asked, gesturing to the dead Wookiee.

/We burn our dead on pyres, specially woven from the deadwood of the forest,/ Zaalbar answered. /He may have been from my village, but I do not know. We can tell them there what has happened, but if we try to take him, they may see me and assume we slew him./

Aithne nodded, and the three of them headed down the walkway. Mission’s face was dark. “I just hate this!” she burst out suddenly. “Those guys—they didn’t even care they’d killed that Wookiee! They treated him like just this . . . like he wasn’t even a person!! All they cared about was what might come out of their precious paychecks!” She turned wide eyes to Zaalbar. “You said how people treat you guys, but I didn’t know it was this bad, Big Z. Can we—is there something we can do?”

Zaalbar smiled with his eyes. /There may be something. I do not know it. The problems of my people with Czerka Corporation . . . they have become larger than anything I know how to solve. But so long as you stand beside me against such injustice, wherever we find it . . . perhaps that must be enough./

Mission looked at Aithne. “Can you do something?” she asked quietly. “I mean, you were on track to cure the entire rhakghoul disease before Malak and the Sith hit. Could you . . . could you do something like that here?”

“You and Zaalbar and Carth were on track to cure the rhakghoul disease,” Aithne corrected, still hating herself for that. “I made sure we got the cure, but I was still half considering turning it into the Exchange for the bounty if we had to when you guys gave it to Zelka.” She was quiet a moment. “We have to find the Star Map,” she said then. “And we have to keep Ebon Hawk safe against our departure. Those have to be our top two priorities. But—”

“But if we get a chance to put something else right, you’ll do it, won’t you?” Mission said. “You’ll help the Wookiees.”

“If we get the chance,” Aithne said, “and if I can do it without jeopardizing our assignment. We have to remember we’re out to beat Malak right now, not kick Czerka Corporation off Kashyyyk and burn the whole sorry company to the ground.” But her wish that they could do just that showed in both her voice and vocab choice, and Mission seemed somewhat appeased.

“I guess we’ll just put it on the to-do list.” She reached out and gripped her best friend’s arm. “Sorry, Big Z.”

They continued down the path Zaalbar told them led to his village, running into a few more groups of kinrath on the way. But they were stopped just after Zaalbar told them they were very close by another group of three men. But these three men weren’t wearing Czerka uniforms. They wore gray, with black cowls, and when Aithne saw them, her skin tingled.

“Mission, stay back from this fight,” she said. “Zaalbar. That vibrosword have cortosis weave?”

Zaalbar roared an unhappy negative. Aithne pressed her lips together. “Take her,” she said then, making a quick gesture toward Mission. “Take to the trees. Shoot from the branches and the shadows. Keep moving.”

“But Aithne—” Mission started to protest, but Big Z had already moved to obey Aithne’s order. He slung the kid over his back and jumped off the walkway, three meters out and one and a half down to a branch, fading from view.

Three scarlet blades slid from the lightsabers of the Sith opposite Aithne. “If you think the trees will protect your friends, you are mistaken,” the foremost of the Sith said. “The Force is with us. Killing them may be more tedious now, but I assure you, it is far from impossible.”

“I think you three may be a little too busy to go chasing a Wookiee through the trees,” Aithne said, activating her own ‘saber.

“Confident,” the Sith replied. “Lord Malak was most displeased when he learned you had escaped Taris alive. He has promised a great reward to whoever destroys you!”

This struck Aithne. While she had predicted Sith dropping out of the sky at some point, she hadn’t anticipated them knowing who she was until someone reported she was after the Star Maps. But she didn’t have time to think about the implications, because all three Sith were on her. She had to command the battle—all three Sith had to focus on her, not only so they couldn’t look for Zaalbar and Mission in the trees but so they might be left vulnerable to Zaalbar and Mission’s fire, which otherwise they would be able to fend off. Aithne began dancing through the blades. She directed the Force to hold one of her opponents in stasis and in an extension of the same movement, chopped off his ‘saber hand. She caught his red lightsaber in her offhand, spun it into a reverse grip, and ran him through, then turned to face off with both the others, rotating the saber again.

Now she truly was in command. She sensed the fear and hatred of her opponents spike. They would use it to fuel their attacks; it was the Sith way. But it would also leave them vulnerable. One of the Sith stumbled, impaled by a bowcaster bolt to the shoulder, though Zaalbar hadn’t felled him. He turned toward the trees with a snarl, and Aithne sprang at him.

He fell at her feet, and Aithne faced off with the third of the Sith. He hissed at her, sprang away, and flung his lightsaber at her. She flicked her green saber up, knocking it off course and away. He could call it back to him. But fast enough? He tried, but Aithne stepped in, and before it got within a meter of them, she had cut down the last Sith with both her sabers. The entire combat had taken about thirty seconds. It wasn’t the way civilians liked to imagine lightsaber combat, wasn’t the way exhibition or sparring matches at the Jedi academy ran, where the duelists weren’t fighting to kill. But often, it was precisely the way live ‘saber play between two enemy Force practitioners went. The moment the stronger—or luckier—combatant spotted a weakness, they went in for the disarming or disabling blow. Or the killing one.

Aithne waited on the walkway for Mission and Zaalbar. They rejoined her in about another minute. Zaalbar slung Mission down off his shoulder, and she shoved him away. “Why’d you do that, huh?” she demanded of both of them. “I could’ve stayed in that fight! I came with you guys to fight the Sith! You don’t gotta protect me all the time, geez!”

Aithne looked at her. “There’s no cover here but the trees,” she said. “No obstacles on the walkway big enough to keep you away from Sith with lightsabers, and neither one of you had a weapon capable of defending from a lightsaber attack. And because these guys were Sith, they’d’ve gone after you first.”

She walked past Mission and Zaalbar to the bodies. The first pack she checked was the pack of the Sith she took to have been the leader of the party, the man who had spoken to her.

“Hey, don’t just blow me off and walk away!” Mission snapped, following her. “If there are gonna be Sith chasing us now, we need to come up with a protocol or a strategy or something. I’m not just gonna run away and let you take on three Dark Jedi on your own! And I’m sure not gonna let Zaalbar pick me up anymore—what, what are you looking at? What’s that?”

Aithne raised the bounty chit she’d found in the Dark Jedi’s pack. “Thought so,” she said. “One of the Dark Jedi mentioned Malak being mad I’d got away from Taris. Like, me, specifically. I wondered—”

She broke off, frowning. The first holo that came up on the chit was an image of Carth—a standard Republic service holo, with a block of brief, scrolling text giving details on the bounty in both Basic and Huttese. She pressed the cycle button, and the next image that came up was Bastila. The crest at the bottom of the image was different; it was an image from the Jedi records, not the Republic’s. The bounties for bringing Onasi in, dead or alive, had been respectable enough—a bounty hunter might be able to live it up on the Rim for a few months on the proceeds. The bounty for Bastila’s death was about 20 percent higher, but predictably, the bounty for bringing her in alive could’ve been a princess’s ransom. The Sith wouldn’t mind taking her out of the fight, but what they really wanted was to capture and turn her to make use of her Battle Meditation for their own cause.

But where’d they get the intel Bastila escaped Taris or that Carth was working with us at all? And neither of them is with me today . . .

More on reflex than anything, Aithne hit the cycle button on the chit again, looking for anything that might explain why Malak was after her. Then she stared.

The third image on the bounty chit wasn’t an official Republic or Jedi records holo. It was a “sketch” holo, an artistic representation formed on a computer from a description. The woman in the image was clearly meant to be her, the way she’d looked on Taris—wearing a combat suit and wielding double vibroblades. And where Carth and Bastila’s holos had had their names next to them, hers read Alias: Aithne Moran. Alias.

And the bounty . . . Aithne blinked. She shook the chit, then breathed out a shaky breath. Malak was offering more for her death than he was for Bastila delivered alive. It was enough for a bounty hunter to retire, and retire wealthy.

“What is that?” Mission repeated, in a very different voice. She was staring at the chit in Aithne’s hand.

Aithne tried to laugh it off. “Mish, you disappoint me! And you claim you’ve got street smarts! Haven’t you ever seen a bounty chit before?”

“Hey, you know what I mean,” Mission protested, grabbing for the chit. Aithne switched it off and snatched it away from the kid. “What are you going for? And why just you, Carth, and Bastila? Why not me and Big Z? Or Canderous?”

Aithne shook her head. “The descriptions come from Taris. Canderous would’ve only been spotted with us at the very end.”

“So, someone else got out,” Mission reasoned. “Some Sith or bounty hunter or something, but not anyone from the base, or we’d be there, right?”

“Probably,” Aithne said.

Mission looked worried. “Look, if Darth Malak has a bounty on you, maybe we should talk about it, you know? Make some plans.”

Aithne looked at Zaalbar. He understood what she wanted.

/The time for making plans is not when we are in the middle of the forest, where my people or angry kinrath could come upon us at any moment,/ he said. /Let it be for now, Mission. Come./

“I just wanted to help,” Mission grumbled, but she rose and fell in behind Zaalbar. They rounded the corner, and a giant wicker gate came into view.

/Rwookrrorro. My home./  said Zaalbar.

Suddenly, a guard moved out from the shadows. He held up a massive furry paw. /Stop where you are, outsider/ he growled. /You enter the domain of Chuundar, chieftain and leader./

Zaalbar stood taller. /Stand aside!/ he bellowed. /These two are with me, and I want access to the home of my people!/

/You have no rights here, mad-claw!/ snarled the guard. /Your friends should not have brought this taint upon our land! You must answer to Chuundar!/

With that the guard blew a tiny carved whistle.

“Zaalbar, do you know this Chuundar?” Aithne asked, getting a bad feeling.

/Silence!/ the guard roared. /The mad-claw is nameless with dishonor. His foulness disgusts me!/ Two burly Wookiees came out of the gate. /He and you will be taken to Chuundar now!/

“Just see here, you walking fuzzballs,” Mission flared up, “You leave Big Z alone or—”

“Mission,” Aithne hissed, grabbing the teenager’s wrists before she went for her gun. “You want to kill people Zaalbar grew up with?” More Wookiees filed out of the gate. “Besides, there are a lot more of them than there are of us.”

“No!” Mission cried, as one of the Wookiees hit Zaalbar, disarming him and taking his vibrosword. “No! You can’t let them—”

She went for her offhand gun with her left, and a Wookiee stepped toward her. Aithne stepped in front of Mission, blocking her fire and the Wookiee’s access to the teenager. “Everyone, stand down!” she ordered.

“They’re taking Big Z!” Mission insisted, voice breaking, face panicked.

“For now,” Aithne said. “Just hold it, Mission. We’ll figure this out.”

/You will do no violence here, human,/ one of the Wookiees said.

“For now,” Aithne repeated, holding her hands up. “I’ll vouch for my companion’s good conduct, but if you attempt to disarm her, or harm her in any way, any promise of peace between us is null and void.”

/You will come with us to see the mighty Chuundar./

“Fine,” Aithne said. “He will explain why you have seized our friend, and the explanation had better be a good one.”

Chapter Text

CANDEROUS

They probably should’ve guessed the girl would react to a hot shower like she was being tortured. She didn’t have enough Basic to understand when the Cathar begged her to stop screaming and crying, when she promised it’d be fine, that it’d feel nice, and she’d be a lot happier when she was clean. More than half a lie—getting the lice and the collected osik on Sasha off her wouldn’t have ever been a lot of fun. Despite Juhani’s protests, Canderous ended up just outside the shower stall in the fresher, yelling at Sasha like a camp chief to sit still and take her cleansing like a warrior, that she was a filthy disgrace, and they didn’t let parasite- and disease-ridden slobs like her stay on Ebon Hawk. The Cathar thought it was harsh, but Sasha calmed right down, and by that time, Juhani had been pummeled and screamed at enough Juhani didn’t make more than a token protest.

Sasha muttered five or six choice curse words at him when Juhani bustled her out of the stall in a towel—she had those down, if she didn’t know jack shit else. He just followed them both to the med bay, and when Juhani had Sasha sat down on the cot for a delousing, he shoved one of Vao’s combat suits and a sewing kit at the kid. He’d already hacked off a good bit of the arms and legs and cut bits of fabric out of the sides to enable her to take it in better.

/Now, you can wear one of Vao’s lounge tanks once Juhani’s done with you, and Onasi’s getting some things more in your size at the trading post, but you should have something to protect you too. Now show me how a warrior takes care of her gear./

He had to repeat the speech a few times, with some gestures, before she understood. She frowned at him. /Sasha no warrior. Sasha . . ./ hound,” she said in Basic. “Sasha little scut.”

Juhani muttered something under her breath. Canderous saw her claws flex, but she took a breath and controlled herself, and she was gentle with the louse gel and the comb in the kid’s hair.

/You’re a warrior now,/ Canderous told her. /And a warrior looks after her gear. Do you sew?/

He grabbed the needle and mimed for her, and she made another face, this time doubtful, but nodded. She took the needle from him. She threaded it with cord after a few tries. He watched her look down at the combat suit, uncertain, then pinch the bottom of one reduced leg to form a fold and start to stitch. In two seconds, he knew she’d only ever played at proper sewing.

 /No,/ he told her.

She froze and looked up at him. /Sorry,/ she muttered. /Sasha . . . try again? Do better? You no hit?/

/’I’ll try again. I’ll do better,’/ he prompted her. /And I already said I won’t hurt you. Here. Let me show you./

As the Cathar worked with her hair, Canderous showed Sasha how to thread her needle and sew a hem. He worked with her on the evenness of her stitching, and when she had it down, he started telling her what she was doing in full sentences, first in Mando’a, then in Basic, and making her repeat after him. She was concentrating so hard, she didn’t notice when the Cathar had to pull her hair.

“Finished,” Juhani said, putting away the louse gel and putting the comb in the med bay sink. “You did very well, Sasha,” she said, slowly, enunciating clearly through her accent. “You are a good girl.”

Sasha made another face, shook her head and her hair, in putrid spikes with the louse gel, and complained in her mixed-tongue gibberish.

“I know it is not the most pleasant experience,” Juhani told her. “In an hour, we will return to the fresher and wash all that remains of the vermin away. The smell will go as well.”

Sasha cocked her head, and irritated, Canderous explained, using the simplest words in Mando’a he could think of, as well as a few gestures he’d be embarrassed for anyone off Ebon Hawk to see. The girl wasn’t an idiot, but she was so damned ignorant he wanted to kill the Dar’manda on Dantooine all over again.

He tossed her the tank of Vao’s they had ready for her. The only real advantage it had over her old get-up was that it was clean and only about eight sizes too big for her instead of umpteen. “When will Onasi and Shan get back with clothes for the brat?” Canderous grumbled. He looked at Juhani. “Introduce her to the droid. See if it’ll show her one of Vao’s holos or something. I’m going to call and see where the others are and see if I can’t string the kid up a hammock in the hold so at least she’s not curled up in the walls like a rat.”

“As you say,” Juhani agreed. She stopped then, though. “I did not believe you would be any good at this,” she said. “I was wrong.” Then she beckoned to Sasha, showing the girl with gestures that she should go with her again.

The kid didn’t head out immediately, though. She looked at Canderous, waiting for her orders. /Go with Juhani,/ he told her, repeating the message in Basic. /We aren’t going to shove you back in the shower for a while, and after that, we’ll all have lunch. You were asking about the droid earlier? She’ll introduce you./

Sasha brightened and bobbed on her feet. She went after the Cathar easy enough then. She seemed fondest of the most annoying members of the crew.

Canderous stalked up to the comm in the cockpit and punched in Onasi’s frequency. “Where the hell are you, Carth? We managed to get the kid cleaned up, but it’ll be a while before she can wear anything of Vao’s. She’s still running all over the deck half naked.”

He heard his voice echoing through the ship and realized Carth had actually just got back onboard. The comm crackled anyway. “Keep your armor on, Ordo, we’ve got the shopping.”

But then a red light blinked, indicating another incoming signal. Canderous switched the comm over. “Aithne Moran to Ebon Hawk. Come in, Ebon Hawk.”

“This is Canderous. Go ahead.”

“Our Wookiee has an inordinate fondness for playing the damsel in distress,” Aithne reported. “He’s been taken hostage by Chuundar, the chieftain of the closest village to the spaceport—a Wookiee who happens to be a slaver and the big brother of our friend, something Zaalbar failed to tell us about before he stepped off the ship with us. Chuundar’s holding Big Z until I agree to do some of his dirty work in the Shadowlands. Mission’s overwrought, and it’s been about all I can do to keep her from trying to go commando on the whole village here. She needs an evac, and I need a new backup team.”

“Are the two of you alright?”

That was Onasi, come up behind him. Canderous looked over his shoulder and saw the warrior and commander in the man, in the way he held himself, the way he took the lead. A man used to authority, Carth Onasi.

“They haven’t hurt us,” Aithne answered. “Had to do some fast talking to keep them from confiscating Mission’s weapons, though—to both parties involved.”

“What about y—” Canderous started, but Onasi cut him off with a look.

“What kind of team do you want?”

“Juhani to escort Mission back to the ship—the walkway is too dangerous for anyone alone, and I’d rather have her protecting Mission than anyone else. You and Bastila for my backup. Canderous, I’d take you, but—”

“No. You put me in charge of the foundling,” Canderous said. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t rather be gunning down giant monsters in the Shadowlands—or, hell, the Wookiees holding Zaalbar, if things went badly enough—but sometimes, duty was more important. If those Dar’manda on Dantooine had actually done their jobs, Sasha would be ready to start training in the field next to her guardian by now, but even then, no guardian with sense would start her out in the Kashyyyk Shadowlands. As it was, he was going to have to start training Sasha from scratch, and probably not for a few days until she was settled and had had a few good meals she hadn’t had to scrounge for in the emergency ration barrel. For now, he was going to have to make do with hygiene lessons—pertaining to personal appearance as well as the maintenance of her area and belongings—and to language tutorials.

Afterward—well, they’d start with basic unarmed combat. Cover weapon assembly and maintenance before they ever touched using the weapons . . .

Damn. Was he actually looking forward to training the brat?

“Understood, Aithne,” Carth said. “We’ll leave right away.”

“Great. Aithne out.”

The comm went dead. Onasi handed him a sack with the Czerka supplier insignia on it. Canderous looked in it and saw a couple shirts, a couple of pairs of trousers, and a package of children’s underwear. “I could guess on the sizing for the clothes, but I had no idea about the shoes. Figure it doesn’t matter for the time being.”

“I’ll get her measurements,” Canderous said.

“You can hold down the fort here?” Onasi asked.

“Don’t insult me, Republic,” Canderous growled. “Even if Czerka took it upon themselves to attack someone paying them money or the Wookiees made a raid, with the guns on this ship, I could hold ‘em off without the rest of you for an hour. Go get Moran. Figure out what that chieftain wants for Zaalbar. Get him back, but screw over the chieftain if you can. I’ll comm if the Cathar’s not back with Vao in a couple hours.”

Carth nodded and left.

CARTH

Carth and the Jedi made the trek to the Wookiee village without too much sidetalk. All of them were too worried about Aithne’s report to feel like talking. The Wookiee village chieftained by a slaver—Zaalbar’s brother—who was holding Zaalbar until they did something for him? It sounded bad. And Mission had been there to see the whole thing. Carth remembered how she’d been when the Gamorreans had taken Zaalbar. After Taris, she’d want to cling even closer to her friend. To be in a situation where she couldn’t save him again—where Aithne and the rest of them couldn’t either—Carth didn’t want to think about what that might do to her.

Damn it, if Zaalbar had a brother who was capable of doing something like this, in a position to do something like this, he should’ve told them before they landed on Kashyyyk. Definitely before he agreed to go anywhere near his old village with Aithne. Carth didn’t think Zaalbar had intended to screw them over, but it just went to show you couldn’t really trust anyone. Even people with the best of intentions could make horrific mistakes, out of fear or awkwardness or downright stupidity. Carth himself was living proof of that.

The path to the village was pretty straightforward. A couple kinrath attacked once, but Carth, Juhani, and Bastila were with the Wookiees within about forty-five minutes of leaving the ship. The village hadn’t been built on the walkway originally. You could still see the vine bridges that had been the first connections between the wooden and woven-vine buildings, built onto and out of the wroshyr trees. But Czerka had built walkways around and up to the houses, steps surrounding them. Carth didn’t like the look of them. He didn’t like Czerka having this kind of access to the Wookiee villages, or the gold chains some of the Wookiees around the village wore and the way the others tended to flinch away from them.

They found Aithne and Mission sitting on barrels under guard outside the biggest building in the village. Mission was pale. Her eyes were bloodshot, her headtails were twitching wildly, and there were dried tear tracks on her face. But she wasn’t crying anymore.

She stood and came to them when she saw them. “Get him back,” she told Carth, then went to stand beside Juhani.

“I . . . we will,” Carth told her.

“We’ll get Zaalbar back, Mission,” Aithne seconded, rising.

Mission scoffed, folded her arms, and glared at the walkway. “Let them take him, though,” she muttered under her breath, just loud enough to be heard.

“Watch h—take care of yourselves on the walkway,” Aithne said, starting to speak only to Juhani, but expanding her sentence to include Mission at the last moment.

“Sending me back to the ship with the karking kid . . .” from Mission again.

Carth waited for Aithne to correct Mission’s language. When she didn’t, he cleared his throat. “Language, Mission.”

“Whatcha gonna do? Ground me even more?” Mission exploded. “That’s my best friend those hairballs are holding hostage! I’ve known Zaalbar longer than any of you! I have a right to help save him, but no, it’s ‘Back to the ship, Mission, it’s too dangerous.’ How do I know you won’t hit those monsters in the Shadowlands and just give up like you did up here? How do I know . . . how do I know you’ll even make it back alive?!”

“Hey,” Aithne said, stepping up to Mission. “It’s me, remember? The only reason I haven’t torn this village apart is it’s Zaalbar’s home, however they’re treating him right now. Those monsters in the Shadowlands aren’t Zaalbar’s old friends and neighbors. There’ll be nothing to stop me ripping them limb from limb to get Zaalbar back. And I will.”

“But you can’t—” Mission started, then broke off, looking over her shoulder at the guard.

“I know,” Aithne answered, without making it clear what she was talking about. Probably she felt the same way about Chief Chuundar’s extortion that Canderous did, only she didn’t want to say where they could be overheard. “I’ll remember.”

Mission glared at Aithne for a moment, then dashed forward and hugged her hard. Before Aithne could react, Mission had shoved her away and given Carth and even Bastila hugs too. “I’m ready, Juhani,” she said then. “Let’s go.”

The two of them headed for the gate that led back toward the spaceport.

“So. Juhani gets a lovely walk back to the spaceport with Mission, and the task of facing monsters with you in the Shadowlands falls to me,” Bastila said. “You realize Jedi Sentinels are not generally combat specialists? It may be I could have aided you better with my Battle Meditation from the ship.”

Aithne rolled her eyes. “This morning you were complaining about being left behind, now you’re mad I’m taking you. You know exactly why I sent Juhani with Mission instead of you. I think you just like to complain.”

Bastila pursed her lips. “You invite folly with your insistence on defying the Jedi traditions regarding attachments. Besides, I would have been a perfectly adequate escort for Mission on the walkway.”

“Juhani’s better,” Aithne answered. “And anyway, I was talking to Mission this morning. I think she needs to get to know Juhani better too. We all do.”

“Only not right now,” Bastila said.

“Only not right now.”

“Which way to the Shadowlands?” Carth asked.

Aithne gestured toward another exit.

“What does Chuundar want you to do for him?”

“Assassination,” Aithne answered shortly. “He’s got this whole village wrapped up tight, or so he claims, but as soon as we showed up with Zaalbar, he gets nervous about a Wookiee that’s been down in the Shadowlands for a few years?” She shook her head. “Politics. The exile Chuundar wants us to kill was influential once upon a time. Moreover, holding Zaalbar is more than a way to get us to kill the guy. Chuundar doesn’t want the two of them interacting. When Zaalbar left, twenty years ago, his father was chieftain, not his brother. I think the exile Chuundar wants us to kill is his father—though he said their father, Freyyr, died years ago. At least, the exile was probably one of Freyyr’s strongest supporters, or Zaalbar’s, back when all the nastiness first broke out.”

She gave them the rundown: Zaalbar had discovered his brother slaving twenty years ago. He had confronted Chuundar, but the berserk way he’d done it had made him lose all credibility with the village, even made them hate him as a lunatic and attempted kinslayer. No one had believed Zaalbar’s accusations about his brother, and Zaalbar had been exiled from Kashyyyk. To this day, the official line was that Chuundar had nothing to do with the slaving, despite the favors Czerka heaped on him and the way his enemies tended to disappear. The second they’d shown up to the village, Rwookrrorro, Chuundar’s guards and allies had seized Zaalbar and Chuundar had demanded an audience with Aithne. Because Zaalbar had returned, Chuundar claimed, Zaalbar’s life was forfeit, but since Zaalbar had sworn a lifedebt to Aithne, Chuundar would generously release him into her custody—if she killed the nuisance Wookiee in the Shadowlands.

“We cannot ransom Zaalbar with murder,” Bastila said.

Aithne shot her a look, then made a gesture with her hand, though she kept it subtle, down by her leg so you had to be looking to see her waving at the Wookiees all around them in the village.

With Aithne, there was never even a question of her screwing up due to incompetence or stupidity. Not even because she let her emotions run away with her. She was always with it, always in command of the situation, and usually three steps ahead of anyone else. And that was what made her so difficult to trust, Carth thought. Aithne Moran didn’t do things without having a damn good reason. She’d gone for a bloodless approach to obtaining Sith armor to avoid attracting attention. Attacked the Sith base later when it didn’t matter, but gone with the members of their squad who were lowest risk for capture and interrogation. She’d helped the citizens of Taris to improve squad morale. Accepted Jedi training so she’d have a way to provide for Zaalbar and Mission.

In all that, there were just two things that didn’t fit the pattern: she hadn’t pressed Bastila and the Jedi Council to learn the things she knew they were hiding from her, and she’d propositioned him—even after saying again and again she didn’t think the attraction between them was real and wanted to avoid acting on it if it was. So, why? There were only so many explanations. The generous one was that even a woman like Aithne Moran couldn’t be smart and reasonable every minute of every day. That was probably what Aithne wanted him to think, but Carth wasn’t sure they could afford to be generous, no matter how much he liked Aithne and wanted to.

She was too weird. Canderous saw it too. She didn’t act like a scout—some loner, rough-around-the-edges freelancer who’d received her first command a week and a half ago. She just didn’t. Nobody was smart and capable enough to adapt that fast. She’d fought like a Jedi before she’d ever trained as one. She didn’t understand Mandalorians like someone who’d spent a few weeks negotiating with them; she understood them like someone who’d immersed herself in their culture and thought about countering their strategies of war for years—or been one, maybe. That was a possibility he hadn’t considered a whole lot, because she also definitely approached Mandalorians like an analyst, like someone looking at them from the outside, the aruetii Canderous called her.

The thing was, if she was a Dark Jedi spy, she was bad at it. She was terrible. A good spy wanted to be invisible, forgettable. Low- to mid-rank; without close friends, family, or dependants, and someone who avoided picking them up. Someone who never got herself noticed, in good or bad ways. And even when Aithne was lying to the enemy, she relied on being noticed, probably because she knew she couldn’t help it. Carth was pretty sure if she’d been a spy, she’d have adopted a completely different approach. More likely, she simply wasn’t capable of it.

But if she was lying about her past, about her training, and wasn’t a spy, Carth was stumped on what the actual explanation could be. Shame, maybe. She could be a Dark Jedi deserter—someone who’d defected with Revan, Malak, and the others but then regretted it and organized intelligence work with the Jedi to atone. Maybe she didn’t trust him, how he might react to something like that. It was even possible she’d been a Jedi deserter, someone who’d broken off from Revan and Malak at Malachor or before. Maybe she’d been a coward or an addict or had lost a major battle. Maybe she hadn’t told the Jedi anything, but they’d seen how she used the Force and wanted her back because of their failing numbers, but also seen how she was trying to lie to everyone and didn’t trust her any more than Carth did. Either of those explanations could account for an awful lot. Carth just wished she’d tell him; tell him instead of trying to manipulate or distract him.

They left Rwookrrorro. Once they were a few minutes out, down a different walkway, Aithne looked at him and Bastila. “No. I’m not about assassinating someone for Chuundar, particularly because he’s trying to extort me into doing it by holding Big Z. I don’t think we should do anything at all to help Chuundar; he’s a rot at the heart of that village. He’s betraying and enslaving his neighbors and subjects for credits, power, and influence. He’s scum. If I do any assassinating at all, I’m likely to start with Chuundar himself.

“But he’s got Big Z, Czerka on call, and way more loyal guards and supporters than we can take on without triggering a bloodbath of epic proportions in Big Z’s home village, and to do that, we’d need all of us and would put all of us at unconscionable risk with our mission only just begun. No. We need to topple Chuundar and ruin his support. We can’t attack him outright. So—why does he suddenly need this exile Wookiee dead? Maybe we see what this exile has to say and see about connecting him with Zaalbar somehow—the thing that Chuundar least wants to happen—instead of killing him outright.”

“I see. An intriguing concept in theory,” Bastila said. “Somewhat problematic in execution.”

“Since we don’t know where Chuundar’s rival is or what the nature of his rivalry with Chuundar is, what his connection to Zaalbar is or how we’re going to connect them with Zaalbar held hostage, or even if our unknown Wookiee in the Shadowlands is still alive or will be willing to act at all? Yes. I’d say the plan’s problematic,” Aithne said. “We’ll think of something. Meanwhile, we have other problems.”

She swung her pack down off her shoulder, groped around in it for a second, and pulled out what looked like a bounty chit. She tossed it to Bastila. “I was attacked by a group of Dark Jedi on the way to Rwookrrorro. They knew who I was. They knew you two are with me. And they knew to look for us here.”

Bastila went so white then, Carth’s every nerve lit up, and he glanced at Aithne on instinct. She caught his eye and tilted her head, raising her eyebrows. She’d seen it—Bastila freaking out when they’d known the Sith would probably show up at some point. Something about her reaction was off.

They’d all stopped for Bastila to look at the bounty chit. She activated the tech, and a holo of Carth himself came up first.

“You’re doing well for yourself, flyboy,” Aithne remarked in a by-the-by manner. “There are some quarters in the galaxy where they’ll laugh you out of town unless you’ve ticked off someone enough to get a decent-sized bounty on your head. That—” she nodded at the chit— “is more than decent. Someone wants you caught or dead. Just you. There’s no bounty on Mish, Zaalbar, or Canderous, even though we were seen with them back on Taris too.”

Saul. Carth’s gut blazed. His fists clenched. For a second, he could almost see his old mentor’s face staring at him over Aithne’s shoulder. He tried to play off how he felt. “Well. I guess one of the Sith knows a quality nuisance when he sees it.”

“Or a personal threat,” Aithne murmured. She looked at him, and he knew she saw right through the levity to exactly how much he wanted Saul Karath dead—more than the price of the bounty Saul had on him, but he wasn’t about to pay someone else to do his dirty work. “I don’t know whether to say ‘congratulations’ or ‘I’m sorry,’ but I know this one’s not from Malak.”

Carth just managed to nod back at her. Bastila hit the button to cycle the chit. Carth didn’t think any of them were surprised to see her there too, or that the bounty to bring her in alive was enough for a bounty hunter to go on a yearlong luxury Core vacation and buy his mother a new vehicle. Bastila hit the cycle button again at once, and they all stopped.

It was Aithne—a sketch image of her as she’d looked a lot of the time on Taris, but where his and Bastila’s name had been on their bounties, on Aithne’s, the line read: “Alias: Aithne Moran.”

Alias.

There was no real name, no explanation. But the bounty on her—Carth breathed in sharply. The bounty to kill Aithne was more than three times what the Sith were offering bounty hunters to bring in Bastila alive. Carth thought hard. Why would the Sith be willing to pay so much for Aithne’s death? Because of Taris? It didn’t make sense. How would they . . . how would they even know how she’d taken charge down there? This couldn’t be a reaction to the destruction of one backwater Sith base and getting Bastila offworld before the slaughter. It would be annoying, assuming Malak knew, but hardly worth the kind of sum he was offering for revenge. No. They were offering the kind of sum they were to bring in Bastila alive because they knew that, turned to the Dark Side, she could cement a victory over the Republic. If they were offering more to make sure Aithne died, the Sith had to think she could utterly destroy them—and that for some reason, there was no way she could possibly be converted to their side.

Viewed in that light, it was immensely comforting. Whoever Aithne Moran was behind the alias, or whoever the Sith thought she was, she was undoubtedly an ally. But how she was and who she was—that was still one big mystery. Probably, Carth thought, the mystery Bastila had been freaking out about. They knew who I was, Aithne had said. The Jedi knew something about Aithne—her past, her qualifications, her destiny. Carth had no idea what, but something. Something that made her—her, not Bastila—the linchpin of this war. Now Bastila was worried the Sith knew it too.

Bastila switched off the holo. “Clearly, one of our enemies on Taris escaped to bring the Sith news of us.”

“And Malak dispatched his bounty hunters here straightaway because?” Aithne asked.

It was a decent question: how had Malak known they would come here? Why would his mind immediately have gone to the Star Maps upon receiving a report from Taris?

Bastila shook her head. “If what we believe is true, and the Star Forge is central to the success of the Sith war effort, Darth Malak may be paranoid about anything that could lead to its discovery. We know Revan and Malak likely visited these worlds on their own journey to find the Star Forge’s location. It’s likely Malak dispatched hunters to every world listed on the Dantooine Star Map once he learned of our escape from Taris. He may have dispatched them elsewhere as well; he could have no way of knowing that the Star Maps were our true target. Now that you have slain some of his hunters, however, we should not count on his remaining ignorant for much longer. Resistance to our progress will increase.”

“Because a team of three Dark Jedi isn’t enough to worry about,” Aithne sighed.

“Clearly not, if you took them out without a scratch,” Carth said.

She shot him a glare. “I would rather not have had to.”

She turned, and the three of them started back toward the place Aithne said the Wookiees had told her they kept an elevator that went down to the Shadowlands. “Yeah, and I don’t like that you faced them with just Mission and Zaalbar,” Carth admitted. “With that bounty on your head—Bastila’s right. There’s gonna be more. They’ll keep coming until you’re dead. I don’t understand why the Sith are offering so much. I mean, I know Malak is a monster, but is one defeat on Taris worth the kind of credits he’s offering? And what’s with the alias?”

Aithne breathed out through her nose. “I lied about my name a lot on Taris. If the person who gave the Sith their intel knows that, they probably wonder if Aithne Moran is my real name either. Look. Carth. Do I need to put in a request the Republic reassign you?”

Carth stared. “What? I—I don’t understand—”

“You heard me,” Aithne told him. “Can you work with me, or not? Because explaining myself to you is getting tedious. You don’t want to be here. You’d rather be on the front lines of the war. Fine. I’m getting to the place where I’d rather have you there. There’s only so much distrust, suspicion, and stress I can take. There’s only so many times I can stand explaining I’m not evil and I’m not a liar before I break. I’m good, but I won’t work under these conditions. No one should have to. So, suck it up that I am who I say I am, doing what I said I was going to; shut it up about not believing me; or I’ll cite irreconcilable differences or somesuch and ask the Republic for a different pilot.”

“Aithne—” Bastila began.

Aithne cut her off with a gesture. “No. This is between me and him, and it’s been coming on longer than you’ve been around. I may have to take ‘Beware the Dark Side’ from the Jedi. I don’t have to take ‘You are the Dark Side’ from him, especially since he doesn’t even actually believe it.”

Carth shook his head. “You’re overstating things,” he said. “If I can’t bring up simple questions without your blowing it all way out of proportion—besides, ‘irreconcilable differences’ is a reason you give for requesting a divorce, not a reassignment.”

“Whatever,” Aithne retorted. She breathed out again. “Look. I realize I probably just made everything worse last week with the—”

“Aithne!” Carth protested, glancing at Bastila. He didn’t want to talk about this in front of her!

But Aithne rolled her eyes. “She knows. I was so royally mortified after the event it bled over our bond, and she came running. She’s probably been hanging around you ever since to make sure I don’t try anything like that ever again.”

Bastila went pink. “I—”

Aithne shook her head again. “Since you did hear about the incident that night, you might as well hear this too. Carth: I was unprofessional; incredibly inconsiderate of you and your feelings, wants, and needs; and I apologize—for making the offer, for the way and the time that I made it, and for not getting up the guts to apologize until now, when I’m so annoyed with you I could spit.”

She sounded genuine, Carth thought, with some surprise. There was a shipload of annoyance, sure, but also a lot of frankness, guilt, and self-recrimination in what she was saying. And it made sense—for her to have been avoiding him lately because she was embarrassed and awkward, not because some scheme of seduction hadn’t worked. For her not to have had the guts to own up to it, especially with Bastila hanging around, until she was so annoyed it didn’t matter anymore. Just like in the Vulkar base. She was serious about the reassignment, he realized. He knew what it was like when a soldier’d been pushed too far. He didn’t like thinking he’d been the one to do that to Aithne, in any sense.

She was so capable, it was easy to ignore all the pressure she was under and just focus on all the weirdnesses about how everything had been arranged, but now he could see she’d been trying to tell him for a few weeks that she was just about at the end of her rope. Hell, she’d been there at the glassing of Taris just like the rest of them. She was the one who had all the responsibility of honoring Zaalbar’s lifedebt, she was the one who’d taken on the guardianship of Mission—and Mission was fighting her on it about as much as she obviously needed and wanted Aithne around. All this with the informational overload of becoming a Jedi in the span of six weeks. Now, the Council had put the salvation of the galaxy on her shoulders. They were walking through a slaver-controlled jungle full of monsters, one of their companions had been captured, their best warriors were occupied watching the minors back on Ebon Hawk, and now there was an impossible bounty on all their heads. And he was just piling on. Continuing to question her place in the war and her intentions when she’d been nothing but helpful to the war effort and unbelievably strong throughout. And lately, all the more because she’d committed the unforgivable crime of liking him, wanting just a little relief from the insanity, and speaking up about it. Then getting embarrassed when he rejected her.

All his building anger at Aithne drained out, replaced with a heaping helping of his own embarrassment and a nice side portion of guilt. “No. I told you—you don’t need to apologize,” he said.

Aithne disagreed. “Maybe you didn’t think I needed to then, though I already did. But then I left, and I didn’t come back, or try to work things out. So.”

That was even more embarrassing, Carth thought. Aithne thought she had to cater to him—to the issues that drove him to spin these stories about her and try to find problems where there were none. The worst part was, so far, she was right. He had to do better. Get that paranoia out of the pilot’s seat. He wished Bastila wasn’t here, watching their exchange like a holodrama. Probably compiling notes on attachment to send back to the Jedi Council. Aithne might not care, but he didn’t want to get her into trouble. “Alright,” he admitted, rubbing his neck. “Maybe I got a little anxious after what you said. Maybe I started wondering. Good reminder that explanations for things don’t always have to be deep, dark conspiracies. But I don’t think we have to—”

“Look out!” Aithne said. She jerked her head ahead, at three Wookiees on the path being attacked by a kinrath swarm. In the same movement, Aithne had pulled her lightsaber out of her sleeve and sprung into action. Except—not lightsaber. Lightsabers. She’d picked up another one, probably from the Jedi who had attacked her. And this one was red.

“What in the—” Bastila started. Then she, too, activated her lightsaber and ran toward the fight.

Carth stayed back, keeping away from the fray, moving back and forth across the walkway to find his shots. The Czerka walkway tended to funnel enemies into a natural bottleneck, but it also made getting a clear blaster shot a whole lot harder. He did get one of the kinrath coming down from the trees to drop down on them, and another coming up from below to flank the others.

Aithne really was at her best with two weapons though, he thought, watching her from behind. Rather than treating her lightsabers like separate weapons, they became extensions of each other, simply widening her reach, her area of effect, as well as the zones she could guard and the damage she could inflict. The red and green lightsabers clashed horribly, and he didn’t like the way the red lightsaber seemed to fit her, as much as the Consular green one did. But he admired the way her attacks flowed together, the way she was aggressive without being brutal, and incredibly efficient. He hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to observe her fighting side by side with Bastila, but he was satisfied now that he’d been right: Aithne was the better swordswoman. Bastila was good, but Aithne—she was something else—and back at the enclave, Aithne had been trying to spare Bastila’s feelings when he’d asked the question.

The fight ended, and Carth walked up to join the Jedi women and the Wookiees. He was just in time to see one of the Wookiees shoulder past Aithne, growling something that sounded angry, and lead the others back toward the village.

“What was that all about?” Carth asked.

Aithne shrugged. “They’ve never been off-world. To a lot of these Wookiees, ‘human’ translates to ‘Czerka.’ I don’t think a lot of them have even heard of the Jedi. They thought we must be slavers.”

“Be that as it may, I believe we need to talk about your new weapon,” Bastila said, turning to Aithne with a severe expression.

Aithne made a face. “Bas. Using a red laser sword doesn’t turn you into a Sith. I like dual wielding better is all, but the Council never gave me a second crystal to build a second lightsaber. I picked this up two hours ago and haven’t had time to purify the crystal through meditation.”

“You are a representative of the Jedi Order,” Bastila said. “How confusing do you imagine it will be for denizens of the galaxy to know which side of this war has your allegiance, if you go around with blades signifying two separate factions?”

“I imagine we already have issues with people who see my battles but get away to tell the tale, and I don’t intend to give them many more opportunities,” Aithne returned. Her voice was cool. “I’ll take care of it tonight, Bastila.”

“See that you do.”

They walked in silence for a little while longer. Carth wanted to get back to the topic of whether Aithne really thought he should transfer, but the kinrath attack had reminded him they were vulnerable out here and right now, it was probably better to focus on getting to the Shadowlands and finding what they needed without getting hurt. He saw something that looked like the elevator ahead through the dimness of the forest; things would probably be a lot worse down there, he thought.

Aithne herself seemed to have been distracted by the Wookiee’s reaction to her after the fight. “You know, the Republic really should do something about Czerka,” she mused eventually.

Carth sighed. “Czerka Corp is one of the galactic companies and foundations too big to be policed by the Republic. They have diplomats that speak in front of the Senate. What do you want the Republic to do, start another war?”

Aithne looked thoughtful. “In a way, I don’t really blame Revan and Malak for trying to take over the Republic. It has some definite problems. And there’s nothing like a threatening dictator to incite social reform.”

“Oh, never mind the war profiteering and the economic shortages that sweep the galaxy in the aftermath of wars,” Carth said.

“Generally plays out in a couple years. The reforms can last for decades,” Aithne replied.

“The Republic is a fundamentally good institution,” Carth argued.

“You don’t deny it has problems, though,” Aithne shot back.

“I can’t honestly,” Carth admitted. “I can and do deny that it needs to be taken over, especially by the Sith.”

“Did I say I wanted them to win?” Aithne said. “I’m just saying, I understand the impulse to take over from incompetents and do the whole thing yourself. It’s seductive: it usually leads to a whole lot more trouble than you bargained for, and you usually end up in charge of a system just as flawed as the old one, only different. But I get the impulse. I also think the Sith trying to take over the galaxy might end up doing us all some good.”

“How do you mean?” Bastila asked.

Aithne shrugged. “The successes of an enemy in war highlight the weaknesses of a given regime. After this is all over, the Republic and the Jedi are going to sit back and review how it was that so many of their people joined Revan and Malak, and why. Driven by a terrible fear lest any of this should ever happen again, they will necessarily make certain changes. Some of them will probably be horrible overreactions, but some of the others will be for the better. For one thing, they might implement better humanitarian and crisis response systems, so backwater and Rim populations aren’t ever tempted to join radicals in response to the atrocities that can happen out there.”

Carth looked at her and didn’t say anything. It was an interesting train of thought, but there it was—talk like a general or a Senator. Or a Jedi Master historian. Why was Malak willing to pay so much to kill Aithne Moran? How had the Jedi trained her and dispatched her to save the galaxy in six weeks? He didn’t want to distrust her. If the bounty did nothing else, it proved she was unquestionably on their side. She had to be. She didn’t deserve his suspicion, and she was right—it probably made working conditions that much harder for her. But still.

They were at the elevator. Aithne moved forward to greet the Wookiee there on guard, and they were on course to the Shadowlands.

Chapter Text

ZAALBAR

To see his village reduced to the staging ground of slavers, the dominion of his lying brother—his father dead or exiled—turned all the happiness of the trees, the sights and smells of home—to merest ash. Zaalbar did not mind so much to be dishonored and reviled as a mad-claw. It was no more than he deserved, and it was so good to hear the sounds of his people’s language again from others that he didn’t care that they cursed him. But to see his people reduced to Czerka prey—that was the worst thing.

Chuundar had not imprisoned him, the better for him to see what had become of his village, the way the Czerka stood beside Wookiee guards, the gold jewelry and the credits they lavished upon Chuundar and his favorites. The way Chuundar mocked his enemies and the less fortunate of the village—those he had sent or allowed to be sent to indignity and enslavement. And as a testament to his might and Zaalbar’s own comparative weakness. Chuundar did not need to restrain or imprison him. It was enough that his guard watched Zaalbar’s every move, that the entire village hated Zaalbar, leaving him no friend and no support. Were it not for Chuundar’s defense, in fact, they might have beaten Zaalbar with the flats of their swords and left him for dead outside the gates of the village.

So Zaalbar was to wait, to endure the sights and sounds of Chuundar in power and the knowledge that all knew his dishonor—not only as a mad-claw, but as a Wookiee who had taken on a lifedebt, then suffered its subject to go beyond his sight into the most dangerous part of Kashyyyk to save his worthless pelt again.

He should have been beside Aithne as she ventured to the Shadowlands in search of her Star Map, fighting the kinrath and the other monsters of the undergrowth with her. He wished now that he had never brought her here. Better to let her go to his village alone and join her later than to suffer this greater dishonor.

He grieved for Mission too. After Taris, after the Gamorreans in the sewers and Darth Malak’s attack upon the planet, she should not have had to see him torn from her again so soon. He missed her now, her chatter and her cheer—for three years now, she had been his near-constant companion. They had only ever been apart for a few hours at a time. She had learned the language of his people merely to be his friend. She had been interpreter, comrade-at-arms, partner in crime. She had been a truer sibling to him than Chuundar ever had been, and he had tried his best to serve as he believed Mission’s own brother should have done, though he knew he had never replaced Griff within her heart. He loved Aithne Moran the more for what she had done and was doing for Mission, yet now he worried his capture had been the cause of some division between them. The last he had seen of them, Mission had been shouting at Aithne.

“Worried about your friends?” Chuundar asked him, clapping his hands at an attendant, who had been standing ready with plates of food. The attendant brought them close. Chuundar took them and dismissed the she-wook with a nod. He gave one of the plates to Zaalbar.

Zaalbar considered refusing the food for a moment—he wanted nothing from his brother. Yet, starving himself would only weaken him, and if something about his circumstances changed, he might need to be strong. He began to eat. “You may not know the meaning of friendship—of family, Chuundar, but I have not forgotten.”

“Do you say I do not know the meaning of family?” Chuundar asked. “Then why have I suffered to spare you, brother? I would be well within my rights to demand your death—you were exiled from this village upon pain of death. Yet I would see you reconciled to me, and to all of us, if I could, and if you would permit it.”

“Reconciled to a slaver and a liar—and to a murderer as well. What is the purpose you have sent my friend to the Shadowlands for but a murder by proxy? It was wrong.”

“She did not have to agree to it,” Chuundar pointed out. “The outsider could have refused. Who here would say you are worth such a ransom? And I wonder that you could call me murderer, mad-claw. Would not you have slain me years ago? Would not you slay me now, had you but the power?”

“I do not know,” Zaalbar admitted. “I was truly mad when I discovered what you are. Yet to slay one’s kin is a grievous sin. I believe I would have regretted it, had my attack succeeded. Not for your sake, but for the sake of my own honor.”

“You have no honor,” Chuundar told him. “Yet it amuses me to see you try and grasp at it all the same. To see you, who attacked your own elder brother with your claws, stand there and lecture me upon my morality. To see you chide me for using the outsider for my purposes, while you stood by and let her go, and she your supposed lifedebt. What would be more fitting, do you think? For your lifedebt to perish in the Shadowlands, trying to save your life, or for her to tarnish her own honor in a murder, so mistress and slave might be more alike than ever?”

“I am not her slave!” Zaalbar cried. “Aithne Moran saved me from slavery! I honor her not just for that, but because she treats me as an equal—never a dumb beast, never a meat shield, never a chattel. She is my friend, and her honor is beyond reproach. She has proven it many times since we first met. Do not impeach it!”

 “I do not see her honor as so unimpeachable,” Chuundar replied. “She allows one such as you to remain in her presence and in her service, and again, she did not protest when I asked her to take care of my little problem for me. Then again, I do not see honor as the be-all, end-all, as you and the other simpleminded fools in this village do. What of profit? What of polity? What of progress? You and others would eschew all of these for your vaunted honor. Perhaps your Aithne Moran is not so blind. Perhaps she sees a value in you beyond your honor—or lack thereof—as I do.”

Zaalbar covered his ears, turning away. “I will not listen!” he declared. “Your words are poison, Chuundar!”

Chuundar laughed. “As you like. Your Aithne Moran cannot return from the Shadowlands soon—if she should return at all. The two of us have plenty of time.”

AITHNE

Gorwooken, the elevator attendant charged with taking them down into the Shadowlands, was an idiot. He was loyal to Chuundar but was not in on Chuundar’s dealings with the Czerka slavers. Accordingly, he ascribed to the popular opinion that all humans were scumbags, and whenever he had to talk to them at all, he was surly and insulting. Aithne didn’t bother translating his remarks for the others.

The ride down to the Shadowlands was long, and it didn’t necessarily lend itself to conversation like travel on the walkways above. Every meter they descended, the forest got darker and gloomier. The tachs climbing up and down the trunks of the wroshyr trees began to sound eerie instead of just irritating. Now and then, Aithne saw kinrath webs in the distance, and she could hear crashing and limb-cracking in the undergrowth that sounded like larger, clumsier beasts. The light changed from dappled yellow and green, to gray, to a dim, unnatural twilight, a murk that wasn’t nearly complete darkness, nor yet the darkness of night, but the worst possible daylight for seeing. The kind of light where the eyes strained to see more than a few meters ahead and each movement made you jump.

“Charming place,” Aithne muttered. Finally, the basket elevator touched bottom, and in the distance, Aithne heard a fire crackling.

She gestured at Gorwooken. “Is that fire a good thing?” she asked him.

Gorwooken laughed at her. His fangs flashed in the darkness. /Anything that made a fire down here isn’t a Wookiee,/ he told her. /So, you have slaving scum or worse. Good luck, Aithne Moran. Welcome to the Shadowlands./

Aithne translated this for the others, as well as Gorwooken’s promise that he would remain on guard over the basket but would not accompany them, nor lift a claw to defend them from the beasts of the Shadowlands or help them achieve Chuundar’s task. They left the elevator basket and stared out into the gloom.

“Great,” Aithne said. “Alright. Let’s head for the fire.”

“That does not seem wise,” Bastila said. “Didn’t that Wookiee just say that anyone who has built a fire is probably our enemy, and not a Wookiee? And aren’t we looking for a Wookiee?”

“No, she’s right,” Carth said. “If we’ve got an enemy down here, better to find them now and deal with it—one way or another—than to just ignore them and hope they go away. They could decide to sneak up on us later.”

Aithne nodded, and the three of them started over the forest floor toward the sound of the campfire. This was more difficult than it sounded: the wroshyr roots could be as thick and as tall as city walls, forcing them to take meandering paths rather than any straightforward approach. They’d run into dead ends, have to retrace their steps, reorient themselves.

“Should’ve bought a Kashyyyk coordinate system from Czerka, however objectionable their business practices,” Aithne muttered. “We might spend longer down here trying to find where we are than anything we’re looking for.”

“Climbing equipment might’ve been nice too,” Carth agreed.

“Waste of energy,” Aithne disagreed. “No point going over the roots in the way if we don’t know what we’re looking for is on the other side. Ah.”

They’d rounded what felt like their twelfth enormous tree root and come into sight of the campfire. Aithne saw several heavy packs ranged around it—they’d contain supplies enough for long-term camping. Their supposed enemies had come ready to stay awhile. Then she made out that two of the three figures around the campfire were Wookiees—surprising, after what Gorwooken had said. Then she noticed that these Wookiees had probably been off-worlders for a bit. Their claws were dull, not sharp from extensive tree-climbing. Their weapons were standard Exchange issue. They were slaves—or thugs.

The third figure was a small but muscular human male in armor that she recognized. “Guys,” she said to Carth and Bastila, “I think I know how Malak got our descriptions and the knowledge we’ve been working together.”

“The bounty hunter on Taris,” Bastila murmured. “He survived.”

Aithne stepped into the circle of the campfire’s light and held her right ‘saber at the salute, though she didn’t activate it. “Calo Nord. What are you doing here?”

Nord faced them, and the firelight glinted off his goggles. “Looks like the gang’s all here,” he said. “I have to give you credit. You’ve led me on quite a chase. But nobody gets away from Calo Nord in the end. You got lucky on Taris; the Sith saved you from a quick and gruesome death. But I promise you, the Sith won’t be getting in my way this time.”

“You know,” Aithne remarked, “Malak doesn’t expect you to survive this. We intercepted a general death order from a team of Dark Jedi earlier today. They’re dead. Yet here we are. You think you can do better?”

“You’re a challenge, Moran,” Nord admitted, “or whatever your name is. I might be a little sorry when you’re gone. But it’s show time.”

Bastila leapt into action, her yellow lightsaber blazing as brightly as the campfire down here. She engaged one of Nord’s Wookiee companions, and Aithne observed with interest and a little disappointment that his sword had cortosis weave, so it might reasonably be expected that the other’s would as well. Then she had to jump, as half a dozen blaster bolts hit where she had been standing merely a split second earlier.

She ignited her sabers, taking up a double-saber variant of a Form III stance—with Nord focusing his fire on her, Soresu was going to be her best bet right now. Onasi had fallen back behind a tree root and was lining up his shots, so maybe he’d give her something of a break too.

Still, she arranged things so when she took on the second Wookiee, his body was between her and Nord at all times. She hadn’t wanted to avoid a fight with Calo Nord back on Taris for nothing. He kept moving, dodging Carth about as well as the rest of them dodged Nord himself—and hurling the odd grenade, just to keep things interesting. In fact, Aithne found herself prolonging the fight with the Wookiee. She could only really use him as a meat shield so long as he was alive. She could try to use him longer, but then, she’d have to carry him.

But when Bastila’s Wookiee went down, Aithne went ahead and killed hers too. She didn’t want to be fighting her Exchange thug longer than Bastila. That was just embarrassing. They took up positions on either side of the campfire, challenging Nord—he could try for one of them, or he could try for the other, but whichever Jedi he took on meant the other one would get him.

Under those hellish goggles, Nord looked angry now. Despite all the signs indicating he should’ve taken them more seriously—the lightsabers, the price Malak had put on their heads—there wasn’t a scratch on the three of them yet, and all his backup was dead. He hurled a grenade in Onasi’s general direction, popped three shots off at Bastila, then ducked a shot from Carth—not at all in the general direction he had thought—moving toward Aithne.

Aithne had the sense she always got in the final seconds of a fight. She could almost taste victory. Nord was moving too slowly; he wasn’t going to be able to get his blasters up and facing her in time. She lunged, only to see Nord hadn’t entirely ducked to dodge Carth. He’d retrieved a short, razor-sharp knife from his boot, and it was moving at a speed too slow for her energy shield to absorb. That knife could pass through her shield like it wasn’t even there. She was caught up in the momentum of her swings and watching in slow motion as the knife, glinting in the campfire, arced up toward her heart.

Suddenly, a shoulder hit her hard from the back and slightly from the side. Aithne fell forward and turned her head to see Nord’s knife plunging instead into Bas’s side. Bastila fell, looking pained but . . . satisfied.

Fury swept through Aithne. She swept her right leg around, beneath Nord’s guard, knocking him to the ground beside her. He was’t ready for it. She was. She rotated her two lightsabers around in the same movement she used to jackknife to her feet and watched Calo Nord hit the dirt beside Bastila, armor smoking and melted. She smelled it when he crapped himself and knew, if he hadn’t killed Bastila, at least he’d been killed.

She didn’t waste time gloating. She didn’t wait for Carth. She just knelt down beside Bastila. The side of her fellow Padawan’s robe was already dark with blood. Her eyelashes fluttered. “Is it . . . over now?” she managed.

“The battle, not your life,” Aithne snapped, assessing the damage. “Onasi! I need a coagulant shot and a ready bandage from a medpac before I take the knife out. Get one of the advanced pacs from my bag.”

She thrust it at him, and he moved at once.

Aithne examined the wound, with her eyes and with the Force, sensing the organs and blood vessels beneath Bastila’s robes. “You lucky, lucky moron,” she muttered. “Caught you right between your lower two ribs but missed everything super important. Centimeters up or down, and you could be looking at a punctured lung or worse. What the hell possessed you to do that?” She spat the vulgarity at the younger woman, still furious, replaying that look of satisfaction on Bastila’s face as she had fallen.

Carth handed her the shot. Aithne pulled out her own knife—the one she used for eating—and sliced Bastila’s tunic up and down her injured side. Careful not to jostle Bas too much, but without taking too much care for her modesty, Aithne peeled the tunic away from Bastila’s torso and away from the wound, leaving her exposed in only her bra. Then she injected the coagulant right over Bas’s heart. It’d get to her wound faster that way. She handed Carth back the empty syringe for disposal and received a length of linen in turn.

“I’ve got the tape,” he said.

She waited about thirty seconds, then said, “Ready?”

Bastila nodded.

“One . . . two . . . “before Bastila tensed up on three, Aithne pulled out Calo’s knife. Bastila cried out, but then she was still, waiting. Aithne wrapped a length of linen around Bastila’s entire side over the wound, binding it tight and fixing it in place with the tape.

“Get her an extra shirt,” she told Carth then, and turned around to focus on the wound beneath the bandage. In six weeks, she hadn’t had a lot of time to focus on a lot of varied Force abilities—she’d skipped over a lot of physical augmentation, stealth, and evasion abilities and only touched the surface on how to temporarily immobilize organic and synthetic enemies in combat. One thing she’d taken her time with had been healing. It was one thing that was always useful, and you couldn’t always count on having a bacta tank, kolto shots, or even a more basic first aid kit available. She reached out with her feelings to sense the muscle fiber in Bastila’s side, the veins and arteries and capillaries that ran through it. She called on the Force to knit it all together once again. She imagined the blood clotting, scabbing over, skin growing over the injury.

Color flooded back into Bastila’s face. Suddenly, she was seizing Aithne’s hand, over her side. “Stop, Aithne,” she protested. “You will expend too much energy.”

Bastila pulled herself into a sitting position, wincing, and accepted the shirt Carth offered her. She pulled it over her head, and Aithne sat back on her heels, breathing a little harder than usual. The Force was strong in the Kashyyyk Shadowlands. It was a place full of life. But Bastila’s stab wound was the most serious she had ever attempted to cure, and she’d just sped it through roughly the equivalent of three weeks of natural healing—about three days with the assistance of kolto.

“What if we run into katarn or kinrath within the next five minutes?” Bastila demanded. “You could leave us both too weak to face them.”

“What if the scent of your bleeding all over the place ended up drawing them even faster?” Aithne shot back. She reclaimed her pack from Carth and resituated everything inside. Then she withdrew a ration bar and thrust it at Bas. “Eat it,” she said. “Drink half your waterskin too. We don’t want you getting dehydrated from the blood loss or the healing.”

“Don’t fuss,” Bastila told her. “You’ve done enough that I should be back to normal within two standard hours.” She winced again, and rose, slowly. Aithne reached down to help her.

“Good. I don’t want your death on that conscience you don’t think I have. Next time, cut his hand off. Push him with the Force. Take the knife with the Force. Do anything except take the knife for me!”

“You are welcome,” Bastila said, unwrapping the protein bar Aithne had given her.

“Did I thank you? I’m not going to. I will never, ever thank you for that kind of stupidity.”

“Aithne,” Carth said, stepping forward. “Come on.” He gestured at Bastila, clearly wounded by Aithne’s words now as well as by the knife she’d taken. Aithne glared at him and stalked away, taking up a guard position on the perimeter.

“We move out in an hour,” she said. “You’ll be ready enough to travel then, Bastila, and Carth and I will keep an eye on you until you’re 100 percent.”

They both thought she was being unnecessarily harsh, even cruel, and ungrateful. But Bas’s shields were still rock solid, and Carth hadn’t seen what she had—that expression of satisfaction on Bastila’s face when she’d taken the knife for Aithne. It had been a stupid move—tactically, there had been about three other ways Bastila could have saved Aithne’s life without putting her own in jeopardy, because she couldn’t have known that the knife would deal her a painful but essentially harmless stroke—but the worst part to Aithne’s mind was that it had been a calculated one. She didn’t think Bastila had thought ahead far enough in the moment to deliberately risk her life to save Aithne’s, to demonstrate her loyalty or to put Aithne in her debt—Bastila couldn’t have counted on Aithne being stupid in the fight as well, and in a life-and-death, split-second-decision combat situation, no one had the capacity for that much forethought. Bastila’s decision had been instinctive, but it had been instinct based upon a durasteel-hard conviction that Aithne’s life was worth more than hers was. Even training, conditioning. That look—it had been that of a soldier who knew she’d done her duty, not a friend who’d saved a friend.

The Sith valued Aithne’s death above Bastila’s capture. The Republic thought Bastila was the key to their war effort. But the Jedi Council—they’d put Aithne in charge of the mission that could lead to Malak’s defeat, but they’d been giving Bastila orders all along that Aithne hadn’t been privy to. Aithne was beginning to suspect that Bastila’s Battle Meditation didn’t figure nearly as largely in the Jedi’s plans for the war as it did in the Republic’s or the Sith’s, that the Jedi’s hopes rested—and that the Sith might know they rested—upon Aithne’s hunt for the Star Forge. Or else, why dispatch bounty hunters to Kashyyyk?

Did the Sith have a spy on the Jedi Council? Elsewhere in the Dantooine Enclave? Nord’s survival on Taris explained how the Sith knew about Carth and Aithne’s involvement with Bastila. Karath’s position high within the Sith fleet explained the bounty on Carth. But Carth, with his usual unerring instinct for the holes in every story, had also pointed out the single, biggest question of them all: why was Malak offering the kind of credits for Aithne that he was? The Sith had to have information on Aithne’s position as spearhead of the mission to find the Star Forge. Only, if Aithne died or fell to the Dark Side or quit, Bastila could still search for the Star Maps, couldn’t she? They were both having the dreams about Revan’s past visits to them. Or—was Aithne having the visions, and Bastila merely listening in through their bond?

Are the visions just mine?

Aithne’s head spun. Enough. She was to the point where she needed answers. She didn’t care how horrible they were, they couldn’t be as bad as this cloud of uncertainty, this . . . Darkness around everything the Jedi Council intended for her. But the time to ask for them wasn’t while Big Z was being held by his slaving brother, and the place to ask for them wasn’t the depths of the Kashyyyk Shadowlands.

She looked over at Bastila, sitting against a wroshyr root and drinking from a water bottle. Bastila wouldn’t give her answers willingly. Was she a better or worse option than Master Zhar on Dantooine, once they returned to deal with Sasha, one way or another? Either way, she’d need a plan, a strategic and tactical approach to convincing the Jedi to part with whatever information it was they were keeping so close to their vests. And she might need help. Aithne looked over at Onasi and suppressed a groan. She was going to have to apologize to him again, wasn’t she? He was the only one also asking the questions she wanted answered, and since she’d decided she did want them answered, she couldn’t exactly reassign him.

At the end of an hour, they extinguished Nord’s campfire and left the bodies of him and his comrades to the wildlife. They moved out into the Shadowlands, moving more by instinct than anything else. Aithne stretched out with the Force, feeling all around not just for life but for intelligence—a mind at work that might be Chuundar’s Wookiee. The first mind she sensed—apart from Carth and Bastila’s—caught her entirely by surprise. Not only was the mind human, not alien, it was alive to the Force, without the touch of the Darkness she’d sensed in the Sith she’d met on the walkway.

“What—”

“I sense him too,” Bastila said, catching Aithne’s sideways glance. “There is a Jedi here,” she told Carth.

“Another hunter from Malak?”

“Not a Sith,” Bastila corrected. “A Jedi. His mind is not tainted by the Dark Side. I cannot imagine what he may be doing here, however.”

Fighting, it turned out. As they drew near, they heard the sound of snarling and the hum of an active ‘saber in the distance. They rounded a tree the approximate thickness of a skyscraper on Coruscant and navigated its roots to find a human Jedi beset by four katarn—great, hulking quadrupeds; slow and clumsy, but they made up for it by hunting in groups, with brute strength, sheer viciousness, and determined persistence predation. These ones had likely been hunting this man for a while, but he was certainly holding his own.

He was on the shorter side—maybe only a few centimeters taller than Bastila—and looked to be nearly seventy years old. But he was in fighting trim for all that, with powerful shoulders and a gymnast’s build. He didn’t seem to be too bothered by the four katarn attacking him, facing off against them in Form I with what seemed to be a few personal rather than studied variations. His lightsaber, like Aithne’s own, was Consular green.

Even as they watched, the old man finished off the katarn, felling one after the other of them with final but not overly aggressive strokes. He raised his eyes to look at them then—acknowledging their presence in reality and in the Force. He wasn’t even breathing heavily.

“Ah, the damnable racket of battle,” he said. His voice was a rough but fairly warm baritone. He gestured to the dead beasts surrounding him. “Watch yourself. There are even more of these crawling beasts in the underbrush.”

“Doesn’t seem to worry you much,” Aithne answered. “But you have us at a disadvantage.”

The man reattached his lightsaber to his belt, and held out a strong, calloused hand for her to shake. “I’m Jolee,” he replied. “Jolee Bindo. Follow me to my camp, and we’ll talk a bit.”

“Any particular reason you’re camping down here?” Aithne asked, falling into step with the man.

“Well, it isn’t because I like the stink of dead katarn,” Bindo replied. “Keep close. My camp is nearby, under a log.” He caught her eye and grinned, flashing a full set of white, healthy teeth. “Yeah, I live like some burrowing rodent. I fought the Sith, now look at me. Hmph!”

Jolee Bindo led the three of them to his so-called camp site, though “camp” turned out to be an understatement. The “log” Jolee lived under was the approximate size of a warship. It was long and low, a great piece of a fallen trunk that the Jedi had carved out and built up not into a temporary shelter but into a house that had obviously been there for some years. Cheerful light blinked from the windows.

Aithne looked at the Jedi curiously, standing by the door. Jolee Bindo wasn’t on assignment here; he’d been living here for a long time. “Well don’t be all day about it,” he told them. “Come in already. Welcome to my home, such as it is.”

He led them inside. Aithne’s sense of wonder grew. Jolee’s habitation was a masterwork. He’d carved the home piece by piece, so all its furnishings seemed to grow right out of the walls, floor, and ceiling. Pieces of what looked like a starship had been hung up on the walls, supporting the idea that Jolee had crashed, once upon a time, and just . . . chosen to stay. Jolee had hollowed out an earthen pit in the center of the floor and carved a chimney above it, and it looked like that was where Jolee cooked his meals. The bed in the corner was made and pressed with linens that looked like they had to have come from Czerka or the Wookiees but smelled like it had been stuffed with vegetation. In fact, the whole home smelled of forest and wood fires. It was not an unpleasant smell, but it was very different.

“Pull up a stump, and be comfortable,” Jolee suggested. “We should discuss a few things.”

Aithne tilted her head. Then, slowly, she walked over to a bench near the fire pit. Carth and Bastila followed her, and they all sat down. “I think I know how this works,” Aithne said. “You live here, and we’re tourists. As such, you already have a good idea what we’re looking for. You’re willing to help us to it, but only if . . .?”

Jolee was kneeling across from them, building up the fire. “What I guess and what you can tell me might be two different things. Before we get into the matter of information and payment, maybe we should get to know one another a little better, hmm?”

Aithne bowed in assent. “Aithne Moran, Bastila Shan, Jedi Padawans,” she answered, gesturing to herself and Bastila in turn. “Major Carth Onasi, a colleague of ours from the Republic. We’re on a mission from the Jedi Council but seem to have run into a little local trouble. You’re Jolee Bindo. You have a lightsaber and use the Force, but you failed to explain exactly why you’re here.”

The fire had begun to crackle and climb, and Jolee rose to his feet with a groan, pressing his back. He then sat across from them in a wicker chair. “Ah, what is there to tell? Jolee Bindo is the crazy old man in the dangerous woods. I’m content with the impression I give.”

“Meaning, for the purposes of this interview, that’s all we need to know,” Aithne said. “Other than the fact that once upon a time, you fought the Sith. You dropped that too, you see.”

“Did I?” Jolee asked mildly. “You have annoyingly good ears. It doesn’t matter. Those days are gone. Leave them in their graves.” He unclipped his lightsaber from his belt and turned it over in his hand. His eyes glinted with a look similar to Carth’s when he thought of Telos, and he continued in a reflective tone, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I’ve seen my share of the dark and the light, and frankly, both extremes annoy me. Of course, I have felt the rumblings of change . . .”

His words trailed off into a murmur, but just when Aithne was certain the hermit had forgotten them completely, his eyes snapped up and caught hers with an expression of challenge; curiosity; and sharp, searching intelligence. She sensed him examining her through the Force, like a puzzle he was determined to work out. The feeling was unnerving, but it was also—for the first time in a while—unaccompanied by any sense that this strange, solitary Jedi feared her.

That in and of itself was enough for Aithne to like him. Her own Force sense of the man pressed his potential importance on her, even more insistently than it had when she’d met Canderous, before she’d known what was happening. And if things were as they appeared, and Jolee had been separated from the Jedi and the Council and their wars for years, she might be able to trust him.

Bastila was warier. “I can feel the power of the Force within you, old man, but I do not see the taint of the Dark Side. I think you are a servant of the Light, despite what you claim.”

Aithne was amused. “And we’re suspicious of that, are we?”

Bastila didn’t take her gaze off Jolee, but she answered Aithne. “It makes me curious. If this man has not been corrupted by the Dark Side, why has he remained in this place for what has clearly been a considerable time? Surely he could have bartered for passage from this world with Czerka—or if he had objections to that plan, there must have been a spacer or supplier. Well, Jolee?” she challenged him.

“I can assure you I see more gray than dark or light, young lady,” Jolee answered. “I’m just a stubborn old man, tired of the foolishness of others.”

“Alright, we’ll proceed on those terms—strangers on a mission, long-term resident of the area that they’re searching,” Aithne said. “As I said, we’ve become somewhat embroiled in a local power struggle—”

“Yes, among the Wookiees,” Jolee smiled. “Intriguing creatures. I like that they have little patience for bureaucrats. But of course, even here there are hidden things that manipulate.”

He raised a bushy gray eyebrow, and Aithne folded her arms, impressed. “The current Rwookrrorro chieftain’s holding our companion hostage and manipulating us to kill another Wookiee down here for him. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the crazy old wook he wants us to murder?”

Jolee inclined his head. “Maddened with grief, perhaps, but not crazed. I helped him pass to the lower forests where only a Wookiee could follow. Some other matters will determine if you can. There is a barrier that . . . well, we’ll talk more of that in a moment.”

“And you don’t happen to know why Chuundar wants this Wookiee dead?” Aithne probed.

Jolee’s teeth flashed, and he didn’t answer directly. “Czerka Corporation was smart to put that one in power. He’s as good at destroying Wookiee culture as dropping corpses full of Ardroxian Flu. Will you work for him or against him, I wonder? I’ll be interested to see.”

“We’d prefer to work against him,” Aithne answered plainly, “but unless we get to the target, I don’t see us being able to leverage him against the current chieftain. You mentioned a barrier?”

“That Wookiee the only thing you want down there, lass?” Jolee prompted her.

Aithne narrowed her eyes. Beside her, she felt Carth and Bastila both tense. “You know where the Star Map is,” Aithne said.

Jolee clapped his hands three times. “Bravo. I knew that had to be why you were here. The problems of a few Wookiees don’t amount to anything before the concerns of the Jedi. No, you are here for the map.”

Aithne didn’t like that. She glared at Jolee. “We came for the map,” she qualified. “Honestly, on my priority list, figuring out Chuundar and his would-be mark is a lot higher up. The Wookiee he took hostage, Zaalbar, swore a lifedebt to me. I have a responsibility to him. And he’s my friend. However, I can’t just kill the guy Chuundar wants me to kill, especially if he’s a lever that could boot the slavers’ man out of control of Zaalbar’s home village. But if the map and the Wookiee are in the same spot, please, help us get down there. If you want compensation for doing so, tell us what you want and we’ll pay, if it’s reasonable and we can afford the fee.”

“What I want is simple,” Jolee answered. “You must do a task for me and then allow me to join with you. I will then remove certain barriers in your path.”

Aithne hesitated. Bastila had a point. A man as capable as this one seemed, and a Force User—whether or not he was an active Jedi now—could have certainly arranged for transport off Kashyyyk any time he wished. Even if he had crashed here to begin with, he had chosen to remain. Why leave now, with her, on the acquaintance of just a few minutes? Worse, why use what he knew of the Shadowlands as leverage to force the issue? Why try and arrange not just a ride offworld but an indefinite place in their little entourage?

The tactic, more than his refusal to tell much about his background, got Aithne suspicious.

“Is guidance to a single Star Map and a Wookiee worth a billet on our ship with no time limits or restrictions placed on your stay there?” Aithne asked.

“That’ll have to be up to you,” Jolee answered. “What’s your mission worth to you? What price would you pay for the life of your friend? It’s not like I’m going to be a liability. I can help you.”

“You’re sure you don’t want credits instead? Goods in trade?” Aithne asked.

“I’m old but not senile, young woman,” Jolee told her. “I know what I want. Besides, the test is simple. Since they began expanding in the Shadowlands, the Czerka have left me alone for the most part. Until recently, anyway. A group of them set up camp not far from her. Poachers is all they are. I’d like them removed from this place.”

Aithne blinked. The test was simple. It could even prove to be quite enjoyable. And the format indicated Bindo was interested in the welfare of the forest after he left. “You want me to boot some slaving poachers off your lawn? I’m in, as far as that test is concerned. I’m less certain about the billet on my ship. Why us? Why now? And why ask for more than just the ride offworld?”

“Good questions,” Carth muttered.

“Why now is my business,” Jolee answered. “I’ve seen all I wish to here. I’m really sick of the trees. And perhaps your destiny might show me something new. You never know.”

“You want to play tourist saving the galaxy,” Aithne summarized.

“Quiet retirement gets boring,” Jolee replied. “I’ve just decided I want an exciting one.”

“The minute we show up.” Aithne looked at her companions. Carth, predictably, looked suspicious; Bastila, incredibly annoyed.

“Our mission is not something to be taken up on an old man’s whim,” she said. “I do not think we need this person, Aithne. We can find another way.”

“Within the next few days?” Jolee asked. “Without falling down a hole, being eaten by a katarn, or losing your way back?”

That last caught Aithne’s attention. She thought she could find her way back to the elevator topside now. They weren’t too far. It was possible. But she was already worried about their being down here without a Wookiee guide or a Kashyyyk global positioning system. The trees down here could look annoyingly similar, and they took ages to walk around.

“He’s right,” she said. “We need him. Whether we’re trying to find Chuundar’s Wookiee or the Star Map, we don’t want to be down here weeks feeling our way, living off the beasts we kill and tripping over tree roots in the dark. Without knowing where the water is or access to a shower.”

“So we’re stuck with a companion we know nothing about.”

Carth, naturally. Aithne made a face. “Not nothing. He has a lightsaber and uses the Force, and you heard Bastila: he’s free of the corruption of the Dark Side. He’s also been here for years, Carth. I doubt Malak’s had a sleeper agent down here that long.”

“Yeah, but Revan might have, though,” Carth muttered.

Aithne thought back to her dream. “No. I don’t think Revan trusted organic servants by the time they came down here. Right. Jolee, where are your unwelcome guests? How many of them are there?”

Jolee grinned. “They are not that far northeast of here. There are usually five in the area, as far as I can see. The captain of the lot is the one that earned my ire. Mishandle my garden, will he? Hmph!”

Aithne rose. “Well. What must be done is best done now, and all that.” She extended her hand to Jolee, and they shook. “We will talk more about your dreams for an exciting retirement and what all you imagine they entail, but for now, you’ve carried your point.”

“Good,” Jolee said, walking Aithne and the others back to the door. “Return to me here, and we will see how you have done. Shoo! Shoo!”

Aithne left with the others but stopped a ways away, just out of easy earshot of Jolee’s cabin. She sighed, and turned around to face Carth and Bastila, both of whom looked stormier than the dimness of the Shadowlands could warrant. “Alright. I’ll take your criticism now.”

Carth began. “Look. I get where you’re coming from. These trees all look the same, and Zaalbar’s in danger, and with bounty hunters already showing up, we shouldn’t stay in any one place too long. But do you really think taking on the new guy just because he asks—for reasons he won’t explain—is a good idea? Bindo’s more stubborn about answering a question than I am, for goodness’s sake!”

“You’ll remember I didn’t have a problem with that,” Aithne pointed out. “Just a problem with your blowing hot and cold. I didn’t press Zaalbar for details about his life, either. Turns out I was wrong there. But Jolee—I think I’ve actually heard of him.”

“He was a great traveler and adventurer among the Jedi before the war with Exar Kun,” Bastila confirmed. “Yet something of an eccentric and a rebel, if I recall. He never advanced far within the ranks, and he disappeared from the records decades ago. I do not believe he can provide any substantial aid to our quest beyond our immediate need, and it troubles me that he seeks to force his company upon us.”

“I was bothered by that too,” Aithne admitted, “right up until he used the word ‘destiny.’ Now I kind of think he has some sort of ability with the Force in that line—a capacity to sense the potential around or within a person. Will you start calling me out as arrogant and insufferable again if I cite what you and the Council have both said about the potential dramatics in front of both of us?”

Bastila scowled at her. “No,” she said, “yet for Jolee Bindo to wish to accompany the two of us out of idle curiosity seems frivolous.”

Aithne shrugged. “To that, I imagine that if I’d stayed somewhere like the Kashyyyk Shadowlands for years—for whatever reason—and a couple of good-looking people with a fascinating destiny came along, I might want to up and follow them home too.”

“Wait—just two good-looking people?” Carth asked, feigning concern.

Aithne looked down her nose at him. “Two good-looking people with fascinating destinies, I said,” she sniffed. “You’re boring.”

Carth grinned. “As long as I’m still handsome.” This seemed to mean he was finished making his objections. Although she’d set the joke up to ease the tension, Aithne lost her nerve now, and just offered him an uncertain smile in return where a couple of weeks ago she might have insulted him again or flirted instead. She looked back at Bastila.

“Everyone feel heard?” she asked. “We do need Jolee’s help rather badly right now, whatever happens after we leave Kashyyyk.”

Bastila huffed. “I admire your way of making such weighty decisions about the long term based on such a short-term advantage,” she said. “Nevertheless, the Council placed you in charge, not I. As you like.”

“If you have a better idea . . .” Aithne invited her, extending her hand.

Bastila let out a long, frustrated breath. “I do not,” she said at last.

“Well then. Let’s go kick the poachers off Jolee’s turf before he vacates the premises.”

They set off in the direction Jolee had pointed them in, and it wasn’t too long before Aithne spotted the Czerka campfires through the trees. She motioned the others to a halt and considered her approach. While she’d had few qualms about killing the slaving party who had murdered their captive up on the walkway—they’d shot to kill first after she’d offered them what she still considered a merciful punishment for their actions, however severe it might have been by Czerka’s own standards—she was less inclined toward open violence here. The hunters would have been as likely or likelier to be written off by their superiors as the patrol. They were stationed in the Shadowlands, after all. But for so many to go missing in such a short span of time might get someone at the base asking questions, and Ebon Hawk was still right in the middle of the Czerka station. Canderous and Juhani could no doubt hold off any attackers for a long time, but subjecting them to the risk of attack with Sasha and a distraught Mission onboard as well was a risk Aithne couldn’t conscience. Besides, she didn’t want to hold that she wasn’t going to assassinate someone for Chuundar then immediately turn around and kill a bunch of people for Jolee, just because she happened to like him better and the people he was offended by less.

She tilted her head slightly toward a nearby root. “Stay behind there,” she told Carth and Bastila. “I’m going to scout out the camp more closely, and I want to do it without alarming the men if possible.”

Carth and Bastila didn’t like it, but she wouldn’t even really be going out of view, so they were forced to be satisfied that if Czerka started shooting at her—in panic or for worse reasons—they would be able to help her in a hurry. Accordingly, Aithne crept closer. She made out five figures around the campfires—all human. Czerka had a nasty record of discrimination against nonhumans. Then she saw two others returning from the trees off to her right, dragging a string of tach corpses. Aithne clenched her fists. This single party would probably kill two or three times as many in a day. It would leave the kinrath and katarn and other predators down here hungry and could drive them to desperation. The insect population would soar, which could have a negative impact on the trees themselves. She hated careless hunting, particularly when the hunters ended up discarding most of their kills. Czerka would harvest the glands of the tachs and dispose of the remains. The only good of the harvest would be to liquor aficionados and users of certain types of hallucinogenic spice who could just as easily get buzzed or high off of other substances.

So. Seven men total. Armed, Aithne saw, with standard Czerka-issue blaster rifles. No real armor to speak of—and they wouldn’t be trained up to a military standard either. Fighting them shouldn’t be a deadly prospect, if it came to that . . . but then Aithne caught sight of a few pieces of equipment that offered another solution.

Czerka wasn’t equipped or prepared to deal with the predators of the Shadowlands either. Their guns and traps were really only good for killing tachs. So the company had equipped the hunting party with several sonic emitters—rare, expensive equipment that drove larger animals off by giving off a frequency at a pitch painful to several. If she was somehow able to sabotage or destroy that equipment, the hunting party would likely be forced to withdraw sooner or later, and they wouldn’t be able to return very quickly either. It might, she thought, even be possible to sabotage the emitters in such a way that she wasn’t at all connected with their failure.

The general darkness of the Shadowlands made it fairly easy to approach one of the guards on duty near the sonic emitters without alerting the rest of the camp, and the shrieking of the tachs and echoing noises through the trees made it difficult for her conversation with him to be overheard. It took some doing to persuade him not to shoot her at first; he was jumpy from hours awake and on duty in an area where nearly everything moving was a deadly enemy. Aithne was normally averse to using the Force to persuade people to do what she wanted. It felt sneaky and manipulative. It felt like taking people’s choice away. She reasoned that, in this instance, since the alternative was probably murder, she was doing the Czerka hunting party a kindness. Anyway, the guard wanted to leave the Shadowlands too. Of course he did. Flashing her spacer badge and skirting around her reasons for being in the Shadowlands herself, she got him talking about how miserable and scared he was then “suggested” he sabotage his own emitter. Aithne then snuck around the camp’s perimeter and repeated her performance with a second guard. Judging the failure of two emitters would probably be sufficient, she returned to Carth and Bastila.

 “What were you doing?” Bastila hissed.

Aithne motioned for the others to get comfortable. “With any luck, encouraging our friends to leave in a way that won’t be traced back to us at the outpost—at least, not in any way that should invite Czerka retaliation. We’re going to need to stake the camp out to make sure it works, though.”

They didn’t have long to wait. Twenty minutes after they’d taken up their post, a bone-chilling roar rang out through the camp. A massive creature, bigger than the rancor beast Aithne had encountered in the Tarisian sewers, lumbered into the clearing where the Czerka had their camp. It was a dull, sickly yellow, with spikes that dripped poison running down its back and tail. Its claws extended nearly a foot from its massive hands, and serrated tusks protruded from its mouth.

Aithne froze. She’d thought it would be a group of katarn or kinrath. She hadn’t expected anything like this. Master Dorak’s apprentice back on Dantooine had described such a creature once—a terentatek, a Jedi-killer. Bred by the Sith, terentateks fed on the Force, and had once hunted Force users to near-extinction. The Jedi had in turn made them extinct, or so it had been thought.

Aithne reached out beside her and gripped Bastila’s forearm. “Don’t move,” she said, as quietly as she could. “Don’t even breathe. And whatever you do, don’t reach out to the Force!”

Bastila flicked her eyes to Aithne to show she understood. The Czerka down in the camp ran every which direction from the monster, but one guard was too slow. The terentatek, with uncanny swiftness, pounced upon the unfortunate watchman. Aithne was forced to watch as the beast clubbed the man down with its tail. Its claws sliced the man open like paper, and the mighty beast knelt to the steaming corpse to eat. Aithne closed her eyes. It was probably for the best. The others would have two reasons not to return too quickly. But if the thing wasn’t satisfied when it finished its dinner!

The beast snorted. It raised its head, fangs dripping blood. Its green eyes caught at every speck of light in the darkness and reflected it back. They were more intelligent than the eyes of any animal she’d seen. The terentatek surveyed the darkness. Aithne wanted to tremble, but she willed herself to stay absolutely still as the monster’s gaze swept right past her and her companions. The beast sniffed the air. But finally, after a moment that seemed to last an eternity, it lumbered off into the distance toward the deeper forest, and Aithne could breathe again.

JOLEE

The travelers were all passed out on his floor asleep. They’d be his companions first thing tomorrow. Been a while since he’d had some of them. After supper and a two-hour chat, Jolee already felt the consequences of years of living alone. He was anxious, irritated. Part of him wanted to kick the strangers straight back out again, just like the Czerka he’d had them dispatch above as a test. He breathed through it. View it as exertion, old man. A test of your own. The first trial of many that lie ahead.

At first blush, they were all good, kind young people. The man, Carth, and the younger Jedi, Bastila, were definite hero-types. The older Jedi—the woman calling herself Aithne Moran now—not so much, but even she was displaying an admirable loyalty to her companions on this visit to the Shadowlands. And she was sharp. She’d contrived a way to get the Czerka poachers back to their outpost with only a single casualty—and that one unlikely to be traced back to or blamed on her. Whether she’d done it to be merciful or practical, he couldn’t guess. Her emotions were difficult to make out, her intentions even more so. The web of possibility around her was far too complicated, almost blinding. He wasn’t certain Aithne Moran was the same person who had visited the Shadowlands three years ago and locked the Star Map, but the feel to her was similar enough that he was curious, dammit. The person who’d visited then certainly hadn’t been with the Jedi or the Republic.

He didn’t know much about what was going on in the galaxy these days, and he hadn’t known any more back then, but he’d still known a Sith when he’d sensed one. He’d shielded and tracked the presence to the Star Map, several hours’ walk away from his home in a particularly Dark area of the forest. He’d found the Sith there installing that pesky holointerface. It’d been impossible to tell if they were male or female, or even to be certain what species they were. Very stereotypical, this Sith had been—big black cloak engulfing the body; war mask obscuring the face. Left a Sith looking deadly and mysterious, which was as good as charisma for a young lord just starting their rise to power. Granted an extra aura of intimidation. Made it easier to frighten others, or to relate to particularly racist individuals. Concealed the expressions and body language of those who hadn’t quite learned to lie or bluff.

Still the Sith had left Jolee uneasy. Deeply uneasy. Despite the amateur costume theater, there was considerable heft and power to the Sith’s presence. And if this one had already switched to nonorganic guards over valuable intelligence points—well, that was a sign of precocity. That meant the Sith was powerful enough that all their organic servants were untrustworthy: already cowering in terror or plotting murder. They had reason and sense enough to have developed a healthy paranoia. And the scope and feel of the Force matrices that surrounded them—some of them already broken, emanating chaos—there was a sense of destiny hanging over the Sith like nothing he’d seen since Nomi Sunrider, Exar Kun, or Qel-Droma. And worse.

He'd left. The Sith had come to the Shadowlands on a mission of secrecy. If they found him, he had no doubts they could destroy him. He was old and out of practice fighting anything but the dumb beasts of Kashyyyk. But the Star Map had drawn him back, and in three years, he hadn’t been able to get past the security system that Sith had installed.

If Aithne Moran was the same person he had seen then, he didn’t understand why they had seemingly allied with a Jedi Padawan and a soldier of the Republic, why Moran would give no indications of having ever been here before. The old urge to explore, to see new things, to learn was rising in Jolee again, and Aithne Moran was a kind of mystery he had never before encountered.

There weren’t many, even among the Jedi Order, who saw fates and destinies the way Jolee did. In the same sense that some Jedi warriors saw the exact places to strike the enemies or obstacles they encountered in the field to make them all come crashing down, or some tacticians intuited openings in a battle, Jolee had always been able to see the cracks and pivot points of the world. He rarely understood what they meant until the things they signified came to pass, but he had had more of a knack for finding trouble than almost any Jedi in the Order back in the day.

Except maybe, trouble’s found me this time. Literally shown up on his doorstep, as if to say time to get up and get your wrinkled ass back out there.

Jolee made a face at the girl sleeping on his floor. He wondered if Sith Lords had been this young back in the day. He’d be willing to bet the lass wasn’t even thirty.

And is she a Sith Lord, or isn’t she? She was a trifle pale, but in a way that suggested her ancestors hadn’t come from a slice of ground where the stars were overly radiant, not in a way that suggested she’d conducted abominable experiments with Force necromancy or poured her life’s energy into destroying her enemies. When her eyes were open, they were a little on the golden side, but not to any remarkable or unnatural extent. Warm, intelligent, and sparkling—not sickly or filled with any particular rage.

He could almost think he’d mistaken her for someone else entirely, but the power was just the same. Swirling Force, suffocating sense of impending destiny, all of it. Tomorrow would clench it, he thought. If she wasn’t the same Sith who came here three years ago, she would most likely fail at the holointerface, just as he and Freyyr had. It was possible she might get past it, that she might be smarter than he was or have technical skills enough to disable it some other way. But if the thing recognized her . . .

What would he do if it did? If she was a Sith Lord returned? Then, he thought, he would want to know exactly what she was and why behind the mask was a girl wild, maybe a little unconventional, but definitely not fallen to the Dark Side, and who genuinely seemed to have forgotten being here. And if she wasn’t—well, her destiny still seemed promising. Either way, he was in for a time.

Chapter Text

CARTH

Carth woke up and for a moment didn’t remember where he was. There was a smell of plant matter and wood smoke. Animals were shrieking everywhere, at varying distances. He was too warm, sweating, and grimy and gritty besides. Rough camp. Forest. Then it came back—Jolee’s cabin in the Kashyyyk Shadowlands, looking for the Star Map and for the Wookiee that could help them rescue Zaalbar. One way or another.

Bastila was still asleep off to his left on the other side of Jolee’s fire pit. Jolee was a lump in the corner atop the bed. He’d made them a pretty tasty dinner, but his hospitality had stopped there. He’d said if he was going adventuring again at his age, he was damn well going to spend his last night sleeping in his own bed, and they could have the floor. Their young bones would take it better. Just as if they’d asked him to join them instead of being extorted into taking him.

Aithne was up, though. Her back was to him. A dozen curls had escaped yesterday’s braid, let out of its pins to lay like a frayed rope down her back. She also wasn’t wearing pants. He caught an eyeful of an indecent amount of leg before jerking away in embarrassment. “Aithne! For crying out loud!” he yelped.

“Good, you’re up,” Aithne said, without turning around. She was rummaging in the packs—rummaging in his pack, he realized. “Where’s my fiber armor?”

“Aithne, you didn’t think you could wait to change clothes?”

“Don’t be a prude. You’re lifelong military. I don’t imagine I have anything you haven’t seen a thousand times, and a couple times on me on Taris. And I’m wearing underwear,” Aithne said. She sounded frustrated. “Besides, you were all asleep. Now, the fiber armor. Where is it?”

Carth tried to get past her dismissal of the times he’d taken care of her in a coma on Taris. It wasn’t an indignity he liked to think about or would have thought she could brush off so casually. He tried to remember the armor she might be talking about. “The set we picked up in the Vulkar base? You didn’t sell it to the Outcasts, did you?”

“No, I wore it that day, to rescue Bastila, become dueling champion, and take the Sith headquarters. You didn’t notice? You didn’t pack it? You’ve got the armory pack and spare weapons; you always do.”

Carth rolled off his bedroll and stood, pressing his back. Jolee might claim Carth’s young bones could take sleeping on the floor better; his bones themselves were complaining they weren’t as young as they used to be. He kept his back to Aithne. “Yeah, and I brought you and Bastila a Jedi robe each. But with a couple of vibroswords, two spare blasters, the shields, and my canteen, that was all I could do. I’m not a bantha. I can only carry so much.”

He heard her still behind him. “Well, that’s no good,” she muttered finally. “I wore what I did yesterday specifically to avoid advertising I’m a Jedi to anyone I didn’t end up killing. We’ve already got bounty hunters enough after us without them learning I’ve got some new tricks. Would’ve thought you’d think of that and pack better.”

“Well, if I’d known about the bounty hunters before leaving the ship yesterday, I might have done,” Carth retorted, “When I saw you’d left with your lightsaber yesterday—”

“Armband holsters. They were on the requisition list before we left Dantooine—”

“Which you sent with Mission and Bastila. You put me in charge of astrogation, food, and fuel supply.”

Silence. Then a huff. “Stop being rational when I want to pick a fight.”

Carth scoffed. “Pass me a canteen, would you? And a new shirt.” He reached behind his back and took the items as she handed them over to him.

“Water barrel’s in the corner if you want to wash,” Jolee told them in a muffled voice, head still buried under his coverlet, though how he stood it in the warmth and humidity of Kashyyyk was beyond Carth. “You all smell riper than third-rate Gamorrean thugs on Nal Hutta.”

“Don’t suppose you’d lend me your razor, would you?” Carth asked him, rubbing his chin. “You keep your beard pretty neat for living out in the sticks like this.”

“Use your own,” Jolee said. “The lass is going to make you go back for her armor anyway.”

Bastila let out a long, discontented groan. “What is all this talk about armor?” she yawned, sitting up, her own hair fallen somewhat out of its elaborate style during the night. Her cheeks were flushed, and she looked even younger than usual.

Aithne tossed her an energy bar. “I’ve got a feeling,” she said. “There’s fighting ahead, more than I want to take on in casuals. I want to take a leaf from Ordo’s book. He’s always saying it’s no dishonor for a Jedi expecting a battle to wear some armor, so I want mine, but Carth forgot to pack it.”

“Trust your feelings,” Bastila told her. “I too sense that there may be strife ahead for us today.”

“Beyond the usual kinrath and katarn,” Aithne agreed. “We’re going back. Now. I don’t think we’ll have a lot of time when we find the Wookiee and that Star Map.”

“Expecting that much of a fight, are you?” Jolee growled, sitting up himself. He shot a look at Carth. “Told you, sonny,” he said. Then he looked around the room. “You lot make more noise than a bunch of tachs in mating season. Huh. Nice legs,” he said, apparently to Aithne, who still hadn’t put on pants.

“Hey, keep it civil, old man!” Carth started, but Aithne cut over him.

“And you made more noise last night than a pack of charging katarn,” she told Jolee. “Creeping around the hut with all of us trying to sleep. You think I didn’t hear you?” There was a slithering sound, and then she said, “Onasi, the pants are on. It should be alright for your delicate sensibilities to turn around now. And while I appreciate the defense, if Jolee or anyone is uncivil, I’ll tell them.”

“Hah,” Jolee said, and when Carth looked around, he saw the old man looking between him and Aithne with gleaming eyes. “I see.” He turned to Aithne then. “If you want to make a trip back to the Czerka outpost and your ship, you might as well do it now. We’ve a rough road ahead of us, and I need to pack what possessions I intend to bring on this fool crusade anyway. The elevator is ten minutes to the front of my camp, marked with four torches that are always lit around it. Stray more than a single tree’s width left or right, and you’ll miss it. Will you need help finding it?”

Aithne shook her head. “We were there just yesterday. I’m not confident about my ability to find anything else down here, but I’d be a pretty poor scout if I couldn’t remember a route I went as recently as all that. Expect Carth and me back around midmorning.”

“Not me?” Bastila said, both surprised and hurt.

Aithne shook her head. “I want you to take command back on Ebon Hawk. Do the astrogation calculations for a return to Dantooine and resupply from the outpost. Get anything Juhani and Canderous say we need for Sasha that we haven’t got already. And then, I want you to be prepared to mount a defense or get offworld if fighting breaks out like we suspect.”

That made sense, and Bastila saw it. She got up and started to get ready. 

They left Jolee and started back toward the spaceport. Carth spent most of the trip back to the Czerka outpost and the time they needed to get in better order for the day back on Ebon Hawk thinking about what he wanted to say to Aithne. They’d left things in a bad place. After he left the fresher, shaved, and redressed himself in some Republic-issue plate they’d found confiscated in the Sith base on Taris, he found her in the garage, cleaned up and standing over the workbench. Her eyes were closed, and several parts of a disassembled lightsaber were floating in front of her. He waited while they drifted into a mass and clicked together. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

“That the ‘saber you took from that assassin yesterday?” he asked.

“Yep,” she answered. “Jolee eventually stopped staring at me, wondering what I was, and went to bed. Purified the crystal then, but I wanted to rework the hilt before we headed out again.” She activated the lightsaber, and the blade came out, blinding white now instead of Sith red. Aithne stared at it for a long time, then deactivated it and slid the hilt up her right sleeve. “Have to represent the Jedi Order properly to whatever we kill today. Let’s go.”

Carth fell into step with her and they headed together toward the airlock. “All this scrutiny’s really getting to you, huh, beautiful?”

Aithne didn’t look at him. “No. I’ve got dozens of Jedi looking at me like I’m the salvation or doom of the entire galazy and my fellow Padawan thinking she’s the only one who can keep me from being the latter. Meanwhile, our senior knight’s of the opinion I’m gonna keep her from falling to the Dark Side right after I started this Jedi gig. I’m letting down Zaalbar and Mission weeks after I promised to take care of them.” Her voice was clipped and cool, but the anger underneath it boiled. “You and Canderous are both convinced I’m a deserter from one side or other of the Mandalorian Wars and lying about it, and I’ve got a princess-sized kill order on my head. Gotta say, after years of being on my own with nobody and nothing else to worry about it, I think I’m adjusting just fine.”

“Well, when you put it that way . . .” Carth joked, but the joke petered out. He quickened his step to keep up with Aithne, who was striding fast enough she was halfway to a jog through the Czerka port. She kept her eyes on the pathway, ignoring the slaver gangs bundling strings of chained Wookiees onto transports, the green and gold uniforms all around, but every time they passed a slave or a member of the corporation, her jaw got tighter. “Jolee?” he asked in an undertone.

Aithne flashed their papers at the guard by the exit to the walkway. She walked a few more paces before she answered. “He’s a nosy old busybody interested in what we plan to do with the Star Maps. He probably saw Revan a few years ago and got curious, though I doubt he knows what he saw. He’s been out of action a while, but I know his type. He’s not a threat; he might be a help; and what’s more, I don’t feel like he’s afraid of me. Automatically makes him better than any Jedi or Sith I’ve met lately. Makes him better than a lot of people.”

Carth wasn’t sure what to say to that for a moment. When Aithne got angry—when she had a reason to be angry—she had a way of bludgeoning a person to death with a rant then running him up against the silence. He stared through the trees. “Why are they so afraid of you?” he said, more to himself than to her, really.

She responded instantly, her voice cracking like one of the slaver whips. “Why are you?”

Carth thought about it for a while. “I’m not sure I’d say I’m afraid of you—not the woman I know, anyway. There are things about you that don’t add up for me. That’s not the same thing as being afraid.”

Aithne didn’t seem too mollified. “You file a report with the Republic on that bounty chit yet?”

“I haven’t exactly had the time and connectivity to file anything.”

Aithne’s eyes slid toward him and then away. “I wouldn’t blame you if you had, or do in the future. I know it looks bad.”

“It does,” Carth conceded, “and it doesn’t. But what do I have on you really? That the Sith think you aren’t who the Republic records say you are. I still have no proof you’re anything different and no idea who it is that they think you are. But . . . if that chit tells us anything, if all you’ve done so far tells us anything, it’s that whoever you are, you’re on our side for now. I guess I’ve decided to trust that—and that you’re right: This working atmosphere we’ve had can’t go on.”

They walked a few more paces. Then Aithne spoke in a much softer voice. “Thank you.”

“Did you talk to Mission?” Carth asked, changing the subject.

Aithne looked tired. “She handled us back without Big Z about as well as you might expect. I don’t like that we left him there overnight, Carth.”

“Not much we could’ve done, unless we did attack the village, and there are a lot of reasons that’d be a bad idea,” Carth observed.

Beside him, Aithne stopped walking, and at first, Carth thought they were going to have another argument. Then he saw the way she was standing—the way her eyes had narrowed and were darting from left to right, the way her weight had shifted. His skin prickled, and even as she crossed her wrists in front of her to draw her lightsabers from her arm holsters, he went for his blasters.

The first viper kinrath put its first leg over the lip of the walkway ahead and to the right. Carth started firing. There were three of them. He and Aithne killed them in about forty-five seconds and started moving down the walkway toward the elevator like they’d never been interrupted.

After a moment, Carth gathered his courage. “About the way I’ve been acting—I want to apologize to you. You’ve been asking me to give you a chance to process things, and I just—I’ve been running right over that, over and over. I don’t have the right to just expect you to talk to me, whether I like being left out of the loop or not. I haven’t thought about what this all must be like for you, and it’s made things for you harder than they need to be. So. I’m sorry. Will you accept my apology?”

“Even knowing you still think I’m not who I say I am?” Aithne challenged him, but not in a way that made him think she wanted a response. Carth didn’t try one. There wasn’t a point. They’d had the argument multiple times by now. She obviously wasn’t who she said she was. He’d finally come around to the idea that that didn’t make her an enemy. She would have to be satisfied with that. It was killing him not to know everything.

Aithne asked him another question then—a question he hadn’t been expecting. “Remember back on Dantooine? Right after the ruin? I said I didn’t want to talk with you because it’d be like an echo chamber.” Carth remembered. He waited. “Ever since you told me the Jedi wanted me on Endar Spire, you’ve asked a lot of the same questions I have,” she said.

She paused. “I can’t explain the Sith bounty. I know it’s suspicious, but I don’t know who they think I am or why they think I’m valuable. I can’t help that you and Canderous think that understanding Mando culture after a few gigs dealing with them and a knack for languages means I must’ve been involved in the war. It’s exhausting and . . . unbelievably frustrating never to be taken at face value. But the rest of it? What the Council wants with me, why they’re so damn scared, why I’m in charge of our mission? My bond with Bastila? My supposed destiny. The bounty. Revan.” Her voice got quieter and quieter as she listed the questions he’d had about her and their mission. “I don’t understand any of that either, and like you, I think there’s more than they’re telling us. It’s got me more scared than the Council is, I think. So, yes: I’ve been struggling. You’ve made it worse. But not because you’ve been wrong. Because, for the most part, I think you’re right.”

“And they’re using you,” Carth said, slowing his pace. “Making you an asset without telling you the risks. And Bastila’s what? Your handler?”

Aithne stopped to face him. She looked surprised he was following her, wary, but she gave a slight—very slight—little nod. Carth’s stomach clenched. He’d noted Aithne’s suitability for Republic spec ops back on Taris, and while he hadn’t ever forced anyone into service himself or strong-armed them into a position they didn’t volunteer for, he knew the war was getting desperate for the Republic. Aithne wasn’t the only person the Republic had ever pressed into service. He knew men who’d wanted to retire who were still fighting against their will, and of special agents who would have preferred staying in the regs. He could imagine the Jedi Council might be in a similar position to the brass in the Republic fleet.  They might have seen Aithne’s talent in the Force and decided they needed her as soon as possible, whether or not they had the resources to train her well. They might be insecure about the ethics of using her, though. It could explain their nervousness about her falling to the Dark Side and wanting to keep one of their best Jedi on her.

“Juhani?” he asked.

This time, Aithne shook her head. “Juhani’s auxiliary. As uninformed about whatever the Council wants with me as we are. The equivalent of a Jedi soldier, a decent warrior, but not Bas’s special forces. I think they legitimately think she’ll help us. There also might be a desire, on her part or theirs, to get her a certain distance away from the enclave and memories or influences there, to remind me how easy it can be to fall to the Dark Side, or to encourage me to stay Light-Sided by mentoring her. She was impressed by our talk in the grove.”

Comparing Bastila to spec ops and Juhani to the regs made sense, Carth thought, and moved on. “What are you going to do? You don’t really seem the type to sit back and let yourself be used. You planning to demand access?” He would.

Aithne shook her head again. “I’ve caught them lying to me enough times I wouldn’t trust it. First and most obviously about enclave occupancy during our time on Dantooine—you saw that almost-empty academy. There was no real reason the Jedi needed to quarter Bas on Ebon Hawk except to keep an eye on me, and there’ve been other times. But I need to keep on good terms. I want Malak and the Sith defeated too, and dead if we can possibly manage it. I need Jedi support to provide for Mission and Zaalbar once we get him back. Still, it’s got to the point where I don’t want to ignore things anymore.” She turned away then and started walking again, and Carth followed her.

“What stuck out to you yesterday?” she asked him then.

“Aside from the bounty?” Carth thought, then more on a hunch rooted in what he’d seen from Aithne herself than on anything he’d seen regarding their situation, he said, “Those last few moments of the fight with Calo Nord—was there something in the way Bastila took that knife for you?”

Aithne was satisfied. “Bingo.” She explained what she had observed—the way Bastila’s manner in the moment had indicated to her that the Padawan was conditioned by her superiors to prioritize Aithne’s safety over her own, regardless of Bastila’s Battle Meditation. “She’s a Sentinel, not a Guardian. Battle support, not a front-line warrior. She knows precisely how important she is to the Republic war effort, and even though she likes me now more than she did, she’s not actually the type to take a knife in the side just for the sake of friendship. You are. Mission is. She’s the type to do it out of duty.”

“So, what?” Carth asked. “You’re more important to the war than Bastila?” It’d be consistent with the bounty rewards on the Sith chit. “Has the Council had a vision about you or something?” If they had, had someone on Dantooine leaked it to the Sith?

“If they have, they haven’t told me,” Aithne answered. She hesitated, glanced at him, and seemed to gather her own nerve for a moment. Then she told him her theory: that she was sharing the Star Map visions with Bastila over their Force bond, but that the visions themselves belonged to her. “I think I’m somehow resonating with the part of the Cosmic Force that used to be Darth Revan and channeling her memories.”

Carth remembered she’d explained how her visions felt, the way she tapped into thoughts and emotions about the things she saw that didn’t belong to her but made sense for Darth Revan. How Bastila, when they talked about their visions, only ever seemed to have gotten visuals and some audio, without everything attached. The way the visions Aithne was having didn’t answer the description of any of the kinds of visions detailed in the Jedi records she’d read on Dantooine—glimpses of the future or some Force-sensitive location in the present, or symbols that could lead to enlightenment—but were much more consistent with memories of someone else’s past.

He turned it all over in his head. “You aren’t messing with me, right? You think you’re actually seeing Revan’s memories?”

“It’s not like I’m in love with the idea, Carth,” Aithne snapped. “It’s just what makes the most sense. Like at crucial times—when I met Bastila, when we arrived on Dantooine, before we get to a Star Map—I’m remembering her memories.” He noticed there were dark circles under her eyes, and when her mouth set, he saw lines beside it he hadn’t noticed her having before. “The scary part is, I’m really starting to think that Bastila and the entire Jedi Council know that that’s what’s happening.”

“You think that’s why they’re scared of you,” Carth concluded. “That these memories—however they got there—are real somehow, and doing something to you. And the Council’s what? Letting it happen because they need it?” All this was way above his paygrade, but he could follow, barely. If all this was true, Aithne would be more of a resource than an operative to the Jedi—something that made more sense than her being released from training after just six weeks. If she was accessing Revan’s memories somehow, the Jedi might be trying to use her as a sort of walking conduit into Revan’s information on the Star Forge, the intelligence they thought was the key to the Sith advance. And if the Sith knew the Jedi knew about whatever Aithne was doing, it also made sense they would be desperate to stop Aithne, whatever the cost.

“How is it happening, though? How do you think you’re accessing Revan’s memories?”

Aithne hesitated. “I want to research it when I get back to Dantooine and the Archives,” she said, which meant she probably didn’t know. “Force possession, maybe. Some form of necromancy or essence transfer.”

“That doesn’t sound like something the Jedi would normally approve of.”

Aithne pursed her lips. “No—any of it would be decidedly Dark Side—but people will do a lot of things when their backs are up against the wall. But I’m also not sure it’s the Jedi at all. That’d make the most sense. Otherwise, why did they want me, even before Taris? But it could be whatever’s left of Darth Revan, reaching out somehow. There also might be a more natural way all this is happening I haven’t read about or thought of yet. I don’t know.”

With everything laid out, Carth could understand how Aithne had been feeling overwhelmed. Even if she was wrong about her visions, just thinking she was experiencing the thought processes of one of most monstrous Sith in living memory had to be hell for her. And if the Jedi—or even worse, whatever was left of Revan—had been messing with her head? If there was some kind of uncertainty about what might happen because of it? He had to shudder.

“One thing your theory doesn’t explain, though—” he said. “Where does Bastila come in? What’s the deal with this bond the two of you have? You said you thought that was the most important thing before, right? That you dreamt of her before you two ever met and you think it might play into why you were recruited to Endar Spire.”

“Right,” Aithne confirmed. “There’s going to end up being three questions here. One: How am I tapping into Revan’s memories? Two: How do the Sith know about it? And three: Where does Bastila come in? The most important one to me personally is the first, because I think the answer will play into the level of danger I’m in for here, and I’ve decided I want to know. The second answer could be important to the Republic and the Jedi because there’s been some kind of leak, and we need to find it. The third answer—I don’t know. But it might tell me what the Jedi really want from the pair of us.”

They were interrupted then by another group of wandering kinrath, but when the enormous tetrapods were steaming on their backs, Carth asked again, “What are you going to do?”

Aithne was quiet for a while. Then she said, “Take the visions as they come. Try to lead us to Malak’s center of operations. Study up at the Archives and try to figure out how I’m getting the visions, ways to isolate that part of my consciousness from the rest. Ways to block Bastila out and create, manage, and break Force bonds. I need to know that anyway.” She paused, opened her mouth, and for a moment, he thought she might tell him something else. Then she just shrugged and tried a smile. “Try not to turn into or become otherwise possessed by an evil Sith Lord, maybe?”

“Yeah, that’d put a damper on saving the galaxy.” They walked on in silence for a while then, almost to the elevator. Carth worried about Aithne. He had a feeling that Bastila and the Jedi Council were starting to get to her, that they had her half convinced she actually was in danger of falling into the same kind of evil as Darth Revan. The nasty part was he couldn’t come right out and deny it. A lot of Jedi had gone bad in and after the Mandalorian Wars. Revan and Malak had been heroes once, and there had been hundreds under them just as brave and well-intentioned, if they weren’t as powerful or prominent. All but a handful who hadn’t been killed had deserted the Republic and turned Sith. Something in the war or in the Dark Side of the Force had corrupted them. There was a real danger to Jedi that nobody who paid attention could ignore. He didn’t want to think Aithne was capable of that kind of evil, but who was to say that if she’d been recruited earlier and gone to war like the others that she wouldn’t have made the same choices they had?

 Looking at her now, Carth decided he wasn’t going to let it happen. Bastila—young, inexperienced, and sometimes a little too full of herself to know it—wasn’t going to be the only person keeping Aithne in the Light. And if it wasn’t Revan themself haunting Aithne somehow, if the Jedi had somehow drawn the Sith Lord into Aithne’s head, he and Aithne would find out and hold them accountable. She didn’t deserve to have that monster in her dreams. If Aithne could end Malak and the Sith, great, but the Republic didn’t have to sacrifice her soul to do it. She had a family now. She had a life to live. He didn’t want to see that wasted.

“Aithne,” he started— “If I can help you in any way, just tell me, okay? I don’t know what more I can do than I’m already doing—flying the ship, shooting some bad guys, helping to tutor Mission when you’re busy—but I want to do whatever I can. I—I don’t have access to any records that might help your research; if I did, I’d offer. But if you need the assistance of the Republic, later—”

“You’ll do what you can for a damsel in distress?” Aithne suggested. She sighed again, and just when he was thinking he’d screwed up again and wondering exactly how many times a woman could reject a man when he hadn’t ever really made a committed pass at her himself, Aithne reached out, looped her arm through his, and leaned her head against his shoulder. “You really can’t help yourself, flyboy, can you? You know, I don’t think I really want you to? You have a way of forcing a girl into the worst kinds of inconsistency.”

Carth smiled. “I kind of like your kind of inconsistency,” he admitted. Actions said more than words did, and despite everything Aithne said, her actions were almost always in his favor. “But as far as forcing you into anything—crap. You know, I’m actually starting to think that rumor you were press-ganged into service is just another front.”

“I really should’ve turned pirate out of spite,” Aithne mused, instead of answering the implicit question, but she squeezed his arm. Ahead, Carth saw the elevator through the gloom of Kashyyyk, and a figure that was Gorwooken, waiting for them. And eager as he was to finish the stuff they had to do in the Shadowlands, get Big Z back, and get offworld before more bounty hunters showed up, he was a little disappointed to see they’d got back to the elevator attendant so fast. “I didn’t want an echo chamber, and now I do,” Aithne said quietly, returning to the theme of inconsistency. “I want a wall to bounce all this off of. I want a friend.” She hesitated again. “And I want a witness.”

A chill went down his spine at the implication. While she was cooperating with the Jedi—to defeat Malak, to punish the Sith for Taris and make sure nothing like it ever happened again, and because it was the easiest way for a woman like her to take care of Mission and Zaalbar—Aithne was not okay with what was happening to her. And in asking him to be a witness, she was implying that someday when this was over with, she might want to go on record about it and expect his support in doing so. But even though he knew it could be an ugly fight, with huge ramifications for the Jedi and the Republic, something in Carth really liked the idea of going after them for this. The Jedi had made a bunch of mistakes, before the Mandalorian Wars and since. They were supposed to be the good guys here. If they hadn’t been acting like it, they ought to be held responsible just like anyone in the Republic.

“Then you got it,” he promised once he could speak. “And thank you, for letting me be there.”

“As annoying as you are?” she answered lightly. “Couldn’t be anyone else.”  She lifted her head up, looked him in the face for a moment, then let him go and stepped away.

Probably just as well, Carth thought. Aithne had talked about Jedi restraint and self-denial, and he hoped he could trust to that more than to her inconsistency. If he couldn’t—well, his own reserves of restraint and self-denial were just about tapped out. He thought he had done the right thing, refusing her after Dantooine. But he wanted to be her friend too—without the distrust; without any arguments they didn’t want to have, for fun; without restraint or misunderstandings. Sometimes they even managed it, but when they did, it was hard to tell just where the line was. Morgana had been gone for . . . for a long time.

So, in a way, Carth was grateful for the grumpy, human-hating Wookiee that met them with a glare by the elevator basket. In another way, he really just wished Gorwooken would disappear and leave them alone, suspended among the wroshyr trees, for a little while longer.

AITHNE

The ride down to the Shadowlands and the walk back to Jolee’s was silent, but the quality of the silence had changed. Aithne was glad she had opened up to Carth. And while she wouldn’t be willing to bet he’d never suspect her of anything stupid and unfounded again in the future, she thought he was probably more likely to focus his suspicions now on the things that actually were suspicious about what was going on. She felt like she had an ally. She felt like she wasn’t alone. She’d been alone almost all her life, so it was a good feeling.

They found Jolee outside his hut, sitting on a rock. There was a worn leather pack beside him, with a fragment of the wrecked starship lashed to its back. A memento, perhaps. Jolee’s eyes were closed, and he was humming a tuneless little song. When they drew near, his eyes opened. “‘Bout time you two showed up. I was about to go save the galaxy myself. Make it back in time for tea, maybe.”

Aithne grinned. She liked Jolee. She really did. “You gonna sit there and banter until Carth and I are as wrinkly as you are? Let’s go!”

Jolee appraised her, and the corner of his mouth tipped up. He slid off his rock, slung his pack over his back, and took the lead. As Aithne followed after him, she was impressed. Bindo took them around kinrath nests and away from tach colonies, choosing the least disruptive path through the trees that offered an easy, more-or-less direct route, without making a lot of noise about what he was doing.

Carth was the one who broke the silence first. “So, Jolee, you’ve decided to leave your little hermitage in the forest and come help us stop the Sith. Thought this was worth coming out of retirement for?”

Jolee glanced back at Carth. “Yeah, that’s right, sonny. The Sith are the greatest evil to hit the galaxy since well, the Mandalorians. And they’re the worst thing since Exar Kun. Blah blah blah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

Aithne stifled a laugh. She could see where Bindo was going with this. But Carth, for the moment, was just confused. “Okay, old man, you lost me there. Are you trying to make a point?”

Jolee sighed. “Look, everybody always figures the time they live in is the most epic, most important age to end all ages. But tyrants and heroes rise and fall, and historians sort out the pieces.”

“Well, there’s a way to make a gal feel better about saving the galaxy,” Aithne remarked.

“I’m just trying to keep things in perspective,” Jolee replied. “From what you’ve told me, Malak is a tyrant who should be stopped. If he conquers the galaxy, we’re in for a couple of rough centuries. Eventually it’ll come around again, but I’d rather not wait that long. So we do what we have to, and we try to stop the Sith.” He paused and looked at Carth. “But don’t start thinking that this war, your war, is more important than any other war just because you’re in it.”

Just like Aithne could have expected, Carth didn’t like it. “That’s an interesting theory, but I don’t buy it. The Republic stands for something; it’s stood for something for fifteen thousand years. And if it falls, everything will change forever.”

Aithne decided to take up the argument. “For curiosity’s sake, exactly what does the Republic stand for, Onasi? What are you fighting for?”

Carth’s eyes flashed her way in the darkness, and his annoyance shifted over to her. “I’m fighting for freedom,” he answered. “For justice and for equal representation.”

“Honorable ideals,” Aithne answered honestly. “And if the Republic actually stood for those things, I’d be behind you all the way.”

“If?” Carth demanded, insulted.

Aithne waited a beat. “Yes, if. You can’t tell me you don’t see it, Carth. The Republic is bloated—trying to protect far too many citizens to ever guarantee the safety of all of them. It’s sluggish. The Senate is overrun with petty politicians far more concerned with the welfare of their private business ventures than they are with the welfare of their respective peoples. Worse, corporations and special interest groups like Czerka and the banks have representatives, formalizing an already implicit tendency in the system to value greed over the interests of the everyday citizen. Freedom? There are slavers who sit in that senate hall on Coruscant. The Republic far too often cares more about maintaining the status quo than they do about justice, and people are only represented equally in proportion to the money and power they can put up to make their voices heard.”

“That how you feel, is it?” Jolee asked, voice neutral.

Carth was incredulous. “Exactly whose side are you on, Aithne?”

Aithne raised her eyebrows at him and tilted her head. “Yours,” she answered. “Personally. Mission Vao’s. Zaalbar’s. Teethree’s and Canderous’s and Juhani’s. Bastila’s. Sasha’s, as long as she’s with us. Now yours too, Jolee,” she added to the listening old Jedi. She looked away from Carth and stared out into the dark. “You can’t count on governments and politicians. Especially if you’re little people from the Rim. The best I’ve ever been able to say is that the Republic’s better than the alternative. So, I’ve stood for myself. For my own interests, and—when luxury allowed—for my ideals, not the ideals I wanted to believe any larger entity possessed. Friendship. Truth. Honor. And yes, justice, freedom, and equal representation. To be honest, these days I’m grateful when I can stand for those ideals embodied in my friends as well as myself.”

“Huh,” Jolee said. “Don’t count on them always being embodied. They’re luxury for everyone, not just you. You believe what you have to to get through whatever it falls to you to face. You ask me, we’re just lucky all of us want to stop Malak. Anyway. We’re here.”

He gestured to a blue force field that had sprung up in the path. “There, you see? Beautifully subtle, isn’t it? At least, compared to other Czerka equipment dumped down here. It’s only been here a short while, or the Wookiees would have disabled it. They wouldn’t have had an easy time of it, though.”

Aithne looked around. “Cordoning off escape routes for the Wookiees? Sectioning off the forest for tach hunters and the like?” she guessed.

Jolee snorted. “Yes, there are others. Each blocking similar points on certain paths. It is all very calculated. Very precise. It would have been effective if it hadn’t relied on the creatures to be walking. Climbers don’t have much trouble getting around it.”

“So no luck with the Wookiees, then,” Aithne scoffed. “Alright. You going to let us through?”

Jolee fiddled with a keypad next to the force field. “I can manipulate it for a moment. Let me see: how did the Czerka engineers do it?” The force field dissipated. “There we go. Now keep moving,” he instructed. “These are the most dangerous depths of Kashyyyk. A few surprises wait for us, I’ll wager.”

Aithne nodded for the old Jedi to proceed. He led her and Carth into an older section of the forest. Moss and kinrath webs hung off of the ancient wroshyr trunks. “Aside from the hordes of kinrath?” she murmured. But it was the Wookiee she heard first—a male by register, crying out in rage and anger.

Aithne ignited her sabers and broke into a run. The scene she darted into was dramatic. No less than three armored Mandalorians squared off against a single Wookiee. Two other Wookiees were already dead on the ground—exsanguinated, their blood soaking into the wroshyr roots. Aithne had less than a second to size up the situation. Knowing she might be wrong, misled purely by the numbers and the Mandalorians’ possession of armor, she jumped in on the Wookiee’s side.

She shouted as she attacked, drawing the Mandalorians’ attention toward her, toward her lightsabers, toward the old enemy and a superior foe. It worked. All three of the men turned to face her, closing in. Aithne had a split second to panic before the forest ignited in a flash of blue-violet light. The smell of ozone, burnt metal, and cooking flesh filled the air. Aithne turned to see Bindo, hands extended. Lightning danced from his fingers, casting eerie, unnatural brightness back on his face, taut with concentration but otherwise expressionless. Aithne’s hair stood on end. Force Lightning—a Dark Side power, purely offensive, and intended not only to kill but to kill painfully. Yet she sensed no hatred, no anger in the older man, and his face remained wrinkled only by age. He was channeling the power without draining his own connection to the Force, without corrupting himself. She’d never imagined anything like it.

The Mandalorians jerked and screamed, yet they were rallying, climbing back to their feet, blades raised. Aithne saw Bindo breathe in and flex his fingers, and she moved first, cutting down all three Mandalorians in what was now an act of mercy.

She opened her mouth to address Bindo, but the Wookiee they had saved intervened, staggering over to them. He bent to lean against a tree. He was bleeding heavily, badly wounded with a deep cut to the side.

/Great Bacca,/ he prayed, /let this outsider be different than the slavers.I beg you . . ./ he asked Aithne. /Can you heal my wounds? An attack . . . from nowhere. Please, I need to be healed. Can you?/

Aithne held out a hand, and Jolee placed a medpac into it. He’d had one ready already—and that as much as the Lightning interested Aithne. She shoved it aside for later. “What happened here?” she asked the Wookiee.

/Please . . . I need to be healed. I . . . am dying,/ the Wookiee told her.

Aithne stripped open the medpac and handed him the coagulant shot first. “This one first,” she explained, “then stitches and a bandage. I’d do more,” she added, gesturing with her hands to indicate the Force as he injected the shot, “but my understanding of Wookiee anatomy is chancy at best.” Such an understanding was necessary to heal with the Force. She glanced at Jolee, eyebrow raised, but he shook his head, indicating he couldn’t help with this either.

They watched as the Wookiee stitched himself up and bandaged his wound. Onasi gave him a drink of water. “Will you need help getting back above?” Carth asked, accompanying the question with its counterpart in spacer sign, just in case. It was a nice thought, Aithne mused, even if the Wookiee hadn’t already demonstrated knowledge of Basic by following Aithne’s directions and his knowledge of spacer sign was by no means certain.

The Wookiee shook his head, climbing to unsteady feet. /I will rest, build a hidden and fortified shelter to keep me until I may return,/ he answered. /I thank you. I would not have expected outsiders to aid me. Perhaps . . . you will help again?/ He gave Jolee and Aithne a strange look, and something about it made Aithne hesitate.

“If we can.”

/My hunting party, all of them, killed without honor,/ the Wookiee explained. /I barely survived. I want the murderers to suffer the same./

Aithne heard Jolee translating in a low voice behind her for Onasi. It figured that after a couple decades on the planet, he’d understand Shyriiwook. “You want vengeance,” Aithne summarized. She pressed her lips together. “Without committing one way or the other, tell me about the attackers.”

/I’ve never seen their kind before, not even the Czerka,/ the Wookiee related. He sat down against a wroshyr trunk, leaning on his sword blade, but his voice seemed steadier. /You saw them, armored from head to toe, yet blending in with the forest. They followed us for a long while. We found bodies to the southwest, and then again further south after the west branch of the path. Their speed was amazing. They fought like outsiders, waiting until we were unarmed. They would not attack until we had put our weapons away! They strike like cowards!/

Aithne’s jaw set. “Worse than the guys on Dantooine,” she observed to Carth. “They were raiders, but it sounds like these guys decided to go big-game hunting sapients like the Trandoshans. Murdering just to murder. I know how Canderous would want us to handle them. If we do it, will you tell on me to Bas?”

Carth shrugged. “The way I see it, killing these Mandalorians doesn’t have to be about vengeance. They’re murdering cowards, killing people because they think it’s fun. We stop them, we’re protecting everyone they might hurt in the future. Don’t the Jedi encourage the protection of others?”

“Not as much as they should,” Aithne muttered.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Carth said.

“Well, if we’re agreed,” Aithne said to him. She turned back to the Wookiee and bowed.

The Wookiee bowed back. /I thank you. I will wait here. I am too weak to fight them again, but I refuse to leave the Shadowlands until vengeance is sated, whether that be your intent or not. If you kill them, I will reward you with whatever I can. They are not worthy of life. Look for them where the bodies of my fellows are. They will only attack you if you are unarmed. The cowards./

Aithne bowed again and started off into the forest again with the others. “Speaking of Jedi ideals and what is and isn’t permitted to us,” she said to Bindo, adopting a lightness she didn’t feel.

“The Lightning?” Jolee grunted.

It had been a very deliberate display, Aithne thought. Jolee had definitely bailed her out of what could have been a very bad situation, if he hadn’t outright saved her life, and he had done it in a way that underscored not merely the extreme usefulness he could have to their party but a defiance of Jedi teachings that crossed over into outright contempt. Without doing anything to disprove her and Bastila’s belief that he was nevertheless unfallen. Sith didn’t use Lightning the way Bindo just had—to defend the oppressed; punishing the wicked, but with conviction instead of malice; and drawing from the environment in a sympathetic way instead of exerting their own Force over the environment in a way that necessarily resulted in Dark Side corruption. Jolee had refused to tell her about himself with words, but he had just opened his heart to her through his actions. It felt calculated, and Aithne wasn’t sure if that in itself made her like or distrust him more.

“It got the bad guys off you when you did your whole swooping-in defender-of-the-innocent bit, didn’t it?” Jolee asked her. “Pretty stupid, rushing in like that. But what do I know?”

“I didn’t think they’d all go for me,” Aithne defended. “Reasonable tactics would dictate spreading out to cover you and Onasi too.”

“You underestimate Mandalorian lust for glory, lass,” Jolee noted.

Aithne sniffed. “Just be glad Bastila didn’t see that back there,” she said. “You’d never hear the end of it. Actually, can you do that for her sometime? Might get her to back off me a little.”

“You hear a lot of ‘Beware the Dark Side,’ do you?”

Jolee sounded a bit too casual for her liking. He caught her eye and shrugged. “You’re a bit obvious, asking the boy here not to tattle on you for killing cowards who deserve it.”

Aithne pursed her lips and decided discretion was the better part of valor. She didn’t know Bindo that well yet, and she wasn’t exactly keen to share her issues with Bastila and the Council with him. “Let’s clear the area before we start hunting for our hunters,” she suggested instead. “I don’t want to fight two different enemies at once.” 

“That could be a good idea,” Jolee mused, “You never can tell how many beasts are lurking in the undergrowth, but—”

“—Let’s at least let them know we’re here and a lot deadlier than they are.”

Time was funny in the Shadowlands. With everything the same gray-green, it was near impossible to tell where Kashyyyk’s star was in the planet’s sky. They could have spent less than an hour or nearly half a day clearing the area of nearly two dozen kinrath in order to secure their immediate surroundings to fight the Mandalorians and search for the Star Map and Chuundar’s Wookiee. It was brutal, mindless exertion. The kinrath had no brains to speak of, but they were very strong, and Aithne noted that the variety in that area of Kashyyyk was particularly venomous. She lost count of the number of times she used a Force Push to hold a slavering beast at bay when its dripping fangs were inches away from someone’s throat. But finally, the kinrath they saw began to scuttle away, and the forest floor was quieter, free of the sound of scuttling kinrath legs over the underbrush.

“See?” panted Aithne. “Nothing to it.” That said, she slid down to sit on her butt against the trunk of a wroshyr.

“Uh-huh,” said Carth, sitting beside her, but looking considerably less exhausted. He’d kept to range weapons and had not sapped nearly as much strength as the two Force-users. He rooted about in his pack and handed Aithne her canteen. She drank it down to the very dregs without a word. Jolee, too, took a water break.

“I wonder if we could eat something,” Aithne said presently.

“Well, we have the ration bars,” Carth began.

“No,” Aithne interrupted before he could finish.

“Actually,” said Jolee, eyeing a nearby kinrath corpse.

Aithne was struck by this. “Are they any good?” she asked.

“The vermin make pretty good eating,” Jolee confirmed. “I could whip up some kinrath legs in ten, maybe twenty minutes if Carth started a fire.”

Aithne considered. She pulled a ration bar out from her pack, looked at it in distaste, and flipped it back inside. “So forty-five minutes, with gathering the wood and getting the fire to start,” she said. “Good enough.”

They were in an old forest inhabited by dangerous animals with claws and horns, so it didn’t take Aithne long to find some dead dry wood. While Jolee jointed and cracked open the legs of one of the kinrath corpses nearby, Carth cleared ground for a campfire and built one up, lighting it with materials Bindo also provided. The scent of the kinrath, once Bindo put them on the fire, wasn’t quite what Aithne had hoped—despite coming from arboreal creatures, they smelled like oceanic crustaceans.

“Seafood on a landlocked forest world,” she sighed. But when Bindo took the kinrath legs off the fire, her conclusion turned out to be misleading. The kinrath had the same consistency of some seafood but a gamier, woodier flavor, and in any event, the freshness of the meat was a blessing.

It was a messy meal, with more than one burnt finger in the eating, but when it was over and three full kinrath leg casings lay empty on the ground and they were all lying back around the fire staring at the treetops, seemingly an eternity away, they couldn’t help sighing with satisfaction.

“Well, I understand why those Wookiees were down here hunting,” Aithne remarked as she licked the last of the kinrath off her lips. “Wish we could take the time to smoke or dry some for Ebon Hawk.”

“Wish we had the space to carry it,” Carth agreed.

“I must admit, I’d like nothing better than to nap for a while, but my guess is if we do that, nasty scavengers we don’t want to meet might come by?”

“It’s the Shadowlands, lass,” Jolee pointed out.

Aithne groaned and rolled to her feet. She kicked dirt and rocks over the fire until it was extinguished. “Unfortunately. Killing Mandalorians it is, then.” She pulled her sabers out of her sleeves and stuffed them in the top of her pack, leaving it slightly open. When the Mandalorians attacked, she would use the Force to call them back to her. Jolee adopted the same measure. Carth, however, would have to rely on Aithne to arm him once the fighting began.

It didn’t take long for them to find the first group of fallen Wookiees. And sure enough, as soon as they stepped among them, Aithne heard a faint hiss, and suddenly they were surrounded by three armed and armored Mandalorians. Shoving out with the Force, she thrust them all back several meters, knocking them off their feet. She reached back, flipped Carth’s blasters out of her pack, and in the same movement, called her lightsabers to her palm. In the same moment, Carth flicked the safety off his guns, and Jolee ignited his own lightsaber.

The Mandalorians were taken aback by their preparedness. They had lain in wait for a hunt and had found an enemy prepared to kill. Two of them were dead in a split second—impaled by lightsabers from Jolee and Aithne. The third reacted quickly enough to survive a few moments longer. He ducked under Onasi’s arm, swinging his weapon in a defensive blow aimed to incapacitate Onasi, to give him a chance to leave the circle and flee into the forest. But Onasi could dodge too. He leapt back toward Bindo, away from the blade, and brought up the barrels of both blasters and fired. His first shot went wide. The second went straight through the eye slit of the Mandalorian’s helmet, and he fell to the ground like a sack of meal.

Aithne whistled. “Nice shot. One in about ten thousand.”

Carth shrugged off the compliment. “Ah, sometimes you get lucky.”

The second group of hunters, near another circle of their victims, proved about as easy to take down. Rummaging through their corpses, however, Aithne found something interesting. A datapad on one of the first group had revealed that the hunters were divided into three groups; a swoop bike signaling device on one of the others indicated how the groups were keeping in touch in the absence of radios. Aithne had spotted a deserted camp with the Mandalorians’ powered-down swoop bikes in their sweep of the immediate area. She now led the others back to it, explaining, “The third group is senior. They’re floating, not lying in wait for Wookiees to investigate the murders. I’d rather not take the time to find them in the forest, so I figure we call them back home.”

“Calling the murderers to you for the showdown,” Bindo mused.

“Never do more than you have to,” Aithne answered.

“Yes, that is the rule we live by,” Carth muttered under his breath.

Aithne shot him a look. “You’re three times the do-gooder I am, Onasi, and you know it.”

“You’re only in it for the justifiable homicide.”

“Glad you understand,” Aithne retorted, ignoring his facetiousness. “But don’t tell—”

“Don’t tell Bastila. I got it.”

Aithne walked into the camp. The Mandalorians had made an effort to camouflage their transportation. The supplies were caged and likewise hidden with leaves, moss, and tree bark. But she’d seen the clear ground right away, and from there, it hadn’t been difficult to spot the remnants of a campfire that had been used for at least two days, and then to find the gear. Aithne swung the camo net off each of the swoop bikes. She considered for a moment, then activated her ‘sabers and melted the steering on all three bikes, leaving them red and stinking like the forges they were made in. She then reattached the signaling device they had found to one of the bikes and activated it, sending out a signal that would be picked up—hopefully—on the third team’s receiver, summoning them to return back to the camp for a find or an injury. Finally, she activated her energy shield and leaned up against one of the sabotaged bikes, a deactivated lightsaber in each hand, arms crossed.

“Dramatic much?” Carth commented.

Aithne shrugged. “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

“Especially when you plan on killing the people in question,” Jolee agreed.

They didn’t have long to wait. Soon three Mandalorians appeared before them. These were bigger, and one wore blood-red armor. Aithne wondered what clan he had come from and whether it still acknowledged him. She examined her nails.

Red addressed her. “You have interrupted our hunt, interloper,” he said.

“That was the general idea,” Aithne agreed.

“The inhabitants of this world could do little against us, but you appear to be a threat,” Red said.

“We don’t like that, do we?” Aithne asked rhetorically. “No, we’d rather slaughter sapients completely unprepared for the challenge than engage in anything like a real battle again.” She stood, taking up her stance, though she didn’t activate her weapons again. She looked the Dar’manda up and down. /Lazy, cowardly scuts,/ she said then in their own language. /Your armor is a disgrace. You shame your clan and your ancestors. You call yourself men and warriors? Draw steel and fight, thou soulless. See if you can go to hell with some small shreds of your honor intact./

/You dare?!/ Red breathed.

Aithne activated her lightsabers and engaged without another word. To either side, she heard Bindo’s lightsaber humming and Onasi’s blasters singing and knew they were fighting too. She endeavored to maneuver the Mandalorians around so their backs were to Onasi and he would have clearer sight lines to fire. She didn’t know how much good it would do; the painted beskar would deflect almost all blaster fire. It deflected lightsaber strokes, except at the joints. She, Carth, and Jolee were much more vulnerable by comparison. But she wanted to give Carth a chance to help, and in any event, she was wary of a certain desire she had to kill these Mandalorians, to kill them personally. Bastila, rubbing off on me? It was justifiable homicide, certainly, as Carth had joked, but there were ways and ways to approach those. Motivation was just as important as what a person did, whether that person happened to be a Force User or not. She felt she ought to share the kills on these monsters with the others, combat her urge to cut them down herself in a spirit of disgust and anger.

But like the first group by the Wookiee who had survived their attacks, these Mandalorians were fixated upon her. She’d delivered some of the worst insults she could think from their culture in their own language to begin the fight and now stood Jetii aruetii, both less than a person to a Mando and the most hated and desired foe, denouncing them as traitors, cowards, and unworthy of their armor, clan, and culture. Both intolerable affront and irresistible challenge.

And even though she knew she shouldn’t, Aithne wanted it that way. She liked it that way. There was an electricity to the combat with three men in nigh-invulnerable armor coming at her, filled with hatred and desperate for the kill. There was something impossibly satisfying to her in knowing that cutting them down here and now, regardless of their defense and in defiance of all the odds, would be a righteous action, that no one would blame her for it. No one would miss these three. The galaxy would be better off. Wookiees and probably a host of other people would live because she’d repaid these murderers in kind.

She didn’t fight fair. Mandalorians never did. Total war meant using every advantage at your disposal, and if none of them was enough, your enemy deserved to live. That was what the Mando’ade believed. So Aithne stretched her feelings out to the Force-rich fabric of the Kashyyyk Shadowlands and used it to push and to hold her enemy as required. She manipulated her environment, using the swoop bike at her back at one point, making use of blunt force trauma against her foes since weapons wouldn’t penetrate their armor. And when Bindo made use of Force Lightning again, it occurred to her that there was one other use of the tactic that hadn’t occurred to her earlier: that while lightsabers and blaster bolts had trouble getting through Mandalorian armor, the metal was plenty conductive.

She still got pinned for a moment once—this group was better than both the others and may have been expecting her. She was backed up against a tree root with a Mandalorian warrior bearing down on her with all his weight, holding off his cortosis-weave blade with both her lightsabers and hearing his breathing rattling inside his helm, edged with the excitement of his anger and bloodlust. She lifted her right foot and kicked his knee out from the inside. He fell with a cry, and she didn’t hesitate to hit him when he was down with a direct thrust up under the helm.

She staggered a few steps, rolling her shoulders, and looked around at the scene. The immediate area was a disaster zone. It smelled of feces and ozone and burnt metal. One of the disabled swoop bikes was listing to the side. Another was crumpled, burning in the remains of the Mandalorian campfire atop the crushed and broken corpse of one of the enemy. The sounds of the forest nearby had completely died away, all the beasts having fled or gone into hiding. And Aithne could still taste the death and anger on the air.

She felt nothing herself—no sense of victory, no satisfaction. Now that the battle was over, she just felt tired. She swore once, viciously, under her breath instead of aloud. Then she knelt in the middle of the battlefield, closed her eyes, shoved her hair back from her face, and prayed—a Mando’a meditation for the dead, thinking not only of the dead murderers on the ground who should have been better but the Czerka patrol from the day before, of Bastila, and of all the fighting that likely lay ahead. She waited there for a long time, minutes, until the first tachs began to cry out again from the trees. Then she rose; took a drink from her canteen, which Jolee had helped her refill at a nearby spring since lunch; brushed the dirt from the knees of her fiber armor; and looked at the others.

Both of them were watching her with undisguised fascination. In Carth, it was mixed with both suspicion and empathy. In Jolee, with something like calculation.

“You alright there, lass?” Bindo asked.

“Think I’ve been down here too long,” she answered. “Need to see the stars again. Not sure how you’ve done it all these years.”

“Well, it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of ethical options for getting off Kashyyyk,” Jolee answered.

Aithne hesitated then, looking down at the body of the Mandalorian commander. It need not be the entire head, she decided. The Wookiee would prefer it, but just the helmet would be ample proof she’d completed his charge. These guys had been Mandalorians once. They wouldn’t willingly part with any piece of their armor. Because they were deserters and cowards, and because she’d killed them, by the laws of their culture, technically all their armor was forfeit to her and her clan—or rather, her companions. But she couldn’t carry all of it. As Carth had reminded her just this morning, he wasn’t a bantha.

So, she bent and removed the helmet of the Mandalorian commander to show the Wookiee. The man beneath it had been young, she noted. Probably only in his early twenties when the Mandalorian Wars started, and probably less than thirty when he deserted. Handsome in a brutish kind of way. His blue eyes stared vacantly up at the canopy. She passed her hand over his lids to close them. There was no blood to clean off the helmet. He had died via lightsaber. She tossed it to Carth.

“For the Wookiee?” he guessed.

“Cleaner than the other way,” Aithne answered. She stood again and looked at Bindo. “I don’t want to look at another person for an hour at least, though. Where’s the Star Map?”

Bindo thought for a moment. “You know, it isn’t too far from here,” he said. “This way.”

It wasn’t too far. Jolee had been leading them for less than five minutes before it came into view between a stand of four wroshyr trees. Just like the Map on Dantooine, a small, triangular pillar of the same strange black metal. Unlike it, wired up to a holointerface beside it that looked like it had been installed much more recently.

“Well, there it is,” Jolee said. “Obstinate machine. I’ve no doubt it holds what you seek, but good luck getting it to respond!”

Aithne approached the holographic interface with mixed feelings of dread and resignation. She had wanted Bastila to take charge back at Ebon Hawk in the case of trouble with Czerka and the Wookiees if they defied Chuundar’s orders in some way down here. But she’d also sent Bastila back because she had wanted Bastila away from here. In case she did end up killing for Chuundar, or rather, Zaalbar—and so she encountered whatever Revan’s holointerface had to say independent of Bastila’s input.

The image captured in the holointerface was that of an alien the likes of which Aithne had never seen before, though it spoke to the three of them in Basic. At first, it responded well to Aithne, like the droid in the ancient ruins on Dantooine. It even said it had brain patterns on file that indicated it should allow her to proceed. But as soon as Aithne asked her first question, it shut down. The computer became uncooperative and began withholding information. The conclusion was obvious: Aithne not only had a Force signature similar to Revan’s, she thought like Revan, or her mind had been enough overshadowed by Revan’s thinking patterns to be detectable by the computer’s scans. But because she wasn’t Revan, Revan’s installation was programmed to deny her access to the Star Map.

The computer said that she could, however, undergo “behavioral reconfiguration” to match the pattern in memory. In other words, program her thoughts like a droid to resemble Revan’s, or what she thought might be Revan’s, in order to gain access to the Star Map. Aithne didn’t like the idea, but they also didn’t have the time for her to dismantle the holointerface and any preprogrammed defenses. There was also no way to tell if Revan might have programmed the interface to shred the Map and its contents if she tried that route. From what she remembered from her dreams and visions, it seemed like a precaution that Revan might take.

Aithne put off the computer’s behavioral reconfiguration, asking as many questions as the computer would respond to before agreeing to undergo any further evaluation, but it was really just a stalling tactic. Among the things she uncovered was that the trees of Kashyyyk and the Wookiees themselves might have been bioengineered by the Builders thirty thousand years previously, and that Jolee had tried no fewer than 152 times to access the Star Map.

“One hundred and fifty-two,” Aithne repeated. “Really?”

Jolee chuckled. “Call me stubborn, I guess. It’s not like there was anything else to do around here.”

The computer’s log of the users that had failed to access the Star Map since its installation also included five attempts by a Wookiee named Freyyr. Aithne heard the name with satisfaction. She’d been right. The crazy rogue Chuundar had sent her to assassinate, the threat she had perceived to his rule now that she and Zaalbar were here, was indeed Chuundar and Zaalbar’s father and the former chieftain. If he went back to the village now and supported Zaalbar instead of Chuundar, and the pair of them testified, they might be able to instigate an uprising. The plan that had only been a vague notion before solidified in her mind.

In the meantime, however, she needed the Star Map. Finally, Aithne gave up on putting off the inevitable and started talking about the computer’s suggested behavioral reconfiguration. “How can I match the parameters in your memory when I don’t know what they are?” she asked. She had some insight into Revan’s thinking, she felt, but not nearly enough to say confidently that she could predict how the war hero turned Sith would have acted in every situation.

“There are measures available,” the computer reassured her. “Personality profiling will verify the basic structure of your conscious mind. With that, I will determine whether you are ready to receive the Star Map or can be made ready.”

Made ready . . . “What do you mean by that?” Aithne said, the hairs on the back of her neck rising as she contemplated further infiltration by whatever was left of Revan, not just in her dreams but in her day-to-day life.

“Information unavailable,” the computer answered, as it had to at least nine of her questions thus far. Aithne wanted to scream. “If you have any further questions, ask them now. Access will be terminated upon success or failure of the examination.”

“It’s a really thorough installation and security system,” Aithne muttered. “You have to give her that. Fine. Start your little ‘evaluation.’”

“Evaluation commencing,” the computer said. “Results will be compared against the pattern in memory. Just act like you should.” Its tone became sharper, and it began. “You travel with a Wookiee and have encountered complications. Hypothetical:  You and this Zaalbar are captured and separated. If you both remain silent, one year of prison for each of you. However, call Zaalbar a traitor, and he will serve five years, while you serve none. He is offered the same deal, but if you both accuse the other, you both serve two years. What do you do? What do you trust him to do?”

Aithne was disturbed. “How do you even know about Zaalbar?” she demanded. “He isn’t here.”

“I hear what happens on Kashyyyk, and a great deal beyond,” replied the computer, which didn’t help at all. “Answer the question I have posed.”

“I should think inquisitiveness would match the pattern in your memory,” Aithne muttered. Then she shook her head. She’d heard the hypothetical situation the computer was giving her now before. The prisoner’s dilemma, it was called. She’d heard it discussed by some academics she’d worked for in the past. There were a couple of different strategies for it—the response of absolute dominance and supposedly perfect rationality, which dictated always betraying the other player regardless of their likely reaction, and the response which considered a reaction based upon the first player’s knowledge of the other and the general public good. According to both recent history and the more intimate understanding she thought she had of Revan’s mind, Revan might adopt either strategy in the hypothetical described, depending on Revan’s fellow prisoner and the long-term goal. But given that Revan had been a Sith when she installed the holointerface, the top general of an army in a state of rebellion, and paranoid to boot, Aithne thought she knew the answer the computer wanted—the answer Revan would have wanted.

Abruptly, rashly, she decided she didn’t care. She was not Darth Revan. She didn’t want to be Darth Revan. She didn’t want to become Darth Revan. Besides, Zaalbar had sworn her a life debt, and she’d made him a promise in turn, and the computer had made the hypothetical specific to him. “Zaalbar wouldn’t turn me in,” she said. “He’d consider it the height of dishonor, and assuming I do not have the ability to lie to our jailers and use my freedom to break him out too, he’d trust to my nobility and decision that we would wait out the year and go free together. So, that’s what we’d do.”

“Are you sure?” the computer asked. “If you turn, you risk two years or none at all. If you rely on loyalty, you risk one year. Or five. Your loyalty is dangerous. Your companion could take the opportunity to benefit by turning on you. Zaalbar’s family is mired in treachery. What loyalty do they know? Your answer is incorrect.”

“No. Zaalbar’s tortured by his family’s treachery and determined to act in a better way,” Aithne answered. “I know my man, and that knowledge is far more valuable than indiscriminate paranoia likely to damage our working relationship and mutual goals in the future. My loyalty in reliance upon his enables us to continue on together. The hole in the hypothetical is the reliance upon our captors to abide by the terms of their deal and the rigidity of the problem’s construction—there’s always multiple options in a real-world situation, and honestly, the pattern in your memory would recognize that, though your programming might not.”

“You’re being difficult, lass,” Jolee observed. “The thing can’t help its programming. I assume you need the Star Map?” Aithne glared at him.

“Personality parameters must have limiting conditions,” the computer said. “Evaluation must continue. You must match the pattern in memory. Your memory,” it added meaningfully. Aithne tried to jump on that, but the computer was too quick for her. “I must demand honest acceptance of the proper behavior. That is a condition of my programming.

“The previous incorrect response will be discounted. Future incorrect responses will result in rejection,” the computer told her. “Hypothetical: You are at war. Deciphering an intercepted code, you learn two things about your enemy. A single spot in their defense will be at its weakest in ten days, and they will attack one of your cities in five days. What do you do with this information? What is the most efficient course of action?”

Aithne sighed. She knew what Darth Revan would do in this hypothetical too. This time, it was the same thing Revan, leader of the Republic armies, would have done in the Mandalorian Wars before their fall to the Dark Side. And it was the same thing she would do. She hated that. She almost wanted to lie, but, as Jolee said, they needed the Star Map. So, she put on her best general cap and answered in a crisp, clipped, emotionless tone. “I prepare my forces to attack in ten days. I do nothing in the city.”

The computer seemed pleased by this. “Very good. If you had moved to evacuate the city, you would have alerted the enemy to their lost codes.”

Carth, who had been very quiet so far, was less than pleased. “You mean you’d just let all those people die?” he demanded. “That’s monstrous!”

Aithne gave him a warning look, trying to hold the logic of her answer in her head for the scanning computer. But she answered, “A few thousand or a hundred million, Carth?”

“Ultimate victory required the deaths of the people in that city,” intoned the computer. “You wisely ignored sentiment in your decision.”

“It’s the smart, logical thing to do,” Aithne responded. “That doesn’t mean Onasi’s wrong. It is monstrous, even if you end up saving those hundred million others. That’s why generals turn into monsters.”

The computer was silent a moment. “Your response is correct,” it said finally, “but your reasoning does not match the pattern in memory. I shall adjust my evaluation. Hypothetical: remove the ongoing war from the previous example. Consider enemy states to be weak and remote. With no external threat, your empire stagnates. Your people become complacent and begin to question you. Same scenario as before: you discover an impending attack, but also a weakness that will come after. How do you react?”

It wanted her to answer this one like a conqueror, like an emperor.  Build solidarity within the state against a common foe by allowing an attack. Strengthen nationalistic sentiment with a tragedy and use the consequent outburst of energy and hatred against the enemy to fuel a territory expansion. She understood how it would work. She hated that she understood it. Suddenly, she hated herself, the computer, and the whole situation, and she didn’t care anymore about those security measures she’d imagined Revan would have programmed in. She’d just have to be faster than any shred program Revan had designed.

“This is distasteful. I’ll just take you apart to get the Star Map!” she spat, igniting her lightsabers.

“Implied threat matches pattern in memory,” the computer answered, “but the subject has failed to demonstrate required recognition. Access denied. This system will purge the subject as false. Defense mode initiated!”

Abruptly, two fully functional, mean-looking droids strode into the clearing. “Oh, for crying out loud!” Carth shouted.

Aithne whirled and let loose a Force wave that set the droids to staggering on their spindly metal legs. Revan had been good with droids and computers. Fine. So was she. Good at building them, but also taking them apart. She didn’t have to conform to Revan’s stupid patterns. She was going to do this her way, and nothing anyone put in her way was going to stop her. She jointed the droids like forest kinrath and left them melted and twisted on the forest floor. Then she turned back to the computer, ready to attack.

But the holointerface looked as awkward, for an image of an alien physiology with which she was completely unfamiliar. It shifted on its virtual feet. “Neural scan complete. Analyzing . . . well. It would appear initial assumptions about you were incorrect,” it said. “Secondary scans during battle have revealed much. Under duress, your emotions were easier to read. Programming now instructs that I give you what you seek.”

Aithne felt Bindo’s sharp look like a scalpel but kept her face turned away from him. “What exactly did the scan during battle reveal?” she asked instead.

“That information is unavailable,” the Computer replied cheerfully. “Soon you will recognize the proper course to follow. The Star Map is yours. This unit has now completed its primary duty and has finished with the subject. Executing final action. Activation of the Star Map commencing.”

Aithne fished the Star Map datapad out of her pack as the pillar began to open. She attached it to the Star Map and began to download the new coordinates it revealed. The computer kept talking. “Parameters reset. Stasis initiated. End communication.”

The hologram disappeared, even as Aithne abruptly turned to demand details. She stared at the place where it had been, licked her lips, and swallowed. “Well,” she said. “I think the next poor Jedi who comes looking for a Star Map will have to conform to my patterns.”

Chapter Text

AITHNE

“It wanted you to be Revan, didn’t it?” Carth asked.

They stared down at the inactive holo-interface. “Yeah,” Aithne answered.

Ever since they’d rescued Bastila on Taris and Aithne had realized she’d been dreaming about her for months, she had had an increasing sense of unease, of wrongness. She felt haunted, like ghosts were clawing at the edges of her brain, trying to take her over. Well. One ghost in particular. It seemed like Revan’s shade was trying to personally devour her.

“You come . . . come pretty damn close,” Carth observed. “Close enough for whatever neural scan technology is in that thing, anyway. Enough for it to find an initial match and to pass you through after a fight.”

“Yeah.”

“What would she have done, in charge of a restless city being attacked by a weak enemy state?”

Aithne looked at him. “I think everything depends on the timeline. Whether you’re asking about Revan, defender of the little guys out on the Rim, or the person Revan turned into. But if you’re asking me?”

Carth jerked his head, indicating she should go on.

Aithne looked away. “If I’m in charge of a city’s protection, I protect it, whether or not they appreciate me for it. A job’s a job.”

“You know, you aren’t Revan,” Carth offered after a moment, without looking at her. “I mean, whether you’re seeing Revan’s memories in your dreams or not, whether you can put yourself in that headspace or not . . . however you’re doing it. Whatever darkness was in Revan that made them betray the Republic, you don’t have to accept that into you. You can see the ruthless thing to do—the pragmatic course of action without reference to ethics or decency—you can see that without . . . without doing it. And you do that.”

“Thanks, Carth,” Aithne said, and meant it.

“Now that we’ve got what you came for, we should be heading back to the treetops,” Jolee observed.

Aithne shook her head. “Honestly, the Star Map was a diversion this trip,” she said. “We came down here for Freyyr. Chuundar wants us to kill him. I want to recruit him instead. Possibly stage a coup.”

“You mean you definitely want to stage a coup,” Carth said, folding his arms. “Could be dangerous.”

“If we can talk Freyyr into it, I’ll warn the others on Ebon Hawk,” Aithne promised. “When we get to Rwookrrorro, I’ll go straight for Big Z, with the first priority being to arm him for the fallout. But I really think exposing Chuundar and setting that village right is the best thing we can do here.” When Carth didn’t argue, but instead gave a resigned half-smile and a shrug, Aithne turned to Jolee. “Do you have any idea where we might find Freyyr?”

Jolee closed his eyes, and Aithne knew he was searching for the Wookiee through the Force. Since he had met the ex-chieftain before, he had the advantage there. “I think I can take you to him,” he said.

It was a long walk in silence to the place Jolee had sense Freyyr. Eventually, though, Aithne spotted a tall, powerful Wookiee in the murky shadows. He carried a rusty vibroblade, and his fur was liberally streaked with gray. When he spotted them, he howled out a challenge. /More of you Czerka Core-rats? Is even the heart of Kashyyyk free from your kind?/

“He’s almost feral after all this time,” Jolee said in a low voice to Aithne. Louder, he spoke to Freyyr. “Calm yourself, Freyyr. We are friends. Don’t you remember me?”

/After years in the Shadowlands, I remember only that outsiders are not to be trusted!/ Freyyr roared. /I’ll see you dead!/

Aithne held her ground and didn’t even activate her lightsabers. “At least he hates slavers?” she murmured to the others.

Jolee just grunted. He had no such compunctions about drawing his weapon and took up a defensive stance. “This may prove difficult.”

Freyyr charged.

Aithne shoved out with the Force and knocked Freyyr back a few feet. The Wookiee rose and attempted to attack again. Aithne reached out again with the Force and knocked his blade from his hands, then shoved him down yet again. Freyyr rose yet again and attempted to attack a third time. Aithne shoved once more, harder still, and Freyyr fell to his knees. This time, he did not rise.

/I . . . I am beaten/ he said, his breathing labored after struggling against the Force. Aithne hadn’t done much more than bruise and disarm him. /Take my head, Czerka filth! You won’t get another chance. So swears Freyyr of Kashyyyk./

Aithne put her hands on her hips. “In your experience, do Czerka Core-rats usually use the Force?” she asked. Chuundar looked up sharply, surprised by her reference to something he had said in his own language, surprised she had understood him. Deliberately, Aithne pulled her lightsabers from her wrist sheaths and set them on the ground in front of him. “Listening? Good. I’m not here to kill you. I’m not a slaver. I think the practice degrading for everyone concerned, the worst kind of abuse a person or entity can inflict upon another, and bad business besides—a slave will never work as hard or show the kind of loyalty of a free person earning fair wages. I want to wipe slavery out here on Kashyyyk, or at least give it a good kick in the pants, and I think you can help me.”

Freyyr rose warily to his feet. /The words of outsiders are tainted with lies,/ he said, but his tone was not threatening. /You can’t convince me otherwise./

“I don’t know,” Aithne said. “I can be pretty persuasive. Look. Do you know Zaalbar and Chuundar?”

Freyyr tensed. /What? Those are my sons! Why do you speak their names? Tell me!/

“My name is Aithne Moran,” Aithne explained. “I came to Kashyyyk with Zaalbar.”

/To my shame, Zaalbar was exiled and enslaved,/ Freyyr said wearily. /Do you dare claim to be my son’s owner, outsider?/

Aithne took a breath. “Zaalbar may have been a slave before, but to my knowledge, it has never been for more than a few days’ duration, and he has never been a slave of mine. I freed him the last time he was captured, and he swore a lifedebt to me. In turn, I promised to honor his debt and care for him. By your laws, he follows me as long as I live. By mine, he’s a retainer in my service, and the Jedi Order pays him. I insisted on it.”

/If he has sworn a lifedebt to you, he sees something of worth in you,/ Freyyr said. /I will listen . . . cautiously. Gullibility has armed me in the past. If I had seen the lies of Chuundar, he would have been exposed as a slaver. Zaalbar would not have been exiled. I did not believe Zaalbar’s claims,/ he confessed, /I believed the elder boy, as tradition dictated. The shame of Zaalbar’s attack blinded me./

Behind her, Aithne could hear Jolee translating again for Carth. “What exactly happened?” she asked.

/Zaalbar saw it first,/ Freyyr related. /He learned that Chuundar was dealing with the Czerka, leading them to our hunting parties. Chuundar would blame disappearances on the dangers of the Shadowlands. Zaalbar was crazed when he found out. He attacked Chuundar with his claws. I thought he had gone mad, shed his honor. I was bound by the old ways./

“And Zaalbar was exiled,” Aithne finished. “When did you learn the truth?”

/A year later,/ Freyyr said. /By then, Chuundar had spread lies of my own madness. I had no allies when I confronted him. He and his Czerka guards attacked me. I had to retreat to the deepest Shadowlands, but even there they followed./

“That’s when I first saw him,” Jolee cut in. “I helped his pursuers lose him for a moment. Do you remember me now, Freyyr?”

Freyyr lifted his lips in a Wookiee smile. Aithne found herself wondering exactly how the man had managed to help the Wookiee escape his pursuers. She looked sideways at Jolee. He winked at her.

Freyyr spoke to Jolee. /Yes, I think I do. I am sorry about attacking. It’s been so long since I have offered my trust or accepted that of someone else./

“Will you trust me and help me now?” Aithne asked. “Help set right what went wrong all those years ago?”

/There is a way I might challenge Chuundar,/ Freyyr said, /but it would take a lot to convince people they have been lied to./

Something in his tone made Aithne wary. She’d hoped breaking up Chuundar’s rule on Rwookrrorro would just be a matter of getting Chuundar back there and with Big Z. “Exactly what would it take?”

/Chuundar has a strong web of lies,/ Freyyr explained, /but if I appeal to the traditions of my people, I might be able to gather support. There is a legend of a great warrior from the old times. Bacca was his name, and he is greatly revered. Bacca found a crashed starship, our first hint of life elsewhere. He was a cautious old wook and feared the taint of invaders. He constructed a vibroblade from the wreckage. It has long symbolized our independence. Only destined leaders have held it./

Aithne made a face. “You need to signal divine or ancestral favor upon you and Zaalbar, despite your actions, in order to successfully oust Chuundar, who, while morally bankrupt, has proven the more successful politician among your people. Yes?” When Freyyr just looked dejected, Aithne sighed. “Where’s the thing?”

/That is the problem,/ said Freyyr, shifting. He refused to meet her eyes now. /It was the symbol of our great chieftains for centuries, but it was damaged a generation ago in ritual battle. Here in the Shadowlands, Rothrrrawr fought the Great Beast./

Somehow Aithne knew, even before Freyyr said anything else. Beside her, Jolee said something foul.

“What is it?” Carth asked.

She looked at him. “We’re going to have to fight that terentatek.”

/He sought a challenge,/ Freyyr continued, /but this arrogance got him more than he could handle. He survived, but the blade of the sword stayed in the creature’s hide. Our tales say it was taken because we had become undeserving. The hilt is still in the court of or chieftain . . . with Chuundar. If the blade could be found, Aithne Moran, tradition could cast doubt on his rule./

“Okay, so our choices are: murder Big Z’s father for his traitorous, slaving scum of a son; slaughter a good bit of the village of Rwookrrorro to rescue our friend; or attempt to slay a legendary Dark Side beast created by Sith sorcerors specifically to terrorize the Jedi and try to reclaim half a sword from it that may be lost or rusted away in the first place. Anyone want to advocate for a bit of easy, nonjustifiable homicide?” Aithne asked.

She looked back at the others. Jolee looked wry, and Carth’s jaw was tight, but neither man spoke up. She smiled at them, a bit rueful. “We’re gonna tell Bastila about this one, flyboy,” she told Carth. “And never let it be said I shrink from the Path of the Light, however deadly it might look.” She turned back to Freyyr. “We’ll do it. Where are we headed?”

/Fresh blood will draw it out,/ Freyyr explained. /Before Chuundar’s rule put an end to the ritual, fresh kills were often left as offerings in the south of this area. Go to the place of ritual. If the Great Beast is to be lured out of hiding, it must be done there, using the old ways. You’ll need some bait, however./

“Jolee?” Aithne asked, “Aren’t all those kinrath corpses near here?”

Jolee nodded. Freyyr continued.

/A viper kinrath body will do well. Display it, and the creature will emerge. I will stay here and try to think of what I will say to Zaalbar. I have wronged him. I hope he can forgive me. I will be here. Please, Aithne Moran, find the blade of Bacca’s sword. I must make things right./

Fifteen minutes later, Aithne and Carth between them hoisted a kinrath corpse onto a vine in the place of ritual Freyyr had mentioned. “Remember—this is a time you don’t want to use the Force, Bindo. I wish we had a second spare vibroblade for you, but we don’t, but even using the Force to track your ‘saber beam could make this thing rush to rip you apart. Sure you don’t want a blaster?”

“Been too long since I’ve used one, lass,” Jolee told her. “But if you could keep the terentatek from ripping me apart, I’d be grateful.”

An unearthly roar suddenly shattered the stillness of the clearing. Aithne whirled around, and there it was. Giant, unexpectedly quick, and venomous to top it all. Specifically bred to kill Jedi like her. Bipedal, but with unnaturally long arms tipped with dripping claws. The spikes down its back dripped with the same toxin.

Aithne activated her melee shield, set her jaw, and rushed the thing. She took a claw to the gut for her trouble. It didn’t pierce her shields, but the sheer force of it threw her back a meter and a half into a tree root. Her back hit, and suddenly she was hurt all over, seeing stars and staggering at the very beginning of the fight. The terentatek roared with fury. It fixed her with baneful red eyes, night-vision adapted, which shone through the gloom of the Shadowlands. It lowered its head, readied its tusks, and prepared to charge. 

Carth shouted from her left, loud enough to draw the terentatek’s attention, and as soon as it looked, he fired. Onasi had a fondness for fancy eye shots, Aithne thought, somewhat dazed, as the creature screamed and one of its glowing red eyes went dark. The terentatek leapt, but then Jolee was there, springing at the monster with a Form IV strike toward the shoulder, distracting it again. The terentatek rolled the shoulder, swinging its massive arm to retaliate, but Bindo was already halfway across the Wookiee ritual ground. The air filled with the stench of burning flesh.

The terentatek eyed the three of them with a new wariness now, a look of cunning in its one good eye. Then Carth fired again. More green blood gushed down over the terentatek’s snout, and all thought the beast might have had of a more cautious approach fled. It began to stomp around in a blind, pain-fueled rage, swinging out at random to try and catch them. As it turned, a gleam of metal caught the light off Jolee’s ‘saber, a sword blade half-embedded in an old scar in the creature’s side.

“Guys? I found Bacca’s Blade,” Aithne shouted.

“Great,” Carth yelled back, running across her path and firing his blasters into the terentatek’s flank as it lunged toward her. “Can we grab it after we’ve killed this thing?”

Jolee darted in to take his turn, and in a tag-team effort, they wore it down. Aithne wasn’t the only one who had been thrown into a tree by the end of it. Jolee joined her, and Aithne took another crushing blow on her shoulder from the creature’s club tail. At last, with the terentatek seeping green blood from a dozen different wounds and Aithne and Jolee both staggering from their efforts—as Jedi, the terentatek had fought them more fiercely than it had Carth—Aithne took in a last breath against her protesting bones and charged. She thrust with her double-bladed vibrosword and felt the tip pierce the creature’s heart.

It roared, and Aithne cut. Green blood gushed forth, spraying her face-to-waist with gore. Aithne cried out in disgust but didn’t withdraw her blade until she felt the monster die. It fell to the ground, and she stepped back and knelt to wipe her blade clean on the dirt. Even if she couldn’t get clean, she could see to her vibrosword.

“Ugh, ugh, ugh!” she complained. “Onasi, why did I decide I wanted this thing instead of a lightsaber, which cauterizes as it cuts?”

“You were trying to get the terentatek to spread the aggression around—so, to attack me more,” Carth answered. “That worked. You and Jolee both took some knocks.”

“Burnt out a whole energy shield too,” Jolee added. “Lass, you alright? You had the worst of it.”

Aithne grimaced. “Oh, I probably won’t need to move tomorrow anyway.”

“On the plus side, when we head back to get Zaalbar, you should look terrifying,” Carth commented.

“I’d prefer the shower,” Aithne retorted. “Come on.”

“Hold on a minute, would you?” Jolee said. “Here.” He stepped to her and placed a warm hand on her shoulder. Energy flowed into her. Her melee energy shield had kept the terentatek spikes from piercing her skin or armor, but hadn’t stopped the mass of the impact. The throbbing, exhausting pain from the blow now soothed, then abated. Aithne rolled her shoulder in Jolee’s grip and sighed.

“You’re pretty good at that, Bindo,” she observed.

“It was my specialty, back in the day.”

“I can tell.”

He handed her a small, tattered bag. “I found this near the terentatek as well.”

Aithne looked in the bag. A circlet—the type that enhanced the brainwaves of the wearer—was inside, along with a datapad. Aithne skimmed the datapad, then looked up at Jolee. “There’s an archivist back on Dantooine, where we’re returning next. He’ll want to see this. It’s a record of the three Jedi who went on the Great Hunt. Tells of how they fell to the Dark Side. This circlet belonged to one of him. I’m guessing he died right here.”

“Nice to discover history just going about your business,” Jolee remarked. “But we should return to Freyyr.”

They did so, and when they had returned to the Wookiee’s clearing, Freyyr greeted them. /I see from your clothes you have engaged in a great battle,/ he said. /Please tell me you have made progress. Having Bacca’s Blade will gain me valuable support./

Aithne regarded Freyyr. “You know, if I were still scouting, I could charge a fortune for this,” she said. She sighed, then pulled out the sword blade from her pack, wrapped in a length of cloth so she didn’t cut her hands. “Achieving the impossible yet again, yadda yadda, we have obtained the blade of Bacca’s sword. Here.”

She handed it over. /I . . . I cannot believe it, yet I see Bacca’s Blade before me!/ Freyyr exclaimed, running his claws over and over the blade. /It may not look like much, but it is a very important artifact of my people. Tradition dictates that it be respected./ He looked up then, and there was regret in his eyes. He bowed before them. /I did not think I was worthy to search for it, but I realize that was selfish despair. I should have challenged Chuundar long ago./

“Yes, you should have,” Aithne agreed. “Will you do it now?”

Freyyr threw his powerful, shaggy shoulders back. /I will,/ he swore. /I will make amends for my inaction. I have new hope. You have led me to this. Perhaps this is what the Great Beast wanted./

Aithne grimaced. “I’m pretty sure what the Great Beast wanted was Jedi for dinner, but fine, let’s go with that. How do we proceed?”

/I will climb to the village as quickly as possible and try to gather support,/ Chuundar told them. /You will have to follow me on the paths as soon as you can. When you arrive, we will confront Chuundar in the throne room. My people will no longer be slaves./ With that, he turned immediately and began to scale one of the massive wroshyrs.

A thrill of hope and satisfaction passed through Aithne. She watched the old Wookiee rise, and couldn’t help but smile. If only they could set things right on such a scale everywhere they went.

“Well, we’ve started a revolt,” Carth said. “You were right about the trouble we’d have today this morning, anyway. We should comm Bastila and the others.”

“You’re right,” Aithne admitted, pulling up her com-link. “Aithne to Ebon Hawk, Aithne to Ebon Hawk. Bas, where are you?”

The link crackled, and Bastila’s voice came through the connection. “This is Bastila Shan. Hello, Aithne. Have you made much progress?”

“You could say that,” Aithne answered. “We’ve got a new set of coordinates from the Star Map down here, and Big Z’s father is headed for the surface to instigate a revolt against Chuundar and the Czerka Corporation. I want you to lock down and arm Ebon Hawk. If resistance at the port gets too hot, I want you to fly her into orbit with Ordo and Juhani on the guns and await further instructions to a rendezvous.”

“Understood,” Bastila responded, voice crisp. “But may I suggest I give the comm to Canderous unless evacuation becomes necessary? I can use my Battle Meditation to meditate upon our success.”

“I wouldn’t order you to do that, but it could come in handy,” Aithne admitted.

“Do not be afraid to ask it of me, when it is appropriate,” Bastila told her. “We will have to use all our resources to succeed in our mission from the Jedi Council. And Aithne?”

“Yes?”

“It is good you were able to find a way to disrupt Czerka influence on Kashyyyk,” Bastila said. “The Force will be with you, I am certain, and you will return to us with Zaalbar before long.”

“That’s the plan. Over and out.”

They had been walking through the forest, with Jolee and Carth serving as forward and rearguards, as Aithne spoke to Bastila. Now they had arrived at the wounded Wookiee’s rough camp. He had waited for them, as he’d promised. /You return,/ he said. /Have you found them? Did you kill them all? They were animals in armor, with no honor among them./

Carth rummaged in his pack and tossed the Wookiee the Mandalorian leader’s helmet. “They won’t be bothering you or any of your hunters again,” he promised.

The Wookiee looked at the helmet he held. /Yes . . . yes, I see the trophy helmet from the one who gave orders. Their bodies will not last long in the Shadowlands. I am glad. The taint of them, their cowardice . . . the forest will consume it all. I hope this gives my hunting brethren peace./

Although she believed the Mandalorians who had hunted and murdered the Wookiees certainly had deserved to die, Aithne was still a little uncomfortable with the way and the reasons for which she’d killed them. So she attempted to simply bow and pass the Wookiee. But he held up a claw to stop her.

/You have helped in avenging my fellows. I must acknowledge that, even if you are an outsider and not to be fully trusted./

“You are not the first to call me ‘Outsider,’” Aithne said. “If you wish a name, however, mine is Aithne Moran.”

/I am Grrwahr,/ the Wookiee told her. /You have acted as a fellow Wookiee would have. Here, take this./ He handed her a small token. /It is the symbol of my hunting clan,/ he said. /You served them, so you deserve it./

Aithne hesitated, then said, “I am honored to accept your tribute, but if you would truly be of service, I would have you return to your village. Freyyr challenges Chuundar for the leadership of Rwookrrorro, and each Wookiee he has to support him could make a difference. This could be the chance for you all to rid yourselves of the Czerka slavers.”

/You would accuse Chuundar of collaborating with the Czerka filth?/ Grrwahr demanded. /And Freyyr, he is not slain?/

Aithne hesitated, then began to do her own work to build Freyyr’s support in the village.

ZAALBAR

Zaalbar had been nearly two days with Chuundar by the time Aithne Moran returned. He had been well treated—fed quantities and qualities of food such as he had not had since leaving his homeworld, and neither restrained nor abused—yet forced to remain with Chuundar every moment for fear of his own life. It was only his brother’s indulgence that kept the other villagers from tearing him apart, since he had returned from exile.

Chuundar had made the most of their time with one another. He said he was glad of their reunion, that he regretted the way their father and Zaalbar had both turned upon him when he only wanted the best for Rwookrrorro. He showed Zaalbar treasures the trade with Czerka had brought them from off-planet, claimed forging a friendship with the humans would advance the power and influence of Wookiee wisdom throughout the galaxy.

The price of the power Chuundar wanted seemed too dear to Zaalbar. Yet Chuundar was right when he said, again and again, that kinslaying was a grievous sin. Zaalbar knew he had lost his own honor when he had attacked his brother with his claws, intending to kill. Perhaps he should have listened twenty years ago, before his anger had driven him to madness. Chuundar said that Zaalbar could restore his own honor, could be his brother again and be reconciled to the village, in time.

Zaalbar did not know what to do or what he wanted. He knew Chuundar to be a liar and a slaver, and yet several things he said rang true. It was true as well that Aithne might not fare well in the Shadowlands. It was a blow to him, yet another stain to his honor, and if he could not return to Mission—for while he had not been imprisoned, he knew Chuundar would not allow him to leave—he would grieve for years to come, perhaps as long as Mission herself might live.

Yet the evening that Zaalbar himself had at last begun to consider how he should live if Aithne did not return, she returned at last. She came into the throne room with Carth Onasi and a small, dark human male Zaalbar didn’t know: another Jedi, by the robes he wore and the lightsaber he carried. With them were four Wookiee warriors from the village, and in the lead, a thin, older wook with a graying, shaggy pelt. Had he been two decades younger, Zaalbar would have known him well.

His hearts gave a pang, for the old wook was his father, Freyyr, last seen exiling him from the village.

 Chuundar was surprised at their entrance, and then he was very displeased. “Oh, that’s just great. Everyone is here now! It’s a reunion!” The sarcasm in his voice was a heavy thing.

Freyyr lifted the broken blade of a sword high above his head. Zaalbar fixed his eyes upon it, awed. It was Bacca’s Blade. He had seen pictures again and again in his lessons as a child. It had been lost to their village for generations. “

“Yes, son, by the blade of Bacca’s sword, I’ve come to end your treachery,” Zaalbar’s father roared. “No more will you sell your own people!”

Wookiees around the room began to growl. Chuundar shifted. Although Czerka gave him supplies and treasure, it was not known in the village why they did this: that he was party to their slaving operations and had sold many of his enemies, powerless and uninfluential members of their own village, and Wookiees from other villages into captivity. No one knew this was the reason he had argued with Zaalbar and with Freyyr. He had claimed Freyyr was dead. Now Freyyr stood, making public what Chuundar had done, and he brought Bacca’s Blade. It was a powerful sign that he was rightful chieftain of Rwookrrorro.

 Yet Chuundar forced a laugh. “You have Bacca’s Blade? So what? I have the hilt, held by each true chieftain in recent memory. Even you claimed it was all-important!” He hoisted it high, showing the Wookiees around the room. “We both have our ancient trinkets. So, who will the people follow? You? You are old and weak.”

Zaalbar did not like the way his father and brother looked at one another. He did not like the grumbling through the throne room. “Shut up!” he cried suddenly. “Both of you! This ends today! I . . . I will not let Rwookrrorro suffer anymore!”

/Alright, Big Z?/ Aithne asked him. The sound of her nasal human voice, after two days when the only humans he had heard speaking were the Czerka, was strange for him to hear. Yet, the name, “Big Z,” reminded him of Mission. It reminded him of friends, of the life he had lived for the last few years, and what family was supposed to mean.

“I am unharmed,” he told her. “Chuundar has not harmed me. He says he wants to make amends. He has been telling me things, Aithne Moran. He makes sense . . . I think. I don’t know.”

Aithne’s mobile human face twisted into what Zaalbar knew was an expression of sympathy. She was covered in blood, he saw, though he saw also it was not her own. Her time in the Shadowlands had been a trial for her. /He would make sense, Zaalbar,/ Aithne told him. /He’s been lying for years. Of course he’s gotten good at it. I’m glad he hasn’t hurt you, but I’m not surprised. He’s probably been lonely. The way he’s treated his own people has left him with no one to trust. Do you trust him? Or do you trust your father? He treated you badly twenty years ago, but has he ever acted with dishonor?/

Zaalbar looked to his father, who met his eyes. An understanding passed between them. Chuundar had said that Freyyr himself had attacked Chuundar with his claws, gone mad in the years they had been apart. He claimed Zaalbar’s madness was inherited from their poor father, that only he, Chuundar, was in possession of his right mind. He had been unable to help their father, but he wanted to help Zaalbar now.

Now Zaalbar wondered whether their father had instead gone mad with the grief and betrayal of what Chuundar had done, after he had believed Chuundar’s lies before and exiled Zaalbar. The exile had not been wrong, however: Zaalbar’s madness at the time had been deserving of punishment. His father had endured his own punishment now: twenty years in the Shadowlands. Could both of them be given a second chance? To trust one another? To help their people?

“Aithne Moran—is this right?” Zaalbar asked—his lifedebt, his friend, and the woman who was becoming as another sister, and not the Wookiee who had exiled his youngest son.

Aithne Moran reached behind her and removed a massive double vibroblade from where it had been fastened to the back of her pack. She hefted it into the air, and Zaalbar reached up and caught the hilt in his claws. /Freedom or slavery?/ she asked him. /Truth or lies?/

Zaalbar looked down at the sword in his hands. He regretted what he must do now, especially after the way Chuundar had treated him after his attempted kinslaying. Yet, it was good that now he must attack, he would do so with a blade. “I choose freedom,” he said. “I choose truth. Chuundar, you have betrayed your people,” he said, taking up a position of challenge. “You must pay.”

Several Wookiees around the room readied themselves to fight as well—to support Chuundar or Freyyr and the others, Zaalbar did not know. “That’s my boy!” Freyyr cried.

Zaalbar ignored him, focusing instead on Aithne Moran and the way he would need to move in the upcoming battle to get to her side.

“You’re too weak to fight, old wook,” Chuundar snarled, taking his own vibroblade from his back. “And I still have Czerka support! We’ll see who dies today!”

He charged Freyyr, and the Czerka who had been standing in their corners around the room brought up blaster rifles and opened fire. Fortunately, though the villagers had stripped Zaalbar of his weapons when he had been taken, they had not removed his shields. He activated them now, moving to place himself between Aithne and his brother’s guards. He would fight for what was right, yet this time, he did not want to be the one to attack his brother.

The male Jedi and Aithne sprang toward opposite corners of the throne room—going for the Czerka instead of the Wookiees in what was undeniable evidence of their wisdom. Carth Onasi, too, found cover behind the carved wooden throne in the center of the room and focused his fire upon the slavers. Rwookrrorro fought her own.

Zaalbar was amazed to see that, mad-claws or not, only two Wookiees stood with his brother against him and his father. He did not know whether it was Bacca’s Blade, or the fact that Chuundar fought alongside the slavers, but with the humans fighting the humans, the Wookiee supporters of his brother were badly outnumbered. And though it had been years since Zaalbar had battled with enemies as tall and as strong as he was, he found too that he was more in practice battling than Chuundar’s guards.

He sidestepped a powerful leg to the gut and brought his vibroblade in a sweeping arc, trying to block out how his father fared against his brother in the corner of his eye. He felt the tip of his blade slice into Wookiee flesh and hated that the slavers had brought their village to this barbarism.

When this one traitor fell at his feet, the others had ensured it was done. Zaalbar looked around and saw the only humans still standing his friends and the strange male Jedi, and the body of his brother lying at his father’s feet.

He howled a soft lament, and his father echoed the sound. “We have done it,” he said. “I am saddened that it had to come to this, but I couldn’t let the lies and the oppression of our people continue. Zaalbar, my son, I am truly sorry. You have suffered a great shame. I was blind. I have no excuse.”

“You have every excuse,” Zaalbar corrected. “It was I who attacked my brother in a way forbidden to our people. I should have brought charges before the Holder of the Laws for investigation. Then I would have not have lost my honor, and perhaps it would not have come to this. We have both suffered for our failures, Father. I—I choose forgiveness. Will you?”

“Yes,” his father agreed. “And your wisdom shames me.”

/Freyyr,/ Aithne said, stepping forward. /What will you do about the slavers?/

“We will fight them,” Zaalbar’s father answered. Wookiees around the room raised a cheer at this declaration: war upon their enemies. “It will be difficult, but I swear they won’t take another one of my people without bloodshed

“I’ll send quick-climbers to other villages and try to rally a defense,” he continued, pacing as he thought. “We must guard against this ever happening again. You three will be the last outsiders welcome here for a very long time. This is a change for the better, I think.”

Aithne turned her face to Zaalbar then. She looked uncertain, hesitant. /Zaalbar, what will you do?/ she asked. /I’ll let you off your lifedebt if you want. I’m sure all of us will understand if you want to stay and help your people./

Zaalbar looked over at his father, at the other Wookiees in the room. Not one of them looked at him with hatred now, he saw. Several of them growled invitations for him to stay. It would take time for tale of what had happened here to pass to the rest of the village, but the Czerka were hated in his village and all over Kashyyyk. News that his father had declared war upon them and reconciled with Zaalbar would go a long way. For the first time in twenty years, he could go home.

“Returning home has lifted a great weight from my mind,” he said, “but it has been painful as well.”

“You have a place by my side, Zaalbar,” his father promised. “I would be honored if you would take it.”

Zaalbar looked over at Aithne Moran, and he made his decision. For twenty years, he had lived away from his people and his village. For the last several, he had had a new sister, a new family, and though Mission was not like he was, she had been a better family to him than his own had ever been. Now the two of them were sworn to this Jedi: a woman of honor and good intentions, who cared for them with zeal, kindness, and wisdom, and whose assignment could prove the salvation of the galaxy. “I can’t,” he told his father. “Not yet. I’m just getting used to being free . . . and not just from the slavers. And I have a lifedebt. Now that my life is truly my own again, honoring that agreement is all the more important.”

 Freyyr gave him a Wookiee smile. “Listen to my son!” he cried. “His insight humbles me. Take that good judgment with you, and all the planets will come to revere Wookiee wisdom!”

It would be a better road to spreading Wookiee wisdom through the stars, Zaalbar thought: fighting side by side with Aithne Moran instead of building an empire founded on slavery from Rwookrrorro.

/We can’t stay to do more against Czerka,/ Aithne admitted to Zaalbar’s father. /Our mission will take us elsewhere. But if I could contact our companions back on our ship, and the three of us and Zaalbar could rest here for the night?/

“By all means,” Freyyr agreed, “rest here for the night. You will be an honored guest in my household.”

A young Wookiee led them all away, back to the home Zaalbar had grown up in. They were offered the services of a groomer, so Zaalbar and Aithne Moran could purify themselves from the gore of battle. Zaalbar did not know why Aithne needed help, as her lightsabers kept her foes from bleeding on her. He did not know where she had found her second lightsaber—a blade that shone white in her off-hand, while she wielded the original green in her right. He determined to ask her the next time they were alone.

He was introduced to Jolee Bindo, the Jedi he had noticed before, a man who had, it seemed, been living in the Shadowlands perhaps even longer than Zaalbar had been exiled from home. He would be leaving in their company and would help Aithne Moran as well, moving forward. Zaalbar knew the human must be a powerful warrior, to have survived in the Shadowlands so long alone, and he was also an elder, and so must be wise, in the way of humans.

They feasted on the meat and fruits of Zaalbar’s homeland and bedded down Wookiee hammocks for the night. As the others dropped off to sleep, Zaalbar lay awake. Outside the windows of his home, he could hear the village singing: the funeral song of his brother Chuundar.

Chapter Text

ZAALBAR

Despite her words of the day before, Aithne Moran spent half the morning helping his village determine which of them had supported his brother’s slaving activities. She proved her wisdom as well as her strength in evaluating who had been deceived and who had been a participant in the treachery against their own people. But soon, it was time for them to go.

Aithne led their party back to the throne room so they could take their leave of Freyyr. They found his father bent over a workbench in an alcove, laboring to reunite the parts of Bacca’s sword. When the four of them entered, he straightened to salute them.

“My son,” he said. “Jolee Bindo, Aithne Moran, Carth Onasi. Well met. What do you require?”

/I think it’s time that we were leaving,/ Aithne said. /We wanted to say farewell./

“Perhaps it is time for you to take your leave,” Freyyr agreed. “My people have already begun the attack on the Czerka filth. For all you have done for us, they will find it hard to accept humans here for many years. Yet know, Aithne Moran, that I, Freyyr of Kashyyyk, recognize what you have done, and would reward you. You have done us a great service, and Kashyyyk will remember you well past your lifetime. Because of you, I am reinstated as chieftain. We will return to the old ways, when honor and trust of kin ruled above all else. I’m not sure there is a reward that accurately reflects the value of what you have done. Our world is changed because of you.”

Aithne just smiled. /So I fought a giant monster and gave you a bit of a push,/ she said. Then her face became more serious. /The real work’s ahead of you, Freyyr. You know that. Circumstances allowed for me to help you, and I’m gladder of that than I can say, but I just as well might never have had the opportunity. I don’t need a reward for anything I did here./

Zaalbar’s father growled in approval. “This is a good human, my son,” he said. “She is worthy of the honor you have given her.”

“She is,” Zaalbar agreed. “Yet I would ask for a reward, Father. I have thought about it a great deal. I would like Bacca’s sword.”

All through the night, he had thought on what both his father and Chuundar had said: their wish to spread Wookiee wisdom across the galaxy. As he left his homeworld, this time with the blessing of his father and his village, he wanted to take something of Kashyyyk with them that would symbolize this end, show his commitment to his people in his service for his lifedebt, against the Sith who had obliterated Taris and beyond.

Aithne seemed surprised by his request, but she smiled once again. /I like it,/ she told Freyyr. /The blade is a symbol of your people’s power, honor, and justice, isn’t it? I think Zaalbar should have it./

Zaalbar’s father looked down at the sword in his hand, but newly restored. “I am tempted to say no,” he said, “but perhaps I should consider it an investment. Zaalbar, do you understand what this will mean? It is the legacy of our people, held by chieftains . . . and future chieftains.”

Zaalbar growled an affirmation. He knew he was not worthy to be chieftain yet. But still he felt that, alongside Aithne Moran, he could become ready. He could grow as a warrior, learn from her strength and wisdom, regain his honor. And when he returned to Kashyyyk, in fifty or in seventy years, he would be full grown and ready to take on the burden Bacca’s sword represented. He vowed it. “I understand. I want this, Father. I’ll bring it back one day.”

/Yes, you will,/ Aithne promised.

“I have no doubt,” Freyyr said. He nodded and handed Zaalbar the ancient ritual blade. “Let the two halves of the blade be made one. My son shall hold Bacca’s sword.”

It was good to be his father’s son again, to take on the responsibility for his people again, even if he would not bear it just yet. Zaalbar raised the blade and roared, and his father roared back at him. Zaalbar sheathed the blade and slung it across his back, then ran to embrace his father. Freyyr held him tight before releasing him once again.

“Go well, my son,” he said. “Honor your lifedebt. Represent our people.”

“I will, Father.”

/Farewell, Freyyr,/ the Bindo said, and Aithne Moran and Carth Onasi said their farewells in turn. Then the four of them left the village.

/Do you want to talk, Big Z?/ Aithne asked him, when they were a ways away from Rwookrrorro.

“I do not know,” Zaalbar admitted. “You have seen more than I would have allowed and taught me some things, too. I am grateful for that. It will be a while before I know what my role will be in making Kashyyyk truly free, yet I feel going with you, bearing Bacca’s sword, is the best first step to take.”

/Why did you ask for it?/ Aithne wanted to know.

Zaalbar explained. Aithne listened, and she didn’t comment on what he said. Just nodded and thanked him. /I’m sorry we couldn’t stay longer on Kashyyyk,/ she said.

Zaalbar smiled down at his human friend. “You and I have important things to do,” he said. “I don’t feel bad about leaving this time. I know I’ll be welcomed back. And it will be good to get back to Mission on Ebon Hawk.”

Aithne smiled back at him. /I know she’ll be happy to see you./

As they drew nearer to the spaceport, Zaalbar could hear the sounds of roars and screams resounding through the forest: his people, battling the Czerka. Many might die today, he knew, but it would be a better death, fighting for the sake of their freedom, than any they could suffer in chains away from home. The battle was clean. It was good. And he knew that in the end, his people would win the victory. They had suffered in silence for too long.

Aithne Moran led him and the others in support of his people in a few skirmishes—those that lay in their path to Ebon Hawk. Zaalbar fought beside his people, wielding Bacca’s sword for their cause. He saw lives saved because of their participation, and slavers and scum destroyed.

At last, they were returned to Ebon Hawk. Zaalbar saw with pleasure that his people had posted guards upon their ship to make sure that the Czerka neither attacked nor stole the vessel. Aithne Moran commed the Jedi Bastila, and the ramp lowered down.

/Go ahead,/ Aithne Moran told him then, grinning. /Someone’s waiting for you inside./

AITHNE

Ebon Hawk began its journey back to Dantooine without any real disruption to operations. Jolee took up residence in and responsibility for the med bay, sliding into place as the ship’s medic and healer without a word, and Aithne realized with some chagrin that it probably was not a terrible idea they have a healer aboard. He sometimes joined morning meditation and sparring in the hold with her, Bastila, and Juhani, but just as often took his exercise with the non-Jedi members of the crew in the afternoons or evenings. Zaalbar, Mission, Juhani, and Sasha accepted the old man quickly; Canderous and T3-M4 ignored him; and Bastila and Carth maintained a wary distance, still, she thought, suspicious of the way Bindo had extorted a position on the crew from them.

In two days on Kashyyyk, Juhani had become much more integrated into the crew than she had in two weeks’ journey from Dantooine in the first place. Aithne continued to sense Juhani’s detestation of Canderous Ordo, yet the Jedi Knight had developed an effective working relationship with him in order to best fulfill the needs of their small guest. Among the Mando’ade, it was customary for women to train the girls as men trained the boys, so while Canderous had retained overall responsibility for Sasha’s wellbeing, he appeared to have delegated the actual business of beginning to teach Sasha to fight to the Cathar. He was the girl’s war chief, and Juhani apparently her teacher and immediate guardian. The three had formed a quasi-unit upon the ship, and though the dynamics were weird, Aithne had to approve of what they were doing, both with one another and with the girl.

Sasha was well dressed now. Adequate food was already starting to fill her out. Ordo had taught her the names of everyone aboard, as well as basic greetings and farewells for them all. Her grammar in Mando’a had improved, and while Sasha still had very little Basic, her vocabulary was expanding. She also seemed much more confident.

As they flew toward Dantooine, Mission spent most of her time with Zaalbar. She neglected her lessons a bit, actually. Aithne understood why she was doing it: she’d been scared out of her mind she’d lose her friend on Kashyyyk after everything that had happened on Taris. She needed time to assure herself he was really back and safe and with them. Still, Aithne knew she’d have to get after the teenager to recommit to her education again soon and hoped she hadn’t lost the authority through allowing Zaalbar’s capture or the continued delay in searching for Griff Vao.

The biggest strain aboard Ebon Hawk was between Aithne herself and Bastila. Aithne wasn’t sure Bastila had picked up on it yet, but given the nature of the bond between them, she also wasn’t willing to bet the younger woman hadn’t. The truth was, Aithne was turning over and over in her mind whether she wanted to wait to research what might be going on with her connection to Revan until she was back in the Archives on Dantooine or if she wanted to see what else she could get out of Bastila. Bastila wanted Aithne to trust her. She wanted Aithne to be her friend, even though she herself had difficulty believing Aithne wasn’t about to give in to the Dark Side. Aithne thought there just might be a way to get Bastila to tell her what she wanted to know—obliquely or outright, but she didn’t know how she was going to manage it.

In the end, Bastila broached the subject herself during one of their morning meditation sessions. Aithne had been dwelling upon the issue as she meditated with Bastila and Juhani, and the Sentinel brought it up. “I sense your thoughts have been troubled of late, Aithne. You’re distant: consumed with questions of the past and future. Can we help you bring peace back to your mind?”

Juhani looked at Aithne, and her eyes focused on her. Aithne felt the Guardian’s Force signature, less focused than Bastila’s, fix upon her. Juhani used the Force mostly to augment her physical abilities. She was stronger in combat than either Aithne or Bastila when her mind was clear, but her powers of intuition and her senses of the Cosmic and the Living Force were weaker. “I sense it too,” she said. “Aithne, if you have been struggling, you should tell us. We are here to help one another.”

Aithne decided to take a chance. She wondered: if Juhani were present, would Bastila be more or less hesitant to lie or hide the truth? “I’ve been struggling,” she admitted. “We’re off to a good start on our mission. We picked up the Star Map coordinates on Kashyyyk fairly quickly, despite the bounty hunters and all the other complications we faced there. But it still bothers me that of the three of us, the Jedi Council decided the newest recruit should run the show around here. It doesn’t seem like good strategy—a woman whose Battle Meditation has been holding the tide against Malak in the charge of another Padawan, accompanied but not supervised by a brand-new Jedi Knight who has had her own struggles lately. I know resources are scarce on the ground, but you’d think they could afford a master for us if our mission was so important, or at least a senior knight.”

Bastila searched her face. Aithne felt a sensation like a hand brushing over her mind. She stayed behind her shields, leaving out only one thought for Bastila to grasp: You said you wouldn’t. She sensed Bastila’s retreat, felt the other woman’s shields strengthen in turn, and smiled blandly.

“Your powers—both of your powers—outstrip my own,” Juhani offered. “You know by instinct what it took me years to learn. It could be that raw strength and the Force may see us through where strategy falters. I believe the Jedi Council trusts to the Force.”

“The events on Taris proved that the Force wanted to bring us together for this mission,” Bastila said, “and your intervention with Juhani back on Dantooine created a tie between the two of you as well, though it is not like the bond between the two of us, more akin to the bonds you built with the others at the start of our journey. So much for why we three are together. As for why we do not have a master, with the Sith on the hunt for us already, we can move faster and with more secrecy without one.”

“But not without detection,” Aithne pointed out. “Malak knows where we’re going. Kashyyyk proved that. And the Jedi still want to leave me to it—leave us to it? After everything they’ve said about the call of the Dark Side?” She looked from Bastila to Juhani. She could feel turbulence rising within the Cathar. There was nothing from Bas, but a flush of her cheek said what her mind and emotions weren’t.

“At times, the Council’s tests are . . . unconventional,” Bastila answered. “Juhani will bear witness to that. I admit, at times, I have wondered if my own journey aboard Ebon Hawk might be more than just a mission to stop Malak.”

“Just a mission to stop Malak!” Aithne cried. The girl’s complacency was unbelievable, considering what they’d seen.

But Juhani’s brow furrowed. “You believe this mission might serve as your own trials?”

“I am a Sentinel,” Bastila reasoned. “We are the investigators and support to the Jedi Order. It seemed reasonable that the Council might be watching to see how I might help and guide Aithne on our quest. I have wondered if Aithne’s leadership might be more of a . . . formality. A way to guard me against the front lines.”

“Yet the second I’ve got a knife headed at me, you take it as a matter of duty,” Aithne returned.

“I—”

“I sensed it, Bastila!”

Bastila was red now, not merely pink. Obviously uncomfortable, and her shields were slipping. Juhani looked between them, confusion apparent in her yellow eyes. Aithne decided to press.

“You take the knife, and on the Sith bounty notices, they’re paying more to kill me than they are to bring you in alive, Battle Meditation and all. Explain.”

Bastila had fallen into a breathing pattern Aithne recognized from training—one designed to calm her body and quiet her mind. A form of passive meditation one could make use of during conversation or everyday tasks to release emotion and refocus upon the Force. Bastila met her eyes. “Think of the mindframe of the Sith, Aithne,” she said. “A Sith exists upon his reputation. With each defeat that he suffers, his weakness is revealed to others eager to take advantage. On Taris, you singlehandedly made the Sith presence there untenable, to the point where they were forced to sacrifice the entire planet. From the fire of devastation they rained down there, you escaped with an asset they find valuable, namely myself. There were survivors to testify that you led our endeavors, that you were not even a Jedi at the time. Now, somehow Malak has become aware that we seek the Star Maps. Spies in the Order? It matters not. He is vulnerable, and we are aware. You are an embarrassment, and worse, you have proved yourself a threat. Furthermore, you stand between the Sith and their goal to capture me. Do you think there is anything Malak would not pay to see you dead? Your every step makes him a laughingstock.”

Aithne stared back at Bastila. It was a good lie, she would give the girl that. Bastila was happy with it, anyway. The red had left her cheeks, and she was calm. But nothing Bas had said had explained the knife. None of it had alluded to the visions Aithne had been having, the reason she was able to find the Star Maps, and the nature of which was unlike anything she’d ever heard of in the Jedi texts. Not that that was much. Did they intend that? She remembered the books Dorak hadn’t approved for her to take from the Jedi Archives.

“You would hoard knowledge to stave off your fears instead of facing them like a Jedi,” Bastila told her. “You must learn to trust in the wisdom of the Council. We will come to know our destiny at the appointed time. You mustn’t be so impatient.” She smiled, gently, and it was a masterstroke.

Aithne regarded her. “‘There is no ignorance; there is knowledge,’” she quoted. “Fear lives in the dark, and a Sentinel should know her job is to shine a light into those corners so what’s living there can be faced. And I’m not the one chasing after my destiny. But then, that was your point, wasn’t it?” Reflecting Aithne’s attention back upon Bastila’s own moments of arrogance, playing to a tendency Aithne realized she had demonstrated to point out the foibles and inconsistencies of others. Bastila was manipulating her. Bastila had been manipulating her from the beginning. Bastila had her moments—a knack for a plausible explanation—but she wasn’t particularly good at it, nor did Aithne believe she truly wanted to do it. She was doing it on the orders of the Jedi Council—why?

She searched the younger woman’s face. Between them, the cloud of confusion and doubt around Juhani deepened. Aithne flicked her eyes to the Cathar. “Enough,” Bastila said. “You are intentionally provoking us now. We are not enemies, Aithne. If we are to succeed, we must do so together.”

Aithne raised her eyebrows. “I agree. When you’d like to do so, I’m ready to listen.”

Bastila threw her hands up and rose from the floor. “I don’t know how to deal with you. Make problems out of nothing if you will.”

“Well, ship rides are boring,” Aithne drawled, falling back on passive aggression at having run into a wall.

Bastila paused at the door panel and looked back over her shoulder. “The Council did not make a mistake, placing you in charge,” she said. “Despite the delusions of my pride and your comparative lack of training, you are the better leader. And even at your most difficult, I am glad to have you with us. Not just for the sake of the mission, but for my own sake as well.”

It was a conciliatory tactic, but despite that, Aithne didn’t sense any insincerity from Bastila this time. “Don’t lay it on too thick,” she advised. “You don’t want to form a deeper bond between us.”

“Normally, when someone says something kind to you, it’s polite to reciprocate, or at least to thank them,” Bastila said drily. “I suppose that would be too predictable.”

Aithne made a face. She might as well keep on good terms. “No, I think a witty and ungrateful repartee is right up my lane, actually. Time to switch things up. Thank you, Bas.”

“It would be nice if things aboard Ebon Hawk could be different than they are in the enclave,” Bastila suggested. “I spent years being hounded by my instructors. Being told so often how gifted and important I was until I was sick of it. Constantly threatened with the Dark Side. When I was younger, I used to swear that I would never become as self-absorbed and stodgy as the Jedi Masters. It’s ironic, really.”

Juhani chuckled. There was an angry, sharp edge to the sound, and when Aithne looked over, she saw the Cathar’s eyes cast down to the ground. She saw Juhani had employed the same breathing technique as Bastila had before. She frowned. Had she gone too far? Made the atmosphere in the hold too confrontational? Juhani was hot-tempered, and clearly still recovering from what had happened back on Dantooine.

“Mm,” she replied to Bastila. “If we’re a partnership of equals, for now—and friend,” she added, to Juhani, “we might consider acting like it. You could cut short the lectures, and I could cut short the interrogations.”

“Yes,” Bastila agreed. “Giving me at least the same courtesy you ask Carth give you would be the fairest way to proceed, I think. And keep me from filing for a different partner, bond or no bond, citing ‘irreconcilable differences.’”

“I’m told that’s a reason for a divorce, not reassignment.”

“Yes, well,” Bastila shrugged. She smiled again, palmed the door open, and slipped out. Aithne wondered if she thought a few jokes had fixed all her missing answers, then turned to Juhani. The Cathar was the larger concern for now.

“Let’s have it,” she said, as the door swished closed again. “What’s bothering you?”

“I may have been foolish to ask to come on this mission,” Juhani answered at once, her voice low and throaty. “Regardless of how things were on Dantooine, that it would be good to get away for a time. The Mandalorian; the girl, Sasha; listening to you and Bastila speak—” she spat Bastila’s name, and Aithne felt a spike of hot hatred flare in the room. “I do not know that I have strength enough for this.”

Aithne waited.

“To hear you speak of Taris so casually,” Juhani continued, “the destruction of an entire world! To know that it was because of you that it was destroyed! I never told you where I came from, did I? Where I grew up as a child.”

Aithne’s eyes narrowed, and she regarded Juhani. She had noticed the younger woman got even quieter at every mention of Taris. Her hatred of Mandalorians and the very personal hatred she had for slavery would also dovetail with a childhood on Taris.

“You made them destroy it!” Juhani accused her. “You and your precious Bastila. It was your fault for being there, your fault for rescuing Bastila! Without your intervention, the Sith would have had no cause to lay waste to my homeworld!”

Aithne raised her eyebrows. “If the Jedi never taught you to differentiate between fault and causality—”

Juhani cut her off, closing her eyes, and Aithne felt a wave of pain replace the anger and hatred. “Just let me vent my anger! Please! The Sith are all the way across the galaxy. You are here! I need . . . I need someone to blame, something. Anything! I hated that world, yet everything I learned as a child I learned there. It is as much a part of me as the air I breathe. I have this ache inside me where all my childhood memories lay, and now, every time you speak of what is past, I find your face there with them.  If it was not for you, that world would still exist!”

Aithne nodded sharply. She stood and reached across. Without opening her eyes, the Cathar caught her arm and accepted Aithne’s pull up. Aithne let her go, walked to the weapon wall, and took down two practice staves. She tossed one to Juhani, who caught it. “Maybe don’t try to kill me this time?” Aithne suggested.

Juhani nodded too and took up a Shii-Cho stance. Aithne fell into her favored Niman—which wouldn’t completely deny Juhani’s desire to see her as an aggressor but wouldn’t play to that desire either. Juhani waited for a moment; she was trying to control herself, but then she lost patience once again and struck out. They sparred for two minutes. Aithne counted out the breaths in the breathing pattern both Juhani and Bastila had been using aloud. Then she addressed the younger woman in Cathar, which, unlike Shyriiwook, could be spoken by humans.

/What do the Jedi say of your anger?/

“There is no emotion,” Juhani replied in Basic, shaking her head to indicate she preferred Aithne refrain from using the language of her childhood. Aithne inclined her head in acknowledgment. “There is peace.” She struck a few more blows, and Aithne countered.

“And who does your anger hurt?”

“Me,” Juhani answered.

“And help?”

“No one.”

“Since you’ve directed it at me, let me do what I can to help,” Aithne said, taking the offensive for the first time. “Since you did not tell me where you were from, I couldn’t avoid harming you through any accidental insensitivity. I’m sure it has been hard for you at times in the past couple of weeks. For whatever part I played in that, I’m sorry.”

Juhani was silent for several more breaths. She countered Aithne’s strokes. “You did not destroy my homeworld,” she conceded. “That the Sith chose to destroy it because of your actions is not your fault. I am sorry.” She paused. “Did you know what would happen when you were rescuing Bastila?”

Aithne held up a fist, and Juhani fell to rest with her. “Hours before it happened,” she said. “It was the logical response for a completely evil and ruthless enemy to make to our actions on the surface, out of resources to expend on a ground search and unwilling to risk Bastila’s escape. But even if I hadn’t actually rescued Bastila, the Sith wouldn’t have found her. It’s a good chance what we did only cost Taris its last couple weeks.”

Juhani’s shoulders shook, and her eyes fell once again. “I understand you. But it is so hard to lose your entire past. You would not understand.”

“No,” Aithne agreed. “But two others on this ship would. Carth is from Telos. Did you know that?”

Juhani’s eyes flicked up again, wide, and her mouth fell open. She shook her head and handed over her staff to Aithne. Aithne took it. She put the weapons back in place. “You haven’t talked to Mission much either. I can tell. Know where she grew up, Juhani? Where we picked up her and Zaalbar? A couple months ago, not several years ago. Any guesses why she has nightmares every few nights and sometimes spends half the day dead quiet or crying?”

Juhani knelt on the floor again. Her hands came up to cover her face. “Not Taris?”

“Taris,” Aithne agreed.

“Forgive me,” Juhani murmured.

“Just talk to her,” Aithne told her. “Talk to all three of them. If you want to get away from Dantooine—or Taris—you got to stop spending all your time there.” She tapped her temple for emphasis; Juhani had dropped her hands from her face to her lap, though her despairing, humble posture hadn’t changed. “You might also want to work on your envy.”

Juhani no doubt was struggling with the destruction of Taris, but she’d heard much more in the Cathar’s accusations: she was angry the Council had placed so much importance on Aithne and Bastila and their mission. She felt her own talents overlooked in comparison to Bastila’s Battle Meditation, and she still struggled with the guilt and shame of the weakness she had exhibited in her own trials. She was jealous. She had found it relatively easy to admire Aithne, an older woman from the Rim. It was harder for her to view Bastila, a girl from the Core who had always had a privileged place among the Jedi, with any sort of humility.

Juhani bowed her head. “You see through me so easily,” Juhani said. “You claim so many doubts about your ability, your destiny, yet remain so controlled. Scoff at the traditions and teachings of the Jedi, as I did, but never fall into darkness. And they all trust you—you and Bastila both. And they are right to do so.”

“We’ll see,” Aithne muttered. She bowed to Juhani and took her own leave.

The next morning, Aithne woke up to the sounds of soft voices and muffled crying on the other end of the dormitory. She was not altogether surprised when she turned to see Mission and Juhani there, talking together.

JOLEE

A few days into the voyage, and Jolee was pretty much caught up on what had been going on in the galaxy. He was not reaccustomed to living with people. Not that the folk aboard Ebon Hawk were bad sorts. Zaalbar was probably his favorite. Knew when to shut up, he did.

His best guess now was that the Jedi Council were playing a very risky game. That Sith he’d seen in the Shadowlands—Revan, apparently—had met the appropriately sticky end at the hands of her own apprentice a few months or years after he’d seen her. That apprentice was now terrorizing the galaxy with the help of something called a Star Forge, and the maps—the one in the Shadowlands only one of a larger set—were going to lead them right to him. Or it. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda.

Except Padawan Bastila Shan’s claim to fame was apparently witnessing the death of Darth Revan at the hands of her apprentice, and now she was following around Aithne Moran, a woman with whom she shared some mysterious bond and some mysterious destiny, and the two of them were having visions of the maps to the Star Forge. Aithne Moran, who both matched and didn’t match the brain patterns that thingamajig in the Shadowlands had of Darth Revan, and whose fear and doubt was growing by the day.

Jolee didn’t think she knew.

He wasn’t sure if the Council was trying to use her or to give her a second chance, but whatever their aim, he had a feeling it could just as easily end up blowing up in their faces. You could see it in the possibilities around the woman. It was also just common sense. Lying to people wasn’t usually the best way to get them on your side. Using the Force to literally brainwash a person and overwrite their identity? Well, that was even worse. It was also fairly advanced stuff, especially for masters purportedly committed to the Light Side. Jolee wondered how well it had worked.

From what he could tell, the Council had done a bang-up job on the construction of false memories for their ‘Aithne’ character. Whether they’d woven a complete life for her or simply implanted the suggestion of a past for her and allowed her imagination to do the rest, ‘Aithne’ believed in her whole history. She could tell stories of her homeworld, people she had known, jobs she had done in the past. She had beliefs, viewpoints on life, and many weren’t favorable to the Jedi or the Republic. Inconvenient, from one perspective. From another, it made her a whole person, very unlikely to suspect her previous identity. And indeed, despite the mounting evidence of her connection to Revan, from what Jolee had heard from Aithne and Carth, the lass remained completely oblivious to what was in fact the simplest solution to the mysteries around her. And because all the other solutions she could think of were frankly even more terrifying than the truth, at his best guess, ‘Aithne’ was one bad day away from batshit crazy, notwithstanding whatever remained or didn’t remain from her previous life as a Lord of the Sith.

She herself wasn’t Dark, per se. Oh, the potential was there. She had tendencies to anger, lashed out in fear—though mostly by doing her best to aggravate the people she was afraid of instead of kill them dead. He was pretty sure she thought she was the most intelligent person in the galaxy, too, which was all the worse for her because most of the time she actually was the most intelligent person in the room. Had got her used to devaluing the capabilities of others and biting off more than she could chew, like she’d done when she’d signed on as guardian to that teenage hoodlum. She was arrogant, greedy for knowledge, more pragmatic than the Jedi liked their hero-types to be. She was also vastly compassionate and generally reasonable, with a fine sense of humor. A lass like that could go either way, and he had seen it both ways.

She also had an annoying habit of coming to pick at him after her chore rotations, when cleaning up after nine people had her in especially fine form. “Why are you here, Bindo?” she asked him one evening about a week into their flight back to Dantooine. She’d already had her dinner but plopped down on a stool around the table anyway.

Jolee gestured at his tray. “Why am I here? I was hungry.”

“You’re not an idiot. Humor me and don’t act like one. You could’ve left Kashyyyk any time you wanted to in the last few decades. Why was it that you up and decided it was time to leave as soon as we showed up at your door? Why’d you feel you needed to extort us into taking you?”

Jolee pursed his lips. “You got yourself a fast little ship. Heh. I’d forgotten what engines sounded like. The closest thing to that on Kashyyyk is an uller in mating season. Ugh! Frightful!”

“Yeah, well, you win some, you lose some,” Aithne rejoined. She waited.

“Or it could be the free food,” Jolee mused, poking at the goop the synthesizer had dispensed onto his plate. “What’s the gunk that comes out of the synthesizer on this bucket, anyway? Do you never clean the darned thing?”

“Two days ago, actually,” Aithne told him. “If you’re worried about it, I can put you on mess clean-up detail.”

“You know, in my day, they used to warn Padawans about the effect power could have on them.”

“They’re teaching a shorter course these days. Don’t worry; I’ve filed several complaints.”

Jolee couldn’t help his smile. Damn it, but the lass could hold her own. You had to appreciate that, even if he sensed no lessening of her resolve. She wanted to know why he was with them, but he was very uncertain that telling her would be wise. She could fall to the Dark Side easily in any event, but if he revealed the truth, could he hasten or ensure it would happen? “You know,” he said, “you remind me of someone else I knew ages ago. Pleasant enough fellow, great destiny, all that. Breath like a bantha. Andor Vex was his name. The Force swirled around him like a hurricane, that’s how great his destiny was.”

“Whose destiny?” Mission asked. The Twi’lek rounded the corner with her own supper and sat down next to Aithne.

“Jolee’s trying to tell me about some guy he knew once. An Andor Vex.”

“Ooh. Story! I want to hear!” the girl said. Aithne rolled her eyes but sat her elbow on the table and propped her chin upon her fist in a listening attitude.

“Well, Jolee, you traveled with this Andor?”

“I did,” said Jolee. “Just because someone has the Force swirling around them doesn’t always mean they have a great destiny, but it doesn’t hurt to check it out. Well, it turned out that poor Andor believed a wee bit too much in the infallibility of that destiny. That overconfidence turned out to be his downfall.”

Aithne wrinkled her nose. “Well, you’re more subtle than Bastila and the Jedi Masters,” she remarked.

“Are you overconfident? I hadn’t noticed,” Jolee lied. “Even if I had, I would never comment on it. We’re talking about Andor, remember? Let’s see, oh yes, Andor’s downfall. I was pretty young myself, when it happened. At the time, I thought that Andor’s destiny couldn’t be more boring.”

“Why’d you stick around then?” Aithne challenged him.

Jolee took a bite of his lunch and winced. “Well, he had a much better food dispenser than you do. That, and the fact that even then I wasn’t an altogether impatient twit.”

Mission giggled, then stifled the sound behind her hand. Jolee grinned at the girl.

“However, I was about to abandon Andor to whatever the Force intended for him when his ship was overtaken by a Dimean warship. Now you’ve probably never heard of the Dimeans, but at the time they were a nasty lot led by a nastier overlord named Kraat. Tall fellow. Big teeth.

“Anyway, Kraat has us hauled onto the bridge of his ship for questioning, and that’s when I knew that Andor’s destiny was at hand.”

“How’d you know?” Mission interrupted.

“Swirling Force, remember?” Jolee said, pointing to himself. “Jedi here?”

“And?” Aithne said, “Go on.”

“Well, Andor decides that his destiny makes him invulnerable and starts making all sorts of demands. ‘Free me now,’ ‘I’m not answering questions,’ blah, blah, blah. ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ Kraat decides he’s had enough and begins crushing Andor’s neck. I told the boy he should have kept his mouth shut. I think he agreed, too . . . or those could have just been gurgling noises. Well . . . well, anyway. Finally, Kraat has enough of Andor and tosses him aside into this giant energy intake shaft. Andor gets sucked in and starts bouncing around, heh, screaming . . . heh. Maybe Andor hit something sensitive on the way down or just didn’t agree with the reactor core, but the next thing I know, all the ship’s alarms are ringing.”

Aithne’s eyes were crinkled with amusement now. “You’re kidding.”

“You’re making this up!” Mission accused him, laughing.

“I am not!” Jolee declared. “On my honor! Everyone panics, though, and I run, barely making it to the ship in time before the explosion. Kraat dies horribly, and the Dimeans never quite recovered. Changed the political course of the entire sector for centuries to come. I’d call that quite a destiny, wouldn’t you?”

The girls just stared at him a bit. Mission even had her mouth open. Finally, she managed a snort. “I think you’re crazy,” she said.

“What?” Jolee asked. “Are you kidding?! What are the odds of that happening anyway? A billion to one? You should do so well as to be sucked into the engine of some evil Sith Lord, you know. Andor was a hero! Sort of.” He shoved his last spoonful of dinner into his mouth, winced, and rose. “Anyway, I’m leaving. My throat is dry, and you’re making me cranky.”

“And Force forbid you stay and someone actually answer my questions,” Aithne shot after him.

“Don’t pout. Your face can freeze that way,” Jolee tossed over his shoulder, without turning to see whether the lass was pouting or not. He could feel her anxiety like a little stormcloud in the supper room behind him. She was going to have to watch that need for control. In one respect, it was tempting to give her what she wanted, to tell her that he was curious what had happened to her and wanted to see what would come next. He didn’t want to see ignorance, impatience, and fear lead to her downfall. On the other hand, he didn’t want anger to lead there either.

CANDEROUS

They were three days out from a return to Dantooine. There, Moran said that she’d talked with someone who knew Sasha’s people. They would give the kid back to them, or, if they couldn’t find the guy Moran had talked to before, they’d hand her over to the Jedi until the Jedi found him. Canderous and the Cathar would be off babysitting duty and probably on a bodyguard detail, judging by the bounty that’d been passed around.

What happened to the kid after they dropped her back on Dantooine wasn’t Canderous’s responsibility. She hadn’t been a captive of Clan Ordo; they’d never taken her on as a foundling. She was a Dar’manda’s mistake, years behind on her training, only half coherent, with years of shit treatment to cut through as well before she could ever do any good to anyone. She was better off with the livestock she’d been born to, and once she was back with them, she couldn’t be a liability to Ebon Hawk.

Still. Canderous hated a job half done. Sure, Sasha had stopped with the moronic dancing to try and make herself understood. She could say she didn’t understand in Mando’a, Basic, and spacer sign. She could ask for what she needed—food, water, a place to crap—and ask what something was. She knew how to sew a seam and break a hold, how to disassemble and clean a gun, and better still, how to clean herself and her kit and quarters. It was about where she should’ve been three years back, with a thorough knowledge of Mando’a and a handful of battle songs and teaching chants besides.

He hated the thought of her back at the ass-end of nowhere, left with the incompetents who’d let her get captured in the first place. Those idiots wouldn’t teach her anything, and next time some half-cocked thugs with guns came through, the kid would be right back where she started. Or worse. He didn’t have time to get her shooting well enough to fend whatever came for her people off.

It wasn’t his problem.

The Aruetii found him and the kid in the garage one night working. The kid had learned to take a blaster apart; they were working on putting it all back together.

/Not with the power cell,/ Canderous reminded her. /Save the power cell for last, unless you’re trying to blow your own foot off./

Sasha made a face at him, but she put the power cell aside for later and went back to scowling at the other pieces of the gun.

“How’s it coming, Champ?” Moran asked the kid, nodding at the blaster.

“Me no like the pieces like this,” Sasha complained. “Me can—/I don’t know word, Canderous,/” she mimicked taking the pieces apart—“all ways, but can make one way. /It’s shit!/”

“‘I don’t’ like, kid,” Canderous told her. “When you’re taking about yourself in Basic, you gotta use ‘I,’ and a whole other word to say ‘no.’ ‘I don’t like the pieces like this.’ And you’re looking to say ‘take it apart’ or ‘disassemble.’ You’d say, ‘I can take it apart any way, but only put it together one way.’ But you’re right: it’s shit. Get used to it.”

/You’re shit,/ Sasha muttered. /Chief./

“Her grown-ups are going to have so much fun with vocabulary,” Aithne remarked.

“Just because you talk like a constipated professor,” Canderous retorted. Aithne grinned.

“Start with the small pieces,” she told Sasha, pointing. “Then do the big ones. It’s easy then. It also helps to lay the pieces on the bench the way they will fit in the gun.”

Sasha frowned, then found the way the trigger fit to the barrel. She exclaimed and started rearranging pieces on the bench.

“Thank you, Aithne!” She paused and cocked her head up at the Aruetii. “You /mighty/ warrior? Like Canderous and Juhani?”

“Not like them,” Aithne told her. “I’m not one of the Mando’ade like Canderous or a Jedi Knight like Juhani. But I can fight, with my fists, with a lightsaber, with a sword, or with a blaster.”

“You teach me /I don’t know wo--/ you teach me also?” Sasha wanted to know.

“Good,” Aithne complimented the girl, and she beamed. “No. We’ll take you to your family on Dantooine, and they’ll teach you, or maybe you can get one of the Jedi at the Enclave to teach you. If you want to be a warrior someday, you will learn. But we have to fight a war now, and you can’t do that with us.”

“Mission fight with you,” Sasha argued. “Why no Sasha?”

Canderous spoke up then. “Two reasons. First, Mission’s kept herself out of trouble for years. You just learned how to shower last week. An undertrained warrior is just a liability to everyone in her clan.” He repeated himself in Mando’a, then added, “Second, a good warrior knows how to follow her orders. And our captain’s ordered you to Dantooine.” He paused, then added, /Train. Get better. Maybe you’ll grow and we’ll see you another day./

/When Sasha mighty warrior,/ the kid said. She frowned at the three last pieces of her blaster, thought, then put them together right. /I get better,/ she promised. /Soon I do fast, shoot all enemy of Ebon Hawk clan! All bad people!/

The Aruetii shot him a glance, like she was mad the kid wanted blood. Canderous scowled at her. “Better this than cowering like some kath hound runt,” he muttered. “At least she knows now she can be a warrior.” If those pathetic farmers let her be. “Alright, kid, stow the blaster,” he told Sasha. “Stow your tools and go clean up. Lights out in half a watch. If you’re back in good time, I’ll tell a tale from the war before you bunk up.”

The kid grinned, saluted, and moved to follow orders.

“You’ve got story bribes working alongside sweets from the stores?” the Aruetii asked, interested.

“She wants the stories more than snacks.” Canderous looked down the hall after Sasha. “No one’s given that kid much more than a curse or an order for as long as she can remember. She’s starved for words and comrades as much as she is for bread.” They were quiet for a moment.

“Aruetii,” Canderous said.

“Mando.”

/Captain. Don’t let her get lost. Don’t mess her over. Let her fall through the cracks. You meet up with her people in person, and if they don’t have a gun and some basic skill, you charge her to the Jedi. She can be an acolyte. Don’t let her be a sheep./ In Mando’a, the speech was as good as a threat.

Aithne looked at him. Then she reached her arm out. Canderous took it. They clasped forearms in a warrior’s pact. /We’ll provide for the foundling,/ she promised. /We cannot know her name. She can have no place among us. But she will be remembered. And she will grow strong. She will remember you./

Canderous grunted.

When Sasha returned, she was in Mission’s old tank, face and teeth washed. She sat down at his feet like he’d taught her and grinned when Aithne did too. The grin practically turned into a glow when Aithne reached out and took her hand.

Canderous frowned. The kid was pathetic. She lapped up scraps of affection when what she needed was to learn how to look after herself. Trust her instincts and make her own decisions. He decided to tell her the story of the Battle of Althir.

He started with a short prelude, explaining how the battle had gained him command of an entire subsect of Ordo.

Sasha bounced up and down. /What happen?/

He set the scene. /For five days they had managed to hold off our forces. Keeping us to the outer rings of their world, preventing us from attacking it directly./ As he spoke, Aithne translated. Fortunately, this time, she went for a boring barebones translation instead of wasting her time with a poetic sense one. The kid didn’t need poetry. They didn’t have time for it. Sasha just needed to know how to talk without sounding like a moron.

/My task was to assault one of their flanks with a false attack,/ he continued. /The Althiri would be drawn out by the units I had sent in. Once they had surrounded these units, the bulk of my forces would attack from the rear and defeat them in detail./

Aithne gestured with her hands, showing Sasha what he was describing. /Do you see?/ she asked.

Sasha thought for a moment. /Enemy . . . go for these,/ she said, pointing to where Aithne’s single index finger indicated the feinting warriors, /These not-real, then once attack, real warriors kill all enemy from back?/

/Good,/ Aithne told her. “Good.”

/It work?/ Sasha asked, turning her attention back to Canderous.

/Things didn’t go as I planned,/ Canderous admitted. Across the room, Onasi had come in. He stood in the doorway, arms folded, listening. The pilot knew Mando’a. Never spoke it, but he understood alright. If Canderous was any judge, he’d probably earned some of his fancy medals on intelligence missions in the wars. Had that kind of confidence. Had that kind of mind. He flashed his teeth at Onasi but kept talking to the women. /I saw an opening—a mistake they had made in the disposition of their forces—and took it! While fending off our main force, they had led their fleet split in two. The center of their entire fleet was left exposed!/

Aithne pantomimed the action for her, and Sasha saw it. She gestured at the opening between Aithne’s outstretched hands, squealing and gibbering in a mishmash impossible to understand.

/If you’ve got something to say, pick a language and say it! Warriors do not chatter like tachs!/ Canderous rapped out.

Sasha stopped. Her cheeks went red, her eyes went sullen. She scowled, then she cursed, but then she nodded and bowed. /You get them, Chief?/ she asked. /You get . . . you kill enemy . . . for idiot mistake?/

/Good,/ Canderous said again. /I did. I turned my forces and assaulted the center of their fleet, decimating them!/

/You judged the opportunity worth disobeying your orders?/ Aithne asked.

Canderous knelt across from the other two. /This is a chance given to a warrior once or twice in a lifetime,/ he explained. /The chance to change the course of history in a single act. Their slow, ponderous ships could not turn to face us without being overwhelmed. Their command vessels were destroyed in seconds. Their ranks were overthrown into chaos. It was most amusing to watch the surviving ships scatter and flee. Several even tried to dive through the planes of the rings to escape us! They were shredded by the rings, or crashed into rocks, or were destroyed by our forces as we pursued them./

He eyed Sasha. /What did the Althiri do wrong, recruit?/

/Warriors no run away if they lose,/ Sasha recited. /They fight to the end!/

Canderous gripped her forearm. “Oya!”

Canderous’s eyes slid from the kid to Onasi, then back to Aithne. “They fight to the end,” he repeated in Basic. “As we did against your Jedi, Revan. Another time maybe I’ll tell you about how the war with the Republic went. But that’s enough for now. The kid should get some sleep.”

/No want to go to bed!/ Sasha pouted. She turned to the Aruetii. “Aithne, please!” she added in Basic.

“Sasha, you have to go to bed,” Aithne said.

/Kid, a warrior follows her orders,/ Canderous added.

/If orders idiot? Idiotic?/ Sasha asked. /Like Chief’s, past Battle-of-Althir? Or Sasha see something? Like food?/

Canderous frowned. Aithne smirked. “You kinda set yourself up for that one,” she noted. She stood, slapped her hands together. “Good luck with that, Chief.”

And Canderous was left to explain the right times to disobey to a barely literate eight-year-old. “Thanks, captain. I’ll remember this,” he said.

CARTH

Carth watched them from the doorway— this enormous, brutal Mandalorian, telling stories and trying to teach morals to a kid. Morals were coming out a bit warped, but all in all, Ordo was doing a much better job than Carth would’ve thought. It’d been a couple weeks, and Sasha already mostly looked like a kid rather than some beaten animal. She was talking—not real intelligibly, but well enough you could see there was hope for her. You could see she had some fight, some brains. You could see she was a survivor.

“She’ll be okay, won’t she?” Carth asked Aithne as she came to join him. They walked together back to the mess and took chairs side by side.

“She’ll be okay,” Aithne promised him. “Either she’ll be reunited with her family, or she’ll grow up a ward of the Jedi. Either way, she’ll have a mess of trauma to deal with as she gets older, but who doesn’t these days? And she’ll have a chance.”

“More than a lot of people get,” Carth mused. “My son . . . he was between them, Mission and Sasha, he was about twelve when it . . . when it happened. He’d be just . . . a little older than Mission, now. He never got that chance.”

Aithne sat silent, waiting. Carth stared into the distance. He still had an old holo of Dustil and Morgana. If it weren’t for that, he wasn’t sure he’d remember now just how his son had looked. He hadn’t been around enough when his son was growing up. Always fighting for the Republic. He’d missed birthdays, holidays, school festivals. Everything, at least once or twice. He remembered an athletic, kind of intense kid. Smart. Dark eyes and hair. What would Dustil have been like at Mission’s age? Older?

“Saul led the Sith fleet to Telos,” Carth told Aithne. “The planet refused when he demanded its surrender, and Saul proceeded to devastate its entire surface. Millions died.”

He felt a hand around his and looked down to see Aithne had taken it. She was squeezing hard, but she wouldn’t look at him. Instead, she stared at the wall. Her expression was unreadable.

“No one expected it,” she recalled, voice distant. “The first major blow in the war, and it’s not on any industrial world that can produce guns or starships, it’s on an agrarian world in the Outer Rim. In retrospect, it makes sense—major hyperlane, a big agricultural producer, and just brimming in Force Sensitives, with a large percentage of the population either a reject of the Jedi Order or descended from one: weak enough to control, strong enough to make a big difference to the armed forces. But at the time—”

“We couldn’t conceive of it,” Carth finished. “Revan and Malak were heroes, and they open up the war with a genocide. And Saul did it. I thought my wife and son were safe, but by the time my task force arrived in response to call for help, it was already too late. We didn’t have enough people or medical supplies. The colony was burning, and the dying were everywhere. I remember holding my wife and screaming for the medics. They . . . they didn’t come in time.”

He could see her now, face and body red and black all along its left side from the burns, blood and bruises, gasping from the pain, praying for an end and calling for Dustil again and again . . . until it was the end.

Aithne’s grip on his hand was tight enough to be painful now. He didn’t think she knew just how hard she was gripping it. He didn’t tell her. The pain was an anchor. It kept him on Ebon Hawk instead of back home on Telos.

“Since, I’ve devoted myself to the fleet, to trying to catch up to Saul,” he finished. “I miss them. My wife. My son. I know killing Saul won’t bring them back, and it won’t make me happy again, but my wife and my son deserve justice. Everyone on Telos does. And making that happen . . . it’s all I have left.”

The pressure on his hand lessened. Then Aithne had released him and drawn her legs up into her chair. Carth turned to face her. He hadn’t meant to tell her any of it. But spending time with Mission lately, seeing Aithne, Canderous, and Juhani with Sasha—it had brought back some memories. He hadn’t been around kids much since Telos. That didn’t mean he was free and clear to lay all his baggage on top of Aithne. She didn’t need or deserve that.

What must she think of me now?

But Aithne just watched him, arms around her calves and her chin atop her knees, her long face grave but sympathetic. “Seems like it might not be enough,” she suggested finally.

Carth rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, yeah . . . I, uh, like I said, I don’t recommend it.”

“I’m sorry, Carth. I can’t imagine.”

Carth frowned. “I don’t want you to,” he said. “I hope you never have to go through anything like Telos. It’s bad enough that Mission has. I don’t even know why I told you all this, except—”

Aithne stopped him. “Carth. It’s okay,” she said. “Your past is a part of you.”

“Sorry—I just—I haven’t talked about them in . . . I’ve never talked about them, to anyone.”

Her mouth quirked. “Well. I’m no specialist, but I don’t think that sounds like the best way to cope. Thank you, for trusting me. What were their names?”

“My wife’s was Morgana. My son was named Dustil.” Carth was suddenly exhausted, as if just saying their names aloud to someone else after all this time had taken everything he had.

“What happened to Dustil? If you’re comfortable telling me. You told me about your wife.”

“That’s the worst of it,” Carth admitted. “I don’t know what happened to him. Telos was glassed. The town where we lived, the towns where everyone lived were complete ruins. We never found any trace of him. I made inquiries, and I followed the reports from Telos for years, but . . . I stopped.” He ran a hand through his hair. Dustil was probably a smear of ash on Telos’s devastated surface, but the worst thing was imagining that he wasn’t—that he was out there, somewhere. Alone. With no idea his father was still alive and had tried to find him. There were kids like that all over the galaxy. Like Sasha, taken from her relatives. Or who just woke up on a battlefield somewhere with no idea who they were or what had happened to them—their brains too rattled with everything they had seen. A lot of them died or ended up living lives that were worse than dying. To imagine his Dustil someone like that . . .

“Carth.” Aithne waited until he met her eyes. She was pale. Her freckles stood out against her skin, and her eyes glittered. He couldn’t handle it if she cried. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel sorry for him, or to add one more thing to her plate. Then he saw her jaw was tight. As he watched, she lifted her chin and shook her head. She was angry. Not at him—for him. “Sometimes there aren’t words in any of the languages I speak for what I want to say.” Her voice was low, passionate. “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. What you’ve lost. I just got another big reason to wipe Malak off the face of the galactic map, if I needed another one. But I am honored by your trust in telling me what happened.” She spoke every word slowly and carefully, making sure he heard each one. “Telling me the names of your family. I am proud and happy to be your friend. And I’m amazed and grateful that, after everything you’ve been through, you still have enough left to give the way you have.”

Carth frowned. “No, I haven’t done anything that anyone else wouldn’t do—”

But Aithne cut him off, holding up a hand. “You’re wrong there. Now’s not the time to talk about it. I think we both need to rest. Take some space, take some time. But someday soon, if you want—you should tell me more about who your family was. And I should tell you more of what you do have left, and why.” She extended her hand, and Carth took it, squeezed it. They both got to their feet together.

Carth looked across at her—Aithne Moran, or whatever her name really was. A conscript scout and a months-old Jedi on a desperate mission, who heard the voice of a dead Sith in her dreams. A woman from the hind end of nowhere on the Rim, who’d either been alone all her life or deserted from one war or another—from one side or another. Either way, she was still the dread of the Sith and the Republic’s best hope. She was still brilliant, beautiful, and amazing. And he truly believed that whatever she might still be holding back, she was on their side, or wanted to be. She wanted to do the right thing. She wanted to be there for Mission, for Zaalbar, for everyone on the crew. Even for the Republic, albeit incidentally. 

He was glad she was his friend too. He hadn’t had one—really had one—for a long, long time.

Chapter Text

CARTH

They landed on Dantooine again right on schedule. There was a lot of everyday business to take care of. The Jedi had to make a report to the Council on their progress so far, and an additional report on that monster they’d fought down in the Shadowlands, the one they’d got Bacca’s Blade out of. Jolee had to have a physical and get outfitted; it turned out that he was a veteran of the war against Exar Kun, and he’d been missing from the Order for decades. The Council said he was a Jedi Knight, like Juhani, but Jolee insisted he wasn’t part of the Order at all anymore. That annoyed them. Bastila and Juhani too. Aithne, though . . . she liked that. Carth had thought Aithne might try and maneuver out of their deal with Jolee now they’d got him of Kashyyyk, but she surprised him by saying they could use a medic, requisitioned a lot of supplies for their infirmary, and a few personals for Bindo.

They put in for some light maintenance on the ship, Aithne found the Lur Arka guy who had been inquiring about Sasha before, and he went overland for her relatives. While they were waiting for him to get back—because neither Canderous or Juhani was about to give the kid up to people who didn’t know her personally—Aithne and the other Jedi went on an excursion to some crystal caves a ways out from the enclave, and Aithne spent a lot of time in the archives. Carth was pretty sure she was trying to dig up information on ways she might be accessing Revan’s memories—without letting the Council know what she was doing.

Three days after they’d landed, though, Lur Arka was back with Sasha’s father and two aunts. Her mother and older brother had been killed in the attack when she’d been taken, and her father had been crippled, but the rest of the family was grateful and amazed to find her again. They were weavers now and had a partnership with some of the other farmers in the area. The older of her two aunts was a sharpshooter and a member of the civilian militia in that area of the colony, and the younger one was a teacher and engaged to be married at the end of the harvest. They’d seen some terrible things in the Mandalorian attacks. They’d suffered. But they were tough, good people, and the general consensus on Ebon Hawk was that between them, they’d figure out a way to help Sasha deal with all she’d been through and connect with what she’d lost.

Mission gave Sasha a hug and datapad with a copy of her favorite holo on it before she left. Juhani kissed her on both cheeks and put a braid in her hair, claiming she’d shown determination and intelligence worthy of any Jedi apprentice. Canderous gave Sasha a blaster.

“Ret’urcye mhi, ad’ika,” he told her. /Stay sharp. May you bring your clan great glory./

Sasha hugged him. “Ret’urcye mhi, alor! K’oyacyi! You . . . wait for I . . . for me, I say. I be mighty warrior, see you again!” She bowed to the rest of the crew. “Vor’e, thank you!”

She looked up sideways at her older aunt and offered her hand, and she and her people headed back out to their homestead with Lur Arka. Canderous watched them all the way out of the gate. Carth watched Canderous.

“Hey,” he said, “You know, from the moment we met you, Aithne said if we ever fought, I’d lose. But I have to say, I’m not sure she gave me enough credit.” Canderous looked over at him, and his grim, worried expression lightened up a bit. “What do you say?” Carth asked. “You and me, friendly spar in the Jedi training yard?”

Canderous eyed him. “Friendly?” he repeated. Carth shrugged, and Ordo started to grin. Like a shark. “I’m game,” he said. “You any good with a sword?”

Carth shrugged again. “I guess we’ll find out.” Truth told, he’d earned most of his medals during the wars in space combat. He’d been in a few groundside scraps in his day, but he’d fought with his blasters with most of them. Melee fighting—well, that had always been for exercise, or when he’d wanted to learn something new in training. He could count on one hand the ground combats he’d been in against Mandalorian warriors.

Canderous hummed. “I could use a laugh,” he said finally. “We’ll use training weapons. Wouldn’t want to end up spitting you by mistake.”

 “No, we generally want to avoid spitting our friends,” Aithne said. She’d drifted over and was looking between the two of them, arms folded. Carth met her eyes for a moment, trying to convey there wasn’t a problem. Wouldn’t hurt if he had a distraction right now, Aithne. Aithne’s shoulders relaxed. “I’ll put Bindo on fuel detail,” she said. “He wants to come, he can help our Hawk keep flying and do the negotiations with Aratech.”

“How far we going?” Carth asked. “I’ll need to do the astrogation so we can requisition provisions for the trip—and credits to resupply when we get there.”

Aithne looked over at Mission, who was talking with Bastila, Zaalbar, and Teethree a ways away. “I hadn’t decided yet,” she admitted. “Advantages and disadvantages to anything we do at this point. Bounty hunters would probably have a harder time finding us on Tatooine, but it’s also the hind end of nowhere and Hutt space on top of that. Supplies will be expensive, and help will be scarce on the ground if we end up needing it. Manaan? Neutral space—both Sith and Republics on the ground. It could be political nightmare. Korriban, though—it might be too hot to hold us at the moment.” She frowned.

“Or the news might not have got there about what happened to Nord and the others,” Carth pointed out. “What with the war and all.”

“That’s just it. Kashyyyk was supposed to be the safe bet. Zaalbar ended up in a hostage situation, and then we started a Wookiee revolution!” Aithne smiled, but her eyes were troubled as she gazed at Mission. She was weighing Mission’s mental wellbeing against her physical safety. Could they handle the Sith on Manaan? On Korriban? Would they be better or worse than Mission finding out what had happened to her brother on Tatooine? And what if they couldn’t find out at all?

“We’ll handle what comes when it comes up,” Canderous said. “Until then, are we going to fight, Onasi, or just stand here talking all day?”

“Somebody’s excited. Alright, Canderous. Let’s fight,” Carth said.

In the end, they had to deal with an escort. Aithne understood what he was trying to do, but she wasn’t about to let them fight without a ref, even just using training weapons, and Bastila, Mission, and Zaalbar wanted to observe as well. Jolee went off with Juhani to start on the provisions they knew they’d need to go anywhere, but in between the crew of Ebon Hawk and a couple curious masters and apprentices, Carth and Canderous had a little audience to their sparring session.

The Jedi had a selection of weighted training weapons for apprentices and practice sessions. Canderous went for a staff; Carth kept to a double-handed training broadsword. He was something of a specialist with dual blasters, but whenever he’d practiced with melee weapons, he’d stuck to the basics. He’d be at an offensive disadvantage, but on the other hand, he’d seen Canderous fight with swords. Ordo had never seen him.

They circled each other on the compacted dirt of the training arena. Carth tuned out the eyes of the others, the murmurs from the younger Jedi apprentices. He focused instead on Ordo: taking in his footwork, the set of his shoulders, and how he held his sword. Canderous feinted. Carth didn’t react. He waited. The Mandalorian made a couple more feints before attacking in earnest. Carth met his blade with a crash of polished hardwood, and knew immediately that his initial defensive strategy wasn’t going to work. The first blow sent shivers all the way up to his forearm and all the way down to his pelvis. Carth had planned to do what Aithne did against opponents like Juhani; keep up a defense and let Canderous wear himself and whatever he was feeling over Sasha out. He wanted to see if he could, and he figured they both could use a workout, but Canderous was brutal; incredibly powerful, especially considering he had to have ten to twenty years on Carth. Without the things the Force could do to extend a person’s durability, Carth didn’t think he could outlast the Mandalorian blocking head-on.

The kids murmured excitedly, and Carth felt Aithne and Bastila’s sharp eyes on every move. He ignored them. He switched to dodging or sliding off Ordo’s attacks instead and started taking advantage of the fact he was a bit lighter than the man, especially since Canderous almost always wore something with armor plating. When Canderous fully committed to an attack, Carth could sometimes get around him a little. He’d be exposed, just for a moment. Carth wasn’t quite fast enough to catch him in that moment; Canderous always recovered and brought around his blade in time, but Carth saw Ordo start to get wary—then start predicting Carth’s flanking attempts and preparing a secondary, follow-up attack to counter him. Mission exclaimed when Carth took an ugly knock on the left shoulder that way; if they’d been fighting with actual vibroblades, he wouldn’t have been out of the fight, but he definitely would have been bleeding all over the grounds and a whole lot weaker after.

But Canderous was smiling. “You aren’t half bad, Onasi,” he remarked. “Better with the blasters, but I guess you’re used to letting someone else handle the dirty work.”

“You tell me: is it better to shoot an enemy in space or before they get halfway across the room, or wait until they’re right in your face before you take them out?” Carth asked, sidestepping and jumping to avoid a blow at his legs. In spite of the throbbing in his shoulder, he was enjoying this. It’d been a while since he’d felt challenged in a workout; usually he just used body resistance or weights, alone in the hold, which they’d half-repurposed as a training room.

“Depends what you’re going for.” Carth tried a stab toward the Mandalorian’s face. “Ah-ah-ah,” Ordo chided him.

“If you were really trying to end this, how would you do it?” Carth asked.

Canderous considered. “Gunman on your flank,” he admitted. “You think too much. Hyperfocus on a single opponent. You hold them off well enough, but while you’re doing that, you’re easy pickings for somebody else.” He took another swipe. “You?”

Carth chuckled without much humor, taking in everything about the Mandalorian, from his size to his strength to his technique. It was pretty damn near perfect. Well, it would be. In retrospect, he’d probably been fighting about as long as Carth had been alive. “I’d send a Jedi. Or catch you in a fighter in the air. You’re a decent shot, but I’m better. And a hell of a lot better at maneuver.” He remembered the way Ebon Hawk had moved on Taris, even in the middle of everything that had been going on.

Canderous hit his blade then, and the sheer force of it sent it spinning right out of Carth’s tired, battered fists and across the grounds. Carth’s muscles buzzed. His shoulder ached. He was going to have a bad bruise there.

He sighed, ducked, and kicked out hard at Ordo’s groin plating, under his guard. Canderous was protected, but the force of the kick still sent him staggering back. Carth stepped into his guard, seized Canderous’s practice staff between the grips in his right hand and struck out with his left elbow at Canderous’s torso, sweeping his left leg back at the same time. Canderous lost the staff but went right for his dinner knife at his belt. He tucked into a backward somersault instead of an outright fall and came up ready to throw, facing Carth with the practice staff.

For an instant, it could’ve gone either way. Carth hadn’t recovered from the disarm. His head, neck, and thighs were completely open. Canderous’s dinner knife was sharp, and Carth wasn’t at all confident in his ability to knock it out of the air in time. And he’d been the one to break the unspoken rules of their bout. On the sidelines, everyone had gone completely silent. Aithne was taut all over, eyes glinting, ready to step in. Zaalbar was watching her for what she’d do. Bastila and Mission looked nervous. Then the moment ended, and Carth knew he’d read his man right.

Canderous straightened, sheathed his knife, his face crinkled, and he let out a long, satisfied laugh. The tension broke. A bunch of the apprentices started chattering to their masters about what they’d seen. Aithne and the others all relaxed. Canderous strode forward. Carth gave him his practice staff back. Canderous gave Carth his hand, and they shook. “Well,” Canderous said. “I guess if you can’t fight fair.”

“You Mandalorians never do,” Carth pointed out.

“True enough.” He nodded at the broadsword down on the ground. “We should train together. I’ll bet the Aruetii’s gonna drag you off the ship again at some point, and you’re good enough with a sword it could be an advantage if your power pack goes out, or if we ever don’t want to make a lot of noise. How’d you learn?”

They walked over to the weapon rack together and put the staff and practice sword away. “It’s not the first time I’ve done a mission with the Jedi,” Carth admitted. “I had a friend who taught me a few things once upon a time. Can you hit what you aim for with the knife?”

Canderous’s hand fell to his belt knife, and his eyes moved sideways to Carth in a sly expression. “What do you think?”

I think there’s not a weapon the Mandalorians don’t train their commandos to use, if it comes to it. Carth winced, imagining fighting Ordo on an actual battlefield—that knife heading end-over-end into his throat. Or a bullet from one of his clan heading straight into his back. “I’ll get you next time,” Canderous promised him. “I owe you, now, Onasi. And I’ll be ready.”

“Yeah. Figured it’d only work once anyway.”

“Hey, you didn’t tell me you could use a sword too,” Mission said. “You know, when I made do with a vibroblade, it kinda went like that. Luckily, Big Z’s better when you need to slice some things up—or pretend to, anyway. And now, he’s got that fancy sword from his village, I figure I’m about done kicking guys in the nuts when I start to lose.” She chuckled and grinned. “Nice going, Canderous.”

“You think you can get by without a melee weapon?” Canderous demanded. He shook his head. “Your blaster could jam up too, and Zaalbar could get taken hostage again. Seems to happen a lot, from what I’ve heard. You should train with us, Vao. You can’t always count on your friends.”

“Oh, no,” Mission said. “I ain’t filling in for you just ‘cause Sasha’s off Ebon Hawk now. Come on! I got Aithne and Carth on me already trying to teach me everything under the suns! I thought you were more relaxed!”

“It gets boring in space,” Canderous said. “You aren’t gonna tell me you’ve got anything better to do.”

“I’ve picked up some more books from Master Dorak,” Mission said. “A couple new holovids, too. A girl’s gotta have some down time, you know?”

“Yeah, why don’t you go and sort that out back on Ebon Hawk?” Aithne suggested. “You can check if Jolee’s done with the Aratech fuel guys while you’re at it. Bastila, go ahead and log and balance all our accounts—see how much we have left after the fuel-up, fitting out the infirmary, and the recent personal requisitions. And start thinking about what we’ll do if we’re short on any of the planets we might be headed to.”

“Still got Davik’s old swoop bike in the garage,” Canderous suggested. “Should be racing out on Tatooine at least if you wanted to give things another go, Moran.”

Aithne made a face. “I could live my whole life without sitting on another swoop bike.” She considered. “Could be a decent cover, though—swoop bike racer, woman of fortune. We’re going to need to say I’m something else once we get to Korriban.”

“And at least one of the pair of us is likely to have to deal upon that world,” Bastila added. “Yes, it will require some thought. I will be back on Ebon Hawk.” She looked at Carth and Canderous. “Well fought, the pair of you,” she added.

Canderous, Bastila, Mission, and Zaalbar started back to Ebon Hawk to follow orders. “You know, you are going to have to decide where we’re headed next before I can do my part of things,” Carth told Aithne as the others pulled ahead.

Aithne hummed, then tilted her head at a man standing on the sidelines of the training yard. Carth followed her gaze, focused, then stared. Czerka didn’t have as many dealings on Dantooine as Aratech did, but they did occasionally drop off things at port. One of their guys had obviously come in during the spar. Carth hadn’t seen him, but now . . .

The guy had been staring at him across the yard, and as Carth and Aithne strode toward him, he broke out into a wide grin. “Stars and planets, I was sure it couldn’t be, but it is you, isn’t it?!”

Carth grinned himself. “Jordo! Damn! How long’s it been?”

Jordo had been a neighbor back on Telos, a friend. It’d been years since Carth had seen him. They shook hands. Jordo pounded his back. “I saw that damned awful flight jacket, and I just knew! You old spacedog, how’ve you been? I thought for sure you’d be fighting on some ship out there.”

Carth’s eyes cut to Aithne, who was smirking behind her fist at the jacket comment. He rolled his eyes at her and smiled. “I was,” he told Jordo. “I crashed.”

Jordo chuckled. “Same old-same old from you. Never a dull moment. Gonna introduce me to your pretty friend here?” His eyes drifted to Aithne with some definite interest but took in the lightsabers on her belt, and his smile stayed polite.

Carth evaluated his old neighbor. Jordo had always liked to tease back in the day. Morgana and Jordo’s wife, Jes, had sworn there wasn’t any harm in it, that Jordo just liked to make a woman feel good. Carth didn’t actually know what had happened to Jordo’s wife and kids in the attack, but when he glanced back at Aithne and she didn’t seem uncomfortable, he nodded.

“Sure. This is Padawan Aithne Moran, captain of Ebon Hawk, the Jedi ship I’m liaison and pilot on right now. Aithne, this is Jordo Krin.”

“Still messing around with the Jedi, huh? Pleasure, miss,” Jordo said, shaking Aithne’s hand in turn. “How do you do?”

“Oh, you know, desperate mission to save the galaxy, trying to keep this clown in line,” Aithne said. “Pleasure’s mine, Mr. Krin.”

“So, what are you doing here, Jordo?” Carth asked. “You’re Czerka now?”

“It’s a job,” Jordo shrugged. “Telos still hasn’t recovered. I couldn’t very well work the farm anymore, could I? We were lucky—Jes and the kids and I all got out, but we had to start over. We moved on. Czerka gave us a lifeline. I’m not home as often as I like, but the benefits are good, and there’s a university package for Dara, if she works a couple years as an intern. We didn’t see you after . . .” he hesitated. Carth looked away. Jordo had been there that day, just across the cratered street, backlit by a burning building. “That is, my condolences on your wife.”

Carth forced a smile and clasped Jordo’s hand. The man had been at his wedding. Jordo’s kids, Dara and Tern, had played ball with Dustil. After everything that had happened the last couple decades, there were probably a lot of good people across the galaxy working for shady corporations. Shady corporations had the credits to pay and feed their families.

Jordo brightened. “At least your boy made it through alright, right?”

Carth’s every nerve lit up. Instinctively, his hand clenched around Jordo’s. “My boy?” he repeated. “You mean, Dustil?” He searched Jordo’s face. He hadn’t heard about Dustil in four years, since before the attack, but Jordo seemed so sure . . .

Jordo’s eyes widened. “Yes, of course,” he said slowly. “Saw him at my last stop, on Korriban, though he didn’t recognize me. You . . . didn’t know he was there?”

Carth’s head whirled. The whole training yard spun around. Everything went cold, and his stomach dropped. He hadn’t spoken Dustil’s name to anyone since he’d given up the search, over two years ago. Then, three days after he’d first mentioned him, to Aithne, Jordo’d come with information. He looked back at Aithne, half wild. He could see her freckles more than he usually could; she’d gone pale. Her eyes dropped to his hands, and she cleared her throat. Carth followed her gaze, and saw he was still crushing Jordo’s hand, and his old neighbor looked afraid. Carth hadn’t realized. He let go.

“No,” he repeated. Something clenched inside his chest. If Jordo was wrong, if Carth got his hopes up after all this time . . . “Jordo, Dustil has been missing since the attack on Telos! Are you . . . are you absolutely certain it was him?”

Jordo nodded, but then he looked a little nervous. “I’m sure it was him,” he said. “He looks just like you, Carth. Maybe a little darker, with Morgana’s nose, but it was him all right. But . . . uh, the truth is, I didn’t go out of my way to reintroduce myself. You see, he’s uh . . . he’s joined the Sith. Company doesn’t like us talking to ‘em. Also—it’s a bad idea.”

After the sudden announcement that his son was alive—a location, even—the revelation Dustil was a Sith was too much to take. Carth couldn’t even wrap his head around it. “What do you mean, he’s joined the Sith?” Dustil was a kid! Or he was.

“There’s an academy for the Sith on Korriban,” Jordo explained. “He’s a student there. I saw him suited up in their outfit and everything, lightsaber on his hip just like Ms. Moran. Sorry.”

Carth tried to comprehend it, tried to process. Dustil, alive. Dustil, on Korriban. Dustil, one of the Sith who had killed his mother and destroyed his homeworld. Dustil—one of the enemy. Dustil, with a lightsaber?

“I thought you knew,” Jordo was saying, but Carth didn’t have time for him anymore. He could hardly see him. He fumbled in his pocket for that old holo he had of Morgana and Dustil. Activated it.

“No . . . no, I didn’t.” He switched the holo off, stuck it back in his pocket, shook Jordo’s hand again. “Well, thanks for letting me know, Jordo.”

“Sure, no problem. Good to see you again, Carth. I . . . uh . . . I gotta get going. Hope everything works out.”

Carth had a vague impression of Aithne talking some more to Jordo, saying all the things he couldn’t, getting details, maybe. He didn’t know or care when Jordo’s green-and-yellow uniform moved away into the sea of Jedi apprentices and knights and visiting Dantooine colonists. He took out his holo again and stared at a face four years gone.

He’d thought Dustil was dead. He’d accepted it. He hadn’t ever even considered that the Sith might have taken prisoners.

But if Dustil had a lightsaber now . . .

No. There was no way the son he knew would ever have joined the Sith. Suddenly, Carth had to get to Korriban. He shut off the holo again, took Aithne’s arm. “Dustil is alive! Did you hear that?! We have to go to the Korriban academy and find him!”

Aithne reached over with her right arm to detach him. The left arm he had already held a datapad. She didn’t even look at him as she looked over a message she was composing.  “Way ahead of you,” she said. “I’m sending a message to Master Dorak. I want to see if he or someone else here can draw us up some fake identification papers. Or . . . me. Probably better if Bas doesn’t step one Jedi toe out on the world. It’ll be crawling with Sith.”

Carth stared at her, already at work on his problem, and appreciated what it would mean, going to Korriban now. They’d just talked about it, but the bounty on her, him, and Bastila was still live. More than that, it was hot—less than a standard month old. Every Sith contact in space would be looking for them, and there would be a lot of them on Korriban. Maybe even Dustil. Tatooine was a dust pit in Hutt space, and Manaan maintained a strict neutrality; either of them would be safer places to gather more information than the Sith world of Korriban. He was asking her to run off half-cocked, take the risk that they might not get to the other Star Maps and head to Korriban now—bring Mission—and she was already working on it.

“Thank you,” he said. “I just . . . we have to find him. I don’t understand. A Sith . . .”

Aithne finished her message, sent it, and lowered the datapad. She’d shaken him off before, but now she gripped his shoulder and met his eyes. Carth’s mind cleared, and it almost felt like she’d done something with the Force, except the mind tricks the Jedi normally used confused people, they didn’t inspire them. He could feel her with him, feel his heartbeat slowing down, almost like she’d reached through his shoulder into his chest to calm it down. Her expression was serious, but completely confident. “We’ll find him,” Aithne promised. “We’ll bring him home. For now, I need you to focus. We need to go back to the ship and plot a course for Korriban. And requisition the supplies we’ll need if we have to leave in a hurry with him.”

Somehow, looking into Aithne’s face, it was impossible to doubt her. After all the doubts he’d had about her, all the debates, he believed she would find his son. Just like he’d been there for Mission, she would be there for him and Dustil now. She wouldn’t stop until they had him safe on Ebon Hawk. After four years, he’d have Dustil back. He’d have his family. He gripped her forearm, a second, silent thanks, and the two of them headed back to Ebon Hawk.

AITHNE

They were resupplied and ready to lift off four hours after meeting Jordo, flight path to Korriban locked in and good to go. Aithne had the fake ident card she’d asked for from Master Dorak—since Ebon Hawk had been an Exchange ship, she’d be posing as an Exchange gambler and smuggler named Addison Bettler. The Jedi had even purchased a shipment of weapons from Czerka for her to deliver to some undercover contacts on the Sith world.

She had none of the answers she’d hoped to find in the Jedi Archives on their return to Dantooine. Either the Jedi didn’t have records on the kind of techniques or phenomena that could be allowing her to channel Revan’s memories or she wasn’t allowed access to the records they did have. She’d run into several like that—holocrons, journals, and other resources restricted by security access or rank within the Jedi Order, and she hadn’t been willing to gamble that the answers she might or might not have been able to find by slicing into the computer systems or breaking into restricted areas would be worth the suspicion and blame she’d be in for if she was caught.

So, she still had no idea about how or why she was seeing Revan’s memories, why Revan’s technology on Kashyyyk had recognized her brain patterns, why the Jedi were so desperate to use her but so desperately afraid of her, or who the Sith thought she actually was. Going to the planet that was their most public stronghold, it might be a problem. She knew this. But they couldn’t just leave Carth’s kid on Korriban in the Sith ranks.

Force, his face when Krin had told him the news! Mission wasn’t even Aithne’s biologically, not even the same species, and she’d known the kid for a scarce few months, but when she imagined Mission being taken, showing up in the ranks of the enemy across a battlefield somewhere after feeding her, dressing her, teaching her, after taking her to the doctor, holding her hand until she slept after the nightmares—she could start to imagine how Carth might feel right now, even without that bond in her head making her feel it.

Carth was bleeding all over the inside of her head right now—concern, doubt, fear, panic. Joy, compounded with more fear and panic. He had no shields to speak of; it was on Aithne to block him out, all the time, and it was exhausting. Some part of her noted it was probably good practice—she could work on blocking Carth and better learn to block out Bastila, and she didn’t think Bastila would know about it. She’d been aware of Aithne’s distress when the two of them returned to the ship and noticed Carth’s worry and anxiety, the silence and intensity that hung over him like a storm cloud. But Aithne was pretty sure Bastila wasn’t feeling it like she was, that Bas didn’t know Aithne had also formed a Force bond of sorts with Carth. And that’s an advantage.

Aithne moved through stances with one of the big double vibroswords Canderous had looted off the Dantooine Dar’manda weeks ago. His and Carth’s little duel had given her the idea: the less she looked like the Taris mock-up on the bounty posting when they landed on Korriban, the better. She’d considered cutting or dyeing her hair but decided in the end that wearing heavy armor—and a helmet—would probably work just as well without being near as permanent. She’d be another Sith-dealing scum on Korriban, not a Jedi. Bastila would stay on the ship.

“You know, you could take someone’s eye out with that thing,” Mission said. She leaned in the entrance to the cargo bay, watching Aithne from the door. “Got a minute?”

Aithne made a couple more passes with the vibroblade, grimacing. Staff combat had a very different rhythm than fighting with dual blades; the body had to make up for the lack of versatility in the weapon’s movement. “Can’t say I’d object to the interruption. Shoot.”

Mission slipped inside the cargo bay. She closed the door behind her and hoisted herself up onto a rations barrel. “Something happened back there at the enclave after Carth and Canderous fought, didn’t it? ’Cause you were watching that guy who was watching Carth, and now Carth’s back all hot and bothered and not talking to anybody, and we’re headed to Korriban instead of Tatooine.”

Aithne nodded slowly. She racked her vibrosword and sat on one of the practice mats, hands on her knees. On the surface, she knew it could look to Mission like she was playing favorites, and she wasn’t going to pretend to Mission like she wasn’t going to look for Carth’s missing family member before Mission’s. “Carth lost somebody too. Around the same time you did,” she admitted. “Like you, for years, he didn’t know where that person was, or even if they were alive, until just like you, someone on Dantooine showed up and told him. But there’s a couple of important differences between you that made me decide to go to Korriban first.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “The guy we just talked to saw Dustil a few days ago, not months or years back. We have reason to believe Dustil may have wound up there involuntarily, whatever his circumstances are now. And Dustil’s only a little older than you are.”

Mission looked down at her. “Carth’s kid got taken? Back when Revan and Malak blew up his planet?”

Aithne hesitated, then inclined her head. Mission was silent for a moment. “You—you’re saying he might of been a slave or something, all this time?”

Aithne hesitated again. “I’m saying he was taken from his homeworld. From Carth. Carth’s friend said—well. We don’t think Dustil’s a slave or prisoner now.”

Mission’s eyes narrowed. She kicked her heels against the ration barrel. “Korriban. Gonna be dangerous. What’re you planning to do about that bounty? They’ll be looking for you and Carth.”

Aithne shrugged. “Probably true everywhere we need to go, at this point. The only reason for those Sith assassins and Calo Nord to head to Kashyyyk was if they’d been told about the Star Maps.”

“What about Carth’s kid, Dustil?” Mission wanted to know. “What if he wants to turn you guys in for the bounty?” Aithne looked at her, and her lekku twitched. “I seen it happen before, is all I’m saying,” Mission protested. “If he’s been on Korriban awhile, if he’s in with the wrong crowd or needs some credits? There were a couple of times Griff schemed about letting me turn him in to one sleemo he owed money to or another. Let me collect the bounty, break him out, then pay off someone else he owed. I always talked him out of it. Or he’d come up with something better.”

Aithne battled to control her expression at the idea of Griff Vao suggesting sending his sister, ten or under, to swindle crime bosses and moneylenders then break him out of whatever hole they threw him into. She knew she was losing, because Mission started to scowl, and her lekku twitched faster. So Aithne didn’t comment on yet another revelation of Griff’s superlative guardianship but said, “Somehow, I think if Dustil turns us in, he won’t be planning to break us out again.”

Mission’s defensive posture relaxed, though her eyes grew even more serious. “Yeah, I was kind of getting that idea,” she admitted. “Korriban, you know? Can we trust him? Carth’s kid? I mean, there are plenty of weasels younger than me who are hardened finks and killers.”

Aithne looked at her, letting her weigh Dustil Onasi against her brother. Purple rose in Mission’s cheeks, and her lekku swished more violently than before.

“Yeah, okay,” she said, even though Aithne hadn’t answered her. “I guess we can’t just leave him there either. He . . . he’s probably been through a lot. I guess I maybe see why you and Carth would want to go to Korriban right away.” She kicked her heels a couple more times against the barrel. “Aithne, you wouldn’t blow me off like the Beks, right?” she asked then.

Aithne straightened, offended. “I’m sorry?”

Mission shifted, uncomfortable. “I been thinking a lot since Taris. Since I joined up with you. They never . . . they never really let me in, you know? I mean, they let me stay in the Bek base sometimes, fed me and Zaalbar, sometimes. Maybe they thought we were funny, I don’t know. But they never really let us in the Hidden Beks, and when the time came, Gadon was willing to send us off with you against the Vulkars when he would of never sent one of his own people in there. Because we weren’t his own people. Not really. This isn’t like that, is it?”

Aithne stood. She crossed over to Mission and enfolded her in a sideways hug, and Mission relaxed into her. “Mish, you’re so much my own people I don’t want to give you back to your brother, if we find him,” she told the teenager. “He was lousy at being your people. He forfeited the right. I didn’t want you in the beginning—not because I didn’t like you, but because I knew what it would mean, what we were going into, and I felt like I would be a horrible person to take you into it with us. But I realized I’d be even worse leaving you behind, and so I made you a promise, and I haven’t regretted it since. Worried. Plotted. Schemed and planned and navigated how to keep us safe, as well as together. But never regretted it.

“So, we’ll track down Griff too. If he’s not on Tatooine anymore, we’ll find out what happened to him and where he went. If you talk to him, you’ll get to ask him why he left and left you behind, and—if you want to—”

Mission broke in— “I’m not leaving,” she promised again. “You’re right: whether or not Lena was lying about Griff wanting to leave me behind in the first place, he did! I handled myself, but what if I couldn’t? Or if you’d never come along? I would of died on Taris! You and Zaalbar have been there for me in ways Griff never was, through thin and thick! You saved Zaalbar from those Gamorreans, then saved him from his stinking brother—you started a revolution on Kashyyyk to do it! I don’t like your leaving me behind when it gets dangerous—I could help you too!—but I understand why you do it. I’m no Jedi, and I ain’t never been the kind of places you and Carth been either.”

“You’re going to catch up a lot sooner than I like.”

Mission rolled her eyes. “You bet I am.” But she seemed satisfied. “Okay. So. Sith Central to get Carth’s people, who’s probably not a prisoner and might want to turn us in. At least it’s not about to get boring around here.”

The trip from Dantooine to Korriban wasn’t bad; turned out the secret Jedi Enclave was uncomfortably close to the public center of Malak’s Sith movement. Still, space travel remained cramped and boring. Days fell into a predictable pattern, with a few notable exceptions. Aithne trained and exercised with Canderous, Mission, Carth, and Zaalbar instead of with Bastila and Juhani, practicing to pass as a vibrostaff-wielding thug instead of a greenhorn Jedi or the dual sword-wielding scout she’d been on Taris. Canderous and Juhani were off childcare duty and back on the regular chore rotation, but due to their efforts, Juhani’s hand had stopped hovering over her lightsaber whenever she looked at Canderous, and Canderous had stopped trying to get a rise out of Juhani every chance he got. Unfortunately, the drop in tension between them was balanced out by Carth’s rising stress. He had been Aithne’s most frequent conversation partner from day one. Now he was so worried about his son, he couldn’t hold a discourse for five minutes. The low-pressure system over Carth Onasi had left Aithne with a near-permanent headache, and it was difficult to find empty space on Ebon Hawk to meditate long enough to clear it out.

She’d fallen back on active meditation techniques. Bastila, raised by the Jedi and frequently enclave-bound due to the value of her talents, was slower to recognize any of the techniques non-Jedi often used to quiet and organize their minds. Aithne, however, had realized soon after the start of her training at the Dantooine enclave that the mental state she fell into doing tech maintenance or weapon and armor upgrades wasn’t too far off the state the Jedi utilized breathing techniques, lightsaber katas, or sitting on a mat to achieve. She spent more and more time doing maintenance on T3-M4, communing with Ebon Hawk’s temperamental hyperdrive, or tinkering with Addison Bettler’s gear. She lost herself in electric pulses and programming codes, built a wall of armor mesh between her and Carth’s urgent, brooding worry, his guilt and fear. Then, later in proper, Jedi meditation with Bas and Juhani and sometimes Jolee, she would try to build it again, without the armor mesh physically between her hands. She would practice keeping it up as she went to dinner; as she took her turn cleaning the common areas or the head; as she reviewed languages, history, and planetary practices with Mission; when she taught Bas to count cards at pazaak. Eventually, she wasn’t sure if the headache was Carth’s mental bleed or her own mental fatigue. She called that a win.

She tried not to worry about Dustil herself—what the Sith might’ve done to Carth’s kid in the four years they had had him. What kind of person he might be now, how Carth was going to take it. What they were going to do if he didn’t feel like leaving the Korriban Dark Jedi Academy, sounded the alarm. What they—she—was going to do if Dustil Onasi attacked his father or any of the rest of them.

She didn’t win so much on that one.

Canderous found her by Davik’s old swoop bike one night. He’d taken to spending more and more time in the garage lately, and after their last mention of racing back on Dantooine, she’d occasionally seen him eyeing up the bike, like if she was really done with racing, he might want to give it a try.

Aithne straightened and wiped the grease off her hands with an old rag. “How’s she looking?”

Canderous laid a hand on the back fender. “She looks alright. You’ve looked better, Aruetii.”

“Vor’e,” Aithne drawled, wiping her forehead and shoving hair out of her face. She wondered idly if wearing a helmet on Korriban all the time would help in keeping the stuff out of the way, or just make it easier to overheat. She considered moving toward the head to clean up, then decided she wouldn’t give Ordo the satisfaction of seeming bothered by the insult. So, she grabbed a spanner, laid on her back, and took a look at the swoop’s undercarriage instead. She thought maybe she could do something to improve the shock absorption when it hit track ramps.

“I don’t mean the hard work or the dirt,” Canderous told her. “I mean, something’s eating you. You’re letting all of this get in your head.” Out of the corner of her eye, Aithne saw Canderous make a gesture around his torso.

“Side effect of being a Jedi. Or Force Sensitive. Whatever.”

“Mmm. I hear that’s why they went bad,” Canderous mused.

Aithne sat up and sat down her spanner. Canderous smirked at her.

“Caught your attention, did I?”

“What do you mean? The Jedi in the war?”

Canderous shrugged. “Sure. There were only a handful who joined the war, lived, and didn’t turn on the Jedi and the Republic. The Butcher of Malachor. A couple others. And most of them went crazy. The Jedi Council says that the Revanchists were asking for it, don’t they? That the second Revan’s people picked up their lightsabers to fight instead of keep the peace, they were already doomed.” Canderous rolled his eyes and grinned mirthlessly. “Wonder just where they see you and Bastila heading.”

/Do you ever taste the shit you’re talking?/ Aithne asked. Canderous grinned wider, apparently appreciating her refusal to fight with him as much as he would have the fight itself.

“I’m just saying, Aruetii. A bit hypocritical of them, sending you out to do the same kind of dirty work they shat on Revan for doing and say started this whole thing in the first place.”

“If you hadn’t picked me out to be your getaway car from the Exchange on Taris, would you have eventually joined the Sith, do you think?” Aithne returned.

She respected that he didn’t just dismiss the question out of hand. Ordo’s ideals of strength and challenge in battle aligned with the Sith philosophy on a lot of points. She wouldn’t have believed him if he responded with an immediate denial. Still, she was glad everyone else wasn’t around to see the honest contemplation on Ordo’s face.

“I generally get along with Sith better than Jedi and Republics,” he admitted. “They don’t pretend they’re pacifists, and they’re at least up front about planning to stab you in the back. But they do it so often, there’s no living with them. There’s no stability in any Sith organization. You can’t count on the guy who’s paying you one week to still be alive the next one. Things used to be better, at least on the broader scale. But since Malak’s taken over . . .” he shook his head. “Revan’s Sith—I might’ve joined them. That might’ve been something. But Malak’s—no.”

Aithne stared at Canderous. “Revan destroyed your people. If the Mandalorian clans are ever able to unify and build up to anything like what they were, it’ll be more than I expect of them. Revan crushed you. And you’d’ve worked for her?”

“Her?” Canderous repeated. “Few thousand vode ‘round the galaxy who would’ve loved to hear that.” He snorted. “Couple thousand more who wouldn’t’ve cared. We never knew if Revan was a man or a woman. Hell, we never knew what was under the helmet. It didn’t matter. Revan was a warrior. The best the clans had ever seen. Clever. Ruthless. Brutal. Fighting Revan was an honor. Surviving Revan was an honor. The Mando’ade, the real Mando’ade, who fought until the end—we would’ve followed Revan anywhere by the end if they took up Mandalore’s mantle. Imagine the kind of strength Revan could have brought the clans. Imagine the warriors Revan could have raised.”

Aithne shifted. “So, the collective Mando’ade have a masochism-submission kink and a hard-on for the Jedi who ground them into the dust. That what you’re telling me?”

Canderous showed his teeth. “You ever been with a woman who could crush you into dust but didn’t, Aruetii? Who chose to be a family with you instead, even for a little while?”

Aithne threw the rag at him. “Not my kink.”

Canderous snagged it out of the air. “I wouldn’t knock it, if I were you,” he advised. “You’re gonna have to find someone who respects your strength, or you won’t find someone.”

“Could always take Bastila and the masters’ advice and not find someone,” Aithne returned.

“You could,” Canderous agreed. “You already got a kid. You could adopt some more. Family—a clan—is more than blood. You can raise and train warriors without a partner or ever being a parent, and someone like you is bound to. Still. Don’t do everything by their rules, Moran. Wouldn’t want to turn to the Dark Side from the pressure.” He smirked again and threw the rag back at her.

Aithne tied it into a ball. “You’re chatty tonight,” she remarked, tossing it back again. They started throwing it back and forth, making it into a game. “Full of reflection and sage advice. Got any more for me, Master Ordo?”

“Ha,” Canderous deadpanned. “Fine. Be frigid, uptight, and judgmental all you want. Clench up into knots. Drive yourself crazy and worry yourself sick over kids you don’t plan to adopt into your clan and men you aren’t sleeping with.”

Aithne narrowed her eyes, and Canderous widened his, mocking her. “You want to hear about the war where Revan crushed my people or not?” he asked. “You’re usually up for old stories.”

Aithne recognized grace when she saw it, and she appreciated it. “Go,” she said, throwing the rag ball back to Canderous.

“So, you know we started our conquest with worlds just outside of the Republic,” he related. “We did it quietly so the Republic wouldn’t really know what was going on until too late. When we finally did hit the Republic worlds, they had no idea we were coming.” He smiled a bit at the memory. “We came in through three invasion corridors in adjacent sectors. Anyone who put up a fight—or wouldn’t fight—was was crushed.” His face darkened unexpectedly. “We razed whole worlds trying to provoke the Republic into fighting us,” he growled. “I don’t particularly enjoy wiping out worlds for its own sake, but the cowardly tactics the Republic defenders used left us little choice.”

No, Aithne thought, Canderous wouldn’t enjoy wiping out worlds on its own. A difficult battle, sure. Training and instructing warriors—she’d seen that much in his interaction with both Sasha and herself. But Canderous wasn’t by nature a bully or a tyrant, and she now was almost certain a large part of his frustration on Taris—along with the breach of contract—had been that Davik had so often used him that way. “Tactics such as?” she asked.

Canderous sneered. “Hiding in the homes of civilians,” he spat. “Using families as shields. Thinking we would not use appropriate force on their bases inside major cities. They underestimated our resolve and what measures are acceptable in war. Those who cannot defend themselves should not be around those who can in battle.” Something flickered in his face, and Aithne found herself focusing on certain words. In war, he’d said. Should not. Aithne got the feeling that Canderous felt somewhat guilty for the things he and his people had done early on in the Mandalorian Wars. Well, he should, Aithne thought. The devastation had been massive, with civilian casualties by the thousands. Canderous continued, disgusted. “If annihilating a city was the kind of power it took to overcome a Republic shield device, then that’s what we did. Necessary force to destroy all opposition.”

Aithne threw the ball back but folded her arms, stopping the game. “Atrocities to pick a fight the Republic never wanted,” she returned, voice even.

Canderous turned away, angry now. He threw the rag ball violently enough into the wall it came undone and lay like a downed battle flag across the workbench. “I have no time or patience for cowards!” he cried. “They deserve to be hunted and exterminated like vermin. Did they think they would be unchallenged forever? There was no honor in wiping them out like rats,” he admitted. “But some of your forces did redeem the Republic in our eyes . . . especially later.”

“Later?” Aithne asked, but she knew. Later, when the Jedi—or the Revanchists—had taken up the Mandalorians’ challenge. Later, when under Revan and Malak’s leadership, the Republic had stopped defending and gone on the offensive, and matched violence for violence and outrage for outrage until entire worlds were left smoking, poisoned ruins.

“Later,” Canderous agreed. “When Revan had joined the war. But we’ll get back to that some other time.”

Aithne left Canderous and the swoop bike thinking hard. She’d been initially surprised to hear about the depth of the respect Canderous—and, according to him, the Mandalorians in general—had for Revan. In retrospect, it made a twisted kind of sense. Canderous’s comments about her personal life had been annoying, intrusive, and unwanted, but had also demonstrated a level of respect for her personally that had taken her by surprise. He still called her Aruetii, but by now she had a feeling it was out of habit, or almost a goad. He liked her—as a warrior, as a captain and an employer. And his remarks on her family choices were the kind of things he might have said to a younger warrior in his own clan, especially an unpartnered one. Mandalorians married young, and they believed in big families—biological and adoptive. She hadn’t thought of it before—Ordo didn’t give off family man vibes nearly as hard as Onasi—but she now thought Canderous probably had been married before too, and possibly a father. She didn’t know what had happened and it wasn’t any of her business. She could respect his privacy even if he didn’t respect hers.

But what really had her thinking was what he’d said about the Jedi and the way they had turned in the wars. He hadn’t been speaking seriously; Canderous was contemptuous of the Republic’s initial reluctance to engage in the Mandalorian Wars, and contemptuous of the Jedi who had stayed out of the war in particular—probably mostly because the Mandalorians had specifically hoped to fight the Jedi. Canderous wouldn’t see falling to the Dark Side as a weakness. He pointed out disciplinary and organizational weaknesses in Malak’s Sith, but he had admired Revan’s Sith—for their lack of hypocrisy as compared to the Jedi, who called themselves peacekeepers but trained with lightsabers, whose masters took care to stay out of wars but never hesitated to send their young ones to battle. And Canderous’s remarks shed some light on why the Jedi Council might fear Aithne falling to the Dark Side—so many other Jedi who had gone to war had done exactly that.

Too many.

Aithne took her shower and changed into her sleeping clothes still thinking about it. What was it about war and conflict that turned the Jedi? The philosophers claimed war was not the Jedi’s place. Sith were aggressive; they attacked, the Jedi defended. Revan had posited the best defense was a good offense. Revan’s tactics had certainly been more effective against the Mandalorians, but was it possible that the moment the Revanchists had taken up their lightsabers to attack instead of merely defend, they had done something to upset their spiritual balance? Or was it the feel of it—of sensing each life lost within yourself instead of just seeing, hearing, or smelling it—was that what hardened a Jedi who went to war, filled them with anger and hate and turned them to the Dark Side?

She dried her hair with her towel, wringing out the excess water. “Enough,” she told herself. “You’ll turn into one of those quibblers in the courtyards at this rate. You know better.”

“You know, I didn’t start talking to myself until a decade and a half down in the Shadowlands,” Jolee remarked. He was sitting on the lounge in the central commons, reading one of the Archive records Dorak had approved for them to bring along. “I understand you’re supposed to be a prodigy, but if you take my advice: that isn’t an area of precocity you particularly want to emulate.”

Aithne rolled her eyes at him but smiled and sat at the other end of the lounge, drawing her bare feet up under her body. She’d quickly grown fond of Jolee Bindo. She’d talked to both Zhar and Dorak about his history. Neither had known the exact details of his departure from the Jedi Order but had confirmed Jolee had never left as a Sith or fallen to the Dark Side. The Jedi, they said, would welcome his return, and Jolee’s unconventional background might prove an asset to her mission. But Aithne envied Jolee’s irascibility, and she admired his still-avid curiosity, the way he answered questions with stories that encouraged more questions. She kind of wanted to be Jolee when she grew up, to be honest, minus the hermit-in-the-woods angle, maybe. More, she felt at ease around him, for while she felt him watching her like Juhani, wondering what she would be as much as Bastila or the Jedi Council, Juhani’s hero-worship and the judgmentalism of Bastila and the Council was completely absent in Jolee.

“Why talk to anyone else?” she joked. “Have to keep up a level of decent conversation somehow.”

Jolee snorted. “That big head of yours will float you away someday, just you watch.”

“My hair will hold it down,” returned Aithne.

“Ooh, ouch,” Jolee said, applauding sardonically. “Why are you still up? It’s time youngsters like you were in bed. Korriban tomorrow and all that.”

“Am I in the way?” Aithne asked, serious now. “I know it can get kind of crowded here when we’re flying. Only so many rooms aboard, and no leaving to take a walk when it gets to be a bit much, either.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” Jolee told her, annoyed. “I made my choice back on Kashyyyk, and I’ll handle the consequences. You bunch are hardly worse than a thousand tachs and katarn shrieking and carrying on, after all, though I’ll grant it that you try. I’ll learn to tune you out just the same.”

Aithne made a sympathetic face. “It’s a little much for me sometimes too,” she told him. “I’m used to a lot more work on my own than I’ve gotten lately. Sometimes, I could do with a nap or three. Or a scream.”

“I’ll bet. And you’re captain, which means they all need you to settle disputes, let them off their least favorite chores—and not let so-and-so off theirs—and spend extra time with them making them feel valued.” Jolee chuckled. “Anyone who ever wants to be in charge is a moron.”

They lapsed into companionable silence, and Jolee went back to his datapad. Aithne studied him. “Bindo, why did you want to jump onto my ship?” she asked finally. “You never said. Last time you just gave me that rigmarole about Andor and his destiny and sidestepped the whole question.”

“You know, you’re very observant,” Bindo replied. “With skills like that, I can tell you’ll go far within the Jedi.”

“I’m serious,” Aithne protested. “You could’ve gotten on any old transport vessel any time you got bored, headed off to someplace with a bigger human population and non-Czerka jobs to spare, gotten an apartment, a life with more convenience, a lot more privacy, and a lot less hassle than you’re going to have with us. Instead you stuck around talking to yourself in the Shadowlands until the day when I showed up. Then when I ask why, you give me a story about this guy with an interesting destiny and leave it at that.”

“You could too,” Jolee pointed out. “You needed immediate help and, it turns out, a medic. I was interested in the look of you and your friends. It works. Anyone ever tell you not to look a gift ronto in the mouth?”

“Usually the people who are trying to get me to ignore ‘no such thing as a free lunch.’ You know, you’re pretty elusive. Look. Leave it. Maybe I don’t want to know.”

Jolee’s face seemed to change at that. “That was my idea, lass,” he admitted. “Destinies . . . they can be funny things. Usually best not to talk about them too much, I’ve found. From what I could tell back at the enclave, you’ve already got a whole council and Bastila besides telling you all that’s on your shoulders, all they’re risking if you fail. You don’t need any more of that; you don’t need me pushing you in any one direction. I’m here to watch, that’s all, and to help you if I can. Anything more? Leave it alone, I say. What’s meant to happen will happen without any of us talking it to death.”

Aithne stared at Jolee for a long, long moment, then collapsed against his shoulder. She was taller than he was, but he was broad and strong, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “There now,” he said. “None of that.” But he didn’t push her away; just held her a moment.

“Jolee, what do you see when you look at me?” she asked him.

Jolee hesitated. “Mostly a lot of swirling Force stuff, which you’d know if you’d paid attention last time,” he said, pushing her lightly. “But—when I first saw you on Kashyyyk, everything about you was odd. Slightly off, as if my eyes were trying to trick me. And I won’t say I don’t understand why Bastila and the Council are nervous. Something about you is very dark, Aithne Moran, like a shadow above, within, or behind.”

Aithne shivered, and Jolee patted her arm then gently pushed her up to sit on her own. He met her eyes. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, if I were you. I also see great capacity for courage, compassion, and wisdom in you. You remind me a bit of Nomi, truly, and that can’t be all bad.”

Aithne stared again. “Nomi Sunrider, Grand Master of the Jedi Order, legendary hero of the Great Sith War Nomi Sunrider?”

“Talk about a woman with a destiny,” Jolee confirmed. “Yes, that Nomi Sunrider. She came late to the Force, just as you have. Whether you’ll follow her example remains to be seen—but I doubt it. You’ll never get anywhere, for instance, if you spend all night chatting up old men.” He waved his hand at her demonstrably and picked his book back up. He’d been nice about it, but he was tired, and he needed some quiet.

Aithne smiled and rose. “Thank you,” she murmured. “For everything.” For refusing to prescribe a path, she meant. For comforting her. For comparing her to a famous hero instead of a famous villain.

Jolee smiled back. “You’re welcome. Now shoo.”

Chapter Text

AITHNE

You could never be safe on Korriban. Even the spirits could be enemies and turn against you. The very air burned. Scientists blamed the planet’s gas composition; they claimed the balance was just slightly out of the comfort range for humans and near-human organics. Force Sensitives knew: the whole planet was rife with the Dark Side. Anger, rage, fear, lust to power, the will to survive against a universe doing all it could to extinguish you. Resentment and a killer instinct: that was Korriban. The planet was rich in possibilities; it restricted Force Sight but strengthened those who could withstand it.

Still. Best to be careful.

Malak stood guard outside the door—against beasts, spirits, cave-ins, or whatever came for us.

I examined my surroundings. The Sith Lord who had built his tomb around the Star Map obviously hadn’t known the nature of the artifact he had unearthed. If he had, the Sith of Korriban would have spread throughout the galaxy like the Builders centuries ago. But he had sensed the power of the Star Map, its age and the darkness and brilliance of the creators, to make something which had endured for so long. And like the guardian beasts he had chosen to hoard his treasure, even in death. I would leave his other treasures; I had never had the taste for despoiling the dead that some of my compatriots had had, no matter what could be gained. Fine armor and fine weapons had never helped my enemies. Better to make new things than to take the trophies of the defeated.

But this—this information I would take. I activated the map, memorizing its every detail, and added the information to the coordinates I had in my mind already.

One step closer to the Star Forge.

When Aithne woke up, she spent some time just staring at the ceiling. She’d been more than halfway expecting it this time. She felt almost numb. Revan had mentioned spirits that turned against you: was that what was happening to her?

Do you think you could get out, maybe? she thought rather hopelessly at the place in her mind where whatever remnant of the spirit of Darth Revan might be lurking. It’s crowded enough in here with just me, most days. I don’t need you here too.

Predictably, she got no answer.

Aithne kicked her bedclothes aside and got up.

“You have awakened,” Juhani observed. She was making her own bunk down the dormitory. “Carth landed us on Korriban a little less than an hour ago. Bastila has gone to breakfast. She will want to speak with you.”

“Naturally,” Aithne muttered. She opened her foot locker first, took a look at the comfortable collection of tunics, shirts, and trousers on the left. She sighed, grabbed a comb and a collection of hair pins, and started braiding her hair back tightly into a crown around her head. The style wasn’t one she particularly liked; a million baby hairs escaped every time. On her own, she usually adopted looser updos. Paradoxically, her hair was neater that way. Today, though, she had to tamp down the volume. Then, she started equipping the undergarments she’d requisitioned back on Dantooine—ones that protected her skin from chafing under plate armor.

By the time she was finished, she wore a full set of black Echani fiber armor. Light enough to move in, but with defined plates over the thighs and torso underneath the mesh that made its silhouette and protectiveness notably different from that of a combat suit. There was an optional hood attachment; she’d foregone this as too reminiscent of Jedi fashion and instead purchased a black bucket helmet, a knockoff of Mandalorian design that Canderous and one of Dorak’s assistants had assured her was frequently used by bounty hunters and Exchange thugs. It wasn’t beskar and wouldn’t stop a lightsaber blade, but it was good protection against your average vibroblade and insulated against electrical attacks. It also obscured her peripheral vision and adversely affected her hearing, and she hadn’t laid down the extra credits to outfit it with a virtual threat-detection system. For the purposes of disguise, it’d have to do.

She eyed the helmet with distaste, then elected to carry instead of wear it, at least for now. She made her own bunk then headed for the dining room.

Bastila was just finishing her meal, alongside Zaalbar and Jolee. Bastila paled a little as Aithne entered.

“I take it I look dangerous enough, then,” Aithne said.

“Different,” Bastila said diplomatically. “And that is the point, is it not?” She assessed Aithne more clinically. “Yes, you look exactly like the kind of mercenary you wish to portray on this world, or will with the vibrostaff. What’s more, you look very unlike the bounty sketch we found upon the Sith assassins on Kashyyyk. Breakfast?”

“I suppose I should,” Aithne agreed, helping herself without much enthusiasm. “This is the whole go-over-the-vision bit?”

“The Force is guiding us, Aithne. We have some direction upon our primary mission. It will help us retrace the steps of Malak and his old master—along with our . . . other objectives.” Her cheeks went pink as Carth entered as well.

“We’ll want to pinpoint the location and status of Dustil Onasi before we do anything else,” Aithne said, without beating around the bush. “For instance, if he’s due to leave Korriban soon, we may need to act more quickly; if he’s safe, relatively stationary, or likely to be hostile, we may not want to approach him until we’ve already secured the Star Map.”

She looked at Carth, challenging him a little, but his face was grave, and all he said was, “I understand. I don’t—Jordo said he was a Sith. A Force-user too. If that’s true, you may—would you find out where he is, before going in with me? I want to find him. I don’t want to be the one who gives you away.”

“They’re looking for you too, Carth,” Aithne pointed out. “You’re in danger as much as we are.”

Not strictly true; the bounty on Carth was decent, but it wasn’t anything like the motivation the Sith had offered for Bastila’s capture or Aithne’s assassination. Still, she inclined her head.

“The recovery of the Star Map must remain our primary objective,” Bastila said. “Still. We should be cautious. There are some who believe Korriban is the birthplace of the Sith. This planet is an evil place. There are secrets here best left uncovered.” Her eyes, which had gone distant as she thought of the vision she had shared, suddenly refocused on Aithne, and Aithne felt a press of warning in her mind.

“You shared the vision,” she said. “The Star Map’s underground.” She didn’t elaborate further than that. She guessed they were looking for the tomb of some ancient Sith Lord, a male, but Bastila thus far hadn’t demonstrated any awareness of Revan’s thoughts during the memory visions they had shared.

Nor did she this time, but she had observed more than Aithne would have guessed, because she seemed troubled. “During the vision I felt cold and trapped, almost as if I was buried alive. It felt . . . it felt like we were in some kind of tomb.”

“I don’t want you leaving the ship while we’re here,” Aithne told her.

“With that holo circulating, I fear you may be right,” Bastila agreed reluctantly. “With your image only a sketch based upon a description, you are relatively simple to disguise. Carth and I will have more difficulty.”

Aithne shrugged and looked at Carth. They’d discussed it, and he’d been growing out his beard since Dantooine. It was still more stubble than beard proper but already had changed his look somewhat from the official fleet image in the bounty posting. He’d also stopped slicking his hair back, giving him an overall untidier, younger appearance, as well as lightening the color of his hair to a more neutral brown. They’d agreed it might be important for him to be recognizable—but not immediately so. He would also be switching to a melee weapon for the duration of their stay on Korriban and going by an alias: Card Natthias, a mechanic and not a pilot aboard Addison Bettler’s vessel. Carth had enough working knowledge of ships to make it work. They were depending on the thoroughness of Aithne’s disguise to cover him, a bit, but mostly, people saw what they wanted to see, and Carth was at the end of the day a normal person. Everything about Bastila screamed ‘Jedi.’

“Easier if the three of us aren’t together at all times, though,” Aithne said. “And easier if you’re here, meditating to help us succeed.”

“Indeed,” Bastila agreed. “Very well. I will remain with Ebon Hawk while the two of you—”

“Mostly me, at least at first—”

“While you pursue leads on the Star Map and Dustil Onasi. Is there anything else you wish to discuss?”

“Nothing I can’t say to everybody,” Aithne answered. She shoved most of her food at Zaalbar, taking only her fruit with her to the cockpit, hit the intercom button, and said, “Welcome to Korriban, boys and girls. Up in the briefing room for breakfast and the gameplan.”

She returned to the briefing room and slouched down beside Zaalbar, happily finishing her breakfast in addition to his own. The rest of them filed in one by one: Ordo, Mission, Juhani, T3-M4. If they hadn’t eaten yet, they grabbed something from the synthesizer or the dwindling fresh supplies and took their places around the table. They were quiet, expectant.

Aithne looked around, seized with worry for all of them. This was the most dangerous planet they could possibly have visited, and whatever they did here, they were almost certain to bring at least some of that danger down on themselves before they left. “Right,” she said finally. “This is a Sith world—Malak’s primary public stronghold, in fact, if not his headquarters, and where most of his new Force-wielders train, at least for a little while. There are armies just down our boarding ramp, and most of them are young and just itching to prove themselves. I need all of you to understand that.”

“You mean they’re like the Sith back on Taris, but worse, because they all still have to show they’re good at killing or pushing folks around,” Mission summarized.

“Always assume both,” Aithne confirmed. “These Sith are bored. They’re waiting around for an assignment, and they get better ones if they can prove they better adhere to the Sith ideals. Assume they’re looking for a fight. If you draw their attention in any way, assume they will want to humiliate you at best and quite possibly kill you—not because they bear you any particular ill will but because their buddies and superiors are watching. Don’t give them that excuse.”

She looked around the table, making use of Bastila’s own mental warning technique herself—the Force Sensitives would all feel it, while the others would just understand she was particularly serious about this. “I don’t want the Sith getting any idea of how many off us are here,” she said, “and I’d like to avoid the groupings in that Sith bounty where we can. Bastila’s going to be staying on the ship, and Teethree, I’d like you to stay with her. Your long-range communication abilities could come in handy if she runs into any trouble back here.”

Teethree beeped an affirmation and wheeled away to work on the ship. A little rude, maybe, but it made Aithne smile. The rest of her instructions didn’t apply to him, so what was the point of him staying to hear them?

She turned back to the others. “When Carth’s with me, I won’t be me—” she held up her helmet to demonstrate— “and most of the time, at least to start with, I want him with those of us who haven’t been fingered at all in the reports. Jolee, Juhani—I want you two to pose as Dark Jedi. We picked up some robes on Dantooine to help, and either of you will be able to make it convincing. It should help a little with ordinary soldiers who want to pick fights.” Juhani looked troubled; Jolee unfazed, but both nodded.

“Good,” Aithne said. “Mission. Zaalbar. Exchange affiliates, like I’ll be. You can say you serve on Ebon Hawk if anyone asks; name-drop Davik, whatever. Everyone knows Ebon Hawk used to be an Exchange vessel, and as far as we know, knowledge that she isn’t anymore hasn’t gone public. You two can argue with the Czerka drones or play pazaak til Korriban’s dry, but I want you with Juhani or Carth at all times.”

Zaalbar started to protest, and Aithne looked hard at him. “I don’t want Mission tagged with me on this planet,” she said firmly. “I don’t want her involved in whatever kind of trouble we kick up. Not here. Not when the Sith outnumber us more than a hundred to one. As your employer, as your life debt, as your friend, I want you two to stay together. Look out for one another the way you did on Taris, in the company of one of our other friends. Tell me you understand.”

Zaalbar roared a soft agreement.

Mission looked unhappy. “I get it,” she agreed. “These Sith want you dead, though. It feels scummy not to back you up. But I understand you don’t want me and Zaalbar to get bounties on us too. And that it might be easier for Carth to pass if he’s with us instead of you mostly, like he is in the bounty. But I’d like to help Aithne, and help you too, Carth. To find your kid, you know?”

“I know,” Carth told her. His voice was hoarse. “And I appreciate it, Mission. But honestly, this isn’t a place I’d send most ten-year Republic vets, let alone a couple of new recruits. We need to keep you two—both of you—safe.”

Mission still looked unhappy, but she nodded finally. “All right. Zaalbar and me stay together, and with you or Juhani.”

“You’re not going to be useless, Mission,” Aithne told her. “I don’t plan to head back to Dantooine for a while if we can help it, and we may not always be in a position to receive a wire transfer from the Order. We need an income independent of our Order stipend. Here, I’m putting you two in charge of getting it. Negotiating more supplies for moving forward too. Zaalbar, you’ve been involved in food and water supply from the beginning; Mission, Bas has shown you about accounts. Think you guys can handle it?”

Mission brightened up at this. “Sure!” she said. “So, you’re not just leaving us. We’re actually important! While you guys find Dustil and that Star Map, we’ll be getting Ebon Hawk ready to leave, any time we have to! No problem! You can count on us! The pazaak, obviously, but those Wookiees gave us a lot of stuff back on Kashyyyk we probably don’t really need. I could probably get us some really good deals. Might be fun to sell Czerka some of their own stuff back.” She grinned, and Aithne frowned at her.

“As long as you do it under a low profile,” she reminded Mission. “I don’t want you caught cheating. I don’t want you ticking off some Czerka officer who decides to send his drinking buddy the Sith lieutenant after those scavenging spacers. No mauling, no maiming, no murders, no attention if you can possibly, possibly help it.”

“Alright, alright, we get it already. Sheesh, Mom. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Aithne retorted, “Shut up.”

Mission smiled at that. “We’ll be careful, Aithne. That’s a promise. Anyway, it can’t be worse than tiptoeing through a rancor den.”

“That’s the goal,” Aithne said. She turned her head again. “Canderous, Jolee? For the first couple days while we’re getting our bearings and digging up information, I want you two with me. You all know I’ll be posing as an Exchange captain named Addison Bettler. Master Dorak made us up some papers and even released some contraband for us to sell to make us look more authentic. It wouldn’t be out of character for someone like that to take on a passenger for pay, so that’s your story, Jolee. Canderous, you actually were Exchange, so you shouldn’t have trouble pretending you never left.”

“This is a place of great danger,” Juhani observed. “Are you certain you would not be better off here with Bastila, Padawan?”

Aithne sighed. “Not at all. Carth and I probably both would, actually. But Carth’s the only one here who’s met his kid, and only Bastila and I have even the faintest idea of where to look for the Star Map, so we both have to be groundside at one point. I take comfort in the fact that if the Sith penetrate my cunning disguise and decide to kill me, it won’t lose the Republic the entire war the way it would if they captured Bastila. And I figure, if we go in expecting trouble, and Bastila’s back here using her Battle Meditation for us, we have a shot at least. Canderous, you eaten?”

“I was up an hour ago,” Ordo grunted. “Let’s go already. Korriban’s not getting less dangerous while we talk here. We sit here much longer, and whatever docking flunky is in charge outside might just charge up the ramp to demand the fee.”

“Right. Let’s pay our dues and go. The rest of you—wait an hour or so before following us, maybe? Should help hide how many of us are onboard and who we are, in case anyone’s watching.”

Aithne sighed, looked at her helmet. There was nothing for it. She wrestled it over her head and buckled it to her armor’s neck attachment. She stopped by the cargo bay, grabbed a dolly of weapons and other various contraband as well as the vibrostaff she’d chosen to use groundside, and headed out with Jolee and Canderous.

On Kashyyyk, she’d paid the Czerka docking fee. Here, she negotiated, because Addison Bettler did. She bribed the officer with twenty credits for his own pocket and a flask of one of the liquors they’d brewed on Kashyyyk, one of the hallucinogenic ones made with the tach glands. He marked her as checked in and waved her through. As she’d suspected, Ebon Hawk was well known on Korriban, and within three minutes of leaving the docking bay, she’d been approached by a shifty Duros who alerted her to some spice she hadn’t even planned to trade away here, locked in that hidden storage compartment she’d noticed before in the cargo hold but hadn’t been able to open. The Duros knew what had happened back on Taris and accepted she hadn’t been in charge of Davik’s ship before the attack; he gave her the codes, she went back and collected his spice, and she was able to turn a tidy profit in the sight of several citizens of the desolate world.

They’d landed at Dreshdae, the settlement on Korriban closest to the ancient Sith ruins where Malak had his Dark Jedi academy, the place where, according to Jordo’s information, Dustil Onasi was likeliest to be found. Fortunately, it also had the readiest access to the known ancient tombs on Korriban’s surface, and thanks to Aithne’s dream, she now knew it would be closest to the Star Map too. She was a little encouraged to see that the port was mostly a Czerka outpost and supply station to the Dark Jedi academy, rather than a city where the majority of the Sith army was housed as she had feared; most of them lived in other settlements across the planet.

The proportion of Force users was depressingly high, however. The port was nearly overrun with hopefuls—young idiots who had decided to come to Dreshdae to try to make it at the academy. Everyone else tread on eggshells around them, as well as the academy students themselves. Civilians, the bar owner, merchants, and dock workers all walked around with their heads on a perpetual pivot, watching their step and their mouths, and there were one or two bodies in the streets as they passed, freshly charred with blaster fire or lightsaber wounds. Occasionally, she’d see children with hooded, haunted eyes dart out of the alleys to loot the pockets of the corpses.

It didn’t take long before Aithne ran into some of the civilians involved in a dispute with an academy student herself—just outside the port proper, near the Czerka outpost building. There were three young people in civvies—two human males and one female Twi’lek, groveling in front of a young human in a gray Sith officer’s uniform. He had a lightsaber on his hip, but no insignia, indicating he was still in training.

“No, that is the wrong answer,” he was saying to one of the three civilians accosting him. “Again! You pathetic hopefuls can’t possibly all be this stupid, can you?”

“P-please, Master Shaardan!” one of the men begged, “Give us a chance! We’ll do anything to get into the academy!”

Aithne snorted behind her visor. Exactly the wrong approach, she thought. The Sith aren’t after whining toadies. At least not in the Dark Jedi academy. She was tempted to move on but stayed. If Shaardan was a student at the academy, he might know something about Dustil.

Shaardan, though, stroked his chin at the hopeful’s flattery. “Hmph. I’m no master . . . yet. But I like the sound of that. Alright. One more question, though the lot off you are trying my patience.” He considered a moment, then spoke. “Alright: Let’s say you become a Sith, and I am your commanding officer. I give you an order to spare the life of an enemy. Do you do it?”

The same flattering hopeful who’d spoken before jumped right in again. “Oh, of course, Shaardan,” he cried. “Anything you command us!”

A second hopeful, a female this time, chimed in. “We would never oppose you!”

Aithne shook her head. In an aside to Jolee she said, “Idiots. If they actually were Sith, they would first kill their commander for weakness and then kill the enemy.”

Shardaan heard her. She’d intended him to do so, though she’d pitched her voice low like she might just be an opinionated bystander. She saw his eyes flick to her, saw him take in her high-grade armor, her friends, and the vibrostaff on her back. But he addressed himself to the hopefuls. “Do you honestly believe the Sith are in need of such sniveling cowards?” he demanded. “Mercy is a weakness. If your leader shows weakness, it is your duty to kill him and show true authority, true power. That is why the Sith are strong.”

The third hopeful spoke up now. “Th-thank you, Shaardan,” he stammered. “We, uh . . . we understand now!”

Shaardan sighed, almost regretfully, though his eyes held a sheen that told Aithne it was all theatrics. “No,” he said, “You don’t understand. And you probably never will. You wouldn’t survive five seconds in the Academy. The other students would tear you apart. I can’t be bothered with fools. Perhaps I should . . .” he trailed off, then turned to Aithne abruptly.

“You!” he called, beckoning for her and her companions to join him. “You there!”

Let the games begin, Aithne thought. She walked forward slowly, casually, adding a little swagger to her gait, as if completely unbothered by being called out by a Sith.

“I heard you earlier, spacer, and I see your company,” Shaardan told her. “You have the look of someone not quite as dense as these hopefuls. I require your aid for a moment. Let me pose a question to you. These hopefuls will never survive in the academy. A lesson must be taught here, but I am at a loss as to what form it should take.”

“Well,” said Jolee reasonably, “if you can’t think of anything cruel you really shouldn’t be out here, young man, should you?”

Shaardan’s expression of pleasant inquiry twisted into a snarl. “I wasn’t talking to you!” he spat, but Aithne allowed herself a low, earthy chuckle, as if Jolee’s comment had been a good joke instead of an ill-timed barb for a man pretending to be a Dark Jedi himself.

The chuckle worked, and Shaardan replaced his polite expression, wearing it like a mask, and readdressed himself to her. “I’m thinking to spare them the effort of being killed and do it myself,” he said. “Perhaps I shall turn their skin inside out? Or Force Lightning? It is a most impressive display. Or perhaps a bit of humiliation is in order? I could easily strip off their tunics and make them run through the colony. Or they could lose all control of their bodily functions . . .” he trailed off, delighted with his own gruesome visions. “What do you think?” he asked deferentially. “I just can’t seem to decide.”

It was a flex. Shaardan wanted to demonstrate his superior power—not just to the hopefuls, who he was showing now that he had no fear of their escaping him, but to Aithne, who had correctly answered the question he had wanted to stump the others. Now Aithne would have to flex in turn, not enough to threaten him, but enough to win his respect. On the other hand, she thought, she didn’t exactly relish endorsing the outright murder of three unarmed civilians by this conceited boy, not even to get her own in to the Sith academy where Dustil was.

Controlling her voice, she finally answered, “You can’t just kill them.”

One hopeful, sensing mercy, fell to his knees. “Please! Help us!”

“Silence!” Shaardan shouted, casting all three hopefuls into a Force Stasis. He turned to Aithne, laughing a little. “Of course I can kill them. The Sith can do whatever they like on Korriban, and frankly these worms rather deserve it. That’s for you to decide, however.”

Aithne didn’t flinch. “Even squashing a worm makes a mess,” she told him. “And it doesn’t say much about you to squash them, does it? Anyone could do it. Let them go.”

Shaardan had been smiling. Now he frowned. “Let them go? What could possibly convince me to do that?”

Somehow, Aithne knew instinctively what to say. She put on a high, breathy voice and placed a hand over her breast. “But killing them is wrong!” she cried.

The effect probably wasn’t as impressive in a full helmet. Or else the irony was even more pronounced. In a moment, Shaardan had burst out in a full belly laugh. “Now that has to be the funniest thing I’ve heard all day,” he said, as soon as he caught his breath. “Well fine, whoever you are, since you’ve proven such a good sport.”  He disabled the Force stasis and waved the hopefuls away. “The boys can run off. I’m sure your little lesson will give them something to chew on.”

“I hope it does,” Aithne said insincerely. The hopefuls looked from her to Shaardan, then fled. Shaardan sniffed, then walked away in another direction. Aithne knew she should stop him, introduce Addison Bettler, ask for directions. Something. Instead, she let him go, pushing down her feelings of disgust.

Jolee was watching her. “You did that particularly well. The way you knew exactly what to say was impressive, to say the least. Almost as though you knew what he had to be thinking.”

“He’s as weak as they are,” Aithne answered. “Did you see him preen when that hopeful called him master? People like Shaardan run on flattery and the delusion of their own superiority. Makes them that much easier to take down, and more amusing. You just compliment them. Oblige their wish to think themselves rulers supreme, and while they’re busy thinking how clever they are, you pull the rug out from underneath them.”

Jolee made a face. “Oh, you’re going to do just fine, lass.”

Aithne paused, noting the disapproval in Bindo’s tone. “I’m sorry, do you like bullies who throw their weight around just to do it?” she asked.

“I went along with your bit of justified homicide on Kashyyyk, didn’t I?” Jolee replied. “Even set you on the poachers. I won’t tell Bastila you think about the best ways to take these guys down and how much you enjoy it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Aithne pressed her lips together inside her helmet. “Let’s eat,” she suggested. “Cantina’s usually a good place to pick up some information.”

“You do know you’ll have to take off that helmet if you do any actual eating,” Canderous pointed out. Aithne considered this, decided he had a point, and stopped at a health and beauty store inside the marketplace. She purchased some cosmetics and a bit of her own hair gel, and she stopped by the cantina toilets before they ordered. By the time they sat down, her hair appeared two shades darker and was slicked close to its braid. It wouldn’t hold all day, but it would hold long enough. She’d also used contouring to emphasize the length of her face, emphasize the hollows under her cheekbones and make her look a little older, make it seem as though her eyes were smaller and closer together. The bounty sketch wasn’t that detailed. She hoped she’d pass.

They ordered, but as soon as the waiter had taken their request, three more Sith came over. “Look here, my dear friends,” the tall blonde in the lead told the others. “We have a group of newcomers to our little colony. I don’t believe I’ve seen any of them before. Have you?”

Canderous removed the safety on his big gun. “You should turn around and move along, kid,” he advised. “You don’t want the trouble we’d give you.”

The blonde laughed merrily. “Smart-mouthed newcomers to boot,” she said to her friends, still not addressing Aithne and her companions directly.

One of the others chuckled. “Look pretty fresh to me, Lashowe.”

“That’s what I thought,” Lashowe said. She put her hands on her hips, and her friends fanned out to partially encircle the table. “Well, strangers, I don’t know whether you’re aware of this or not, but here on Korriban the Sith do as they please. And we are Sith.”

Aithne made a show of looking the three’s uniforms up and down. “Really now?”

Lashowe’s eyes flashed. “Quite literally, whether you live or die depends upon our whim. What do you think of that, hmmm?”

Aithne stood, obliging one of Lashowe’s companions to back up to avoid a collision. She didn’t bother pulling her vibrostaff, however, and folded her arms instead. “I’m not too impressed,” she said. “You can try to kill us if you like. You’d fail, but you can try.”

“Those are very brave words for such an insignificant person,” Lashowe said in a low voice. “Do you not realize how many Sith are here in Dreshdae?”

Jolee raised his hand like a child in a classroom. “Twelve?” he asked eagerly. “No, wait, thirteen!”

“Nice one, old man,” Canderous complimented him.

“Thank you,” Jolee said. “It takes effort to be properly irreverent at my age.”

The Sith had been gradually turning red in the face throughout this exchange. One of the men with Lashowe turned to her now. “Oh, give me the old man, Lashowe. Give me him at least.”

“Now, now,” Lashowe clucked, still eyeing Aithne. “Let’s not be hasty. Perhaps our friend here could yet offer up some amusement. What do you say, spacer? Amuse us. Make us laugh, and we just might consider allowing you to live.”

Aithne stared back into the blonde’s blue eyes. She was within a few centimeters of Aithne’s height, but Aithne still had the edge on Lashowe, and she let the younger woman feel it too. “We’re here to eat. We’re not looking for trouble, but we’re not here to amuse you.”

Lashowe seemed to size her up. “Oh, I see. We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?”

There was a tense silence, then one of Lashowe’s friends, the man who hadn’t spoken yet, chuckled. “Looks like this one’s not afraid of you at all, Lashowe,” he said.

Lashowe glared at him. “Are you going to let us be insulted?!” she demanded.

The other man, the one who had originally wanted to kill Jolee, seemed to give it up. “Oh, they’re just a few lowlife spacers. We can let them slide today. Get over yourself. I’m tired of this.”

The other man nodded. “Yeah, they’ve got some backbone, at least. Let’s go.” The two men turned and began to walk away. Lashowe snarled, but her eyes showed her sudden loss of confidence. Without her friends, she’d have to take on Aithne and the others alone.

“Fine.” She shot Aithne a glare as she walked past toward the exit. “You slide. Today. But watch your back.”

Aithne turned her back deliberately, climbing back onto her seat, and she heard Lashowe’s incredulous, furious scoff. The Sith left. To their right, a Rodian near the pazaak tables clutched a drink, whining about how some Twi’lek child had beaten him. Aithne smiled but ignored him.

Instead, when they’d eaten lunch and had hold of their after-meal beverages, they found seats with two others talking about the academy. They were kids, really, a little older than Mission, but the bartender didn’t care, and they were happy enough to chat with Aithne—or Addison—when she offered to buy the next round.

Aithne didn’t bother giving Canderous or Jolee aliases—Malak’s death order had contained no mention of Canderous, and she’d figured if Canderous’s reputation in the Exchange had spread off Taris, it could only help them. As for Jolee, no one had heard from him in twenty years at least.

The kids introduced themselves as Thaddeus Nelson and Leni Cooper. “So what brings you to Korriban?” Nelson asked.

“A bit of this and that,” Aithne answered. “Buying. Selling. You know how it is. The folks here don’t tend to ask a lot of questions.”

“Ah,” Thaddeus said, taking a sip of his drink and edging ever so slightly away. “I see.”

“What about you and your friend here? You looking to get into the academy?”

“Yes,” Leni answered. “We both hope to become Sith soon.”

Aithne nudged Jolee under the table, but he was already playing along, asking the next question. “Seems like the galaxy’s changing, doesn’t it? The Sith might rule it all soon. What can you tell us about the academy?”

“Why don’t you tell us?” Leni asked, eyeing Jolee’s lightsaber. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

Jolee shrugged. “Oh, I’ve left the Jedi. A few years back now. But I wouldn’t say I’m sold on joining the current establishment just yet. I’m just an old man, doing some not-so-honest work for a living, and interested in the current state of affairs.”

Leni eyed him suspiciously. “It might be important to know about the Sith if they take over the galaxy, don’t you think?” Aithne added. “Another round?” She reflected that while Jolee might have been helpful in discouraging Sith violence in Dreshdae—she couldn’t say—he wasn’t really very good at pretending to be a Dark Jedi himself. They might need to adjust his cover.

Fortunately, the two hopefuls were more interested in Aithne’s free drinks than in Jolee’s dodgy backstory. They were young enough that the novelty of drinking themselves into a stupor hadn’t worn off yet, especially on someone else’s credit. They shared what they knew, which turned out to be pretty helpful.

The academy was situated at the entrance to the valley which housed all the best-escavated Sith ruins on the planet. It was theoretically possible to land directly in the valley and avoid the port, its fees, and the guards in the academy proper. A couple smugglers and treasure hunters had tried. But the Sith guarded the ruins and the secrets and artifacts they had inside zealously: the ruins formed a large part of their studies. There were AA guns in the hills that were manned at every watch to keep adventurers from sneaking into the valley without dispensation, and no one but academy students and their slaves and servants received dispensation.

 “Getting into that academy is near impossible,” Thaddeus told them. “You only get in by receiving a medallion from one of the Sith already attending the academy, or if Master Yuthura approves you.”

“Who’s Master Yuthura?” asked Aithne.

“She’s a Twi’lek Sith master in charge of admissions,” Leni answered. “She comes in here every few days to scout for new recruits, but she’s tough.”

“Have you talked to her?” Jolee asked.

“Only about seven times,” laughed Thaddeus. “She said the next time either of us came up she’d skin us alive and hang us from the rafters. It’s either medallions or bust for us now. But we’ll get in.”

“We have to,” seconded Leni.

“When’s she coming in next?” Aithne asked.

Leni shrugged. “She came in yesterday, so I’d guess tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Have you met any of the other Sith?” Jolee asked.

“A few,” Thaddeus admitted. On further prompting, he and Leni gave up what they knew willingly enough. Lashowe, the woman who had confronted Aithne and the others upon their entrance, was well known as a bully and a braggart, but she was also relatively harmless for a Sith. She didn’t like to go anywhere on her own and rarely actually hurt anyone. Shaardan, the other Sith student they had met, did engage in the occasional casual killing or bit of torture, but it usually played out the way they had seen, Leni said, as a cruel bit of instruction for a hopeful who had asked for it, and Shaardan sometimes gave out medallions. They knew of another Sith in the same class with the others, Kel Algwinn, and Leni was particularly preoccupied with the question of how Algwinn had got into the academy at all.

“It should have been me,” she spat. “Kel never talks to anyone. He’s spineless. I never saw him hurt an insect out here. I don’t know who gave him a medallion, or why. I figured the least he could do was pass on his bit of freak good luck, but no dice. He’s not helping any of the rest of us now. Probably scared we’ll kill him after class. Prove he never should have been there in the first place.”

“He probably came with some study on those ruins they’re always digging up,” Nelson reasoned. “They don’t always take on the best fighters, Leni—”

“—They should!”

“I mean, sometimes they want more than somebody who’s decent with a sword, or strong in the Force, or whatever. Your favorite shining star’s one of that type, isn’t he?”

“Dustil threw someone twenty meters into a wall once when they were rude,” Leni corrected. “You weren’t there.”

“Twenty meters? I didn’t hear about it,” Nelson objected, even as Aithne, Jolee, and Canderous tried very hard not to look like they were any more interested in this than anything else the two hopefuls had said.

“It wasn’t one of us, it was someone who’d come with him from the academy. They fought or something; I don’t know. Anyway, he’s got all the guts a Sith needs, trust me.”

“He never hands out medallions either, though,” Nelson said.

“Maybe he used to,” Leni argued. “Maybe he’s over it. He’s our age, but he’s a couple classes ahead of the others, you know. Probably due to be shipped out to the war soon.”

Nelson shook his head. “They’ll train him a couple more years. Make him an officer.”

“You’ve got us at a bit of a disadvantage,” Aithne pointed out reasonably. “We’re strangers here, remember? Who’s this Dustil? Anyone to watch out for?”

Nelson waved a hand, dismissive. “Nah. Like I said, I think Dustil Onasi got in on more than what Leni calls Sith guts. He’s studying to be a historian or a logistician or something. Maybe a pilot or a mechanic. Think I heard he was good with ships. Anyway, they like him—must be strong in the Force or something, but he doesn’t act much like the others either. Like Algwinn.”

“He’s nothing like that coward,” Leni protested. “He’s amazing.”

“Good-looking, you mean,” Nelson snorted.

“Well, he is,” Leni muttered.

“I’m saying,” Thaddeus said expansively, swinging his hand out and almost knocking over Ordo’s drink. “If you think he’s so great, you should be asking him how he got in, since Algwinn’s not talking. I guarantee you: it had to be something like the same way, and Onasi probably won’t kill you just for asking like Mekel.”

“Mekel?” Aithne asked, moving on, so as not to seem overly interested in Dustil Onasi. They’d heard what they needed to know: he was a student at the academy, in among the older classes. Not particularly vicious, but definitely Sith and not a prisoner.

Leni swallowed a gulp of her drink and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Another one of the apprentices up for testing this month,” she said. “In with Algwinn, Lashowe, and Shardaan. He’s been torturing Bart and some of the others outside for a few days now. You seen it?”

Thaddeus nodded. His jaw twitched, and his eyes were haunted. “Starving them, until he thinks they’re worthy to be Sith.”

“I bet it’s just another trick,” Leni said. “But if they get into the Academy!” Her eyes shone, and it wasn’t just the alcohol.

Aithne tamped down her disgust. Again.

“Does Mekel trick your friends and compatriots out here often?” Jolee asked.

“All the time,” Thaddeus confirmed. “He thinks it’s ‘dreadful fun’ to take the stupid ones and trick them to death, promising he’ll let them into the academy. Anyone who tries to interfere gets murdered outright for interfering with the recruitment process.”

“Mekel doesn’t do anything worse than the idiots deserve,” Leni said. “Less competition, anyway.”

But the mood had turned dark. Aithne called for one final round, shook both the kids’ hands, and stood. “Well. We better get going. Thanks for the conversation. Maybe we’ll see you guys around.”

Leni and Thaddeus waved, then turned to one another, debating the best strategies for obtaining their medallions once again. “Will you seek them out again?” Jolee asked as they left.

“Not if I can help it,” Aithne answered. “Tomorrow morning, they might realize what we were doing back there. I don’t want Ms. Cooper deciding she’ll gain her entrance to the Sith academy by exposing or destroying the Jedi spies.” She eyed him meaningfully. “You think you could act a little less like you think the whole lot of them are contemptible, vicious idiots?”

“Aren’t they contemptible, vicious idiots?” Jolee asked.

Aithne rolled her eyes. “We’re Exchange affiliates. We like that. They don’t care if we sell drugs and like our contraband weapons and upgrades. They’re always looking for power, and so they’re susceptible to bribes and intrigue.” Canderous chuckled, and Jolee smiled.

“Alright, lass,” he said. “I’ll tone it down. You want to tell me why we’re heading toward the valley?”

Because Aithne had left the cantina in the direction that Thaddeus and Leni had told her led to the academy, rather than heading back toward Ebon Hawk to report to Carth and Bastila. She made a face.

“Going to do something a lot stupider than poking Sith with sticks or admitting to hopefuls looking for an edge that I’m not a Sith already while dressed as a Dark Jedi,” she confessed. “I didn’t like the sound of what Thad and Leni said was going on out here.”

A few blocks past the cantina, outside the Dreshdae walls, the academy rose up like a headstone in the middle of a slash through the mountains. The expanse outside the walls was barren. The air was dusty, and the sun glared down from overhead. There wasn’t a patch of vegetation anywhere to absorb it, nothing to relieve the eye from the stark ugliness of bare rock all around or the frowning face of that building in the chasm.

At the academy’s entrance, an armored guard stood watch, but to the left, out in the open, three men stood in a line. They were pale and sweating, with rings under their eyes and chapped, bleeding lips. Not too far from them, in the shade of the academy, another man stood, watching, arms crossed and smiling in satisfaction.

Three other bodies lay on the ground, insensate. Or worse.

Aithne, helmeted again, strode up to the man in the shade of the academy without a preamble. He turned hardened eyes to look on her with a bored expression. “Is there something you want?” he drawled.

“Yeah. Heard about this back inside the cantina,” Aithne said. “Addison Bettler. You’re Mekel.”

“And what if I am?” the man asked, in the same bored, drawling tone.

Aithne clenched her fists. The whole atmosphere of the planet was starting to get her. All the casual cruelty, all the pressure of keeping up the subterfuge. “Then do something about those idiots over there,” she replied. “They’re dying.”

“That is the whole point,” Mekel spat. “Personally, I think it’s dreadful fun.” He eyed the line contemptuously. “Those fools actually think that if they stand there long enough, I’ll let them become a Sith. A Sith is not a bantha, all endurance and no brains. A Sith would fight for his life, no matter the odds. If these rotgrubs are as stupid as they seem, then they deserve their fate!”

Aithne could sense the mindless, senseless hate, curling off him like heat waves off the rocks. An anger in her rose up to match. “So. The others were right. This isn’t a real test for them.” Her right hand twitched. She wanted to take off Mekel’s head right there just like the murderers on Kashyyyk, but Jolee took a single step forward, and it reminded her this was a very different situation. The academy guard was still in sight. There were probably several more lookouts on the walls. She didn’t have a ready story for why she wanted to murder Mekel; not one the Sith would accept. And she was going to need them to accept her.

Mekel gave her the same once-over Lashowe had. “Oh, it’s a test alright,” he answered. “It’s a test to see if they’re actually fool enough to die. If they don’t however, I certainly won’t admit them to the academy just for that accomplishment.”

Jolee forced a smile. “Why not just shoot them where they stand?” he suggested. “It would at least be more direct.”

Canderous shrugged. “It’s what I would do.”

Jolee looked at Canderous with disgust. “Of course that’s what you would do.”

Mekel considered for a moment. “It is a bit boring standing out here all day,” he admitted. “I think I’ll go in for some dinner. It’ll be fun to think of them while I gorge myself.”

His eyes darted to Aithne’s hand, and his lips curled, and Aithne knew that he had seen her fingers twitched, that he could sense her anger, was daring her to do more than she had done. When she stayed still, he shrugged, disappointed. “They’ll still be here in an hour or two, surely. I suggest you run along before I decide to make you a part of the fun.”

“One problem with that,” Aithne said, stepping aside to let Mekel pass. “Making me part of the fun, that is.” He turned back to her, and Aithne paused, letting the silence stretch. “I’m no idiot. Enjoy your supper.”

The statement was tantamount to a threat, and just about proved its reverse, but Mekel let it pass. He left, passing into the shadows of the academy. Aithne turned on her heel and marched over to the line of hopefuls. The first one to see her struggled just to stay upright.

“You . . . you talked to Mekel?” he rasped. “I . . . saw you. Have I . . . proved my worth? Did he . . . say anything?”

Aithne looked him up and down coldly. He really was an idiot. And he was close to death in any case. “He said you should go home,” she lied. “The Sith aren’t for you.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Go . . . home?” he stammered. He crumpled. Aithne caught him, but it was too late. He was gone. She dropped him, kicking the wall angrily.

“We should’ve killed him,” she growled, meaning Mekel. “Forget the guards. Might’ve even impressed one of them, here.”

“Or they might have seen you did it out of righteous anger and compassion for that man’s victims,” Jolee answered. “Not exactly Sith material, that. I’m guessing you’ll be wanting into the academy to save the pilot’s son, and to access the valley with the Star Map?”

Aithne didn’t answer him. Simply kicked the wall again. “I hate this place,” she muttered. Revan had been right, in her dream. The very air here burned. The Dark Side ran through the very marrow of this rock. It was itching beneath her skin. She could feel it like a virus. Intoxicating, demanding. Powerful. Urging her to give into her rage and anger, her contempt for those she had met here. How quickly would righteous anger turn to something darker here? She remembered how easily she, Zaalbar, and Mission had killed the slavers back on Kashyyyk, the numbness she had felt striking down the dar’Manda in the Shadowlands. The edge between light and dark could get thin, thin, thin.

She turned to the two survivors of Mekel’s test. One refused to abandon his efforts, but she was able to convince one to go back to the settlement, the same Bart Leni and Thaddeus had mentioned back in the cantina. “Let’s go,” she said in a toneless voice.

They went back to Hawk in silence as the sun dipped low behind the mountains. Carth met them at the door, searching their faces with eager eyes. “Well?” he demanded.

Aithne sighed. “Jordo had it right. He’s here. A couple of classes into the academy. One of the hopefuls we spoke to thought they might keep him until he’s older, send him out as an officer when he’s less likely to get killed by his first subordinates. It’s what I would do. But since when have the Sith been sensible? The other hopeful thought he might get an assignment any day. We should hurry.”

Carth’s face twisted into an agonizing mix of hope and disappointment, and Aithne felt the emotions behind his face like he’d shoved a spike into her brain. Half of him had hoped that Jordo had been mistaken, she knew. Almost better that Dustil had died on Telos with his mother than to find him a Sith.

“Did you see him?”

“No,” she said. “He’s a Sith. All the Sith are in the academy most of the time. And only Sith are allowed in the academy—Sith, and their slaves and servants. Might be time to get you back for that time you went to the Undercity in Yun Genda’s armor and I went as your paid companion.”

Carth shook his head, dismissing this. “Fine. Whatever we have to do. What’s the plan?”

Aithne closed her eyes. Jolee had said it. The solution was obvious, really. Easy to say. But execution was going to be . . . problematic. “I’m going to do the only thing I can, Carth. I’m going to become a Sith.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty-Eight

AITHNE

The next morning, Aithne ate alone, plotting her strategy. Eventually, Carth was going to need to head to the Sith Academy with her. If they were going to get Dustil out, they’d need Carth. If they were going to get in the academy to begin with, one of them was going to have to pretend to be a Sith, and of everyone on Ebon Hawk, Aithne was the single best prospect to play the part. Jolee was too old, Bastila too recognizable, and Aithne didn’t trust that Juhani could pretend to be fallen without a risk. Besides. She wanted Juhani on Mission and Zaalbar. Aithne was still young enough to fit the Sith’s recruitment profile, and since this whole thing had started she’d about shouted herself hoarse insisting she hadn’t fought in the wars—that she wasn’t exactly the kind of cowardly Jedi deserter or fallen Jedi the Sith were looking for. She didn’t think the Sith would have difficulty believing the same thing all the Jedi, Carth Onasi, and Canderous Ordo already thought. The problem would be keeping them from seeing whoever their bounty hunters actually thought she was.

Her research back on Dantooine hadn’t turned up anything helpful as to how Darth Revan’s memories were dripping into her head. After the fifth time some Jedi archivist had asked her why she needed access to that particular section of the records, Aithne had given up looking rather than raise suspicions about her even higher among the Jedi. Instead, she’d gone looking for missing persons early on in the Mandalorian Wars—among the Revanchists and the Republic officers. She’d also looked at deserters from Revan’s army after the fall of Malachor. If she couldn’t find out how Revan was in her head—what dark necromancy or Force phenomenon was sending her Revan’s memories and then feeding them to Bastila—she might at least be able to figure out what had sent the Sith into a panic when someone had drawn that sketch off Calo Nord’s description of her on Taris. Or rather, who.

Bastila’s proposal—that the Sith wanted her because she’d made a mockery of them on Taris—just wasn’t good enough given the size of the bounty on her head. No. The Sith thought she was Somebody. Somebody with skills. Somebody who had fallen out with them at some point and probably wasn’t about to come around to seeing things from their perspective. The Sith thought she was the reemergence of Somebody who, at some point, must have slipped through the cracks.  Somebody to be afraid of.

The person she was looking for would be fairly specific, she knew. They would also have to be fairly obscure—someone not everyone would recognize, or else why not list her presumptive real name upon her bounty to help with identification? But the person the Sith thought she was had to have also been high-profile and competent enough back in the day to register as a serious threat now, with enough of a breach between them and the Revanchists at the start or at the turn of the war that the Sith now believed there was no chance she could serve them, like they hoped Bastila might.

There weren’t a lot of people it could be, but still, the Mandalorian Wars and the conflicts since had been galactic scale, and once she started looking, there were more obscure but still very dangerous people who had dropped out of the fighting or otherwise gone missing than Aithne would have thought. She was able to rule out nonhumans quickly, as well as masculine-presenting Jedi and officers. But even when she got to human women within twenty years of her own age, there remained a handful of possibilities.

Arren Kae had been a Jedi master before the schism. A noted historian and teacher—there were rumors that perhaps she had been one of Revan’s instructors before Revan came forward from the ranks, and afterward, she had become a celebrated warrior. But somewhere among all the records of the Mandalorian Wars, references to Arren Kae had vanished. There was no record of her death. She just . . . ceased to exist. As a Jedi master and a potential tutor to Revan, however, her sudden reemergence might present quite a threat.

Darden Leona would be a bigger one. She had publicly broken with Revan after Revan turned her eyes on the Republic. She had returned to the Jedi—and been exiled for her trouble. Since then, no one had heard a thing from her. No one knew where she was or what she was doing. But if the Sith thought Aithne was Leona—nearly everything would make sense. Leona had been the single best general of the Mandalorian Wars, after Revan. There were records of a few times she had quarreled with Malak over strategy, and she had been the one to preside over the masterstroke at Malachor V. She had bad blood with Malak. She was good. She was nearly as terrifying as Revan themself. Aithne was about the same age as Leona, and she could almost be convinced—except, unlike Arren Kae, there were numerous records of Darden Leona’s appearance, and Aithne didn’t look a thing like her. Darden Leona had been an incredibly petite woman with a much darker complexion, and she’d fought with a saberstaff.

There were three or four other Jedi, one or two Republic officers who’d lost their nerve or been dishonorably discharged. None of them seemed as likely as Leona or Kae, however. And Aithne kept being drawn to perhaps the least likely prospect of all.

Enough, she thought. There was no way to be certain of who the Sith thought she was, so there was no way to avoid looking like that person. What she actually needed to do was to try and inhabit Addison Bettler—except, Addison Bettler wasn’t Force Sensitive. And the person they sent to the Sith Academy needed to be. Could she dare? A lot of the veterans of the Mandalorian Wars were fighting now. The Sith Academy was full of raw recruits. Did it have records like the Jedi Academy on Dantooine? It certainly wasn’t nearly so old or established.

Aithne bit her lip. She closed her eyes. And then she stood.

She made Jolee wear the arm holsters from back on Kashyyyk. He’d been too obvious yesterday and attracted too much attention. She wanted to keep him with her, but she wanted to change his role—make him appear less like a fallen Jedi and more like a nobody. Keep all of the focus fixed on her.

Carth wouldn’t be joining her until the very last minute, after they had a guaranteed in at the academy. As they left Dreshdae for the Sith Academy, there would be a brief window of opportunity as they transitioned from people who had seen them in the city to a population of students mostly unfamiliar. Carth could slip in unnoticed if he looked like a uniform part of her crew. They’d refitted the helmet she’d been wearing yesterday for him, and he and Canderous had worn similar black fiber armor this morning. Aithne planned to send Canderous, her ostensible second-in-command, back with some routine orders for her supposed crew of smugglers and thieves once she “joined” the academy. Canderous would pose as her trusted lieutenant, heading back to carry on the business—or, more likely, to steal it from under her—and Carth would be the lower-ranking thug meant to watch the well-to-do and wary “Addison’s” back within the academy. Except, when she went to the academy, she wouldn’t be Addison anymore.

Aithne threw her tray in the washer and grabbed the pack she’d prepared the night before. It was somewhat fuller than usual, and in a hidden compartment in the side seam was a double-bladed lightsaber, another relic from their Sith attackers back on Kashyyyk. The crystal within it was one she had picked up in the kinrath caves on Dantooine—a rare violet focusing crystal that did not have an affinity to the Dark or Light sides of the Force. Most Sith wielded sabers with bleeding crystals, or synthetically produced red ones. But the few Sith whose blades were not red wielded violet. Beside the double-bladed lightsaber was her own Consular’s crystal, the one she had been given by Master Dorak on Dantooine, as well as two other supplementary crystals that had caught her attention in the kinrath caves, more light-attuned than the one she had placed inside the double-bladed lightsaber hilt. But no one would have to see those crystals. Until it was time.

“Ready to go, boys?” she called down the hall at Jolee and Canderous. Canderous checked the magazine inside his rifle. Jolee adjusted the sleeves of his civilian tunic—a similar shade to Canderous and Carth’s fiber armor—and looked up at her. “I’m more ready than you are, lass,” he muttered.

The three of them made their way down the ramp of Ebon Hawk and out into the city.

Just as Leni and Thaddeus had predicted, when Aithne, Jolee, and Canderous walked into the cantina they had visited the day before, Master Yuthura Ban was there. She was a tall, determined-looking Twi’lek with unusual purple coloring. Dressed staidly and even austerely in a simple Sith workaday uniform, she made her statement instead with extensive and elaborate tattoos framing her face and running in patterns down her lekku. Aithne took in a breath, crossed the floor, and sat down at the woman’s table without being asked. Jolee and Canderous, as requested, took up bodyguard’s positions behind her chair.

Ban’s painted-on eyebrows shot up. Aithne couldn’t tell if she was angry, impressed, or amused, but she was certainly surprised, and Aithne certainly had her attention.

“Is there something you need, human? Make it good, for I have little patience.”

“You’re Yuthura Ban,” Aithne said. It was not a question.

“I am,” replied Yuthura. “Obviously you have been told of me. Is it your desire, then, to train at the academy? Do you wish to become a Sith, human?” Already, she seemed to be losing interest, her face falling into more accustomed lines as she mentally called up the script she used with all Dreshdae’s hopefuls.

“Look,” Aithne said. “I’ve been out of it for a while, making my way on the fringes, trying to stay out of trouble. But after Taris?” She shook her head. “I didn’t think the Sith would make it after the Jedi took Revan out. Now? I don’t think the Republic’s coming back. So I figure, it’s time to figure out where the Sith are going. It’s time to figure out if I need to throw in with the winners. So I flew here. I asked around. And they say you’re the one to talk to. At least out here.” She gestured around at the city in general. Threw a bit of a curved lip, as though she knew there were more important people within the academy. And throughout, she stretched out with the Force, making her presence felt. Letting Yuthura feel her presence.

Yuthura’s eyebrows had risen back up toward her lekku. “What is your name?”

“We’ll get to that in a minute. If I like you,” Aithne said. “The port official has me listed as Addison Bettler. That’s good for now.”

“You’ve caught my interest,” Yuthura said. “The Sith wield ultimate power, my friend. To be a Sith is to taste freedom and to know victory. Nothing is as glorious as bending the Force to your will.” She reached out with the Force herself, probing at Aithne’s aura. “I suspect you know this.”

Aithne’s shields were as firm as she had ever had them. She had needed every bit of the practice hiding from Bastila over the weeks for this: lying with everything that she was, leaving out her power to be grasped at, her fear and desperation to be gloated over, and locking every single altruistic, compassionate intention deep inside.

“I’m not out for glory,” she said. “I’m out to survive. What I need you to convince me is that if I sign up, I’m not going to end up in a stack of bodies like those idiots who fought for Revan at the beginning or those third-rate hopefuls and student casualties piling up outside. Honestly, it’s a mess.”

“Shall I apologize for the weak?” Yuthura challenged her. “If you cannot clench your fist and know when the moment comes to strike, there is no place for you among us. If you are a coward, we do not want you. As for the hopefuls, they are free to leave. Those who are weak return home. If they ware both weak and foolish, they die—but it was their choice to come. Tell me: did you choose to return home, once upon a time?”

Aithne barked a laugh. “There was no home for me to return to,” she answered. “For any of us.”

Behind her, she could feel Jolee and Canderous fixed upon her. She hoped neither of them let anything they were feeling show upon their face. She didn’t know whether she wanted them to believe her now or not. If they did, it would just make her act now that much more convincing. If they did, nothing she could say when they left Korriban would make a difference.

But Dustil was sixteen years old. She took her determination to get to him and layered it into the aura she was projecting.

“The Jedi were always inflexible,” Yuthura ventured, eyes searching Aithne’s face. “They burden themselves with tradition and with the protection of the weak and ungrateful. They are pitiful and misguided. If they spurned you, in the end, did they not weaken themselves all the more? It is their rigidity which has brought us to this pass. We must adapt, or we perish.”

“So I’ve learned.”

She felt that the short, cryptic responses to Yuthura’s probing were working. The idea was to get Yuthura invested in her even before asking to train at the academy, to have her wild to learn Aithne’s supposed secret identity, and hopefully ambitious to return this lost ronto to the herd.

“Have you been squandering your gifts all this time? Existing on the fringes of space?” Yuthura asked. “I can feel your power, friend. It makes you superior. It is the right of those of us who are so gifted to rule. How can any deny that? Yet the Jedi do so, and call us evil because we do not. Are you not tired of their moralizing, of the existence it has driven you to lead?”

It was time to give a little, or else Yuthura would begin to suspect her motives. If she didn’t already. “It’s true I could stand to see a few Master Jedi a little less self-satisfied,” she admitted. “Nor is a pirate’s life all they make it out to be in the holovids. What I don’t know is if your people might be inclined to give me any better opportunities.”

“Opportunities are not given,” Yuthura told her, “They are taken! Just so does the sarkath beast dominate his jungle, by wiping out all resistance! The tuk’ata does not have her meals delivered—she must leap upon the squellbug for the kill! This is the way of the universe. If your gifts grant you superiority, then it is your will that grants you victory. What I do not know is if you have it.”

The Sith had done well to make Ban their recruiter, Aithne thought. Yuthura was better with words than Canderous at his best. She was reasonable, persuasive. Passionate. She was inspiring, and Aithne could almost see the dozens of uniformed boys and girls at the academy who had no doubt been led to try to take their victory over the universe. They missed the other half of the equation. With sapience came a certain responsibility to rise above a primal mindset. If people were going to live together, there had to be some order. There had to be some protection for the weak. Otherwise, like Canderous had said, there would be no stability.

“And is that what Alek aims for now? The eradication of all resistance? Complete dominance of the jungle?” She saw Ban’s eyes widen and felt her focus intensify. Unlike Revan, Malak’s prior identity was widely documented, but it was scarcely remembered and even more scarcely referenced.

“We do not know him by that name,” Yuthura answered her. “Malak is the strongest of us, and the strongest always rules.” Her lips curved up, showing the tips of her canines. “At least until one who is stronger can take it from him. That is our way. Survival of the fittest. You are always on guard, always lean for the kill. We promote it, for through this the Sith are stronger. If you wish to survive—” her voice twisted into a derogatory emphasis on the word— “are you fit, Addison Bettler?”

Aithne raised an eyebrow, letting the silence stretch. Then she answered, “Liat Ser’rida. Would you like to see?”

Yuthura’s expression shifted as keen interest moved to brief confusion. She didn’t know that name. Aithne’s stomach clenched in triumph. She’d felt that it might work. She’d known it. Not the person the Sith were looking for, but if Yuthura or anyone looked her up, all they’d find was a Revanchist.

The Force fights with me, as Bastila says.

Yuthura probed at her with the Force a second time, this time harder, pushing at her shields, trying to read her motivations. “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps. Yet, there is something odd about you I cannot place. I sense your strength in the Force . . . Liat. I sense you have honed some of your abilities. I sense the fear within you. Anger as well. And yet . . .” she trailed off, searching Aithne’s face. “I find it curious the Jedi would reject one with such power. They were not so desperate years ago as they are now, but still. Have they not sought you out since? Are you perhaps here to spy on us?” She laughed a little. “For all the good it would do. You could become a great Sith, Liat Ser’rida. But I do wonder if that is truly your desire.”

Aithne was silent. Press too hard now, and she would lose. She had hinted at a complicated past, a history of conflict avoidance and a deep, hurtful rejection by the Jedi. It was plausible the persona she had created—the person who could become a Sith but would never be a threat—it was just plausible that that person might have a long-buried desire for revenge against the Jedi. It was plausible that after years of scraping and living by her wits on the fringes in the shadows, she might want to live at the top by her sword instead. Alternatively, she might be looking for community, belonging again in a community of Force users. Aithne had given Ban all she needed to supply half a dozen reasons for her, but there was no reason to suppose Liat Ser’rida, former Revanchist, Jedi exile, lost for years now in a life of crime and under a false name, would ever feel like sharing.

“No,” Yuthura said finally, deciding. “No, my friend, I’ll not be the one to bring you into our academy. You—you will have to prove your desire. If you can get one of the other Sith to accept you, give you a medallion, then perhaps. But otherwise . . . not today.” She waved a hand at Aithne in dismissal. Aithne rose without a word, bowed, and left, Jolee and Canderous after her.

Aithne scowled at the floor. It made sense. It was smart. Yuthura could have imagined half a dozen reasons Liat Ser’rida might want to join the Sith. But she didn’t have one real one. Why had Liat Ser’rida left the Revanchists? Why had the Jedi rejected her? Why spend years living apart from other Force Adepts, and why join now? Liat Ser’rida had power. If Ban searched her up—and Aithne wouldn’t put it past her—Liat Ser’rida showed some promising traits for a future Sith. But here, right now, in front of Yuthura Ban, there was very little evidence to suggest a Sith’s gumption in the persona Aithne had assumed. Better to demand a display than to risk letting in a Jedi operative.

But this was going to be annoying.

Jolee and Canderous were watching her. There was a new wariness in both of them. “So, Jetii, what next?” Canderous asked her.

Aithne flicked her eyes to him. Technically accurate, whether he was talking about Liat Ser’rida or Aithne Moran. But to Ordo, Aithne Moran had always been Aruetii, and she knew Canderous at the least was buying the story she had told. In a way, it was satisfying. But it also made her want to cry. “Now, Ordo, we pick a fight with some Sith.”

Bastila wouldn’t have approved of any of it. Had it been just a couple of days ago she’d given Aithne the lecture about the difference in the way the Jedi and the Sith did their killing? Not that the Sith were innocents, per se, but Aithne still had a feeling that picking a fight with Sith was not exactly the way Jedi were supposed to do things. Ever. Aggression wasn’t their role within the Force.

Then again, she wasn’t trying to be a Jedi. She was trying to be an ex-Jedi trying to be a Sith.

Technically, the five Sith did open up the confrontation. They were young, only recently admitted to the academy and fresh off a training session. Just learning to use the Force and intent on abusing their new powers to make someone suffer as they had suffered as hopefuls. The only thing was—Addison Bettler would’ve kept her head down. The Sith were more trouble than they were worth. Aithne Moran would’ve kept her head down. It was irresponsible and cruel to fight five individuals just out of their teens, drunk on power with only the very first idea of what they were doing. But when the Sith started bullying Liat Ser’rida, just rejected by Yuthura Ban, Liat Ser’rida bit back.

“You can leave or die,” Aithne told them, after they’d taunted her suitably. Of course, the Sith couldn’t reasonably turn down a fight with a woman who looked like a mere civilian. And anyway, they outnumbered Aithne and her friends five to three! Stupid to be afraid! It’d make them look weak! Canderous’s first fight in weeks lasted all of forty seconds.

At the end of the fight, Aithne looked down at the sad bloody mess with distaste. “Search the bodies,” she instructed Canderous in a dead voice. Canderous did so, coming up with a medallion. Aithne polished the medallion on her shirt sleeve, which fortunately had little blood on it. She’d stuck to Force incapacitation mostly, with Jolee, letting Canderous handle most of the actual violence. She nodded at Ordo.

“Right. That’s it then. As agreed—you take the credits and the ship, and I take Judd and Natthias off your hands. You can send Card to meet me back in the cantina. I want to get this show underway.” Aithne offered Canderous her hand, and he held out his in turn. They shook. “You’re a good man, Ordo. Good luck.”

Canderous scoffed. “I ain’t gonna need it like you will, boss. Give me a wave next time you need something done right. Or maybe, don’t.” It was an abrupt return to the gruff mercenary of Taris, and as Ordo resituated his repeater over his shoulder and strode off toward the port, Aithne could think of several reasons for it. She liked only one. For a while, she and Canderous had been almost friends. Perhaps they still were. But maybe not.

Here, she’d used him like Davik. Canderous never minded a fight, but she’d used him as a heavy to take out some idiots in over their heads, and it wasn’t worthy of his talents or his ambitions. It wasn’t what he’d signed up for. In addition, she’d told a lie so good that, after all his doubts about her identity—doubts that he knew some of the rest of the crew shared—he had believed it, and any trust they had built up over the months might have just disappeared.

A high, anguished scream cut through Aithne’s dark musings. She whirled. She was running toward the sound before she knew it.

She and Jolee emerged into a side street, not too far away from the Czerka outpost, and straight into a nightmare. A young man in a Sith uniform was standing over the body of a man in a Czerka uniform. A Twi’lek, also in uniform, stood nearby. And as the Twi’lek watched in horror, the Sith shot bolt after bolt of lightning into the other man, whose scream suddenly broke off and went silent. The Twi’lek screamed herself and fell to her knees, crying.

/No! No-no-no-no-no,/ she wept. /Sameen, no!/

The Sith laughed, high off the violence. “When you become a Sith, you can feel the power coursing through you! I—I—hahahahaha! Such power! I—” He turned to the Twi’lek, whose hands ceased fumbling at her coworker’s clothes and froze. Her face turned to the man, to Aithne and Jolee, behind him.

/Help,/ she whispered. /Please. He—he’s going to kill me. He will kill all of us!/

“What are you saying?! Who are you talking to?” the Sith demanded. He turned, saw Aithne and Jolee behind him. “Can I help you?” he sneered, then laughed.

Aithne felt cold all over. “You can stop,” she said quietly.

The man laughed in her face. “Are you and your gramps going to make me, then? The Sith can do whatever they want!”

Aithne nodded, several times. She could swear there were rivers of ice running through her veins, but they burned like lava. “Not without consequence,” she said. “The strongest rules.”

The man’s face changed, going from power-happy to furious as he processed the threat. His hand lifted. But it was too late. Aithne’s hand had come up first. The murderer flew into a wall five meters back, hit with a sickening thud and crunch, and slid. He looked up, dazed and confused. And, as though she’d always known how, as if the Force itself had sizzled through the air to tell her, Aithne pulled apart the energies in the space between herself and the Sith and released a bolt of pure electric charge.

The Sith screamed, an echo of the same sound he had drawn from his victim less than a minute before.

Power rushed through Aithne. She could feel the burn at her fingertips, the charge that would take her too, if she let it, if she relaxed her control over any portion of the environment or the Force shield over her skin for a moment. The adrenaline climbed inside her—the high sapients inevitably got trying to do something so very, very dangerous, piled atop the satisfaction of seeing evil paid unto evil. Justice.

“Lass,” Jolee murmured. Aithne ignored him.

The Twi’lek’s eyes were wide. She was shaking.

“Addison,” Jolee tried again.

Aithne shook her head, brushing him off. “Tell me when,” she told the Czerka woman, shooting another bolt of lightning at the Czerka man’s murderer. The Twi’lek’s eyes flicked to her murdered coworker, to the writhing, screaming Sith. Her lips moved, but no sound came. She didn’t budge. Aithne shot another bolt of lightning.

“Aithne!”

That was a new voice, and Aithne turned. A shot rang out, and the Sith collapsed to the floor, dead. Killed by a bullet through his right eye.

Carth holstered his blaster and strode up. She couldn’t see his face behind the helmet, but she could feel his outrage, pulsing across their bond. “Aithne, what the hell’s going on here?!” he demanded. “Canderous said you were on your way to the cantina.”

“Liat,” Aithne told him, quivering, keeping her voice low. “It’s Liat now.”

“And Liat tortures people to death?”

Aithne glanced over at the body of the Czerka worker. “I didn’t do anything to him he hadn’t done first to someone else,” she said. “You,” she told the Twi’lek woman. “What was it? Did your friend disagree with him over the price of something he wanted?”

/I—he bumped him, mistress. While we were going off of shift. Sameen didn’t see him. I—oh, Sameen!/ Her hands flexed over her coworker’s body once again, and her face crumpled. Aithne turned to Carth, gesturing at the pair of them—civilians coming off of the day’s work. Innocents—even if they did work for Czerka.

Carth’s helmet stayed pointed in her direction. “Don’t do it like that, Aithne,” he told her. His voice had dropped too, keeping her name lower than could be heard down the street past the Czerka storefront. “This guy wasn’t like the Mandalorians in the Shadowlands. He wasn’t in beskar; convection wasn’t a tactic. You could’ve taken him with the point of the sword. You didn’t have to do this.”

Aithne looked from Sameen, who she’d never even talked to, back to the Sith. She felt the residue electricity in her fingers, that burning, cold rage inside her. It had been so . . . easy. So easy. She looked at Jolee. His face was grim, and worse, it was not surprised. From the old hermit, the only sense she had was . . . recognition.

Her stomach flipped. Her fingers flexed. And then she lost it.

Staggering three paces over to the side of the road, she braced herself on the tops of her knees and vomited. She purged her stomach until only bile came up, and then she snatched her canteen from the side of her pack, threw a gulp of water into her mouth, swished, and spat.

By the Czerka office, the Twi’lek’s coworkers had begun to emerge. They were crowded around the bodies. One pale human male looked sideways at the Sith. He whispered to the others, and two men helped him pick up the corpse. To take away to an alley somewhere, away from where his presence in front of the office might inspire a friend to take revenge.

Aithne wiped the back of her eyes and stood straight. It was worse than it had been in the Shadowlands. Worse than the way she had been facing the Mandalorians. Korriban was worse too—a planet baked in the Dark Side, saturated with it instead of one small section of a forest. But that was no excuse. If she started killing with abandon every time the battlefield got dicey, never mind whether her victims all deserved it, there was no reason to suppose any of her protestations to Bastila that she was different from Revan’s Jedi could hold water. She had no way of predicting what a war would turn her into, no way of telling she was any better than any of the Sith, and all the Jedi who had ever been afraid of her might be right.

“Come,” Jolee told them, moving up. “We should leave this place.”

Aithne nodded. She fumbled in her belt pouch, rummaging through her credit bars. She pulled out the payment for the spice from yesterday, all fifteen hundred credits of it. She walked it over to the Twi’lek and her remaining coworkers. Handed it to the woman. “Bury your friend,” she told her. “And bury that we were here.” A lot of names had been thrown around in the last five minutes. She didn’t want “Aithne” getting back to the academy.

/Y-yes, mistress,/ the Twi’lek told her. /Th-thank you./

Aithne shook her head and walked with Carth and Jolee back toward the main street and the cantina. “Are you alright?” Carth asked her, when they had gone far enough away.

Aithne hesitated. “They called me arrogant, back on Dantooine,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Thinking I didn’t have to train. Bastila calls me arrogant.” She jerked her head at Jolee. “He said I was overconfident, just a few days back. I—I’d assumed I wouldn’t have trouble. That I could just . . . do the things I always had, just with the Force, and all this talk about my great power corrupting me was . . .” she trailed off. “But as I open up more to the Force, I feel more. It hurts, and I—it’s not the way it was.” She cleared her throat. She was thirsty, as if it had been her screaming instead of Sameen and the Sith. She brought her canteen back to her lips and swallowed the water instead of spitting it out this time.

“A heavy task for a padawan, sending them here,” Jolee remarked. “The Dark Side is very powerful on this world, lass. I know your instinct now is to use it, to make it a disguise against our enemies, but any fear and anger you carry with you now will turn against you.”

Aithne nodded. “Yeah,” she said. It was all there was to say.

Carth was a head in a bucket for a minute. He looked exactly like the faceless thug he was supposed to, but she could see his face inside her mind. She could feel it, feel his concern. His worry. “Look. I appreciate what you’re doing, and you’re the best one to go undercover here. You are. And I know these Sith are animals, and it’s hard to watch them do the things they do without wanting to treat them the same way. Just—stay you. There’ll be . . . there’ll be opportunities for justice. Without cruelty.”

Aithne nodded again. She felt exhausted, remote.

“So. You want to brief me on Liat?” Carth suggested, quietly. “Canderous said something back at the ship . . .”

“Jedi docs weren’t going to work,” Aithne explained wearily. She barely moved her lips. But Carth needed to know. They both did. Any surprise at the change in plan could destroy them. “Addison Bettler’s not a Force user, and we needed one. Someone they’d believe was ready to join the Sith. Someone they might want to join the Sith but wasn’t about to draw too much attention. When you’re operating undercover, it’s best to go either with a name close enough to your own that you’ll respond to it—or someone who already exists. Or . . . existed.” She wiped her hands on her trousers, then continued.

“I want to get them away from me, from looking at anyone with a name like mine. And since it seems I sell experience pretty well . . .” she shrugged, keeping her eyes down as she felt a pang of both guilt and defiance from Carth over their bond. “I ran into a wall, looking for what Bastila and the Council are doing,” she admitted. “So I started looking into who the Sith might think I am instead. Officers who dropped out when Revan went bad, deserters soon after Revan joined the war in the first place.

“Liat Ser’rida wasn’t one of the better prospects,” she went on. “She was big in the Revanchists before they joined up, but almost immediately after they mobilized, she’s gone. Like she lost her nerve. It would make sense: she was a Jedi Guardian, but also trained as a historian and an archivist, and she seems to have preferred working as a Jedi scholar. Notes that her evaluators weren’t too impressed with her lightsaber dueling when she passed her trials, though she did pass young, and she seems to have devoted her energies to theories and essays before the schism. She was reprimanded a few times for near heresy. She was a little hellraiser. And then she was a ghost. Far as I can tell, she died or bailed right out the gate, as soon as the war stopped being some shiny great idea and turned real. And the Sith can paint anything they want onto a ghost.

“I just . . . this morning, I kept looking over the names, trying to see who the Sith might be looking at when they see me. Liat was this little obscure person right there at the beginning. A loudmouth, but not much else. Probably wouldn’t have even registered to me, except she was Searched out on the Rim and liked Jar’Kai. I knew, with all the important people who played major roles in the wars and then went missing, dropped out, or turned, odds were Malak and his people had forgotten all about Liat Ser’rida. But then I had this feeling—if I turn into Liat Ser’rida here, the Sith won’t look for me to be anybody else.”

Carth was silent for a moment. “So who do you think the Sith actually think you are?” he wanted to know then. “If you’ve researched it and all.”

Aithne sighed. “No idea. Arren Kae? Maybe? I don’t think they’d chase her like they’d chase Darden Leona, but honestly, there’s no way anyone in the galaxy could take me for Darden Leona, even on a sketch from a guy with a head injury.”

Carth chuckled, and Aithne gathered he’d seen or heard of General Leona and agreed with the assessment.

“There were a couple of Republic prospects,” she said. “Rogue officers gone criminal and dishonorably discharged, that sort of thing.”

“So you picked Liat Ser’rida, some no-name historian from the Rim,” Carth mused. “The outside bet. A Revanchist no one’s actually heard fought, but a borderline heretic and organizer in the schism whom the Sith might believe had left the Jedi.”

“I just . . . had a feeling,” Aithne said again. She couldn’t put it any better than that.

They stared at the cantina across the street. Carth’s helmet turned back to her. “Well. Let’s see if it worked. Liat.”

Yuthura was still stationed at her table in the back. When Aithne walked up, her lips twitched. “Back so soon?”

Aithne tossed the Sith medallion in front of her on the table. “You gave me a job,” she answered.

Yuthura picked up the medallion and examined it, then looked back at Aithne and the others, taking in the flecks of blood still on Aithne and Jolee’s clothes. “I did,” she agreed. “See how you can perform, given the proper motivation? Very well. I will take you to the academy. We shall see if you are ready to join the ranks of the Sith. I have only one other question.” Her slender fingers danced out, indicating Carth and Jolee. “You are giving up your smuggling days, I presume. Do you think you will require these companions?”

“Slaves,” Aithne said coolly. “If the other pupils didn’t bring their own, that’s their lookout, isn’t it?”

Yuthura smiled. “Indeed,” she said. “And are you ready to go to the academy?”

Aithne shrugged. “Well. I did go to a little bit of trouble,” she murmured.

Yuthura’s smile widened. “Then let us leave,” she said, rising from her seat and striding forward with a fluid grace. “The master of the academy awaits.”

With Ban in the lead, Aithne and the others had no trouble gaining access to the Sith Academy. Aithne walked after the Twi’lek master into the building at the mouth of the valley. She was immediately struck by the differences between the Sith academy and the Jedi enclave on Dantooine. The enclave was pretty, with vegetation everywhere. The academy was stark—metal and concrete, purely functional. Lightsabers hummed through the walls, and you could hear the odd scream through the hallways. Aithne set her jaw, and behind her, she felt Bindo send a tendril of reassurance to her through the Force.

Ban led them to the center of the academy, where some sort of assembly was taking place. Aithne frowned. In the small crowd of faces gathered around a tall, tattooed man with yellow eyes, she picked out several Leni and Thaddeus had identified in the current class of rising Sith, several she had met as Addison Bettler the day before. Lashowe, Shaardan, and Mekel were all among them, and all three swept her a look, though none said anything.

“Greetings, prospective students,” the man in the center was saying. He suddenly caught sight of Yuthura and the others and paused. “Ah. It appears we have a late entry,” he said instead. “Who do you bring before me, Yuthura? A young human, bristling with the Force?”

Yuthura bowed. “A human that has had some training, it seems, Master Uthar. Very promising, I think.”

Lashowe sneered at Aithne and Jolee. “I met these in the colony the other day,” she said. “Which is the prospect? They are all common criminals. Petty thieves. Unworthy, if you ask me.”

“La-Sow, was it?” Aithne said lazily. “I apologize if my bondservant got a little mouthy back in town. I’m trying to break him of it. But he has the most inconvenient sense of humor. Can’t help laughing when he sees something funny.”

Lashowe fumed. Her face turned pink, and she opened her mouth to retort, but the master cut her off. “Silence, child. No one asked your opinion.” He looked Aithne up and down. “Tell me, human, what do you know of the ways of the Sith? What preconceptions has your mind been polluted with?”

Aithne regarded him. She could already tell: Master Uthar was going to be as long-winded as Zhar at his finest. “Honestly? I’ve killed too many Sith to still have any preconceptions,” she said.

A risk, saying that. But a calculated one, judging by the energies rising from the master. Uthar raised a tattooed brow. “Most impressive,” he said. “If it is true. Those who were too weak to stand against you deserved their fate, so expect no retribution from us. There is much you can learn from the Sith, and we from you. The Jedi equate the Light with goodness and strength and the Dark with weakness and evil. That is their tradition, and it is truly no surprise that they cling to it for comfort. We, however, do not treat the Force as a burden.” He was addressing the entire group again. “We treat it as a gift, a thing to be celebrated. We use it to acquire power over others . . . and why should we not? Because the Jedi say we should not? We are as the Force is meant to be. The Jedi would hide that from you. They would tell you the Dark Side is too quick, too easy, all so that they need never challenge the passions that lie within them.”

Aithne disagreed. In actuality, her studies and her experience led her to believe the Jedi were the more likely to challenge their passions. It was part of their entire way to manage and calm them. The Sith, on the other hand, were ruled by them.

Uthar continued. “Joining with us means realizing your true potential. It means not stifling yourself solely for the sake of hide-bound shamans and their antiquated notions of order. Be what you were meant to be.”

As Uthar defined his people, always in the negative, the Mandalorian name for the Sith rose to Aithne’s mind. Dar Jetii. Literally: not-Jedi. Uthar could not express what the Sith were without reference to their opposite. Well. On the other hand, the Jedi Order did the same. Their entire Code laid out their take upon the galaxy in a series of negatives. She wondered if Jedi or Sith really knew who they were without the other.

“What say you, Lashowe?” Uthar was asking. “Are you ready to learn the secrets of the Dark Side? Dare you?”

Lashowe was eager to make up for her earlier set-down. “I dare, Master Uthar!” she exclaimed. “I am ready!”

Aithne regarded her. She wasn’t. Too sensitive to the opinions of others, too hesitant to act on her own initiative, Lashowe was weak at her core. But Uthar was chucking. “Brash and fiery, as expected. Turn that passion to your advantage, child. What of you, Mekel? Are you ready?”

Aithne looked over the man she had hated so much yesterday, the one who killed hopefuls as a game. If she was to compete with these individuals, she might see if she could see some justice done on him. “I am, Master,” he said. “More than ready.”

“I sense much anger within you, young one,” Master Uthar told him. “That is good. That will provide you power. And Shaardan . . . what of you?”

The strutting demonstrator. “I am always ready,” Shaardan said in turn. But Uthar seemed to have Shaardan’s measure.

“I see,” he said, arms crossed. “You had best gather your wits for the trial ahead, boy, or you will not last.” He looked at the next young man in line, a slender, quiet-looking human. He opened his mouth, then looked past the young man, as if he could think of nothing at all to say. Aithne assumed the young man must be Kel Algwinn. Seemed Uthar didn’t think Kel was Sith material any more than Aithne’s friends Thaddeus and Leni.

Instead, Uthar moved on to Aithne. “And you, young human? Does this interest you? Are you ready to learn more of what I speak?”

“Liat Ser’rida,” Aithne said quietly, meeting the master’s eye. “I’m ready.”

Uthar blinked, then frowned. A quick sensation passed over Aithne—Master Uthar was much subtler in his probing than Master Yuthura. “Are you?” he repeated. “Liat Ser’rida, is it?”

Something clenched in Aithne’s stomach—part recognition and part dread. She felt found out, and she lifted her chin, looking Uthar right in the face, standing her ground.

“I see your heart, Liat,” Uthar told her. “I see the dark kernel that is there. If it is ready to sprout remains to be seen.” He turned to the others, leaving Aithne troubled. “Now then,” said Master Uthar. “All of you Sith recruits have shown a degree of facility with the Force. You all have the potential to become true Sith. Only one of you, however, will succeed. The one who succeeds will be admitted to the academy as a full Sith. All others must wait until next year and try again . . . if you survive. My pupil, Yuthura, shall be your teacher and master while you attempt to prove yourselves. Heed her words.”

Yuthura stepped forward. “As Master Uthar said, none of you are a true Sith yet. For that to occur, one of you must do enough of worth . . . gain enough prestige . . . to be selected. What is an act of worth? You must learn that for yourselves. Remember that you are competitors here. Fight for your destiny, or go home.”

Aithne observed her competitors. Their reactions would tell her how she was to approach them, and how she could eventually beat them. Kel looked down. Mekel and Lashowe looked delighted. Shaardan looked serious.

“If you wish to gain a lead over your competitors,” Master Uthar said, “the first of you to learn the Code of the Sith and tell me of it will be rewarded. The rest is for you to discover. Welcome to the Dark Side, my children . . . your one chance at true greatness lies here.”

Chapter Text

JUHANI

It was a bit dull, simply standing in the room as Mission played pazaak, negotiated for supplies or services, or traded goods. Juhani wished she could talk with Zaalbar about it. He must have performed a similar function during their time on Taris. How had he learned to be content? Unfortunately, Juhani’s skills in spacer sign were rudimentary. She could communicate with Zaalbar only on necessities—simple directions, simple questions. Nothing so involved as what she needed to converse on such complicated matters.

There was honor in the work Juhani had been asked to do. There was honor in being recognized as the finest warrior among the Jedi aboard Ebon Hawk, in being trusted to guard and teach the younglings. Juhani was aware that, though the salvation of the galaxy was Aithne’s charge, the preservation of this young Twi’lek was her heart. She comforted herself with this on days she wished she was more actively involved in Aithne’s mission. And with so many individuals in Dreshdae capable of using the Force, with so many who might choose to be unfriendly, Juhani knew Mission might need more protection than Zaalbar alone could provide. Yet, her position was not a leadership position. It was clearer by the day that Juhani’s role upon Ebon Hawk and in her crew was becoming more and more a supportive one. A humiliation to her pride, but perhaps one that she had needed.

It was also true that on Korriban, perhaps Juhani had needed the anchor of having an assignment of peace. Here, Juhani could feel the passions swirling all around her. Old hatreds and jealousies, fear soaked into every stone. It was like being awash in a storm upon the sea. She could feel that if she herself became angry or gave way to her small envies, she would become swept away in the current of Korriban’s Darkness, perhaps never to return.

There remained many days Juhani struggled with her emotions. She had become too much in the habit of discounting their influence upon her. In her arrogance the past few years of her apprenticeship, she had grown to believe many of the Jedi restrictions were unnecessary. And her passions had almost led her to disaster, and upon numerous fronts.

Juhani sipped her watered beverage, glancing over the rim, and rolled her shoulders back. Despite her recognition of Aithne’s wisdom upon this planet and the precious trust she had been given, she hoped they need not remain in this pazaak den too much longer. It was better to keep their excursions in Dreshdae short, so they did not seem to be up to no good and attracted less attention.

She scanned the patrons of the gambling den. A collection of smugglers, traders, and dock workers, aiming to use what little disposable income they had to win more. Or merely to raise their spirits by the risk.

Mission operated smoothly among them. Juhani had her suspicions the girl sometimes cheated, but she was careful never to cheat on games with a large gambling pot. She never won by ridiculous, obvious margins, and she never won from the same people with too much frequency. And every now and then, she would lose a game—smaller wagers, but the loss kept her partners coming back. She was humorous and charming, playing alternately upon her youth and on her experience as it would be effective.

Occasionally, the people Mission dealt with made improper advances. People—especially men—were used to female Twi’leks as objects of lust. Female Cathar, too, were frequently fetishized, yet not quite so frequently as Twi’leks, who often used their own women as bargaining chips. Mission was young, but she was already quite beautiful. Her Rutian coloring was unusual and attractive, her gray eyes clear and intelligent. She carried herself with confidence and authority and went to adult places, so it was not uncommon for men to believe her older than she was. Even when they did not, at times the men Mission spoke to were intoxicated, or worse slime than that which emanated from a Hutt’s excretory cavity.

Mission had been used to summoning Zaalbar when this happened. Since Juhani had been assigned to her protection as she sought out further provisions for the crew and kept up their appearances as an Exchange smuggling vessel, however, Mission had been making an effort to call on Juhani too, whenever she felt unsafe. They had discovered that it could keep things friendlier with the person Mission wished to discourage. Another woman alongside Mission was not so threatening as a Wookiee, fallen Jedi though she appeared. This seemed backward to Juhani; in truth, she was far more dangerous than Zaalbar. Yet, she understood too that it was to their benefit if men who wanted to bother Mission stopped doing so, but still did business. Those discouraged by Zaalbar rarely stayed. And regardless, she appreciated Mission’s thoughtfulness.

Juhani had only once since they had come to Korriban actually needed to discourage a Sith from targeting her young friend; per Aithne’s instructions, Mission had been trying to avoid them. Yesterday, however, there had been a Sith who had wanted to cut in line at the shipyard, to make the technician there see to his speeder before Ebon Hawk. Mission had been ready enough to give way, and the technician to agree—one did not so easily refuse a Sith—yet the man had been with two companions and had seen an advantage to forcing the issue rather than merely accepting his due tribute.

Juhani had pretended to arrive then and taken issue with the Sith’s speeder taking priority over her ship, her employee. (She had been unable to call Mission or Zaalbar her slaves, however prudent it might have been.) The Cathar’s reputation as warriors had helped her then. The Sith had been a coward, willing to harm two Force-blind individuals, but unwilling to battle another with some training in Force techniques.

Since, Juhani had been keeping an eye out for similar situations. None had arisen yet, but she knew one could at any time. Aithne had obtained her entrance into the Sith academy, after all, by killing five students who wanted to attack her only to prove their power.

So Juhani was wary when her eyes caught a Sith uniform among the dock and shop workers in the pazaak den. When she recognized the face above the uniform, it was perhaps forgivable that she stared. Unfortunately, it also cost them their cover.

Dak Vesser caught her looking at him across the room. He recognized her. How could he not? Cathar were not so ordinary through the galaxy as to pass unremarked, and Dak had known her better than most. He had returned to his place from momentarily stepping out. Now he took his drink and rose, crossing the room to meet her.

“Been a long time, Juhani.”

Even after nearly a year, Juhani could feel pain emanating from Dak, pain which she had caused. She knew her guilt was senseless. She owed him nothing. Yet, she could not help the compassion that rose within her. She could not help mourning her old friend. And she was greatly saddened to find him now within the uniform of the Sith, to feel the taint of the Dark Side in him.

She would have to tread carefully. There could be no lying to Dak, yet he would have a clearer insight into her mind than many human Force Sensitives. She nodded a greeting. “Dak.”

He did not know what it was he wished to say. To all outward appearances, she seemed to be a fallen Jedi. To Dak, it appeared as though she had left the Order as he had done, and that meant that she had lied about wishing to remain a Jedi. She had only wished not to leave with him. Juhani saw his face work and twist, felt him initially attempt to govern his emotions as they had been taught, then turn away and embrace his hurt, his anger.

“What are you doing here?” Dak asked at last. “Finally realize the Jedi weren’t the gods you thought?”

His words were weapons. Juhani attempted to compose herself as Dak would not, remember the Jedi Code. As she did, however, she revealed herself. She felt Dak get his sense of her through the Force, even as she opened her mouth to tell a lie.

“No,” he said, peering at her. “Actually growing up and being honest with your feelings—well. That wouldn’t be very like you, would it?”

Zaalbar had seen her talking with a Sith. He had signaled Mission, and pazaak game abandoned, the two of them now made their way over to her at her place by the bar. Dak saw them coming and turned. He was surprised at her strange companions.

“Juhani,” Mission said. “Everything alright?”

“What is this?” Dak demanded, looking back at Juhani. “You’re with that skifter kid and . . . and a Wookiee? You’ve still got your lightsaber and that halo of self-righteous hypocrisy, so you’re still a Jedi, but—”

Mission only saw an enemy on the attack. She stood taller and lifted her chin, putting her hands upon her hips. “Hey, who you calling a skifter, corpse-breath? Juhani’s part of our crew, so there! So why don’t you leave her alone, huh? She’s had it with the Jedi and you Sith, and as soon as we get paid, we’re out of this hole! So you can just scram. We ain’t looking for a fight here, but if you push us, we can give you one!”

Dak took in the Twi’lek child. She was two handspans shorter than he was and perhaps half his weight. “Well. You don’t lack for guts, I’ll say that much,” he told her. “I wasn’t bothering your friend. She’s a friend of mine as well. Or used to be.” Zaalbar made an inquiry in spacer sign to Juhani. She signed back.

It is true. This man is not a danger.

Zaalbar roared something to Mission. Mission eyed Dak. “Fine,” she muttered. “Juhani, you need anything, this guy makes one wrong move, and you just say the word, okay?”

Juhani was touched by Mission’s protectiveness. It was fairly ridiculous. Dak could carve her up in seconds. But the bravery, the camaraderie behind the offer was genuine, and evidence of Mission’s truly lovely heart. She and Zaalbar retreated to a table nearby and sat together, still watching Dak and Juhani.

Dak watched them in turn. “You always did make interesting friends,” he muttered, turning back to her.

“Dak, I did not know you had fallen to the Dark Side,” Juhani said.

Dak scowled. “I didn’t fall. I opened my eyes. Look, I changed my mind. I don’t know what this is. I’m just glad I saw you here. Gives me time enough to get the kriff out before whatever you’re involved in goes down.”

Dak was aware that Master Quatra had trained her for infiltrative missions with the Jedi. Before Juhani had become so foolish, they had often undertaken stealth operations together to collect reconnaissance for the Jedi or complete mercy missions behind Sith lines. Clearly, he had sensed there was more to her presence on Korriban than she and her companions were trying to let on. He had also seen her and immediately wished to flee to the other edge of the galaxy. It was undoubtedly safer for them, and yet—

“Running away? Again?” Juhani asked him.

Dak’s lips spread in a mirthless smile. “Why not? It’s what I do best. I won’t tell anyone you’re here. But a word of advice?” He nodded at Mission. “Keep your friend from challenging the other Sith like that. If she comes at the others like that, most of them will feel they have to put her down. Prove their strength. I’d also stay away from talking to the others about how they’ve ‘fallen’ to the Dark Side. That makes it pretty obvious you haven’t. Goodbye, Juhani. If I never see you again, it’ll be too soon.” He tilted his hand and walked out of the establishment, leaving his drink behind.

Mission and Zaalbar came up to stand beside her. “And that isn’t gonna be a problem?” Mission wanted to know.

Juhani shook her head, feeling immeasurably sad for her old friend. Somehow, he could not let her go, and so he could not stay with her or in any place she walked. A paradox, and perhaps one of the reasons the Jedi warned against attachments. “Dak will not reveal us, and he knows nothing besides that I am not what we have tried to portray here. He chose not to ask. It allows him to maintain deniability. Yet he spoke truly of you. Mission, if it had not been for our prior friendship, it would have been most unwise for you to challenge him like that. A Sith can never show weakness, particularly before one such as you.”

“I just saw there might be trouble,” Mission said. “You kinda froze up there, Juhani.”

“I know,” Juhani admitted. “I was not expecting to see him. Can we go? I would feel better if we returned to Ebon Hawk for the moment.” In a very short time, the freighter had become a safe place for all of them. Almost a home.

Mission’s eyes were sharp. “You got it,” she said. “Big Z, keep an eye on our tail, okay?” Zaalbar made a noise of agreement, and together, they left the pazaak den.

Mission watched her as they walked through the Dreshdae docks, past other freighters and transport ships. “You can tell me about it, if you want,” Mission suggested.

“There is not much to tell,” Juhani answered. “Dak was a friend of mine. We entered the Jedi Order at the same time. We were padawans together. Occasionally collaborated on assignments with our masters, with another padawan. Belaya.” Juhani felt herself soften as she mentioned this old friend, this dearest and most special of friends. “The three of us grew close. We came to enjoy spending our leisure time together as well. We studied together. Talked together.

“Dantooine was isolated,” Juhani explained. “Especially as more and more Jedi went away to fight against the Sith, my friends and I were very much alone. Absent any true community of the Order, Dak, Belaya, and I grew . . . self-assured. We were the finest warriors, the finest minds we knew. We had similar frustrations—with our masters, our confinement, and with the rules and regulations of the enclave. And we had other feelings in common, but not all were in harmony with one another.” Juhani remembered how it had been—with she and Belaya finding release for their passion together, with Dak having such similar feelings to Belaya for her, when she was unable to return them for him. What had been innocent and lovely had turned desperate and awkward, painful and embarrassing for all concerned, but especially for Dak. Juhani and Belaya had faced their own consequences at last, but they had been spared the worst repercussions for their folly. Dak, it seemed, had not. And he wrestled with them still.

“One day, Dak decided he wished to make his own way, outside the restrictions of the Jedi Order,” Juhani related softly. “He asked me to go with him. He said—” she trailed off. Mission did not need to know the details of what he had said. “At any rate, I told him no, and it proved the end of our friendship for him. I wish he had felt differently. I wish he had chosen differently, that he could have remained in the Jedi Order and walking in the Light, even if . . .”

Juhani could sense Mission’s understanding. “It’s awful when guys think you should just up and be in love with them, just because you happen to be friendly,” she said. “Or, you know.” Her lekku twitched. “And it’s worse when you end up not being friends because of it.”

Juhani looked down at Mission, curious. “It has happened to you as well?”

“A couple times,” Mission admitted. “I never wanted to be with anybody. Aside from the fact that most guys are drooling Huttspawn and just about as smart, I saw too many girls end up in trouble when they started dating. Get drawn into really bad crime rings. End up sold for slaves. Or just even poorer than they were before, in some lice-ridden dunghole with a couple kids to feed, pining over some guy who said he’d love them forever but was back to cruising the cantinas. I decided ‘look but don’t touch’ was a good rule to live by, for everybody concerned. Some of my buddies didn’t think that was such a good idea, though. But when I had to tell them that, well, suddenly they weren’t my buddies anymore. But what about you and Belaya? Did that go anywhere?”

Juhani smiled sadly. “Once Dak left us, my friendship with Belaya became . . . difficult. I felt guilty, you see, that I could not return Dak’s affections, that the pain he felt because of us had led him to abandon the Order. Belaya grew angry with me, that I would let such feelings sour what was between us. We were both of us distracted from our studies, preoccupied with our attachments. Lost in our emotions. My master grew impatient with me, and she was right. One day, she confronted me with my weakness. I became enraged with her, and—”

“And that’s where Aithne found you.” Mission finished.

“Belaya and I agreed to end it. Our relationship had become a twisted thing, no good for either of us, let alone our commitment to the Jedi,” Juhani said. “Sometimes I wonder, if it were not for Dak, if we would have realized the jealousy, insecurity, and possession that had become tied up in our affection for each other. Or if it ever would have arisen. Sometimes I wonder if Dak actually saved us, before Master Quatra or Aithne ever did. But I miss them both often. I grieve what we were before everything went wrong. And I am sad for Dak now.”

She gazed over at Ebon Hawk. They had arrived. They were home.

Mission looped her arm around Juhani’s waist and squeezed. “I’m sorry that stuff happened to you, Juhani,” she said. “Maybe Dak will figure things out eventually. He didn’t seem that bad, for a Sith.”

Zaalbar roared something that sounded similarly encouraging, and Juhani smiled at him.

“Thank you, my friends. I am glad I am here with you.”

“Any time,” Mission promised. “I’m gonna go inside and see if I can bully Canderous into showing me how he makes synth slop taste good. Then I should probably do some work for Aithne and Carth so they don’t think I’m slacking. But we’ll go out again tomorrow, okay? I think I may have earned enough for us to reward ourselves for all our hard work with a little shopping. Make it up to some of the guys I’ve been scamming out of their credits by spending some.”

“I would enjoy that,” Juhani told her.

“Come on, Big Z!” Mission called, and the two of them jogged into Ebon Hawk. Juhani followed at a slower pace.

It was good spending time with Mission—another child of Taris, another nonhuman. She understood things about Juhani’s life that not even her fellow Jedi could. But Juhani was growing to appreciate all the non-Jedi members of Aithne Moran’s crew, Canderous excepted, though even he had virtues she had not seen at first. She hoped that Carth soon found his son. He had been so concerned since receiving the news of him on Dantooine.

Juhani made her way to the ship’s cargo hold, also the crew gymnasium. She sat on one of the mats inside to meditate upon her encounter with Dak, what she had learned since their parting a year ago, and whether there was any wisdom in what he had told her in their brief encounter in the pazaak den.

But as Juhani began to untangle her feelings about her past with her friends, her confusion in the pazaak den, she sensed another, restless energy aboard. Bastila was disturbed. Fearful and anxious. Juhani opened her eyes, unfolded herself, and went to seek the younger Jedi.

Bastila was sitting atop her bunk in the women’s dormitory.

“Bastila, is everything alright?” Juhani asked.

“No,” Bastila answered. “No, everything is not alright. Juhani, I feel very apprehensive about what we have done, allowing Aithne to enter into the Sith academy. The reasoning she presented for doing it this way seemed sound at the time. I am far more recognizable to our enemy; you are still recovering from your experience with the Dark Side upon Dantooine and may not be prepared to resist in the heart of the storm here upon Korriban. Yet we have sent her into the very heart of danger accompanied only by a self-named exile who has been hiding under a tree for the past twenty years—and the man she is in love with, whose desperate need to rescue his son may draw him to do most imprudent things, and Aithne after him. Can we be certain Aithne will withstand the severity of the danger she is in any better than you or I? She is so new to our Order—”

Juhani interrupted. “Bastila! At the moment, I am more oppressed with the power of your emotions than with the force of this entire planet’s evil. Repeat the Code with me: There is no emotion—”

Bastila’s blue eyes met hers. She breathed in deeply. “There is peace,” she said. She repeated the rest of the Code with Juhani. “I thank you,” she said.

“Now. I am aware you have a special bond with Aithne Moran,” Juhani said. “Do you sense any particular danger to her through it?”

Bastila’s lips thinned as she pressed them together. Her eyes were worried. “I do,” she said. “The evil upon Korriban pulls her. Her anger is provoked by the cruelty she sees here, and the deception she must enact to achieve our objectives upon this planet makes it all too easy for her to justify any action that she takes. She is not unaware of the dangers, but—she struggles. She suffers. And she is all the more vulnerable because of her worry for Carth.”

Juhani was still absorbing this. She had seen herself that Aithne Moran was most comfortable with the pilot, that he was her most frequent companion and the two of them had a closer rapport than Aithne shared with anyone else aboard. “You believe she has formed an attachment to him?”

Bastila hesitated. Attachment was a loaded word among the Jedi. The Jedi could maintain friendships, even those with romantic or sexual elements, without overt disobedience to the Jedi Code. The practice was discouraged. It was all too easy for such relationships to turn selfish—to become infected with fear, with possession, or with jealousy, as had happened between Juhani and Belaya after Dak’s departure. And then they became dangerous to a Jedi’s faith and spirit. Yet, Juhani had seen no symptom of these feelings in the friendship between Aithne and Carth Onasi.

“I do not know,” Bastila answered at last. “I know she admires him greatly, sometimes despite herself. I know at times she has been irritated or even hounded by him, but she has mostly been grateful for his help and his companionship. I share many of these feelings with her, but with Aithne it is . . . different.”

“She is attracted to him, you mean?” Juhani asked.

Bastila nodded. “Extremely. And the attraction has always been mutual between them, since before they rescued me on Taris. There are mental, physical, and moral dimensions to it. Carth’s professionalism and his personal history have slowed them down, I believe. But she cares for him.”

“Does he care for her?” Juhani asked. She acknowledged to herself she felt a pang of jealousy. Aithne was . . . extraordinary. Beautiful, powerful, wise, and compassionate. She reminded Juhani of the Jedi that had once saved her life and moved her to join the Order herself. Yet, Aithne had shown her only the kindness and courtesy of a colleague, and it was better Juhani not nurture her own small infatuation.

Bastila hesitated once more. “I cannot speak for Carth as I can for Aithne. I do not have the same connection to him. I know he respects her as well. They have had their disagreements, but he has remained willing to help her both personally and professionally and has generally followed her lead. From what I know, he has remained devoted to his duty. But it has at times seemed to me that he feels that they do have a special relationship, and with some justification.”

“And she immediately turned to Korriban when she learned of his difficulties,” Juhani mused.

“We must consider that there is a child in the balance—the equivalent of a Jedi padawan only a few years into his apprenticeship, still in need of the care and protection of his guardians,” Bastila said, “but yes. The speed with which Aithne agreed to come to Korriban, objectively the most dangerous planet we must go to, and which could make things all the more dangerous for us for the remainder of our mission, did concern me.”

“Do you think Aithne likely to act rashly in pursuit of Dustil’s freedom?”

Bastila thought about this. “Rashly—I do not know,” she said. “Aithne is rarely rash. Unwisely?” She lifted her hands, indicating the answer to this question was less certain.

Juhani nodded, accepting this. “Whatever her dangers, it is too late now for either of us to enter the academy with her, even if we could contrive a way to do so. She will do what she must. I do not, however, think it is too late for us to help her. Your fear will do nothing for her. Your meditation can.”

Bastila looked at her, and for one of the first times since they had begun their journey together, Juhani felt as though Bastila Shan truly saw her. “You’re right,” she said. “Fretting about all the danger Aithne has agreed to undertake for us will not help her face it. Through my Battle Meditation, I may be able to strengthen her resolve and light her path, and I can certainly have more of an idea of what she goes through than I do now. Would you help me with this, Juhani?”

Battle Meditation was not an ability that Juhani had ever learned. It was not one she believed she could learn. But she understood. The Jedi were stronger together. “I will meditate with you to give you strength,” she promised.

CARTH

Carth had once had to dress in the uniform of the enemy for a mission. He hadn’t enjoyed it. Aside from the fact that the Sith armor he had worn had belonged to a real creep, it had been low quality and smelled bad, and wearing it felt like a betrayal of the Republic. The Sith dress uniforms worn by the Force-Sensitive academy students on Korriban were better made than the mostly plastic armor mass-produced for Sith foot soldiers, but Aithne didn’t enjoy wearing it any more than Carth had liked wearing the clown suit back on Taris.

She made Carth and Jolee leave the room while she changed—a concession to Carth’s tender sensibilities, she said. Kicking his heels in the hall outside, Carth considered the drawbacks to camping out in the Sith academy. Aithne might have been allowed to have an advantage by bringing her own servants—or slaves—but Master Uthar had been inconsistent in the concessions he made for them. He’d allowed Liat Ser’rida to feed her servants from the academy dining hall but forced her to share her student quarters. Behind closed doors, Carth, Aithne, and the others had agreed to rotate who slept in the single bed. Carth hoped they wouldn’t be staying long, though. His back wouldn’t thank him for it.

When Aithne came from the room dressed out, Carth had to fight a grimace. He knew he hadn’t looked great in Genda’s armor on Taris, but the Sith academy uniform was even worse. Aithne looked pretty sharp in black. Gray sucked the color out of her cheeks and made her look like she’d been engaging in even more Dark-Side Force sessions than he’d seen. She looked powerful, sure, but also pretty intimidating. Her cheekbones suddenly seemed more prominent; her eyes more yellow than brown. Looking at her, she looked like the enemy.

Aithne must have picked up something to that effect from him, because she glanced at him. “I know,” she muttered, fingering the hem of her shirt with distaste. “Lovely, isn’t it?”

“You look fine,” Carth lied. He tried to focus on the details, things that told him—but wouldn’t tell the Sith—that she was just playing a part here. She was still using that makeup she’d bought yesterday, the stuff that made her features look just a little different—a little older, with a longer face, eyes closer together, and a little sharper nose. She was still using that double-bladed vibrosword, too: while everyone here already knew she had some training with the Force, she didn’t want the other students knowing how much yet. Finally, she’d left her hair down. Would’ve gotten her cited by a Republic officer in an inspection for sure; the look wasn’t professional, and long hair worn down could provide a point of attack for the enemy and obstruct her vision. The advantage was that Aithne’s hair, left down, changed her entire shape, not to mention the way it served to partially obscure her face from certain angles. It could sometimes be hard to get a good look at her face from the side, and overall, she looked significantly different from the sketch from Taris.

“Let’s go get some breakfast,” Aithne said.

But as soon as the three of them started down the hall toward the mess, the door to the room immediately next to Aithne’s opened, and Yuthura Ban stepped out.

“Ah, if it isn’t my favorite prospect for the year,” she purred.

Aithne stepped back, surprised for a moment, then Carth saw her features settle into a neutral, guarded expression. “You’ve been waiting.”

“I was,” Ban admitted. “I arranged for you to be placed in the room next to mine as well.”

Aithne folded her arms and raised her chin. “Why?”

“I was impressed with how quickly you rose to my challenge yesterday,” Ban told her. “I’ve been impressed with your, shall we say, preparation for the academy.” Her eyes raked over Carth and Jolee in their own costumes—they had coordinated, if they had been unable to match. “You’ve a promising aura about you and a history of both subtlety and survival. You are the kind of person I would like to have on my side. By my estimation, you are far more likely to achieve the prestige necessary to become a Sith than any of the others. I have an opportunity for you. Of the once-in-a-lifetime variety, if you want to hear it.”

Aithne hesitated. Carth thought rapidly, fighting to school his expression. This wasn’t what they had planned. The plan had been to infiltrate the academy, find Dustil, get through to the tomb or cave in the valley that contained the Star Map, and get out. They weren’t supposed to attract a lot of attention, let alone the focused interest of one of the senior instructors at the academy. Damn it! He’d always thought Aithne would be a terrible spy.

Of course, if Aithne tried to back out from Ban’s proposition now, she’d just look like she had something to hide. “Alright. Go ahead,” Aithne said.

When Ban said what she wanted, Carth thought he really might’ve guessed—less Yuthura approaching Aithne straight out the gate to help. She wanted to kill her master. Yuthura had been plotting for months and decided that one of the student trials would be the best place for a confrontation. It was one of the only times Master Uthar was ever alone. Ban figured she could rig it to make sure Aithne was selected to complete the final trial to be a Sith, and when it worked, she said, she, Uthar, and Aithne would head alone to the tomb of Naga Sadow in the valley.

“Why the tomb of Naga Sadow?” Aithne asked.

That, Yuthura explained, was a tradition dating back to the academy’s founding. Before Revan and Malak had established the academy, they had found a Star Map within the tomb of the Sith Lord Naga Sadow. So, every year, the student eligible to become a Sith in full made a pilgrimage to that tomb for their final trial. It was the only time the tomb of Naga Sadow was ever open and unguarded.

“You don’t say,” Jolee drawled. “Well, the master loves tombs. Don’t you, Master?”

Carth glared. “No one asked you, Bindle,” he growled. Jolee was probably a worse spy than Aithne. He said too much and had way too much of a sense of humor. A born nonconformist and a few decades a misanthrope, he stuck out like a sore thumb wherever he went. Carth got why Aithne had wanted him along. He was the most experienced and least recognizable of any of the Jedi with them, and with Force users around every corner, it was good for her to have a Jedi for backup. Carth had also seen that Jolee was ready to tell Aithne when she went too far, and Aithne tended to respond to Bindo’s advice that way a little better than she responded to Bastila, probably because Jolee waited to give it until she actually stepped over the line. Not that Jolee could always stop her. She’d still been ready to kill that murderer in Dreshdae the same way he’d killed his victim. But Bindo and Aithne had had a couple of nice exchanges in the Shadowlands that showed the two of them had a few things in common. Still. The guy needed to learn when to keep his mouth shut. The last thing they needed was for the Sith to realize Jolee had been a Jedi too.

Yuthura was watching Jolee too. “Indeed,” she said, slowly. “Anyway, the tomb is not the important thing. That Uthar will be alone is the important thing.” If Aithne helped her to assassinate her master, Yuthura promised, Aithne could take her place at Yuthura’s right hand. Effectively, it would give Aithne a shortcut through months or years of scrabbling and backstabbing to gain some power in the Sith.

Aithne’s face was difficult to read. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “After all of one conversation, you want me to be your personal apprentice?” 

“Your eagerness to prove yourself as I requested yesterday said a great deal,” Yuthura confirmed. “You have the motivation and gumption to do what I require. And I believe we discussed knowing when the time comes to clench your fist and strike.”

“We did,” Aithne agreed. “I am, however, surprised that time has come to me so soon. I’m surprised you’d move to promote me like this before we know one another better. When you strike Uthar down in the Sith tradition, you make yourself vulnerable to your own apprentice, who will one day inevitably seek to strike you down as well.”

Yuthura’s smile was darkly amused. It had teeth. “I am not afraid of the challenge. By all means, strike me down one day. If you can.”

The two women looked at one another, and then Aithne smiled back. Her smile was every bit as venomous as Yuthura’s. Carth understood that in a couple of minutes, everything had changed. Now they knew the only way to get to the Star Map was to impress the most important people at the academy. Aithne had to play along. But—something in that cold, hard smile didn’t sit right in his stomach.

 “Very well,” Aithne said. “Now. About my prestige within the academy? Ensuring I become Sith at the end of this little competition?”

“Of course,” Ban agreed. “The first and easiest way to gain prestige would be to recite the Code of the Sith for Uthar. Would you like to hear it?”

Aithne nodded, and Ban began: “Peace is a lie; there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.”

Safe in the full-mask helmet that prevented anyone from seeing Carth Onasi from the Sith bounty lists, Carth had a bit of an advantage. You couldn’t see the eyes or expression of a person in a full-mask helmet, so if they stayed back and stayed quiet, it was pretty easy for them to disappear. It was pretty easy to forget they were even there—all the more so if you thought that person was a servant.

When they’d learned they were going to have to infiltrate the Sith academy to find Dustil, they’d decided that the helmet, which had originally been Aithne’s disguise, should go on Carth. The Sith had an official Republic holo of him. The Tarisian sketch image of Aithne wasn’t nearly as detailed or effective. But switching out the equipment had also left Aithne exposed, and she didn’t have any of Carth’s practice disciplining her features.

Carth had noticed before that every thought Aithne Moran had showed on her face, and as she and Yuthura talked about the philosophy behind the Sith Code, he worried nearly every second she was going to give herself away. He tried to evaluate her expressions like a Sith would, look for weaknesses Master Yuthura might want to exploit. Nothing really stood out—no obvious compassion or overdeveloped ambition—but he could tell one thing: Aithne wasn’t buying in. She wasn’t sold out to the Sith. She was thinking about the Code and what it meant, sure, but you could tell that she wasn’t committed to a life of following her passions to gain power. He hoped maybe Yuthura wouldn’t see it; she didn’t know Aithne like he did, or even like Jolee. He hoped that if Yuthura could tell Aithne had some doubts about the Sith Code, those doubts didn’t make Yuthura suspect Aithne of any ulterior motives. But damn, Aithne could sure be loud, all without ever saying a single word.

It was probably just as well she did have doubts about the Sith philosophy, though. Yuthura was . . . she could be pretty persuasive. She was intelligent and charming, and when she spoke, the Sith almost sounded reasonable. To her, all the power plays, all the backstabbing was a way of life. It made sense. But he didn’t want it making sense to Aithne.

As Aithne and Yuthura finished their discussion of the Sith Code, Ban went on to tell Aithne about a few other opportunities she knew of for impressing Master Uthar. The headmaster wanted a few students who had refused an order to execute someone executed in their turn. They had fled, and a student who tracked them down and carried out Wynn’s sentence would probably earn his respect. Yuthura also suggested Aithne might collaborate with another student in the academy and betray them later, obtaining the resources they had worked for together and demonstrating her cunning all at once. Ban suggested Lashowe might be the person to try for doing that sort of thing—the girl was uncertain and didn’t like to work alone. She was too trusting. Aithne could use that.

Carth couldn’t help staring at the Twi’lek as she spoke. She made all these horrible things sound so . . . matter-of-fact. It was hard to even hate her, even as she talked about assassinating her master and murdering conscientious objectors—refugees, now—who had refused to take part in the academy’s culture of violence. What made a person like Yuthura Ban?

Aithne must’ve been interested too. “Tell me about yourself,” she asked Yuthura eventually.

Ban seemed surprised. “Me? Well, I’m originally from Sleheyron, if you must know.”

Carth wasn’t familiar with the world, but Aithne seemed to know it. “A Hutt world,” she said. She asked for details, and Ban explained she’d been a slave to a crime lord there.

“The Hutts control everything on Sleheyron, and a slave is nothing to them,” Ban told them. “I was determined not to be nothing.” She explained how she had killed her master with a stolen knife one night and made her escape on a vessel which had eventually run out of fuel.

“But how did you go from a scared little kid on a stranded ship to the right-hand-woman of Darth Malak’s Sith academy?” Aithne asked.

“I—I would prefer not to discuss that,” Ban said, stammering slightly.

Carth thought Aithne might leave it at that. She wasn’t huge on invasions of privacy from either side. She surprised him, though. “I’d really like to know.”

Yuthura stiffened. “Why?” she demanded, suspicious. “There is no point. Have I asked you about your past?”

Aithne shrugged. “You can. I’ll answer.” She said it so easily, he wondered what she’d do if Ban took her up on the offer. Had she thought up a story for Liat Ser’rida yet? Could Yuthura check it? Or did Aithne plan to mix truth and lies together to create her persona here. He’d thought the best plan was to say as little as possible. “Maybe I’m a nosy busybody,” Aithne said, “but I just thought since we’re going to work together, we might as well try to be friends.”

And there it was, Carth thought. The charisma of Yuthura Ban, her eagerness to reach out and find an ally. Aithne had seen Yuthura’s weakness in a second: the Twi’lek liked people too much. She was lonely, following the Sith, where you had to think anyone might kill you at any time. For a second, it looked like she might actually cry.

“You . . . you have very odd notions for someone hoping to become a Sith,” Yuthura said. “Let’s see, after escaping from Sleheyron, I was found by the Jedi. They took me in and trained me, even though I was a bit older than most padawans.”

Aithne blinked. “You were a Jedi too?” she repeated.

Yuthura shook her head. “Not really, no. I never progressed beyond padawan. I had discipline, but no peace, and after my treatment at the hands of the Hutts there was little room in me for the ways of the Jedi.”

Beside him, Jolee shifted. His face was strange. “You . . . you sound very much like someone I used to know,” he said softly.

This time, Carth didn’t call out Bindo’s behavior. He didn’t think it was a good idea to remind Ban that all three of them were there. She should have known better, actually. If she’d been a slave at one point, she should have remembered that servants see and hear everything. But she’d been caught up in the façade of seeing servants as objects again now and, talking and connecting to Aithne, had forgotten that Carth and Jolee existed, except as extensions of Aithne. Now she was too lost in her own memories to remember.

She laughed a little. “Yes, well, I imagine I am not unique. Things could have very easily been very different for me. I wanted to use the Force to free the other slaves I knew, to fight for what I knew was right. The Jedi restrained me until I couldn’t stand it anymore. They claim the Dark Side is evil, but that isn’t so. Sometimes anger and hatred are so deserved and right. Sometimes things change because of it.”

Carth shifted. He felt the way he had down in the Undercity, looking at that foot soldier who’d died for Rukil’s apprentice. It was easy to forget that there were people on the other side of a war, that a person who made bad choices and fought for evil things might not actually be pure evil. Ban was caught up in the Sith culture of violence and deception now, but her hatred was actually directed at the slavery and cruelty she’d seen as a child. And he had a feeling Aithne understood what she wanted. Hell, to an extent, he could understand Yuthura himself. Hate was probably the best word for what he felt for Saul Karath, and he wanted to kill Saul because it was right.

“I agree with you,” Aithne said. “But have things changed for you?”

Ban seemed to consider this. “No,” she admitted slowly. “Not yet. But my anger has not diminished, nor my desire to see change. The more time I spend with the Sith, the more I am certain that one day I will be able to fight as I must. I know this may sound strange, but only my compassion stands in my way, now. Once that is gone, let the slavers beware!”

Aithne shifted her weight then, moving her left hand behind her back, and her fingers formed the Republic signal for Be ready. She was about to do something crazy.

Aithne raised an eyebrow at Yuthura. “I might suggest your compassion has faded more than you think, Master Yuthura,” she said. “For here I stand with two men I introduced to you as my slaves, and your first act is to befriend me.”

Yuthura tensed all over. Then, her eyes narrowed, and once again, she was paying attention to Carth and to Jolee. She looked from them and back to Aithne. “Are these men then not your slaves, Liat Ser’rida?”

Carth didn’t know what the hell Aithne was doing. He fingered the blasters at his belt.

“I thought it might be useful to introduce them that way in a Sith academy, but no,” Aithne answered levelly. “Say rather, colleagues. Unable to become Sith themselves, these men nevertheless think they may profit from my becoming a Sith, and I’ve found it useful over the years to work with friends. But Yuthura, if ours had been a more conventional arrangement, if I had been a master to them like the master you killed once on Sleheyron, would you see me as a creature to one day be eliminated, on moral grounds and not merely as perhaps one day a threat to your life? Or would my power still make me a desirable ally?”

Carth saw what she was getting at now, kind of. Aithne was underscoring her willingness to collaborate by giving Yuthura a little more about him and Jolee, offering a little reciprocation. She was also using what Yuthura had told her about her own past and ambitions to make her doubt her resolve as a Sith. He guessed it would be the Jedi way to try and save Yuthura or any Sith they could here—they had to save Dustil, at the very least—but damn was Aithne playing with fire.

Yuthura was silent for a long moment. “You are a fascinating person, Liat Ser’rida,” she said at last. “A student who comes to us already possessed of her own voluntary followers. A student who competes through cooperation. A study in paradoxes, among the Sith.” She paused. “Perhaps it is you who will teach us. It is an interesting notion, that the chains that bound me might already have been broken, and it is a question worth consideration, whether I wanted them to be.” Her voice became quiet and pensive, but then she looked up. “But perhaps I sensed, without knowing it, that you were not who you presented yourself to be. Perhaps this was what intrigued me.”

She jerked her head at Carth and Jolee then. “Nevertheless, if these men are not bound to you, let them declare for themselves. Who are you, and what do you hope to gain in the halls of the Sith?”

Carth hesitated, but Jolee answered at once. “Our fearless leader can do what she wants, but I’ve no desire to go back to the person I was before I joined her crew. The name they gave me is good enough for me. You can call me Judd Bindle just like they do. As for why I came here with her, well. The Jedi and the Republic don’t have a monopoly on knowledge, do they? I know I’m not what the Sith are looking for in a recruit, but I’m here to learn what I can. Besides. If we’re plundering tombs in the valley here, who knows what little artifacts might go missing?”

That was a lot better than the slave persona, Carth thought. There was . . . there was a lot of truth in what Jolee had said just now. He could feel it: the rejection of the person Bindo had been before Kashyyyk, as well as the same kind of openness to ideas and cultures outside of the Republic that Aithne had. Jolee could hide behind those truths when Yuthura tried to sense if he was lying.

Sure enough, Yuthura seemed satisfied with Jolee’s answer. “A plunderer, then, or rather, a collector—of knowledge as well as of relics. Your words also hint at something I have at times sensed from you—Liat is not the only one among you capable of feeling the Force, is she, old man?”

Jolee shrugged. “Maybe not, but I’m no Jedi, and my warrior days are behind me.”

Yuthura hummed. “I am all the more intrigued, for I sense no lie upon you. There is a place for those who seek knowledge of the past and of the Dark Side among us, but mind you do not become a liability to your companion.” She turned to Carth. “And you—you in the mask. The Mandalorian’s replacement. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Carth shrugged. “Ordo didn’t need me,” he answered, in the lower, grittier voice he had adopted for his alias. “Liat figured she might. She’s paying me to be here. A decent share of whatever she earns.” It was one way of saying a big part of the reason they were here in the first place was for him, without strictly telling a lie.

“And if she should earn nothing? If she is killed? You realize you would most likely perish with her.”

Carth shrugged again in response to Yuthura’s challenge. “We haven’t died yet.”

“Indeed.” Yuthura’s eyes were sharp. “And, if I may, what is your name, friend? And why do you wear that mask?”

“They call me Card Natthias,” Carth answered. “I wear a helmet to be prepared. A Sith can attack at any time, and I’m not stupid about head protection like Liat here.”

Aithne made a face at him, tossing her hair and playing into the dynamic—old shipmates and co-campaigners.

Yuthura smiled. “This one is perhaps a little too paranoid for my taste, but he is not unwise,” she told Aithne. “You might see about getting him some regulation armor.”

Carth scoffed. “Our gear is better,” he said.

This time, the master laughed, looking his black fiber armor and plate up and down. “Spoken like a true mercenary, and likely true. Very well. As you will, then.” She turned back to Aithne. “Very well, my friend. I will keep you no further, nor will I reveal the comparative independence of your . . . compatriots. The clock is ticking. You have only a limited time to gain Uthar’s favor. Remember what we have discussed.”

Aithne bowed, though the bow had a trace of irony. “Master,” she murmured.

Carth and Jolee kept quiet all through breakfast, keeping their cover, but Carth wondered what the plan was. They needed to find Dustil. They needed to get Aithne to the top of this stupid prestige competition so she could enter the tomb of Naga Sadow and find the Star Map. But they had to do it all in just the right order or everything could fall down around their ears.

And he didn’t like the way Aithne looked. The way eyes seemed far away, and her expression seemed so closed. The muscles of her arms and back were all tensed up. He could tell she was thinking hard, but not about what. But he had a bad feeling none of it was very pleasant.

After breakfast, she led them back to the center of the academy, where Wynn was meditating. Aithne cleared her throat, and Uthar’s eyes flicked up. “Yes?”

Aithne didn’t hesitate. “I felt you should know: Yuthura offered me several leads to secure an alliance just now. She wants me to help her kill you at the final trial.”

Master Uthar’s yellow eyes flashed. “Is this true? I see. It is good you have come to me with this information,” he murmured, keeping his voice low. “It is a bit . . . ironic . . . that Yuthura has begun her plotting. I have been aware of her growing ambitions for some time and had in fact already decided to remove her. Normally, the one who gains the most prestige would engage in a final trial. Two of the students would fight. This time it will be Yuthura who battles, though she does not know it. Perhaps it will be you who combats her?” He looked hard at Aithne. “Yes . . . perhaps so.” He reached inside his robes and withdrew a datapad from an interior pocket. “This is what you can do: Give this pad to Adrenas. You will find him among the trainers near the exit to the valley. He will put some poison in Yuthura’s bath. This will weaken Yuthura for that final test, making her an easy target.” Uthar smirked. “Rather generous of me, don’t you think?”

“It would perhaps be a better test of my skill to have me fight her at full strength,” Aithne suggested. “But then, if you would have me fight a full master of the Sith instead of one of these other hopefuls, perhaps I should be grateful for the advantage.”

“Take every advantage you can get,” Wynn advised. “For this is the way of the Sith. For coming to me with this information and betraying your foolish trainer, I feel you are worthy of prestige, Liat Ser’rida. Go now. You have not yet impressed me enough to declare you the victor.”

Aithne raised an eyebrow. “As part of her side of our bargain, I had Yuthura tell and explain the Code of the Sith to me,” she replied. “I learned it well. You had asked to hear it from the hopefuls.”

“You have learned it already?” Uthar asked, skeptical.

“I have a good memory,” Aithne told him. She recited it and told Uthar one of the interpretations of it that Yuthura had given her when he asked her to explain it.

Uthar seemed impressed. “You do indeed have a good memory, Liat Ser’rida, and some self-possession, to take advantage of more than Yuthura’s treachery in your conversation. But I understand training of this nature is not new to you.”

Aithne tilted her head and said nothing. “Go,” Uthar said. “I must meditate further this morning.”

Carth and Jolee followed Aithne away from the center of the academy. “Want to tell me just what we’re doing, lass?” Bindo asked her in an undertone. “Not that I’m not fascinated. You’re committing intrigue like any one of these hardened villains, but I’d believed you liked our once-compassionate Twi’lek friend.”

“I do like her,” Aithne admitted. “I like her a lot, actually. She’s better than this place and better than what she’d doing. She’s also a lot further gone than she knew before this morning. I’d like to deliver an object lesson to her on exactly how much she doesn’t really want this life.”

Jolee grunted. “You mean to turn her back? You backstab her like this, and she’d just as likely to kill you dead. You gave her a lot more about us than you had to, earlier. She’s got some weapons.”

Aithne nodded. “I know. But she also knows I’m not a slaver, and once I heard about her past, I thought that was important.” She paused. “Still. Watch your backs,” she told them. “If she decides she wants to hurt me, she’ll go for you two first.”

“Yeah. Thanks for that,” Carth said. “So. What now?”

Aithne looked sideways at him. “I think it’s time we get an idea of who else is living with us in this academy,” she answered. They were going after Dustil.

Chapter Text

CARTH

They talked to a lot of other people the rest of that morning and into the early afternoon. Aithne was probably the most social Sith hopeful in the academy. Most of her immediate competition was pretty wary. She and Jolee knew most all the people she was up against to become a true Sith, and they’d had different experiences with each of them. The woman who’d insulted them at the beginning, Lashowe, the one Yuthura recommended targeting for a betrayal, was hostile but not too aggressive. A man, Shaardan, was friendly, but wouldn’t talk too much about what he was doing. There was another man, bigger and a little older, who had a pretty brutal face. He was contemptuous of Aithne from the start, and her eyes just about burned, talking to him. Mekel tried to provoke her into a fight, but Aithne decided not to go there.

When they got around to the last of the students immediately competing with Aithne, Kel Algwinn, Carth was ready for just about anything. But he was as friendly as Shaardan, if a little withdrawn. On him, though, it seemed more like introspection than like he was on his guard.

“Is something wrong?” Aithne asked him.

“Not really, no,” Kel told her, but his eyes cut away. He wasn’t too great of a liar, Kel.

“C’mon, you can tell me,” Aithne pressed him, voice soft.

“My master says that I am too trusting,” Kel said, politely refusing to share. “And you’re going to be a Sith.”

He was a kid, really. Probably only about a year older than Dustil. “Aren’t you?” Aithne asked him.

Kel realized he’d already said too much. “That’s not what I meant!” he said.

“What did you mean, then?”

Kel stepped back. “Never mind. I can’t trust you. Can I?”

Aithne raised her eyebrows at him. She walked past his meditation mat and sat right down on the end of his bed. She’d adopted the same manner she used with Mission, Carth saw. She saw as well as he did that this kid wasn’t a threat. “That’s the nature of trust, isn’t it?” she said. “You have to decide. You can tell me what’s bothering you, and I might use it against you, or tell someone else who would. But I also might use my power of choice to help you out, just to shake things up around here. Of course, you can always keep your secret and let it eat you up inside.”

Kel stared. “What kind of Sith are you?” he demanded. Aithne just looked back at him, eyes wide, waiting.

Kel shifted. “Fine,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t feel like I belong here. Some of the things the Sith say, some of the things they do, some of it just doesn’t feel right.”

Aithne hummed. “Where are you from, Kel?”

He frowned. “I grew up here on Korriban. Why?”

That explained it, Carth thought. Kel had gone to the Sith because it was what was around. Aithne got it too. “If I were Master Uthar, I might say that any dark kernel inside you is a long, long way from sprouting,” she told him. “I can sense you’re strong in the Force, but I don’t sense the things the people here want from you: I don’t sense hatred, or even a lot of anger. Mostly a whole bunch of confusion. Tell me, did someone ask you to come here because of your abilities, or did you come on your own?”

“They gave me a token back in Dreshdae,” Kel told them. “Said the Sith could teach me to use the Force. And at first, I was interested in learning more about the things I can do. But as things sort of escalated, I got less and less sure it’s what I want.”

Aithne was frowning now. This kid would get himself killed if he stayed here, Carth thought. They all knew it. “Kel, I gotta ask: are you free to leave here?”

Kel’s eyes dropped. “I could, but where would I go? I mean, what would I do?”

Aithne reached into her belt pouch. She pulled out a handful of credits. “I think you should hop a transport out of here,” she told him. “Head to the Core or the Mid-Rim. Look for the Jedi. They can teach you to use your abilities too, but they’re a lot less likely to kill you. Or ask you to kill without good reason. They teach some other ways to be strong, ways that are probably better suited to you, from what I can tell, Korriban-native or not.”

Kel stepped forward to take the credits. “You’re a Jedi, aren’t you?” he asked.

Aithne hesitated. “I don’t want to have to end up killing you,” she said instead of answering the question. “I don’t want one of the others to do it. And I don’t want you to walk a path that you aren’t sure about.”

Kel stared at her. “No one here ever asked me what I wanted,” he remarked. He smiled then. “I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “Whoever you are, whatever you’re here for. And I think I’ll take you up on your suggestion.”

Aithne nodded, rose, and led the way down the corridors again.

It felt like they’d been in every private room in the Sith academy except Master Uthar’s by the time they found Dustil down at the end of the hall in the second dormitory.

He opened the door to Aithne’s knock. “You take a wrong turn somewhere?” he asked.

“Just making the rounds, getting to know the new neighbor—” Aithne broke off, staring.

Carth stared too. Dustil had been twelve the last time he’d seen him, just a boy, younger than Mission. He was—he was within a couple of centimeters of being as tall as Carth, now. Good condition too, though he was skinny enough you could see he was still growing. He looked just like Jordo had said—he had hair like Morgana’s. Her nose, too. But otherwise—Carth might as well have been looking at himself at age sixteen. It was his son!

Jordo had been right about his position, too. Looking past the door frame into the bedroom, you could just see a lightsaber lying on the end of his bunk. Dustil wasn’t just any hopeful or student. He was a Sith.

Aithne nodded once, collecting herself. “Dustil,” she said. “I’ve heard about you. I’m new, and if I could, we’d like a word.” She took off her sword and handed it to him. Dustil took it from her, surprised. Carth saw what she was doing. They’d talked to the other Sith at the academy with their weapons, in the hallway or with the doors open. If they were going to ask to talk to Dustil in private, they needed to show him that he wasn’t in any danger. He immediately took off his gun belt and handed it to Dustil as well, and Jolee, after a moment, removed his lightsaber from the arm holster beneath his sleeve.

“You—the old man uses the lightsaber, not you?” Dustil said, staring from Aithne to the others. Then he caught sight of the right-hand gun inside Carth’s holster. How many times had Dustil asked to help him polish his blaster as a kid? Carth had taught his son to shoot using the gun he held right now. His son’s jaw suddenly turned to durasteel, and his eyes went cold. “Come inside,” he muttered. He reached out and grabbed Aithne’s arm, pulling her inside his room.

“Dustil! Hands!” Carth warned, following the two of them inside with Jolee.

Dustil let go of Aithne. He closed and locked his door and threw the weapons back on his bed with his lightsaber. “That you, Father?”

Carth took off his helmet. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of weeks, preparing for Korriban, and Dustil sneered when he saw him. “Oh, so it is. Looking a little sloppy, old man, but it’s you. That’s just perfect. Which means you—” he turned to Aithne. “I’d heard about you too, but if you’re here with him, you aren’t who they say you are. You’re one of those women he’s been traveling with. The ones Darth Malak would pay a planet for. Too old to be Shan, so I guess you’re the other one. Moran. The one he’d rather have dead than alive.”

The anger coming off him was palpable. Aithne met his eyes. “That’s me,” she said. “You planning to do something about it?”

“I don’t know,” Dustil snapped. “I certainly didn’t ask for this to fall down on my head. How did you—how did you even get in here?”

“I’m pretty sure we lied,” Aithne answered.

Dustil’s lip curled. “Cute.” His gaze swept back to Carth. “Why’d you come, Father? Not for me, I hope. Couldn’t you have gotten yourself blown up on some ship and spared us this reunion?”

Carth stepped toward him, stricken nearly dumb. After four years, to see Dustil like this—“What? What are you talking about? I . . . I thought you were dead!”

Dustil’s mouth twisted even further. “Too bad you didn’t still think that. Or did you really think I would be happy to see you? ‘Look, everyone! It’s Father, come to rescue me at long last! Sure! He may have left Mother and I to die on Telos, but that doesn’t matter!”

Was that how it had felt to him? Carth shook his head, stunned. “No . . . I didn’t abandon you. The Task Force just arrived too late! Telos was in ruins, and your mother . . . I held her while—” Dustil’s face—it was like a mask. As hard and cold as stone. “But I looked for you, I swear I looked for you everywhere—”

He’d searched the wreckage reports for months, looked in relief center after relief center on different planets.

Dustil scoffed. “Oh, save it. You abandoned us long before. We were alone all through the wars, and even once you came back, you still didn’t stay!” Years of hurt were pouring out of him now. Carth caught Jolee looking back at the door. When Dustil had been mocking him earlier, pretending to announce a celebration, he’d still kept his voice at a normal level, a level that wouldn’t be heard outside the stone walls of his room. Now he was shouting.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Carth protested. “I was needed—”

“Yeah?” Dustil demanded. “Well, you were needed at home too. You were needed when the bombing started, and I got captured!”

Carth had had no idea the Sith had taken prisoners on Telos, but he knew Dustil had to be telling the truth. He should have thought of it. The only way he could have missed Dustil all these years was if his son had been taken behind the Sith lines, out of Republic communication channels. He’d grown up here among the enemy. What had his life been like?! This wasn’t the son he remembered.

Dustil shook his head. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. I have a new family now, a family that cares about me. I don’t need you!”

Carth stared. “The Sith? You can’t mean that! No, the Sith killed your mother! The Sith destroyed Telos!” He couldn’t mean it, could he? He wouldn’t be so angry if he meant it.

Dustil laughed in his face. “So? You’re the soldier, Father! How many mothers have you killed?”

No, Carth thought. This was wrong. It was all wrong. “No, you’ve been brainwashed. The son I knew would never—”

“You never knew me!” Dustil shouted. “You weren’t even there to know me, so don’t presume to tell me what I would or wouldn’t do!”

Carth’s jaw set. “I don’t know what’s been done to you,” he said, “But you’re coming with me out of here. Now.”

Dustil put his hand out, and the Sith lightsaber from the bed flew right into it. He didn’t activate it, but he stood there, in between them and all their weapons. “Touch me, old man, and I’ll kill you,” he warned. “Get out! Get out of here before I tell the Sith that you’re here!”

Aithne stepped between them then. Carth’s heart jumped—Dustil was so on edge, he could hurt her. Dustil tensed but didn’t move, and Aithne—she was looking at Carth. “Alright. That’s enough,” she said, in a much lower voice than either Carth or Dustil had been using. “Back off, and calm down.” She turned back to Dustil. “We’re not taking you anywhere unless you agree to it,” she told him. “We’re not going to do anything. I think you’ve been taken enough places against your will. But you know your father’s only trying to protect you. You said it yourself. You know he came for you, and you know he came the very second that he heard you were here. And since you’ve been here all this time, and since you’ve seen the bounty offering, you also know just exactly how dangerous it was for all of us and the entire Republic war effort. So you can calm down too.”

Dustil had been breathing pretty hard. He’d gone red in the face. Now he started to get himself back under control. “I don’t need his protection. Not anymore. The Sith give me everything I need.”

Carth sidestepped around Aithne. He had to get through to Dustil. He just had to. “You can’t mean that,” he said. “The Sith are . . . they’re evil. They’re the Dark Side. They . . . they took me away from you and your mother. They’re . . . they’re what took you from me.”

Dustil folded his arms. “Please. You made your choice. You were at war long before the Sith ever showed up. From where I stand, the Sith were the ones to want me. You didn’t. And as for the Dark Side—well. It gets things done. Doesn’t seem too evil to me.”

“The Sith are opportunists,” Aithne said. “They took you for what you could do for them. And as for Carth not wanting you, that’s garbage, and I think you know it.”

“I went to war for you, Dustil,” Carth pressed. “For your freedom, your future. What are the Sith doing here? They’re warring to conquer. To rule the helpless. If I failed you, then it’s my failure, but please don’t add to it by continuing on in something evil.”

Dustil stood there for a moment, staring into his eyes. Somewhere in there was his son. Carth could feel it, and finally, Dustil threw his lightsaber back on the bed and placed his hands on his hips. “You really believe that, don’t you? And Moran’s right—you risked your life and the entire Republic war effort when you came here. Fine. Prove it. Prove that the Sith are so evil and . . . and I’ll think about going with you. I don’t—you were useless, but I don’t actually want to kill you.”

It hurt like a knife to hear that, but Carth knew he had to take it. From Dustil’s perspective, he had been useless. Dustil had been four years among the Sith. Carth hadn’t had a clue. Who knew what they had done to him, everything Dustil had suffered?

Aithne put a hand on Carth’s shoulder and squeezed, offering him a momentary reassurance. “Trust me, we are happy not being killed,” she said. “But how can we prove to you the Sith are what we say?”

“I’ll stay right here,” Dustil promised. He kept his eyes on Carth now. “I won’t tell anyone you’re here or who you really are. For now. You find some proof, and you bring it to me. If I hear you asking questions about me or doing a single thing to jeopardize my position in the Sith, I swear, I’ll tell everyone what you’re up to. And I’ll just bet Shan’s nearby.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Aithne told him quietly. “I will vouch for your father—we won’t do anything to force your leaving.” Carth glanced at her. No way they were leaving Dustil here with the Sith. Not one week more if they could help it. This was his son! Aithne met his gaze levelly. She didn’t back down. She looked back at Dustil then. “Besides, if we tried to paint you as a traitor or unreliable, the most likely result is it would backfire on us anyway, without you doing anything.”

“Glad to see you understand that,” Dustil answered. “You got it, Father? You prove what you’re saying is true. I’m not going anywhere otherwise.” Carth understood what Dustil was offering—a chance to prove himself, a chance to be worthy of trust.

“I . . . I got it, Dustil. We’ll be back. I swear it.”

Dustil stepped aside, letting them collect their weapons. They left Dustil’s room. Aithne led them right back to their own quarters. She waved her hand at Jolee. “Go eat a snack or something,” she told him. “Eavesdrop on the teachers. Listen for prestige opportunities.”

“Aye-aye,” Jolee muttered. He walked quickly out the door and closed it behind him. Carth faced Aithne.

“We’re not leaving him behind. I don’t care what he thinks,” he said. “If we have to drug him, he’s not staying here.”

Aithne pointed down the hall in Dustil’s general direction. “That’s not the twelve-year-old kid they took on Telos,” she told him. “That’s not the boy who was desperate for his father and didn’t have him. That is a full-fledged Sith with training in Force abilities and currently lost in the Dark Side. That is an indoctrinated killer just about ready to go to war for your enemy. We only walked out of there just now because he still loves you.”

“He doesn’t,” Carth argued. “You heard him: he’s so full of anger and hate, especially for me. He doesn’t even care what they did to Telos! But he’s my son, and I won’t leave him here.” He’d imagined scenarios over the years where he would discover Dustil alive. This wasn’t like the worst ones—Dustil some burnt-out wreck, some mindless husk of a refugee on the surface of Telos or in some backwater Republic war camp. Dustil crippled, or a Dustil who didn’t even know him. Dustil had known him immediately, just as soon as he saw his guns. He was healthy. He looked great, and by and large, he was himself. That just made it worse that he was Sith, though. A full-fledged Sith. A murderer. And defending them like family.

“You weren’t listening,” Aithne snapped. “You walked in there, and if Dustil didn’t flash right back to the destruction of Telos and the day he was kidnapped, I don’t know what a flashback looks like. That day was the single worst day of his life, and his dad, his hero, even if you weren’t around all the time, wasn’t there to save him. Bombs were dropping down on his planet, and some Sith swooped down and took him away. It was just like Taris for Mission, except as Dustil watched everyone and everything he knew die all around him, he wasn’t with friends who cared about him. He was with the people who were killing everyone and everything he knew. And in the four years since, fighting to survive among the Sith, learn what they had to teach, keep from being murdered himself, I bet he’s thought a lot about that day when you weren’t there to save him.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Carth cried. His throat was closing up; his eyes burned. All this time—

He buried his face in his hands, raked his fingers through his hair.

Aithne’s hands came up to grip his wrists. She brought them down gently between them, making him look at her. “I know. He knows it too. He knows you came to save him now. He knows how dangerous it was. But that doesn’t wipe out everything he’s been through. And we can’t take him away from a place he wants to be now the way the Sith did when he was twelve. Your son has spent four years a prisoner of war. I don’t want to make him ours. He’s spent enough time with his enemies that he sometimes feels he loves them now. Because he has to, because there hasn’t been another way for him to stay sane. Except when he remembers that day, he’s still so angry he was taken, and that’s just worse, because he has to love the people who did such a horrible thing.”

Carth nodded. “I—I think I get it. I get it. The only way to get him back is to get him to see the truth. And even then, it’s gonna be a long, long road.” He accepted it, and it hurt, realizing all the pain Dustil had been through these four years, how deeply Carth had failed him. And yet . . . it was so, so much better than believing his son was dead. Now, at least there was a chance.

Aithne was silent a moment. “Did you know he was Force Sensitive when he was little? You and Morgana. Did you know?”

Carth shook his head. “I—I didn’t. Not like a Sith or Jedi. I mean, things were different back on Telos. With so many members of the AgriCorps there—I mean, stuff like that tended to run in a lot of families. Sometimes the Jedi would come through and Search out a bunch of kids, but mostly, they left us alone. Morgana’s mother, my grandfather—they were both in the service, but Morgana and I never really thought—”

“I wonder what Morgana was like,” Aithne mused. “You know you’re Force Sensitive—not to the extent that anyone could ever train you, but enough to give you an edge in your piloting and better intuition than most—”

It was like she’d thrown a sandbag at him. “Me?” Carth repeated. “You think I’m—”

Aithne blinked. “I know it,” she told him. “Carth, your aura’s almost easier for me to pick up than Juhani’s, though that’s probably because she’s nonhuman. Your senses about people and situations aren’t Jedi standard, but they’re far more attuned than the average person’s. Your battle reflexes verge on precognitive, and you adapt to new styles and situations in combat far faster than you should. As primarily a pilot in your service history, you should not have been able to fight Canderous to a draw in your sparring session back on Dantooine. But you did. You’re also reading surface impressions of others nearly all the time. You access and use the Force without realizing it nearly constantly. Like I said—no one could train you. Your Sensitivity isn’t that fine-tuned or marked. But your son’s is. He’s the equal of any Jedi in the Dantooine enclave, and more powerful than a lot of them. It has to be the reason that they took him.”

All Dustil’s childhood, and Carth and Morgana had never thought he might have inherited his grandmother’s powers with the Force. It was hard to deny it now; Carth had seen his son move a lightsaber with his mind. That was strange enough, but now Aithne was telling him he had some of the same abilities—that he used them. He’d never even thought—

Carth refocused. None of that was important for now. If he was Force Sensitive, if he’d been using the Force, he hadn’t realized it, and it didn’t change the way he interacted with the galaxy. As for Dustil’s powers, they might matter when he was off Korriban and away from the Sith. Carth was starting to realize the Dark Side of the Force had different dangers for the people who could feel it. But they would deal with that when they got Dustil off Korriban.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. So we can’t drag him out of here. We can’t drug him. How are we going to get Dustil the proof he wants? How do we—how do we convince him to leave the Sith?”

Aithne bit her lip. She sat down on her bed and ran her hands through her hair, rubbing at her eyes and temples like she had the beginnings of a headache. “None of this is like I thought it’d be,” she admitted. “We weren’t even supposed to be here yet. Then when we get here, we find out that in order to find Dustil or the Star Map, we have to head right toward the people we should avoid. But that’s not enough: the cover we prepared won’t work because I have to masquerade as a Sith. Then even that’s not enough: I have to be the best damn Sith in the academy year if we’re going to get anywhere near that Star Map. Sorry.”

“No, you’re right,” Carth told her. “It’s just been one complication after another since we met with Jordo. I hope you know I appreciate the risks you’re taking, everything you’re doing for me and Dustil.”

Aithne laughed. “You’re taking the risks right with me, flyboy.”

Carth sat beside her on the bed. “Not like you are.”

Aithne shoved her hair back out of her face and looked at him. “It’s called reciprocity,” she said drily. “You’ve helped me with my kid. It’s my turn.”

Carth laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. What could you do? Just a few months ago, he’d been alone, trying to maneuver a way to the front lines to Saul and damn the consequences. Aithne’d been doing who the hell knew what scouting out on the Rim, on her own too, but probably in a whole lot less trouble. Now here they were, two of the Sith’s most wanted and trying to sneak through under all their noses. Dustil was back from the dead, just a few doors down, but a Sith. Aithne was both a Jedi and de facto mother to a teenage Twi’lek, and somehow, their entire lives had gotten jumbled up together, kids and all, with the galaxy on the line. And he wasn’t sure he regretted any of it.

Aithne swallowed and scooted away from him, moving her hands like she was filing things in the air. “Right. So. Yuthura’s little news and proposition for us this morning told us two things: I gotta win their little competition, and we are probably not going to be able to play anything safe. Odds are, I am going to end up killing one or both of Malak’s highest-ranking Sith here.”

That put things into perspective. But she was right, Carth realized. With the way Yuthura had set things up, Aithne was going to have to kill Uthar, Yuthura, or both, and that was sure to kick up a fuss. “Huh. We’re not getting out of here without a fight,” he observed.

“I don’t think so,” Aithne agreed. “I’ll call Canderous tonight to tell him to be ready for a hot takeoff the minute we’re done here. I just hope we don’t have a tailing army of Sith after us, suddenly inspired to stop trying to outdo one another and follow Malak’s death orders because I’ve personally tweaked their noses. But when we go, Dustil’s gonna have to be ready too.”

“Timing’s gonna be a little tricky.”

Aithne nodded. “And I want us to have a plan for that, but I’m also thinking that what I do to make Sith and end up in the tomb of Naga Sadow could probably help us out with Dustil’s proof. See, I think I could make Sith doing a bit of high-risk artifact hunting out in the valley, the way Jolee was talking about earlier. But I think I’ll have better success finding dirt on the Sith for Dustil if I’m digging into Sith internal politics instead of Sith tombs. And if I don’t, if all else fails—” she chuckled darkly, her expression grim— “you ought to be able to hold me up as an example to Dustil.”

She was thinking about that student yesterday, and the way she’d betrayed Yuthura for the prestige this morning. Carth reached down between them but didn’t take her hand, giving her the option. She looked at it for a moment, then laced her fingers through his, looking away. “There’ve been times when I can understand why the Jedi might be worried about you,” he admitted quietly. “When it’s like I can see a different person underneath the one I know.”

She closed her eyes, and it was like he could feel her hurting—feel the way she was still beating herself up about those times she’d gone too far. He wondered—with what she’d said about his Force Sensitivity—could he feel it? He watched her face. She looked tired.

“But I also get it,” he told her. “Look, the two times I’ve seen where I thought you might have gone too far, the people in question had it coming. They really, really had it coming. I—I could see why you were so angry. And I know it comes from a good place in you. A place that loves justice, that hates to see people killing and torturing for no reason. And that impulse to see justice done? That’s something we have in common.”

Again, Carth thought of Saul, with a fresh feeling of hatred. Saul’s betrayal had meant his son grew up among the enemy, grew up without his father, feeling Carth had abandoned him, eventually embracing the people who had killed his mother. Saul had done that to his family.

Aithne was looking at him again now, hearing him out. Listening.

“We just both of us need to remember what we’re fighting for. Make sure we don’t turn out like Yuthura, get so obsessed with trying to become strong enough to take revenge that we forget everything we’re doing. But here?” Carth shook his head and shook Aithne’s hand between them for emphasis. “Nothing you’re doing is selfish or evil. You—you’re doing what we have to, to save Dustil and the entire galaxy. And I really respect you for it. And I’m grateful.”

He remembered how he’d felt when Dustil had pulled her into his room, put hands on her that way. When she’d stepped unarmed in front of Dustil with his lightsaber. Those had been a couple complicated moments.

Aithne smiled at him. “Right. Well. Thanks,” she said. “I guess we’d better stop talking about stuff and just get to it.” She squeezed his hand one more time, and he let her go in response to the unspoken hint.

She opened the door and knocked on the doorframe. “Bindle! You out there?” she shouted.

Steps sounded down the hallway, and Jolee turned the corner. “You called?”

“Let’s move.”

Aithne’s face was grim as she led the three of them next door again. She rapped at Yuthura’s door.

Carth heard a Huttese curse, then the door swung open. Ban was annoyed, but when she saw Aithne, she smiled. “Oh, it’s you, Liat. Come in.”

“You may not wish me to,” Aithne told her, though she kept her voice low. “Uthar knows of your plan. He proposes to have me fight you at the final test.”

Yuthura folded her arms. “He knows, does he? You told him, didn’t you?”

Aithne’s face was placid. “Of course I did. Our plan was for me to be there in that tomb to face him, and to be there, I need to impress him. In addition, you haven’t been very subtle. You arranged for me to have the room next door to yours. You told me freely. Since my companions could make things awkward if you did so for personal reasons, unless you Sith are even wilder than I thought, it would have followed to Uthar and everyone that you had a professional motivation. By telling Uthar of your plans, I gained his trust and the information that he had already been planning to kill you. Now, you know when and how.”

Yuthura searched Aithne’s face. “And do you intend to try and kill me?” she asked, voice suddenly silky and dangerous.

Aithne raised her eyebrows. “I might. I might not. You realize, of course, that killing you would essentially place me in the same position to Master Uthar as you have promised me with you. I’d get quite a lot more respect around here killing you than another student, after all, if not so much as killing Master Uthar, and he’d be missing an apprentice. And killing him might be more dangerous. Still. I like you. Can you give me any further incentive to side with you?”

Yuthura’s expression was unreadable, much more guarded than it had been in the morning. “You should know you don’t stand a chance with Uthar. I respect your attempt to play both sides. I thought I could use you like a pawn. You have proven me wrong, but Uthar will have already seen it. You are too dangerous for him to have around. I think . . . I think I’d enjoy it.”

She turned away and moved to the equipment locker at the foot of her bed. Keying it open, she felt around in the corner and rummaged for another minute, then brought out two items. “Here is the passkey to Uthar’s room,” she said, handing over a small keycard. Aithne tucked it into the purse at her waist without a word. “And here,” Yuthura finished, handing over a second, metallic machine about the size of Aithne’s palm, “is a device. You will place it under Uthar’s bed. It will poison him, weaken him before the fight, now that he expects our move. Go. It is our only shot.”

Aithne slipped the device, like a mechanical spider, into one of the cargo pockets of her uniform trousers. “You’re graciousness itself, Master,” she said ironically.

“Hardly,” Yuthura said. “You’ve made sure I really had no choice. Until tomorrow, my friend.”

Aithne bowed and left. Carth and Jolee followed after her. “So. That’s your first move. You know she’s definitely going to try to kill you now,” Carth muttered.

Aithne hummed agreement. “Not until she gets rid of Uthar,” she said. “She doesn’t think she can handle him herself and knows he’s on his guard. So until the trial, she’ll be ready for me to turn on her but hoping that I won’t. You two are going to have to really watch your backs, though. I tipped our hand a little to try to get under her skin this morning. She might know I actually like you guys and want to leverage you against my performance. I don’t think she’ll let anyone else into the plan—she’s exposed enough already, and she’s feeling it. I ought to have her a little gun shy. But she might have more poison around or try and make a move on you before my trial. Subdue and capture you and hold you hostage so I do what she wants.”

“Great. I hadn’t even thought about that,” Carth muttered.

“We’ll try and stay together,” Jolee said. “Been a while since I had to use a buddy system. Should we set up a watch tonight?”

“Couldn’t hurt,” Aithne admitted.

“And now we are . . .?” Jolee asked, nodding at the hallway they were walking down.

“Heading to pay a visit to the rooms of the principal of evil,” Aithne answered. She paused where the hallway diverged. Glanced at Jolee. “Keep watch now, will you?” she murmured. “Create a big diversion if we need one? Carth?”

Jolee promised he’d make some noise if someone started down the hall or seemed likely to intrude, and Aithne and Carth hurried down the dark, lightly traveled passage they’d seen on their earlier tour of the academy—the hall that led to Master Uthar’s room.

Aithne took the card Yuthura had given her at the access pad. The door hissed open, and they walked inside. Aithne took the device Yuthura had given her. She examined it a moment then pushed something on its underside. The device grew small metal legs, Aithne placed it on the floor beside Uthar’s bed, and it scuttled away quietly.

“You’ve seen things like that before?” Carth asked her.

Aithne’s face clouded for a moment, like she was confused. “No,” she murmured. “I think it . . . told me, somehow. Through the Force? I sometimes meditate with T3-M4 or the hyperdrive. It’s sort of the same thing.” But she frowned.

“Are you alright?” Carth asked. He didn’t like the look on her face, how . . . unsettled she seemed.

Aithen shook herself. “Fine. The gas in that device won’t kill Master Uthar. Not enough in there to do that or a long enough time for it to work. But he’ll weaken slowly over the next few days. Not so much he notices. But enough. At any rate, that’s not exactly why we’re here.” She knelt down beside one of two lockers in the room. In a second, she’d bypassed the code and opened the lid.

She skated over the trunk’s contents with her fingers, left it all, and closed the lid. Then she repeated her performance on the second locker. She was careful to leave no trace, Carth saw, and he was grateful that she was wearing her gloves. But this time, her brow knit as she noticed something in the trunk. She pulled out a datapad and scanned its contents. “Student evaluations,” she said. Then her face fell. She seemed sad, but unsurprised. “Here,” she said.

It was all the warning he got before she tossed him the datapad. Carth caught it and read through the contents. It was Uthar’s personal notes on some of the academy’s more promising talent—as well as a record of the interventions he had made on their progress. There was something about finding a direction for Mekel, some notes about some other trainees, and dating from about six months back, a note on Dustil.

Aithne had been right: his son was powerful. Powerful enough the Sith master had taken a personal interest in his career. But apparently, Dustil’s friends hadn’t all been up to his standard. He’d advanced faster than most of the academy kids his age, and after he’d made full Sith last year in the same competition Aithne was in now, his friendship with one of those kids in particular had caused Uthar some concern. Dustil had spent too much time with this girl, talking to her, helping her. Uthar had thought this girl, Selene, was making Dustil weak. So he’d had her killed. He’d told Dustil that she’d died in an accident and closed the entry on the incident confident that without Selene’s influence, Dustil would get back to advancing as he should.

There was a lot that hurt about the entry. If Master Uthar was a murderer, for no better reason than to better motivate a student—well, they had evidence now that Dustil had become a murderer too. They knew enough about this Sith competition Aithne was in now that Carth could guess that Dustil had had to kill someone to earn his position. In a way, you could argue it had been self-defense. In a way, it definitely wasn’t. His son had been lost to the Dark Side.

But there was reason to believe he wasn’t lost for good. Master Uthar wouldn’t have lied to him about Selene’s death if he thought Dustil would understand the reasoning for her murder. He wouldn’t have been concerned about Dustil’s friendship with her in the first place if there wasn’t a lot of good in that relationship. Carth was sorry Selene had been killed, sorry Dustil had lost her. He also knew they had found Dustil’s proof.

“What do we do with it?” Carth asked. The design on Uthar’s datapad was pretty specialized—a way of identifying its owner and ensuring security. They could download the information onto another datapad and leave Uthar’s log inside his quarters, leaving minimal traces of their presence, but then Dustil might think they made the story up, even that they’d asked about him like he’d told them not to in order to do it. If they left the second datapad in Uthar’s quarters instead and took the original to Dustil, though, Master Uthar would be even quicker to realize they’d been inside his room.

He saw all the possibilities pass through Aithne’s mind. Saw her jaw clench. “Best chance is to hope he just thinks he misplaced it,” she said. “Take it to Dustil and get out with him as fast as we can. That was our plan anyway.”

“Alright. We’ll get it to him tomorrow afternoon,” Carth agreed. “After you’ve done a few things to make it easier to leave here.” It would also be easier to talk to Dustil tomorrow afternoon, when a lot of the Sith would be out of their rooms training or looking for advancement in the valley, than tonight or early tomorrow morning, when most of them would be hanging around their dorms.

They slipped out into the hallway again, behind and around Jolee, and headed to the mess for dinner, exactly like they hadn’t been up to anything.

Chapter Text

JOLEE

“I don’t like it,” Carth muttered in an undertone to Jolee. The two of them were supposedly examining the weapons in the training room, testing edges and seeing the weapons that were available to Aithne and the other hopefuls. Every so often, they would pick up two of the swords on display and whack at each other for a bit, just for show, then ooh and ah over a pretty knife or scowl at a spear.

Really, they were spying. The students at the academy were always bothering their teachers for leads on how to gain Master Uthar’s favor. The man seemed lazy to Jolee, capitalizing on the energies of the students, but everyone in the building bought into the system lock, stock, and barrel. And if you listened to the students long enough, you could get a pretty good idea of what their instructors were looking for.

It could also be fairly entertaining. Every now and then one of the academy students would jump up screaming and try to kill their teacher, trying to climb the ranks, or else just provoked enough to lose their temper. Of course, the teacher slammed the kid down soon enough. So far Jolee hadn’t seen any deaths. The teachers usually laughed and instructed the children to let their humiliation fuel their hate, make them stronger. But the constant battling kept things lively.

And every so often, you saw something else. What had Carth worried now was that Aithne had just come through and whispered something to one of the support instructors, handed them some kind of datapad. What had him bothered was that she was using this morning when they were waiting for all the Sith except Dustil to filter out of the academy, when she had him and Jolee listening for leads on prestige, to work on a few little leads of her own, ones she hadn’t discussed with either of them.

“The sooner Liat secures a win in this competition, the better, sonny,” Jolee said.

In truth, he was worried too. He had a feeling Aithne had continued nosing around in the shadier aspects around the Sith academy after they had discovered evidence for Dustil. The datapad she’d just handed over—he thought that was Aithne electing not to trust in Yuthura’s good nature after the two of them fought Master Uthar together in the tomb of Naga Sadow, following through on the advantage Uthar had offered her. He had believed Aithne had seen something in Yuthura, had perceived the compassion, loss, and loneliness that still lay beneath the Twi’lek’s ambitions. He had hoped the faith Aithne had demonstrated in her was a sign that she was going to try and reclaim Yuthura from her Darkness. That she was moving to sabotage the Twi’lek now was prudent, perhaps—Yuthura had been saturated in the mores of the Sith for a long time now. She was not used to feeling as vulnerable as Aithne had made her yesterday, and she was used to terminating threats like the one Aithne had presented. Yet this second, more insidious betrayal of Yuthura was concerning, as was the fact that Aithne had committed it alone.

Jolee watched as she moved away from the Sith instructor, heading for the exit to the valley. She was going to the tombs.

“Should we go with her?” Carth asked him.

Jolee shook his head. “If the master needs us, she’ll let us know,” he said. “Until she does, we should keep following her orders.”

The lass wouldn’t appreciate a couple of babysitters checking up on her every few minutes. She was a grown woman and more than capable of handling herself. A hard worker, too, taking advantage of every hour they had to make herself more essential to the Sith. But despite his words to Carth, Jolee had a bad feeling Aithne was very much in need of help.

Some hours after her departure from the academy but still hours before the time they had agree to return to the younger Onasi, Aithne returned to the Sith academy. She still did not seek Jolee or Carth out. Jolee heard some of the other students discussing her. The Sith students knew she had been the last person to talk with Kel Algwinn before he left the academy. They knew she had been the first to memorize and interpret the Code of the Sith for Master Uthar. They were aware that both of their senior instructors were impressed by and wary of her, so they were impressed and wary in turn. Jolee thought some of her competitors had begun marking her progress. They’d want to either steal from or sabotage her.

She’d want to keep well ahead of them. As Jolee had wandered the academy, doing odd tasks for support staff and examining the wall hangings, he had heard tell of a rogue assassin droid in the tomb of Marka Ragnos which the instructors wanted reprogrammed or eliminated. Carth had mentioned hearing something himself—something about the last headmaster of the academy, a personal enemy of Master Uthar.

He was following up on that now, following around the instructor who had mentioned it to a student. As for Jolee, his bladder was calling.

The privy was away from the training room, back toward the mess hall. Getting there—or anywhere within the academy—meant crossing back through the central rotunda. So Jolee happened to be there when Shaardan, that young ass they had met outside the docks the other day, came bouncing up to Uthar with a sword.

Uthar greeted the boy. “Ah, what is this you bring me, Shaardan?”

Shaardan extended an ancient-looking vibrosword to the master. “It is none other than the sword of Ajunta Pall, Master,” he said, eyes lit up with greed and self-satisfaction.

Uthar took it, examined it, and then violently cast it aside. He caught the boy in a partial Stasis, and Darkness surged around them. “Fool,” he told the boy. “All the trouble you went to for your deception, and you did not even make an effort to verify the sword’s authenticity?”

Fear reeked from Shaardan now. He knew he was a dead man. “Master, what—what do you mean?”

Uthar extended his hand, and Jolee watched as the boy began to suffocate in front of him. “There is no place for fools among the Sith. Begone!”

Jolee watched for the twenty to thirty seconds it took for the boy to fall unconscious. He would die within the next few minutes. Someone had fooled him, tricked him into presenting this false sword to Master Uthar. And Jolee had a feeling he knew who.

As he passed nearby the kitchens, he sensed another act of violence blossom out from elsewhere in the academy. There were often shouts and screams coming from the Sith interrogation room, but this shout sounded different: it was one of anger and surprise rather than pain. He heard a lightsaber ignite—from there and not the opposing dueling room. Battle cries. Jolee closed his eyes.

At the very instant he reached out with his senses, he felt a spirit extinguished—one who had died in great pain, shame, and despair, having betrayed intelligence he had sought to guard with his life. He had been tortured, but the cause of his death was not his torture but his broken heart.

Nearby, a Dark and twisted spirit reached out to crush another, unfallen, but corrupted by recent deception and violence. Jolee turned away to seek the privy.

He had thought something like this might occur within the academy. The culture of this place was pervasive. It was all too easy for anyone within to buy into the lie that they needed to conform to the patterns of violence and betrayal in order to excel. And the lass was working against her own history, her own habits, even if she didn’t know it. She might think she was doing what she had to, but she was walking a more perilous path than Jolee thought anyone with them but Bastila was aware.

There was a possibility their secondary purpose here might save her, that if the competition to achieve the Star Map drew Aithne toward the Darkness, her mission to save the pilot’s son might act as a counter to her lower instincts. He hoped so. But then, Yuthura’s need had not held her back from poisoning the woman. Aithne was capable of greater callousness and cruelty than she had known before she came here. And he feared that now, even if she turned back from the Dark road she had started down, she would not forget.

AITHNE

Aithne met the others for the midday meal, as they had agreed they would last night. If her face looked a bit drawn and her eyes a bit shadowed, they were good enough not to comment on it. But she could sense their concern for her—and Jolee’s silent condemnation. He wasn’t talking, but he had seen or heard something today which he had not approved of.

Aithne didn’t look at him. This morning, she’d let one of her competitors destroy himself with his own laziness and ambition. She hadn’t killed him. That he had died was his own fault for trying to profit off her efforts. The Mandalorian who’d died in the interrogation room had been a dead man anyway. The Sith weren’t going to let him live, and she couldn’t have freed him without giving herself away. And she’d killed the man who had brought him to the point where his death had been such a probability. As far as she was concerned, she’d advanced her position quite a bit at minimal risk this morning. She doubted it would take her until tomorrow evening to convince Uthar she was the best candidate to join the Sith, and once she did that, she could stop being one.

As for Yuthura—she knew both Carth and Jolee had seen her talking with Adrenas. They’d probably thought she wasn’t going to follow through on the advantage Master Uthar had given her. Yuthura hadn’t always been a terrible person. Her reasons for joining the Sith were sympathetic ones, and Aithne had the feeling that the woman wasn’t beyond reason or redemption. But she was also a powerful Sith about as on her guard of Aithne as she could be now. She would almost certainly be planning to kill Aithne in the tomb of Naga Sadow as soon as the pair of them struck down Master Uthar, however friendly they’d been so far. Aithne was just fine making that a little harder for her.

She was doing all of this for the mission, to get them away from this horrible place just as soon as she could. If Jolee had been point on this, he would have poked around the tombs stealing artifacts and been outpaced by the others within a few days—if he didn’t open his mouth when he shouldn’t and get himself made and slaughtered in an hour.

Still. At least he was smart enough not to start reading her Jedi lectures on nonviolence in the middle of a Sith academy. And she didn’t think he’d told Carth if he knew any more than about Yuthura’s poison. That was good too. Onasi had enough on his mind.

They were a festive crew during dinner. Nobody felt like talking, and Carth and Aithne both only picked at their food, which was a shame, because the Sith students actually ate pretty well. The instructors knew they had to be energized to go out plundering and murdering every day. Finally, Jolee stood and picked up their trays. “Ah, let’s just get things over and done with,” he said. “There’ll be no living with either of you until we do.”
Aithne felt Carth’s gratitude spike at that. Aithne adjusted the datapad in her pocket, and when Jolee had taken their trays to the dish return, the three of them headed back to the dormitories to Dustil’s quarters.

He was waiting for them, just as he had said he would be. It still amazed Aithne how much the kid looked like his father. It was like someone had printed Dustil off a copier, gone back and made a couple adjustments with a marker, then called it a day. The difference was in the feel. Dustil had all Carth’s strength and passion, the same basic core of honesty and fairness. Both Carth and Dustil were deeply, deeply angry, and bitter and distrustful besides. But Carth’s anger was still basically righteous. Dustil’s had become twisted. There was a malicious aspect to it completely missing in his father. And while Carth burned hot and then cooled down as his reason and good sense cooled his temper, Aithne had a feeling that Dustil never really cooled completely down. He was aggressive where Carth was protective. He had had to be.

At least this time he didn’t try and yank her into his room. Aithne had almost hurt him for that, Carth’s son or not. She understood his panic when he had seen them there, both for his father and for himself, and it had been more important in the moment to convince Dustil they were not a threat. But if he did anything like that again, he would learn why it was a terrible idea.

They filed into Dustil’s quarters, and the kid shut the door behind them. “Back already?” he demanded. “So tell me, Father, just where is this proof you promised?” His tone was harsh, his stance uninviting, but behind both, Aithne could hear a genuine hunger in him. He wanted Carth to come through for him. More than he even wanted the Sith proven evil, he wanted his father to prove himself reliable. Worthy of his trust and dependence. He wanted a reason to believe in Carth again.

Aithne pulled Uthar’s datapad out of her pocket and handed it to Carth, and Carth in turn handed it to Dustil. “We found a datapad we want you to look at,” Carth told him, taking off his helmet once again. “You knew someone named Selene?”

Dustil took the datapad, surprised. “Selene? She—she was a girl from Korriban. She knew my master. She’s the one who convinced me to stop fighting, that it would be better if I joined the academy. We started together. It changed everything for—where did you get this?”

“Look at it,” Carth insisted. “It belongs to Master Uthar, doesn’t it?”

Dustil examined the pad, the intricate design they had noted on it the day before that had meant they had needed to take the pad itself, that had made taking it such a danger. “Yes, it’s his,” Dustil said, beginning to scan the contents. As he read, Aithne saw the grief and anger rise upon his face. He reminded Aithne more of Carth than ever, every time Carth told her of Telos. “But . . . he told me . . . he said that she’d been lost on a mission in the valley,” he said, and his voice, already dropped to a man’s register, became that of a boy once again. “This . . . this says that they—”

“—Killed her because she was hindering your progress,” Carth finished. “Superiority at any cost, Dustil. There’s your evil. Or can you live with that?”

His voice contained both pity for what Dustil had endured and a challenge for the boy’s future. Aithne saw Dustil rose to the challenge. He met his father’s eyes, jaw tight.

“No. No, I can’t,” he said. “I . . . I had no idea. They lied to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Aithne added. Dustil’s eyes swept to hers.

“Now will you leave here?” Carth demanded.

“I don’t—I have some other friends here,” Dustil started. “I have to warn them what’s going on.”

Aithne stepped up to him. “Dustil, most of them already know,” she told him gently. “If there are others like Kel Algwinn and your friend, locals who didn’t know they had a choice, or people like you, captives who became Sith because it was better than what they were before—you can try. But the second you do, you’ll be vulnerable. They’ll think you’re weak, and you’ll be in danger. If you want to defect, if you want to go home again, the best way to do it is to do it before they know you’ve changed your mind.”

“I—Telos is gone,” Dustil said. “Mother’s gone. This has been my home for four years. These have been my—I called them my family!” His eyes flashed, and his hatred spiked, and he looked at the datapad he held with sudden loathing.

“You didn’t have a choice, Dustil. I get that,” Carth said. “But now you do. You can leave here with us. We have more to do here, but we’ll be finished in less than three days’ time. Right?” He turned to Aithne. Aithne thought about it, then nodded. It was likely.

“Your mother’s gone, but I’m still here,” Carth told Dustil. “I—I love you, Dustil. I’ve always loved you. I’m sorry I failed you for so long. Let me help you now.”

Dustil hesitated. He looked from Carth to Aithne. “You’re right,” he said finally. “If I tell the wrong person, I won’t survive. They’ll kill me in days. Those students in the shyrack caves, the ones Master Uthar wants killed—some of them were friends of mine, and if the monsters in that cave don’t kill them, one of the hopefuls will.”

“We’ll try to get them out in the morning,” Aithne promised. “I don’t think we’ll be able to take them with us, but we can try to clear their way to the port. And we do have room for you.”

“I’m proud of you, Dustil,” Carth added. “You aren’t hanging on to a lie after you see it for what it is. Not everyone could do that.”

“So how do you want me—what’s the plan?” Dustil asked.

Aithne thought. “They’re watching Carth and Jolee,” she said. “Most of the academy thinks they’re my slaves, but even if they do, they know they’re my spies, probably bodyguards, and possibly assassins. If they leave here before I do, someone’s definitely going to notice and know something is up. Your best chance is going to be on your own. Do you go to Dreshdae often? We met a couple of hopefuls who have seen you there once or twice.”

“I go there sometimes for a drink with some of the others or to get supplies they don’t have in the academy,” Dustil answered. Carth’s expression shifted, and Aithne said what he was thinking for him, so Dustil could be annoyed at her instead.

“You’re too young to drink.” Dustil scowled, but Aithne shook her head. “But since you do, and I doubt the Korriban bartenders check the ident cards of the Sith, it can help us. Go to Dreshdae—tomorrow or the next day, whichever you think will be less suspicious. We have some colleagues there, and I’m going to call them. One of them is a Twi’lek girl about your age, or close enough it won’t seem weird or even creepy if you decide you want to follow her back to her ship and spend a little more time with her.”

Aithne raised an eyebrow at Dustil. “Don’t you dare be weird or creepy,” she warned him. “I’ll tell the scary Wookiee she usually goes around with to stand down, but there’ll be another Jedi following her to make sure you’re both safe, and if you even look at Mission wrong, she’ll knock you into next week and then hand you to the Wookiee. I want you to think of Mission like my daughter. Understand?”

Dustil looked amused. “Don’t flirt with the kid getting me away from the planet I’ve been trapped on for four years. I get it. Is she at least cute enough for this to work?”

“She’s cute, alright, but probably not like you’re thinking,” Carth said. “You’ll be looking for a Rutian Twi’lek in combat gear, not some apprentice dancer. Fast-talking, smart, armed, and capable. And the best place for you to meet her will probably be around the shops or gambling dens, where she’s been in charge of obtaining better cash flow for our assignment for the past couple of days. She’s fourteen, Dustil. This is a good plan. It’d make sense for someone like you to want to make friends with her, but keep it innocent, okay? From me and not just Aithne.”

Dustil looked between them once again. “And this little girl’s a colleague? Interesting.” He thought about it a moment. “Fine,” he said at last. “Just make sure she’s there and isn’t scared when I start talking to her. And that her Jedi bodyguard isn’t too trigger-happy. We’re going to have to make it believable. And you better be back at your ship too pretty quick after. The Sith’ll buy me gone overnight, but not too much longer than that before they start suspecting I’ve deserted. Also, until I’m ready to leave, I probably shouldn’t see you much.”

He looked at Aithne. “You’re alright. You’re in the competition. You’re trying to become a Sith. It makes sense you might want to work together. But you’re right that Father and this other man are suspicious. They’ve been here twice already, and I don’t want to take the chance that no one’s noticed.”

“We’ll set it up, Dustil,” Carth promised. “And thank you.”

“And the ‘other man’ is Jolee Bindo, in case you were wondering,” Aithne added. “He’s with us too.”

Dustil examined Jolee. “Another Jedi? I read about you before. Huh. You guys really are playing with fire, aren’t you?”

“Every day. Want to join us?” Aithne invited him.

Dustil smiled slowly. “I might,” he said. “I thought you’d just get me off the planet, but if you’ve got a kid younger than me working with you, hopping ship with you might be more interesting than it sounds.”

“Hang on, Aithne,” Carth protested. “Dustil—he’s not ready to do the kinds of things we’re doing.”

Aithne tilted her head at Dustil’s lightsaber. “I don’t know. He seems smart, armed, and capable to me,” she told Onasi. She could see Dustil was uncomfortable with the idea of a girl his age working on his father’s ship, participating in whatever dangerous mission Carth was involved in. She could see he was jealous. If they wanted Dustil to feel like more than a burden, more than a simple rescue they’d made because he was Carth’s son, they needed to make him a part of the team. If Carth wanted to reconnect with his son, he would need to start by respecting him.

Dustil chuckled darkly, but seemed open to the idea, and Carth saw it. “Huh,” Carth said. “Well. I guess you don’t do things halfway, do you, son?”

“I guess I don’t.”

“We’ll play it like you suggest,” Aithne told him. “I’ll come back later after I’ve contacted Ebon Hawk. Play it like I’m trying to make an ally of the last man to make Sith and give you a date and time for the rendezvous with Mission. Carth and Jolee will see you back there when we’re all away. Oh—and here, I’m Liat Ser’rida.”

Dustil frowned. “Liat—but she was one of the biggest names behind the Jedi who left to join the Mandalorian Wars.”

Aithne shrugged. “And then she disappeared, killed or deserted right after. It made for a decent alias.”

“I guess,” Dustil said doubtfully, searching her face. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“See you, son,” Carth said, donning his helmet again. He led the three of them back out into the corridor.

“Thank you,” Carth murmured to Aithne as they left. “For everything.”

“Anytime,” Aithne told him. “We need to call the ship. Then I need to head back out to the valley.”

“Got plans out there, do you?” Jolee asked. His meaning was clear.

Aithne looked at him. “I’ve arranged to meet Lashowe there to work together to obtain a lost Jedi holocron, taken away from the archaeologists there by a naughty tuk’ata.”

“And you’ll be going alone, will you?”

Aithne held Jolee’s gaze. “I will. She noticed your behavior back in Dreshdae, Bindle. She knows you’re not just any servant and guesses that Card’s not. I had to promise I’d come alone as a show of good faith.”

“And are you going in good faith?” Jolee wanted to know.

Now Aithne looked away. Truth told, Mekel was the biggest remaining threat among her competitors. Lashowe had shown herself to be a planner, but she didn’t have enough gumption to see her through the competition. But if Aithne could ruin her plans, it would be an even clearer demonstration to Master Uthar of her own commitment. Shaardan and the sword of Ajunta Pall had proved her cunning. Contrasting her performance with Lashowe tonight with Shaardan’s weak attempt to take advantage of her this morning could only work in their favor.

“Ai—Master,” Carth started, face creasing. “You’re already way ahead of all the others.”

“And if I slow down for a minute, any one of them could catch up,” Aithne answered. “We can’t have that. I don’t want to still be doing this next year. Come on. Time’s wasting.”

Mission agreed to meet Dustil the day after tomorrow in the cantina. She’d leave Zaalbar aboard Ebon Hawk so she would look more open to making friends than she usually did, but as Aithne had discussed with Dustil, Juhani would follow Mission discreetly to make sure that she stayed safe. It wouldn’t do for some other Sith to kill Mission just for fun in between the ship and the cantina.

“I’m glad you talked him into getting out of there,” Mission said over the commlink. “But . . . uh, what kind of kid am I looking for here? I don’t want to take the wrong Sith home with me by accident.”

“You won’t,” Aithne promised. “You’ll know Dustil when you see him, Mission, I promise. He’s nice, too, or about as nice as anyone can be who’s been either a prisoner of the Sith or a Sith himself the past four years. And me and Carth have made him promise not to be weird or creepy.”

“Well, he’ll probably have to be a little creepy,” Mission reasoned. “Or I’ll have to be a little bit skanky. It’s only fast girls take a guy home the first time they meet him. Or the ones who want something. Huh. Maybe I’ll pretend I want to rob him. Hey, Aithne—thanks for trusting me with this. I’ll come through for you, I promise.”

“I know you will. And be nice to Dustil, okay? He’s been through a lot.”

“I believe it,” Mission told her. “He can’t have had a fun time living with the Sith for all these years. Alright, Aithne. Over and out.” She signed off.

Aithne put the comlink back into her bag and nodded to Carth and Jolee. “It’s set up,” she said. “I want you two to stay here for now. Keep the door locked. I think you’ve probably kicked your heels around the shady corners of the enclave for long enough today. Stay safe. I’ll be back later tonight.”

“You sure you don’t want backup?” Carth asked.

Aithne shook her head. “I’ll be fine,” she said again. She put her sword down then and reached into the hidden compartment of her bag, drawing out the double-bladed lightsaber she had prepared ahead of time instead. She felt Bindo’s eyes focus in hard on it. She ignored him. Lashowe used a lightsaber.

Aithne left the academy and made her way across the rocky wastelands of Korriban. It was still a couple hours before supper would be served at the academy, but with the mountains all around, the light was fading fast. The tuk’ata would emerge from the caves soon to hunt the nocturnal insects and small, verminous wildlife of Korriban.

The Sith archaeologists and tomb raiders across the valley were beginning to pack up their things as Aithne approached the northern end of the burial grounds. Lashowe was waiting for her there.

In truth, Aithne hadn’t been too impressed by the Sith she’d met so far. They recruited and promoted children like Dustil Onasi long before they were fully trained or ready for the war. Bastila was several years older and still under supervision of the Jedi Council. Juhani, Dustil’s rank equivalent among the Jedi, was far more qualified to fight than any of Dustil’s contemporaries. Despite the constant preaching of advantage at any cost, many of the Sith Aithne had met were also far too quick to trust, up to and including Yuthura Ban, supposedly a senior instructor. They were so starved of healthy friendships, they seized hungrily at every alliance opportunity, and it had killed them by the half-dozens even in the few days Aithne had been here. And the higher ranking Sith wrote off the massive loss of life that occurred as a culling of the weak, rather than the enormous waste of talent and martial strength it was. The dark glamor of the Sith, the promise of power, and charismatic agents like Yuthura Ban could quickly overwhelm the Republic with the force of numbers alone—if they weren’t so industriously murdering their own people.

She’d seen too how the greed and opportunism at the heart of the Sith ethos led to tunnel vision, laziness, and lack of discipline. She wouldn’t have thought it before she came to Korriban, but now she would be willing to bet that pound for pound, the Republics were the better qualified fighting force.

Lashowe had been almost too easy to manipulate. A touch of flattery, a bit of deceptive insecurity, and the girl had folded like a bedsheet. She hated working on her own, hated risking her own neck. And she was vain enough that she honestly thought she could come out the better in any confrontation between them, which meant she really hadn’t been paying much attention.

Aithne jogged up to the blonde girl and smiled, just as if she didn’t intend to betray her. Lashowe’s returning smile was just as false. “You’re here,” she said, rising. “Any later and we would have had to abandon this. I've been calling to the tuk’ata mother in their language—that wretched beast that ate the holocron. Be careful. She’s a tough beast. It’s why the archaeologists haven’t killed her already.”

Three tuk’ata had indeed loped up behind the two of them. As they saw no other tuk’ata, just two human women, they were instantly aggressive. Lashowe ignited her lightsaber, a single-handed red blade, and Aithne ignited her own. She saw Lashowe’s eyes flick to the new weapon, felt her moment of uncertainty, but then Aithne was already upon the creatures.

She still didn’t really like the saberstaff variants of the forms that she had studied. They didn’t come as naturally to her as dual-wielding, and her choice to use double-bladed weapons upon Korriban had been more a function of appearing less like Aithne Moran than anything else. Still, because her primary sparring partner on Dantooine and since had been Bastila, Aithne was quite familiar with the changes in stance required to make the lightsaber forms work with a longer-range saber.

She opted for an aggressive form once again, the simple, brutal butchery that worked better against animal opponents than the more sophisticated dueling tactics that were better used against smarter enemies. Fighting tuk’ata wasn’t unlike fighting kath hounds on the Dantooine plains, except the tuk’ata were as likely to strike with their hooves as with their horns and somewhat less likely to bite until they had a creature down. Like the kath hounds, the tuk’ata worked together. But between herself and Lashowe, the beasts were dead in less than a minute.

Lashowe sliced the stomach of the largest open, and Aithne grimaced at the sour smell that emanated from the body as she did so. Lashowe reached into the bleeding, stinking cavity without a fuss, though, and drew out a small, multisided, glowing device.

“Wonderful,” she said. “And still intact. We make a better team than I thought.” She rose and stuck the bloody holocron into her pocket. “I’ll just take this back to Master Uthar. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to mention you.”

Aithne hadn’t bothered to switch off her blade. “I’ll be taking that back, Lashowe, not you,” she murmured.

Lashowe looked up at her, scowling. “The plan was to take it back together.”

Aithne held the younger woman’s gaze. “Then why didn’t you just say so? Admit it, Lashowe. You were happy enough of my help with this one, but it was never your plan to share the credit.”

Lashowe’s eyes flashed. “So what if I didn’t?” she demanded. “You can afford to give me this. You brought in your thugs and your Jedi training, which you’ve obviously kept up for longer than you wanted any of us to think; everyone knows you’ve already killed or frightened away half of us. You’re not getting this holocron too.”

“Could you have gotten it by yourself, do you think?” Aithne asked softly.

“It was my idea!” Lashowe snapped. “Could you have gotten it without my bond with the tuk’ata?”

“Lashowe—can you take that holocron from me now?”

Lashowe’s saber ignited. “You’ll have it over my dead body!” She attacked, but Aithne was ready.

This time, she adopted Makashi, controlling the flow of battle from the start. As their lightsabers reflected back on their faces in the growing darkness, Aithne saw Lashowe’s blue eyes widen and grow afraid as her unpracticed attacks failed to penetrate Aithne’s defense, as Aithne took the offensive and began to press her back. Lashowe knew she would die a second before Aithne’s last stroke fell. The last light of Korriban’s star fell on her betrayed blue gaze, childlike and hurt. Then Aithne’s blow caught her full on in the side, and she crumpled to the stone.

Aithne knelt beside her to remove the holocron from her pocket. Lashowe laughed, a death rattle escaping through her windpipe. “I—I was going to let you live, you know. Stupid of me.” She coughed once, and then lay still.

Aithne stayed on her knees beside the woman, staring down at her. Yes. It had been stupid. She had never once considered letting Lashowe live. Why hadn’t she, she wondered?

Suddenly a hideous wave of rage and anger rose in her, and she rose from the ground and stormed away, leaving Lashowe’s body in the shadow of the tombs.

Why had she felt the need to kill her, she wondered? Why? Lashowe hadn’t been a threat. She’d been an insecure bully, unable to make a single move without a friend holding her hand. She had no initiative and no courage; alone, she never would have been able to earn the respect of the Sith instructors in time to keep Aithne from dominating the competition. And she wasn’t a killer. Not really. Aithne had known that from the moment they had met.

So why? Because Yuthura had recommended it? Because it was the way they did things here? Because she’d simply disliked Lashowe, and had next to no respect for the woman? None of those were good enough reasons for out-and-out murder, the waste of a person’s life.

She’d vomited when Carth had confronted her over her torture of the Sith in Dreshdae. Today, she’d tortured that Mandalorian, who had deserved it so much less. And she’d felt next to nothing. Written his death off as probably inevitable anyway.

Stars and skies, it was too easy here, to fall into the pattern, to think the way they wanted you to think. She’d been here less than three days and already she had done things she could never take back. She’d told herself it was necessary—to get to the Star Map, to leave quickly before someone realized her identity or the identity of any one of her friends. But had it been necessary to do all that she had done? Because getting to Naga Sadow had depended upon impressing Master Uthar, she had fallen into the trap of actually trying to impress him, actually behaving as the Sith did—and the best, most successful of them.

Force, she could feel Revan in her head, the way she felt in every one of her memories—cold, ruthless, and pragmatic. Justifying each atrocity she committed with reasoning that seemed so sound, until she realized what she had done. She could see within herself the same ruthless calculus Revan’s horrible little program on Kashyyyk had seen, the same terrible potential Vrook and Bastila had been warning her against like two doom-saying carrion-eaters since she started training. It was sickening to realize they’d been right.

Against the background of Korriban’s old rage and hatreds, Aithne’s self-loathing gained new strength. As she passed out of the valley and climbed the path back to the academy, she felt the entire planet urging her to despair, to give in to the inevitable. Korriban had resisted her since her arrival, now it called, as if it would welcome her at last. Join us, join us, it seemed to say. You are one like us. She felt the power she could take from this place, the power she could exercise over these children and deluded idiots who lined up so readily for their own destruction. She was smarter and more careful than all of them; she could dominate. She felt it. She could probably have them all by this time next week, ready to follow her against Malak himself.

For what, though? For what? Aithne remembered the shade of Ajunta Pall she had met this morning, bound to his tomb for millennia, lost in his regrets. So tired of all the violence and the betrayal, the loneliness and misery it had brought him. The only thing he’d wanted in the end was to return to his old masters, to be at peace within the Force. That would not be her.

She entered the academy, pacing quickly, trying to drive the Darkness away through the force of physical activity. The walk from the valley had been a long one. The Sith had begun to go to bed. Everywhere she looked, lights had begun to flick out under door frames. The mess was dark. She’d missed dinner. It was fine. She had some lovely ration bars inside her pack. And anyway, she wasn’t hungry.

She made her way to Dustil’s room one more time. She’d promised to fill him in on Mission and the rendezvous, but as she turned down the hall to go to his room, Aithne realized she wanted to see him, wanted to talk to a Sith. She didn’t want Carth’s fear or judgment, Jolee’s silent sorrow. She didn’t want the panic she could feel streaming over her connection to Bastila back on the ship. She wanted someone who knew the Dark Side, who knew what it could do. She wanted someone else who wanted to resist.

She knocked on Dustil’s door frame, and Carth’s son opened the door for her and stepped aside. She followed him into his room one more time. He’d begun to pack, she saw. The locker at the foot of his bed was open, and some of his possessions were out, surrounding a leather military backpack nearby. There was also a datapad on his bed that had not been there before. The kind that usually had military orders.

Dustil saw her eyes move to it. “You and Father got here just in time,” he told her. “Those came in this evening. They want me to ship out to the war next week. That there’s a copy of my assignment to a cruiser, and a copy of the bounty bulletin on you and the others. Just in case I happen to see you. They really want you guys bad.”

“They do,” Aithne confirmed.

“You most of all,” Dustil observed. “You know the bounty to kill you is higher than the one to take Shan captive, and if we—if the Sith can turn her, this war is in the bag.”

“I know,” Aithne answered.

Dustil watched her. “Hey. Are you okay?” he asked finally. “You seem a little—”

Aithne ran her hands through her hair. She paced around the room. “Mission’s going to meet you at the cantina closest to the docks. Day after tomorrow. She’ll be there right around the midday meal. With any luck, your father, Jolee, and I will be just a couple of hours behind you.”

“Great,” Dustil said. He was still watching her. “Look, could you sit down or something? You’re making me nervous.”

Aithne sat down on a durasteel barrel of supplies that had apparently been delivered to Dustil’s room this afternoon as well. She drew her knees up to her chin, looking down at the floor. “How many people have you killed, Dustil?” she asked him.

Dustil couldn’t have been expecting the question, but he answered at once. “I killed my chief competitor at the trial last year. It’s how you get respect around here, by showing you won’t hesitate, that you can be strong. It was him or me. So, I chose me. Sometimes I think about it, why they make us fight like that when they should want to use everyone they could. I . . . I worried about Selene. Before they killed her anyway.”

His face turned dark, and so did his emotions. “Why? Having regrets? I hear you’ve been doing a pretty thorough job carving up your own competition. You need to win for some reason? Win quick?”

“The tomb of Naga Sadow,” Aithne admitted. “That map Revan and Malak discovered, the reason they founded the academy here. We need the coordinates on it.”

“It’s incomplete,” Dustil told her.

Aithne nodded. “We know. But there are others around the galaxy. We’re hoping to use their combined coordinates to find what we believe may be the source of a lot of Malak’s ships and weaponry, the reason why he’s been able to mobilize his forces so well in this war. It certainly isn’t his people management skills.”

Dustil laughed, a single, ironic bark. “Yeah, or his people’s observation skills.” He picked up the datapad orders from the end of his bed and flicked on an integrated holo. He cycled it twice, comparing the sketch image from Taris to her appearance. “You’re prettier in the holo than you are in a Sith uniform, but anyone looking hard enough should still be able to tell that it’s you.”

“People see what they expect,” Aithne told him. “You’ve had an advantage, seeing me next to your father. Had him covered up since we got here. Me? When we first landed, I was Exchange. Our ship is registered that way, so it made sense to people. When I came trying to get into the academy, I turned into a Revanchist deserter. Again, the story made sense, so no one was looking for me to be the lady who stole Bastila Shan off Taris.”

“Hah. You’re more than that. If Malak wants your friend alive enough to burn that whole world out of the sky, but he wants you dead even more—” he shook his head. “I don’t know. So. You’re freaking out over the way things are around here?”

His tone was callous, but the fellow feeling behind it was genuine, Aithne thought. Dustil really was willing to help her. He was a good person beneath all the anger and bitterness. Like his father.

She shook her head. “I’m freaking out over the way I am around here,” she corrected. “I—the same kind of mindset your father and I were holding up as proof these people are the last ones you should call family, proof you needed to get out of here just as soon as you could—I am really very good at it. I joked with your father that if we couldn’t find the proof you wanted yesterday, we could always use me as an example. But I think I was right.”

“But you’re Republic, aren’t you? Probably a Jedi, even, though it doesn’t say in the docs. I can sense you through the Force.” Dustil’s simple dichotomy reminded Aithne of Mission back on Taris, and her heart hurt.

She tilted her hand in the universal gesture for kind of. “A lot of Malak’s people started out Jedi, Dustil. And Exar Kun’s back before that. As for me, the Council basically strongarmed me into training and rushed me through in about six weeks a couple months ago. Emergency recruit, basically. They haven’t been too thrilled about it, and I’m starting to see why.” She stared at the wall. “I have killed so many people, Dustil. I’ve lost count. And sometimes it’s hard to even care. I know I should, but when a person’s bad enough, dumb enough, or sometimes even when I just feel what I’m doing is important enough, death can just be . . . expedient. It almost feels natural. And I know I should be better than that. I know people in general should be. But I’m not. Since I’ve landed on Korriban, over just the past few days, I have lied, backstabbed, tortured, and murdered like I’d been trained to it for years. Like you. Except I don’t have that excuse. I just seem to have the talent.”

“I’d heard,” Dustil admitted. “They can’t stop talking about you out there. One of the most promising hopefuls to hit the academy since anyone can remember. After Kel and Shaardan I think the senior Sith are all a little scared, even Master Uthar and Master Yuthura. Maybe especially them.”

“Lashowe too now,” Aithne told him.

“Lashowe?” Dustil repeated.

Aithne nodded. “Killed her outside in the valley. Over a stupid holocron. She planned to screw me out of the credit when we’d both worked to get it, but as she lay there, dying, she told me that if she’d managed it, she would’ve left me alive. And I knew she was telling the truth. Why did I kill her? I don’t know why I did it.” Her voice fell to a whisper. Her eyes stung, and the room had gone blurry.

Dustil sat across from her on his bed, listening. “You are pretty good at this,” he admitted. She heard the unease in his voice. No fear—he could tell she wasn’t here to hurt him. But he was disconcerted and disturbed. Dustil Onasi was a Sith, but Aithne suddenly knew he had never done anything like what she had done since her arrival on Korriban.

“Yeah.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” he asked finally.

Aithne shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and she looked over and into Dustil’s eyes. “And I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come here like this and just put all of it on you—”

“No, that’s okay,” Dustil told her. His face had an interesting expression. “It’s actually good to know not everyone with Father is a saint or hero. Good to know one of his friends has your kind of guts.”

“Even someone who’s done the kinds of things I have?” Aithne challenged him.

Dustil considered this. “You aren’t like the rest of them out there,” he answered finally. “You’re here. You know it’s not okay to do the things you’ve done, that it’s not normal to feel okay about it. And that means you haven’t really embraced the Dark Side like the others. You’re still fighting. I guess like Father and you are going to want me to.” He paused. “Will he leave me again? With the Jedi?”

His nose wrinkled, and Aithne guessed what Dustil thought of that.

“I don’t think that will be good for either of you right away,” she told him. “You’re going to need time to recover from the past four years, to get it through your feelings and not just your head that he didn’t just throw you away down here. He’s going to need time to accept that you’re not dead, to get to know the person you are now and feel good about your being safe. Then, it’ll be up to you.” Aithne shrugged. “You have the power to be a Jedi. You know that. And for what it’s worth, I think you could be a good one. You’ve got a good enough head on your shoulders, and I can tell that four years with the Sith might have made you bold and aggressive, encouraged you to embrace a lot of your anger, but they haven’t managed to erase enough of your kindness and essential decency. But I don’t believe in forcing anybody to do anything. If you don’t want to become a Jedi, don’t be one.”

“You’d let me help you and Father, as I am, without training?” Dustil asked her. “Father will let me?”

“He’d be a hypocrite not to,” Aithne pointed out. “That girl you’re meeting day after tomorrow, Mission? I consider her my responsibility, sure, ever since she up and decided she was coming with her friend, who swore a life-debt to me. But she is our colleague, not just some tagalong kid. She’s fought at our side, and Carth’s been an advocate for her right and ability to do that. She’s an important part of our team. If Carth decides he’s going to make you stay safe on the ship just because you’re his kid, you can tell him he’s being stupid. You’re probably better trained and more dangerous than Mission.”

“Huh. I would hope so,” Dustil muttered.

Aithne smiled at him. “Not to say you would be free and clear of any need to train or practice. We all work to keep our skills up, and you’re gonna be less experienced and know less than most of us, purely because you happen to be sixteen years old. We all work to teach Mission all we can to keep her safe. We’ll do the same for you, and I’d want you to learn from the Jedi with us too. Ways to use your abilities that won’t always stem from pain, anger, or hate.”

“The Light Side,” Dustil grunted, unimpressed.

“It can have its uses.”

“Says the best Sith hopeful in the academy,” Dustil retorted.

“Yes,” Aithne answered him. Dustil looked taken aback, then thoughtful.

“I’ll think about it. They always told me the Light Side was weak.”

“Just different.”

“Can you resist it?” Dustil asked her pointedly. Aithne looked back at him, genuinely considering her answer.

“I think—if I can’t, it’ll be because I’m not strong enough. Because I’m not good enough, not because the Light Side isn’t,” she answered finally. “In a lot of ways, the Light Side is the harder path. Tempering your passions instead of giving in, considering your actions instead of behaving according to more primal instincts. Doing what’s right instead of what is easy.” She trailed off, pensive.

She unfolded her legs and leaned back into the corner of Dustil’s room. Somehow, she felt easier within herself now. Somehow, the old adage held true: a burden shared was a burden halved. And it had helped her that Dustil, while not excusing her actions, had not been overtly shocked or saddened by them either.

“Thank you,” she told him. “For listening.”

“Hey. I get the feeling we’ll be working together for a while,” Dustil said. “Might as well get to know each other.”

Aithne smiled. “That’s almost just what Carth said when we started to get to know one another,” she reflected.

“How’d you two get mixed up together?” Dustil asked.

Aithne shrugged. “We were serving on the same Republic ship as Bastila. Went down when the Sith attacked over Taris. We were in the same escape pod. He pulled me from the wreckage and we worked together to get Bastila and our partners in finding her off the planet. Everyone’s just sort of stuck around, even after Bas made me join the Jedi and the Council decided we were going to be the ones to bring down Malak’s whole regime. Carth’s our pilot and the Republic liaison for our mission.”

“And he’s important enough to you guys that you’d jeopardize the whole thing to come get me,” Dustil said. “Or is that just you, Moran?”

Aithne resisted the urge to pull her legs to her chest again. She held Dustil’s gaze.

“You had to know it was a risk, coming to get me,” Dustil continued. “You knew I was with the Sith. You couldn’t know I’d be open to leaving. You couldn’t know I wouldn’t want to turn you in. I didn’t know I wouldn’t hurt you, for a minute there.”
“I don’t leave my friend’s kid with the Sith,” Aithne said.

“Huh. Even if that kid could burn the galaxy? You know Father’s all Republic, all the time. He wouldn’t do the same for you. Not if your guys’ mission was on the line the way yours was coming here.” Dustil’s face was unreadable, but Aithne sensed his anger, his jealousy for his mother, roiling beneath the surface.

“I care about him,” Aithne answered softly. “I care about you, for him, because of what you’ve been through, and because you’re still a kid.”

“Lashowe and Shaardan were kids.”

Aithne accepted that. Neither one of them had been older than Trask or Bastila Shan. “We aren’t together,” she told Dustil. “He’s still loyal to the memory of your mother. He misses her every day. He knows the Jedi disapprove of fraternization, and the whole time we’ve worked together, he’s been professional.”

“He didn’t like it when I pulled you in here yesterday,” Dustil pointed out.

“I didn’t like it when you pulled me in here that first day,” Aithne answered. “And he’d have spoken up that way for any of us.”

“You move and operate like a unit.”

“We’ve been working in quite close proximity for months now.”

“He likes you too.”

Aithne didn’t deny it. “He does. Nothing’s happened.”

Dustil looked away. “It’s been four years,” he said. “I know that. It’s a long time. Sometimes it feels like forever. Sometimes it feels like yesterday. Mother was—I miss her every day. She was there for me when he never was. She was strong and brave and patient, and I don’t know how she did it.”

“He loved her. He loved you both. He still does.”

“I know.” Dustil’s face twisted. He swallowed. “It was just—” He stopped, shut down.

“Vengeance on the man responsible for the attack has been the only thing that’s kept him going. When he heard you were alive, it was like a part of him came back alive too.”

Dustil was the one staring at the wall now. “Could you go?” he asked. “I can feel him across the dorms, worrying about you. I—it’s enough. For tonight, it’s enough.”

Aithne folded herself down from the supply box. “Yeah,” she agreed. “He gets into your head, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Dustil said in his turn. “Can’t believe I never noticed growing up. I’ll see you in a couple days, Moran.”

“See you, Dustil.” She headed for the door. He stopped her a step or two from it.

“Hey,” he called. She looked back. “I’m not saying I love it, but Father could do a whole lot worse. Be careful out there, okay?”

“I’ll do my best. You do the same.”

Dustil nodded, and Aithne left.

Chapter Text

AITHNE

Aithne had decided to begin her third full day in the Korriban academy with a sparring session. It had been a couple of days since she’d had a workout where she wasn’t legitimately trying to kill somebody, and she thought it was time for a change. She’d also decided that maybe instead of avoiding Jolee’s doubtful glances, it might be wiser to embrace them into her life and use them as a check. So Carth was standing off to the side of the sands by a weapon rack in the academy dueling room, looking servile and unoccupied but actually keeping himself safe from Aithne’s rivals or distrustful allies in the academy while Aithne went a few rounds with Jolee. She’d put away the lightsaber for now, so as not to give away Jolee’s ability to use one in the event some Sith came by.

They’d both worked up a sweat. Funny, Aithne thought, how much better you felt about yourself when you started doing something. She’d had too much time to think about the day before during the night. She bore down on Jolee with her double-bladed sword, forcing him back. In the field, Bindo frequently augmented his combat with Force attacks; his skills with a lightsaber were basic. He had practiced mostly against beasts for twenty years. But he was a master of the rudimentary forms, and his defense was solid if not brilliant or original when he was fighting with just a sword. If neither of them resorted to Force attacks, Aithne thought she could probably take Jolee using her preferred Form VI, perhaps with a few Form II variations, but she knew it would take a while.

Jolee, however, did have a weakness. He was easily distracted by conversation. Aithne wanted him to work on it; to start paying more attention to what was called for in the moment and whether or not it was a good idea to talk in the first place. So, as she sparred against Jolee now, she opened up a conversation. “You mentioned something about your adventuring days?”

“Did I?” Jolee grunted, blocking her overhead strike. “Strange the tricks memory plays on you when you get older.”

Aithne stepped left and back, whirling her weapon underhand to swing like a pendulum, underneath where his sword was positioned. Jolee had to jump back to avoid the slice that would have gone right up underneath his rib cage. Aithne grinned. “Well? Were you an adventurer, or weren’t you?

Jolee scowled. He made the signal to cease, and Aithne lowered her weapon. “Didn’t I say my past was my affair?” he demanded. “You don’t see me poking and prodding you with questions, do you?”

Aithne shrugged. “I seem to recall plenty of questions yesterday, actually. Call this my revenge.”

Jolee’s eyebrows could be rather intimidating when he chose. He used them to excellent effect now. “You don’t really want to hear about me. We’re talking ancient history, probably before you were born. History bores kids. Proven fact.”

Aithne swung her sword into its casing on her back and gestured to her canteen, strapped to her pack by Carth. He stooped, scooped it up, and tossed it at her. She caught it and took a long drink, nodding her thanks. “Yeah?” she said to Jolee when she was done. “Well, old people love to talk about history. Proven fact.”

“She won’t give up, you know,” Carth put in.

“I know that,” Jolee snapped. “Oh, fine, fine, have it your way. Just don’t cry about it later. Yes, yes, I was an adventurer. Happy now? I wasn't even done with my—” he looked around.

Aithne mocked him, exaggerating the motions as she looked around as if for an eavesdropping enemy. “Don’t worry: I’m monitoring the perimeter. We’ll treat it like a training exercise,” she told him. “Not that it isn’t hilarious that you care what people overhear now.” Jolee had been far too quick to speak ever since their arrival on Korriban.

“Oh, ha-ha,” Jolee said sourly. “Mouthy, arrogant little—Maybe I have been a bit chatty since we landed, but they need taking down a peg or two around here, in case you hadn’t noticed. Fine. I hadn’t even finished my training. I had a full head of hair and an eagerness to see absolutely everything. Sound familiar? The powers that be were never very happy with me, you see. Too brash! Too willful. They liked it even less when I began my smuggling career.”

Carth checked. “Wait. You were a smuggler?” he repeated.

Jolee sniffed. “Don’t look at me like that, sonny, dammit! I wasn’t always the wrinkled old coot I am now, you know.”

“I could buy it,” Aithne offered. “You’ve got the right mix of boredom with the status quo and irreverence for authority.”

“Oh, think you’ve got me figured out, do you?” Jolee growled, but he seemed appeased. “At the time, the Ukatis system was interdicted by its own king. He preferred to keep his people starving and poor, the better to oppress them. The Republic Senate was trying to negotiate peace, but they were getting nowhere as usual. I decided I wasn’t going to wait. I found myself a ship and a partner, and we began smuggling food and supplies to the Ukatis citizenry through the blockade.”

Aithne made a small noise of approval. “And you got the credits for the supplies from?” she prompted.

Jolee grinned at her then. “Well, we didn’t buy all the equipment, per se. Some were happy to donate goods. Some we just, ah, knew had more than they could use.”

Carth snorted. “So, you stole it.”

“‘Stole’ is such a harsh word,” Jolee complained. “They would have donated those goods readily enough if they were compassionate. I considered it a tax on the greedy. We only got caught once. A lone Ukatish freighter shot us down and forced a crash landing. I thought the Force had abandoned me, as I remember.”

“So, what happened then?” Aithne asked.

Jolee looked off into the distance, his face oddly torn between happiness; sadness; and bitter, bitter regret. “Well, as it happens,” he said softly, “getting shot down turned out to be very fortunate. That day was the day I . . .” he trailed off.

“That was the day you what?” Aithne murmured.

“Well, that was the day I met my wife.”

“You were married?” Carth demanded. “Isn’t that against regulations for a Jedi?”

Aithne had to admit she was surprised herself, but she let Jolee answer. Two other Sith were headed toward the dueling room now with some intention, but it would be a minute or so before they arrived. “So is smuggling and independently owning a starship,” Jolee said. “I wasn’t big on rules in those days. Or these days, for that matter. I’m not the only one of the Jedi to ever break that particular rule, either, though it usually doesn’t end too well.” He had sensed the Sith heading their way too now. He had gone tense, and he picked up his own things. “But that’s a conversation for another time. My mouth is starting to draw flies.”

Aithne wanted to return to the conversation another time; she was interested in Jolee’s past now—in the smuggling Jedi trainee who had married. But with appearances to keep up, it was time they moved on. “And we’ve got work to do,” she said, just as the Sith came into earshot. “All warmed up? Good. I would like to accomplish a great deal in the valley before the evening meal.”

Jolee and Carth fell into place behind her and at her flank like dutiful servants. “Master, there was something about one of the tombs,” Carth said. “One of the instructors mentioned the former headmaster of the academy has been hiding there, and that some of the academy students have had some trouble.”

Aithne saw both of the Sith prick up their ears as they passed. She swept them a contemptuous look over her shoulder as they exited the dueling room and moved toward the academy exit to the valley.

“Which tomb?” Aithne murmured in a lower tone.

“Uh—Tulak Hord, I think,” Carth told her.

“We’ll be careful,” Aithne assured him. “You think it’s something Master Uthar might want handled, though?”

“Yeah, the instructor yesterday told the student asking that Master Uthar would be interested in any of the old headmaster’s research,” Carth confirmed. “But I think it was another one of those things where they had some issue, and the master was letting one of the students resolve it instead of handling it himself.”

Aithne’s sneer was genuine this time. As they left the academy, she fell into a more natural walk and expression. “He’s lazy,” she told the others. “He’s letting the students here handle every single problem his incompetence gives rise to. Amazing nobody’s noticed yet and challenged him. I’m fighting Yuthura at the trial because he can’t even be bothered killing her himself. I haven’t seen Uthar bother doing his own work even once since we arrived, and his attitude is affecting the whole culture here.”

“You realize you’re complaining that he’s making the Sith coming from here more incompetent?” he pointed out. He sounded amused.

Aithne smiled. “Okay, an advantage for the Republic,” she conceded. “But it’s bad management.”

“Where to first?” Jolee asked. “And can I say, it’s good to be out of that academy with you?”

Aithne rolled her eyes. “Positive reinforcement to encourage more pro-social behavior?” she drawled. More genuinely, she admitted, “It was a mistake leaving you so much yesterday. One of my dear classmates or one of the older or newer classes might have taken advantage. I think you two would probably put up more of a fight than they’d have expected, but that would’ve caused its own problems. Besides—” she grimaced, flicking her eyes back in a sort of apology to Jolee for her coldness yesterday— “It wasn’t good for me to leave you.”

“It’s always easier to resist the Dark Side with the influence of others,” Jolee said softly. “Folks to hold you accountable, give you perspective. Remind you how much you stand to lose by giving in. It’s the reason the Jedi encourage master-padawan pairs. They are only ever abandoned in times of deep extremity, when resources have been pushed much too far. When you’re alone, it is far too easy to justify any action that you take.”

Aithne wondered if that was why she had left them yesterday: because she’d known that. Because she’d already known inside herself that the actions she planned or the mindset she had had was unjustifiable. She had needed to have more respect for Korriban and the power of the Sith culture from the start. More respect for the warnings she had been given since she joined the Jedi. “I want to follow up on those kids Yuthura told us about today, Dustil’s friends. The ones in the shyrack caves. I want to see if we can get them out,” she said. “Then a couple more of the tombs.”

“Whatever you want,” Jolee said.

“We’re with you,” Carth seconded.

It turned out that the students in the shyrack caves were in quite a bit of trouble. They had been able to handle the mynock and tuk’ata with only a few casualties, but another terentatek from the days of the Great Hunt had made its home in those caves too. Unable to return to the academy with Uthar’s order of execution hanging over them, unable to defeat the terentatek alone, the runaways had lost five of their companions since their collective desertion from the academy four days ago, and a sixth was wounded. But Thalia May, their leader, was fiercely protective of the small group that remained, fiercely resistant to returning to the Sith academy and the culture of violence and murder she had found there. It took some doing for Aithne to convince Thalia that she was on their side, but with a little bit of work and some discussion of their friendship with Dustil—though Carth did not remove his helmet or explain further—the students agreed for one last try against the terentatek. With Thalia, two other able-bodied students, and a few well-placed mines, they were able to fight the terentatek, which was tired and elderly, on much more agreeable terms than Aithne and the others had fought the one in the Shadowlands.

“Can you get to Dreshdae from here?” Aithne asked them after Jolee had done what he could for their wounded companion, looking out of the caves’ back exit toward the barren waste outside.

Thalia nodded. “There is another entrance to the city on the eastern side, near a road leading to the sulfur springs. We can get in that way. The gate is still run by civilians, and we should be able to trick them into thinking we’re still a part of the academy there and barter for passage within the port. Thank you!”

“Good luck,” Aithne answered, shaking Thalia’s hand. The students left, and Aithne examined the artifacts she had found near the terentatek’s lair. Once again, she’d found information the archivists on Dantooine might be interested in—the ending of yet another one of the Jedi who had gone on the Great Hunt years before. They’d also found a relic of that Jedi, robes separated from a corpse long gone, but the robes, while dirty, were still good quality, and felt good to Aithne within the Force. Protective, somehow. They hadn’t helped the last guy much, but she still felt rather like she wanted to do some laundry when they returned to the academy that night.

Their excursion to the tomb of Marka Ragnos went, if anything, even more smoothly than their excursion to the shyrack caves. It was nearly infested with droids, the creations of an elite assassination droid capable of cannibalizing the materials buried with the Sith Lord to bolster its own defenses. Marka Ragnos had apparently been a droid aficionado, and the assassination droid was a hyperintelligent model that had been programmed with the knowledge. But the droids the original rogue had created were not as advanced as itself, and Aithne had a particular knack with droids—repairing and destroying them. She had also asked around and found out about the rogue droid’s sound sensitivities beforehand. The droid had apparently gone rogue because its independent learning systems had advanced to the point where it took issue with its own assassination programming. It was a little funny: a droid on Korriban had developed a conscience. Nevertheless, because Aithne and her friends had taken care to dampen the sounds of her approach to the droid’s location, they were able to meet the assassination droid itself without hostilities, and with some commonsensical repairs and restructuring, she was able to fix the droid’s audio receptors and delete its assassination protocols without destroying the droid itself. She didn’t exactly know what the droid planned to do with itself as it headed out a back exit to the tomb of Marka Ragnos, but she wished it well.

Ironically because the morning had gone so well, Aithne was apprehensive as she approached the tomb of Tulak Hord with the others, after a lunch of the ever-delicious ration bars. Good days didn’t happen on Korriban. And in her experience, whenever things seemed to be going well, it was always the universe winding up to deliver a cruel cosmic sucker punch.

However, upon entering the tomb, there didn’t seem to be anything to worry about. The first few rooms were dusty and crumbling, but they contained nothing more dangerous than a few tuk’ata, none as big or as mean as the three she had faced with Lashowe the night before. Aithne had actually started to relax when she arrived at the ancient console that locked passage to the burial chamber of Tulak Hord. The systems were ancient, and all too susceptible to the modern slicing tools Jolee carried in his pack. As she worked, Carth knelt to examine a corpse the tuk’ata had been at recently.

The passage to the burial chamber opened, and Aithne and Jolee walked forward, just as Carth spoke up behind them— “Wait a minute. There’s something funny about this—”

Aithne’s foot fell on a pressure plate hidden under the dust in the dimness of the passage. Aithne’s stomach sank as she heard the hiss of a gas release and smelled the sickly-sweet scent of toxic fumes. She recognized the scent—a contact nerve toxin that would dull human senses and quickly render its victim unconscious—but she was already breathing it in. They all were. Carth wore a helmet, but it didn’t have a filter or gas exchange.

She saw Jolee collapse beside her as her world went black.

Aithne’s first sensation was a tingling in her arms and legs. It wasn’t unlike the pins-and-needles feeling of blood returning to an area where the circulation had been cut off. Aithne forced open her eyes. Her lids were sluggish, and she felt tired and stupid. A side effect of the nerve toxin.

She tried to move, but none of her limbs responded. She swore. That came out, though the ugly word sounded slurred. Aithne didn’t usually curse, but sometimes it felt appropriate, and now was one of those times. Carth had warned her about the tomb of Tulak Hord! He had warned her! Yet she had blundered into a Sith trap like a ten-year-old playing junior archaeologist!

First things first. Aithne’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, and she tried to evaluate where she was. The musty, dead smell and the sarcophagus immediately in front of her suggested she was still in the Sith Lord tombs, probably still the tomb of Tulak Hord. There was a rough camp to her left with a flickering lantern, a bedroll, and a single supply crate. Behind the Sith sarcophagus, she could see Carth and Jolee, suspended by their wrists from the ceiling with some simple rope. Only the rope suspended them. Both were dead weight, slumped against the leverage of the rope. Unconscious, not dead—she could see the rise and fall of their bodies as they breathed and feel their lives pulsing through the Force.

She herself was held differently. She wasn’t tied from the ceiling but held in a partial stasis on her knees, everything from her shoulders down held immobile with the Force. She could move her eyes, her head, her mouth, but nothing else. Aithne struck out with the Force, beating against the stasis with her mind, but it was like beating on the stone walls of the tomb. She felt nothing but a sudden surge of cold amusement.

A figure she had initially taken for stone rubble near the sarcophagus moved. The man’s skin was as gray as the tomb itself, like slate or chalk. He was bald and wrinkled, but the two yellow eyes burning inside his shriveled face were alive with malice. “Awake already, are you?”

The man’s voice was high and grating, and Aithne hated it immediately. He rose, striding between his camp and Jolee’s hanging body to perch on the Sith Lord sarcophagus like a throne. He regarded her. “Good! We can get started, then. You’re in the tomb of the Sith Lord, Tulak Hord, if you don’t know. I’ve taken up residence here for now. It’s dusty and full of critters, but it’s home.

“You’re far more toothsome than Uthar’s usual drek, by the way,” the man added. “His female students tend toward the dour and shapeless. It was a positive pleasure relieving you of your weapons. Interesting decision—hiding your lightsaber within your tunic like that. Something you didn’t want the others to know?”

Aithne saw the weapons—in a pile in the far-right corner, a couple of meters right and behind Carth. Sure enough, both her sword and the double-bladed lightsaber were there. She’d been searched. She tried to judge her condition, to see if the old man might have done anything else. Her tunic was wrinkled but was intact, along with her trousers. Aside from the effects of the contact nerve gas, though, she appeared to be unharmed.

The man was smiling at her. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was too big for his shrunken face and reminded her of a skeleton more than anything else.

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, as if he’d known what she was thinking. “I don’t plan to touch you, that way at least. I might have quite enjoyed it once upon a time, but I’ve grown away from such basic pleasures. We’re going to have a little test instead.”

“You’re the old headmaster.” Aithne’s voice came out raspy, and she cleared her throat.

The old man giggled. “Correct! Very good! Mekel here hadn’t done any of the appropriate background when he stumbled into my little web. He thought he would just nip into the tomb for a bit of raiding.” He jerked his head to Aithne’s right, and she looked over her shoulder.

Mekel hadn’t been immediately obvious. He was only barely in her periphery if she looked straight ahead, but there the slime was, sure enough, held in place with a stasis just like she was. Apart from an exchange of insults on her first full day in the academy, Aithne had steered clear of Mekel. He’d been her most serious competition from the start. Now he was her only remaining competition.

He wasn’t looking too well at the moment, though. His breathing was shallow. His uniform was stained with sweat. It looked like he was straining to stay conscious, actually, and his expression was that of a man who had been pushed to the very limits of his endurance. He’d hardly reacted at all to the mention of his name.

“What’s with him?” Aithne asked, though she thought she knew.

The old man laughed again. “Poor lad. He’s had a hard day. Say hello, Mekel.”

Mekel could only groan.

“Good,” the old man said with mock compassion. “Introductions are always the place to start. My name is Jorak Uln. And you are?”

 Aithne hesitated. She didn’t want to play this old man’s game, whatever it was, but looking at Carth and Jolee hanging from the ceiling, she had a bad feeling about what could happen if she refused. “Liat Ser’rida,” she answered.

The old man’s eyes glittered, and he seemed to study her for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he said then. “You could be—I never met her, but no, on the whole, I think you’re lying. Liat Ser’rida would never be so foolish as to stumble into my little trap.” A chill ran down Aithne’s spine. Like she had when she’d met Uthar Wynn and given Ser’rida’s name, once again she felt there was something she was missing, that she’d made a bad miscalculation.

“Now why would you say that, I wonder?” Uln mused to himself. “No matter. It has little to do with our purpose here. You see, I’d like to discover if you’ve got the pluck of an old-fashioned Sith. Most of the students Uthar has been passing through these days are so pathetic. Take young Mekel here,” he said with a contemptuous gesture. “I already tested him. Didn’t I, Mekel?”

Mekel stirred more this time. His eyes tried to focus, first on Uln, and then on Aithne.

“Yes, yes, you’re welcome,” drawled Jorak. “You see, Melek here has the cruel disposition of a Sith, but not the gumption I’m looking for.”

In the corner, Jolee was beginning to come to. He twitched, and his eyelids fluttered. Aithne reached out with her mind, trying to convey a psychic warning. Stay still. Don’t let him know you can help us! She saw him tense and felt that some part of her message had gotten through.

But Jorak Uln had sensed it too. His face wrinkled in surprise, and he turned. Suddenly, Jolee was encased in a stasis too. “Oh,” Jorak said. “Interesting. The woman from dear Uthar’s academy is not the only Force adept in the party that just came knocking. Clever,” he remarked, turning back to Aithne, a new light of respect in his eyes. “A hidden lightsaber, and you keep a follower in reserve, disguised as a simple underling. Aren’t you full of surprises? But there will be no interruptions tolerated from your friends. They will be spared or destroyed along with you.”

“Destroyed?” Aithne repeated. Her eyes drifted back to Carth. He wasn’t conscious yet. Jedi training enabled the body to fight off toxins faster. She didn’t know whether he should be waking up soon or not. What if he was hurt? “Look, I’m not interested in handling Uthar’s business for him. You two can fight your little war all you want, leave us out of it. Can’t we—can’t we talk about this?”

Jorak followed her gaze. “Oh, and there’s her weakness!” he cackled. “Foolish, child, very foolish, bringing someone you love to search out a Sith lord! But come! We’ll see if your fear for him makes you strong. Perhaps you have some questions?”

Aithne thought rapidly. The situation was bad. Any protest she didn’t love Carth now would seem like a denial, expose him even further to Uln’s cruelty and caprice. Best to leave it alone. Besides, of the four of them in the tomb with the madman, Carth was the most vulnerable to him and the person she did want least for him to attack. “What do you want?” she spat.

“Now, now,” Uln chided her, “Is that any kind of attitude to take with higher education? I’m doing you a favor, really. So then! This is how it goes: I’m going to pose a moral question to you. Get it right, and I torture Mekel. Get it wrong, and I torture you. Mekel here is a bit weak. He probably won’t be able to take much more punishment. Mind you, get too many wrong, and you’ll die yourself, and your allies with you. I don’t know what you think of Mekel. Maybe you don’t like him. Maybe you think he deserves to be murdered. Well, here’s your chance. Fair enough?”

Aithne glanced over at Mekel. He was a threat, the last remaining obstacle between her and the tomb of Naga Sadow. Moreover, he was a terrible person, and she’d wanted to kill him since she’d first seen him outside the academy with those starving hopefuls. Preferably in a way just as drawn out and painful as the slow death of exhaustion, dehydration, and malnutrition he’d forced on those children. On the other hand, she’d kind of wanted to kill him herself. Doing it by proxy seemed like a cheap and unsatisfying shortcut.

But she only said, “You know, when I woke up this morning, I thought it might be nice to kill him in a sick personality test given by some demented monster in the middle of a tomb.” The irony was heavy in her voice.

“My, aren’t you fun,” Jorak observed. “Any last comments before we begin, Mekel?”

Sometime in the last two minutes, Mekel’s eyes had begun to track. Now he flopped his head to the shoulder facing Aithne and looked at her, desperate. “We can both survive,” he grunted. His voice was a rattling rasp. “Attack him together!”

Jorak’s eyebrows met in a childish pout. “Now, now, dear lad,” he said. “Do you really think your friend here will answer questions wrong just to spare little you, risking her own life and those of her companions? Apparently, you’re her competition! And how many correctly answered questions before you die, hmm? No, don't be silly . . . you had your chance, remember? On that note,” he said, turning to Aithne, “let’s begin. Now then, your immediate superior amongst the Sith is an effective commander and a fine leader. He trusts you, and you like him. You see an opportunity to kill him. What do you do?”

Aithne looked back at Mekel. In between his worthless life and Carth’s and Jolee’s, she’d choose Carth and Jolee every time. She stared down Mekel’s hopeful expression, answering Uln without looking at him. “I take the opportunity. Kill him and take his position in the Sith.”

“Very good,” Uln purred. He turned on Mekel with a malevolent gleam in his eyes. “It looks like your friend is more of a Sith than you, Mekel. Time for your punishment.” The air crackled and Aithne’s hair stood on end as Uln released lightning from his fingers. It danced over Mekel’s body, and he strained against the stasis, unable to even cringe away from the impact. His hoarse scream resounded in the confined burial chamber. He’d been screaming that scream for hours. On the other side of the sarcophagus, Carth regained consciousness with a start, thrashing against his tether.

“Still, Natthias!” Aithne snapped. “You’ll hurt yourself! You’re safe, for now.”

Carth reacted to the sound of her voice. His helmet turned toward her. His body remained tense, but stopped lashing at the end of his rope. She felt him take in the situation.

“That’s right, Natthias,” Uln crooned. “You’re safe enough, so long as your pretty master here stays on her toes. Keep quiet now, and leave your betters to their business.” He turned back to Aithne. “And so, we come to Round Two. You come across a group of humans who are threatened by dangerous animals. They plead for help, offering you a reward. What do you do?”

Aithne glanced at Carth, then looked back at Jorak. “I take the money and leave the weak fools to their fate,” she answered.

Once again, Uln’s fingers flashed lightning. Once again, Mekel’s scream tore through the stillness of the tomb. She could feel his pain, his terror. It didn’t give her the pleasure she had thought it would. Aithne watched Uln’s unnatural electricity crackle and arc over Mekel’s already singed skin. She could smell the scorching on his uniform. A thin trickle of blood ran from his nose.

On the other side of the tomb, Jolee was watching her. His mouth was hard. He knew what she was doing. He knew why she was doing it. But that stare didn’t offer her any consolation. She was still letting Uln murder a man in cold blood. She was encouraging it, to save her skin and that of her friends, and telling Uln lies so Mekel would suffer. Jolee’s eyes left her with no excuse.

And Carth, to her right—he hadn’t heard any of Uln’s proposition. He had no idea it was them or Mekel. But he’d understood well enough that she’d said something terrible, pleased Uln, and Mekel’s pain was the result. His body strained against the ropes again, trying to get away from the horrible scene, and through their bond, Aithne could feel his horror, his disbelief. His betrayal. It hurt worse than Jolee’s stare.

Jorak though—he kept rambling on about her brilliance. Finally, though, he got around to the next question. “You discover an aspect of the Force that gives you great power,” he said, eyes glinting. “Do you share it and strengthen the Sith as a whole or keep it to yourself?”

Aithne looked from Mekel—her competition, the horrible little murderous insect she’d wanted to squash for days—to her friends. She closed her eyes, bracing herself. “I share it,” she whispered. Even as she said the words, she felt a weight lift from her chest and off her spirit. “Let all learn who care to,” she added, suddenly smiling.

Jorak sputtered, incoherent. “Share it?!” he demanded. “You gain an advantage, and you share it freely? I mean, share it?!! Are you mad?”

Aithne opened her eyes and widened her smile. She winked at Uln provokingly. To her left, she felt Jolee’s approval, like a warm blanket settling over her. He was willing to take the risk. He was okay with this, so long as she didn’t force Mekel’s murder.

Jorak was angry. His eyes narrowed at her. He knew she had answered wrong on purpose. “Ah, well, you did ask for this. It’s for your own good.”

Pain tore through every nerve of Aithne's body. It was her first experience with Force Lightning, and it felt like she was being fried from the inside out. A furious, anguished scream sounded, and it wasn’t until Aithne realized her chest ached from holding back her own cry that she understood it was Carth. She didn’t have the energy to reassure him. Her every fiber pulled against the Force stasis. Every nerve leaped; every muscle seized. The torture wasn’t just the Lightning; it was the damage she did to her own body, trying to resist. Abruptly, the Lightning ceased. Aithne’s skin sizzled. She could smell her own hair, but she also felt the last of the sluggishness had left her body. Uln had burned out the last effects of the nerve toxin.

“Let her go, you bastard!” Carth was shouting. The rope above him creaked and trembled with his efforts to escape. “Let me go, and I’ll—”

Abruptly, he too was frozen in a stasis. Unlike the fields encasing Mekel, Aithne, and Jolee, Carth’s encased his entire body. His rage and sudden terror flooded across to her mind, though.

“I thought I told you no interruptions,” Jorak snarled at Carth. “If your master knew her lessons, she would be fine, but no, she had to be stupid and stubborn.” Aithne felt Carth’s understanding dawn, and she felt his sudden turmoil. Unlike Jolee, he didn’t know what he wanted her to do. She closed her stinging eyes and didn’t know if she wept for him or for herself.

“Not that his pain isn’t delicious,” Uln remarked to Aithne. “I want you to imagine what it will be like for your friend to watch you die, to know he’s about to go himself because of your failure. Maybe that will give you the proper motivation. But what if it was he who had failed? Tell me that? What if this man made a major mistake and made you look bad? Let’s assume he is normally very competent and skilled, though given his level of control, I highly doubt it. Nevertheless, you clearly have some level of attachment to one another. If he did make a mistake, would you kill him? Or give him another chance?”

It was a particularly cruel question. If Aithne answered it the way Uln wanted, she’d be telling Carth she would kill him for a mistake, along with possibly actually killing Mekel. If she told the truth, he’d have to watch her tortured once again. Men like him—the worst thing for them was to feel helpless, forced to watch as evil reigned uncontested, particularly when it came after people close to them. She’d be taking him right back to the heart of the ugliest battles he’d ever fought in, right back to Telos, in a way. But—

“That one deserves another chance,” Aithne answered. “Let him learn from the mistake and do better next time. I forgive him.”

She spoke the words for Carth—forgiveness for every time he’d ever suspected her of anything, because as it turned out, she hadn’t been that trustworthy. The first taste of a little anger, the first decent-sized temptation to do what was expedient, she had folded, right into a perfect little sculpture of a Sith. Silently, she pled with Carth that he would forgive her this, for trying to be good because he’d want her to.

Jorak’s eyes blazed with fury. “You’re soft,” he hissed. “Weak. Fine. Time for your medicine.”

Aithne’s vision was lost to the crackling aureole that enveloped her. The burning smell in her nostrils sharpened as her every sense screamed. She screamed; she couldn’t hold it back this time, though she buttoned her lips over it so it sounded out as more of a groan, though it tore her throat with its intensity. Her limbs trembled within the stasis. She felt fevered and sick by the time Jorak stopped. Tears streamed down her face, and the salt in them burned her tortured skin. She was thirsty.

She felt Carth’s echoed anguish ringing and resounding through her brain; Jolee’s pity and sorrow, from farther away.

“Last question,” barked Jorak, “You’re about to die: do you pass on your knowledge to your apprentice to make him stronger, or do you use your last breath to strike at your enemies?” He sneered, waiting like a predator in the dark for her response.

Some sense deep inside herself told her this last question was a trick; she’d displeased him, and Uln would torture her whatever she said. Aithne looked over her shoulder at Mekel one more time and found that somehow, she still thought he was a terrible person who probably deserved to die, but she didn’t hate him anymore. She smiled at Jolee, then looked at Carth one more time. She didn’t look back at Jorak. “I won’t give you the satisfaction,” she whispered.

The Sith huffed. “Such insolent students I get these days. You deserve this, and then some! I’ll enjoy this. Time for your medicine!”

And then he released such a volley of Force Lightning. This time, the scream got past her lips. It tore the air with her throat. Her eyes seemed to fog over. She felt like she was burning alive. It seemed her skin would split and her bones would melt, and then, right when she was sure she’d die, the Lightning finally, finally stopped.

Aithne took a deep, shuddering breath. She looked at Uln through eyes turned red with the burst blood vessels. She’d won.

He was regarding her, nonplussed. “This is odd,” he said. “The test is over, and you’re both still alive. Well, that's never happened before.” He got up off the sarcophagus and started pacing. “What to do, what to do?” Finally, he turned to Mekel. The stasis field holding her competition released. “I suppose this means you can go, Mekel. I’ll just have to figure out some nastier way to kill our friend and her companions here. Run along, now.”

But Mekel remained, panting. “Or,” he said, “I could use the Force to free her! And we could kill you! Seems you didn’t think of that, old man!”

As Mekel struck out with his mind, Aithne and Jolee struck with him. Aithne felt the Force stasis fields on her and her companions stretch then shatter into oblivion. Mekel clenched his hand into a fist, and she felt him cannibalizing Uln’s life force, using it to strengthen himself. Jolee spread his own hands, and Aithne felt her skin soothed. Her vision cleared, and her heart rate steadied. And she reached out with the Force and called. Several objects went flying—her and Jolee’s lightsabers, Carth’s blasters, spinning around the room to their respective owners.

It was brief, brutal justice for the old headmaster of the academy. Aithne stood panting over the body at the end, staring down at the corpse riddled with lightsaber burns and blaster bolts. She let her pain and anger and despair dissipate into the air. The tomb itself felt cleaner as she did so.

Mekel stood beside her. He turned to her. “I can’t believe that I’m alive,” he murmured. “You saved me. You could—you could have answered all those questions, couldn’t you? You deliberately started choosing wrong answers to spare my life.”

“I did,” Aithne agreed. She stood quietly for a moment. “It almost went the other way,” she told him then. “For my friends. For those hopefuls at the gate, and all the ones you must have killed like them.”

“I understand,” Mekel said. He looked back at the corpse of Jorak Uln. “I’ve never . . . I mean, I’ve never been on that side of the fence before. It makes you think. I think I understand why you might have—I’d be dead if you weren’t . . .” he eyed Aithne’s lightsaber. “I mean, if you were a proper Sith. But you’re not, are you?”

Aithne activated the saber, twisting it to admire the violet color of the double blade. Mekel tensed but did not reach for his weapon. “I took this crystal from a kinrath corpse a couple of weeks ago,” she told him. “It wasn’t necessarily attuned to me—just . . . neutral. But I thought it might be useful if I needed to go incognito at some point. I have another hidden in my bag back at the academy. It doesn’t go to this lightsaber; it’s from my actual blade. But I’ll put it in this one before I head to the final trial, and when I do, this lightsaber will shine a bright green.”

Mekel swallowed. “That old man—did he say your name wasn’t Liat Ser’rida? Or was I imagining that? It was . . . kind of fuzzy at the beginning.”

“He said he thought I was lying about my name,” Aithne said levelly.

“And . . . are you?”

Aithne looked at him and didn’t answer. “Right,” Mekel said. “I think I want to leave here. I think—I think the Sith aren’t for me. At any rate, I don’t want to compete with you anymore. You . . . you saved my life.”

Aithne deactivated her lightsaber. “You saved mine,” It was just basic fact.

Mekel shook his head. “I owe you,” he insisted. “Thank you. And, whatever you’re here for—good luck.” He looked hard at her one more time, then turned and practically ran out of the tomb.

Jolee had been rummaging in Jorak’s supplies. He came up beside her now and handed her a datapad. Aithne looked over it. It had all Jorak Uln’s research, documentation of his observations and meditations in Tulak Hord’s tomb as well as the results of his experimentation on several academy students and archaeologists. Aithne’s fingers felt dirty, touching the datapad. Such a little thing, with such a long record of violence and evil. But once she turned it in to Uthar and told him what had happened here, he’d have no choice but to make her a Sith. Aithne stashed the datapad inside her pack.

“Lass?” Jolee said.

Aithne glanced at him.

“Well done.”

“Aithne—” Carth’s voice inside the helmet was dry and rasping. Aithne closed her eyes. She could feel the pain emanating from him—Uln was dead, but Carth was far from done with his reaction to watching Aithne’s torture. The helplessness, rage, and self-recrimination he felt now was nearly overwhelming him, and he broadcast it over their bond at every instant. He couldn’t help it, Aithne knew he couldn’t help it, had no idea what he was doing. But it was too much. Jolee had healed much of her body moments ago. Her mind and spirit would take longer to heal. She couldn’t deal with Carth’s pain on top of her own.

She heard his armor shifting, knew without opening her eyes that he had removed his helmet to see her better, so she could see him better. Desperate for a way to stop the influx of Carth’s emotions, to manage her own, Aithne acted on pure instinct. As if she had always known the way, she imagined a door inside her mind, and suddenly, it appeared—a door within a wall meters high and thick. She slammed it hard and slid home the bolt, and outside of her mind and body, she heard Carth make a startled noise.

Aithne opened her eyes to find him with his helmet off, looking at her in sudden surprise. “You did something. Just now. I—I felt it.”

“Yeah,” Aithne agreed. Suddenly, it was as though a weight had lifted off of her. She breathed in deep and smiled. She imagined her walls extending and made a second door across the path leading to still another mind. She slammed it too, and suddenly, for the first time in a long, long time, she was alone in her own head. She could feel Carth and Bastila there, on the other side of the doors. She had not learned to sever the bonds between them. But she had learned to block off their influence. It was like dropping two of the heaviest arms and armor packs they could make up on Ebon Hawk. Despite the fact she had been tortured just a few minutes ago, Aithne felt like she could fly.

Carth was worried, though. “Aithne—it’s like . . . what did you do? Suddenly, it’s like you aren’t there anymore. I can see you, but—”

Jolee looked between them. “Ahh, I see,” he murmured. “You have some Sensitivity to the Force then, don’t you, lad? Well. Sometimes these things do run in families.”

“I mean, that’s what she told me. I don’t—she said I don’t realize it, but that—was it a Force thing that just happened? Aithne?” Carth turned back to her. His expression was torn between fear and the lingering torment of the past several minutes. Aithne could imagine what it was like. She knew if she opened the door between their minds, she would feel it. But she no longer had to.

She reached across to him anyway. Took his wrist. “I took care of something that’s been bothering me for a while, that’s all. Probably you too, though you couldn’t have known. We can talk about it later.” She wouldn’t be able to put him off, she knew. It was time and past to tell Carth a lot of things, and even as he opened his mouth to argue, she squeezed his wrist. “You have my word,” she promised. “But right now, I just want to get out of here.”

She was playing on what had just happened, she knew, but it was also true, and Carth knew it was. “Okay,” he agreed. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here. But Aithne—what you did. With Jorak. Never do that again. Never make me watch that again.” His voice cracked as he asked her. Force, his eyes—they looked like a kicked akk pup’s.

Aithne regarded him. “I can’t promise that. Would you want me to?” she asked.

Something passed between them, and Carth’s jaw set. “Yes,” he said finally, but the answer was absolute. Aithne felt as though he had reached into her chest and squeezed her heart inside his hand. She let go of her grip on his wrist.

“Let’s go. I want to report to Master Uthar.”

Uthar couldn’t honestly keep her from passing to Sith. She’d revealed his apprentice’s plot against him and was working with him—to the best of his knowledge—to end the threat Yuthura posed. She had retrieved information his master torturer had been unable to obtain. She had deceived not one but two of her competitors to death and brought him valuable Sith relics that each in turn had failed to secure. The other two competitors, as Uthar saw it, she had merely convinced of her superiority and persuaded to drop out. She had eliminated threats to the academy in the form of renegade students (she was able to persuade him that the bodies in the shyrack caves represented the entire remainder of the students he wanted executed) and a rogue assassin droid. She had even eliminated the old headmaster, Uthar’s own former master, and brought back his knowledge to Uthar. In three days, she had proven herself far and away the most diligent, capable, and intelligent student in the entire Sith academy. At this point, Aithne felt she could be running the place. The very least Uthar could do was allow her to take her final trial the next day. Aithne left him feeling contemptuous of the entire competition.

She and her companions ate their evening meal. After they had returned to her room, Aithne took out the robes she had retrieved from the shyrack caves. “I’m going to mend and wash these,” she said. “Bindo, stay here. Keep the door locked. Carth, you’re coming with me.”

It was her offer to explain what had happened earlier, and both men understood what she was saying. Jolee nodded his approval. He followed them to the door, and when they left, Aithne heard the lock engage as she had asked. Satisfied, she led Carth to the room the Sith had designated for their laundry.

The room was empty. For whatever reason, Sith preferred to have servants and slaves launder their clothing, or just went with dirty clothes. There was rather a superfluity of unhygienic Sith, Aithne had noticed. Still. Aithne closed this door as well. It was not equipped with a lock like the bedrooms, but it would be a barrier between her and Carth and any intruders. She expanded her awareness, splitting her attention so even as part of her remained focused on Carth and the conversation they needed to have now, another part of her remained on guard against any coming threats or potential eavesdroppers.

She pulled her new Force robes through her hands, feeling the fabric, the work she had to do. She moved to the laundry worktable, sprinkled stain remover upon the robes, and took up a separate rag to begin to rub the weave and work the filth out. “I told you you’re Force Sensitive. Like your family. Like Dustil, though not to the same extent. Just the other side of untrainable, but it has an effect. On how you see the world, the things you’re able to do. How you interact with people.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Carth said. He reached up and removed his helmet, setting it on the worktable beside Aithne’s station, standing across the table from her.

“Force Sensitives sometimes form bonds to others, particularly other people who use or can feel the Force,” Aithne explained. “Most of the time, bonds like this are deliberate. Jedi masters create them with their apprentices, a way for the masters to train the apprentices better and the apprentices to better learn from their masters. These bonds are then severed when the apprentice becomes a Jedi knight, like Juhani’s was with Quatra. But sometimes, the bonding is accidental. Forged in a moment of distress when one or both parties need the connection.”

“Like you and Bastila,” Carth said, following.

Aithne hesitated. She had been dreading this conversation since Dantooine. But it was time and past they’d had it. “And me and you,” she told him, keeping her eyes down on the fabric of the Jedi robes.  

“You and me.” Carth’s repetition was monotone, like he didn’t quite understand. Aithne’s eyes flicked up to his face. He was watching her, intent.

Aithne shifted. “I first became aware of it the first time we were on Dantooine, when I began exploring my connection to Bastila and how it felt, and realized I had a similar ‘easy access’ to your thoughts and feelings. Not as fine-tuned or powerful; you aren’t as powerful, and most of the time, you aren’t aware of what you feel or experience through the Force. But I believe that on some level, you are also more aware of me than you are of others, with some heightened insight into what I am thinking and feeling.

“If I had to guess, I would say this connection between us probably first formed when you pulled me from the crash on Taris and cared for me right after. It might have strengthened with everything we faced together there, particularly during Taris’s destruction. Things were harder for you in that moment than for anyone but Mission, and more so for you because it was the second time you’d seen something like it. You probably reached out with your mind for any connection you could find, and I—I was there. I can’t say whether you or me or both of us together are responsible for the bond, whether I felt I needed you or vice versa, by the end, but something happened. And we are bonded. Just like me and Bastila.”

Carth didn’t answer. Aithne felt awkward. Putting aside her rag, she picked up her robes and turned around. She filled the tub there with warm water and put the robes in to soak for a while before she sent them through a proper cycle in one of the Sith machines. She turned back to Carth. She wished he would say something. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry or upset you. You can’t help it, and I didn’t know how to fix it. Still don’t, really. I managed to figure out a way to shut you out back there, but it’s not a permanent fix. The bond is still there, just masked. Shielded. I know you feel this kind of bond is invasive. I’m sorry. I just—”

“It’s all right.”

Aithne froze. She peered at him. He seemed as surprised as she was that he had said it. Cautiously, warily, Aithne opened the door she had built in her mind, allowing Carth’s feelings to become clear to her once more. As she did, his gaze intensified. She felt a new awareness from him.

“You can feel that,” she realized.

“I—yes,” Carth said, frowning in sudden concentration. “I can’t . . . I can’t explain it. I can—I can feel you. Huh. I think you’re right. I think I’ve been feeling you for a while. Your presence. It’s like . . . like a sound right at the edge of what I can hear. Or something I can only see in my periphery. You’ve just been . . . there. I never even noticed, but when you . . . when you shut me out, like in the tomb earlier, it’s like . . . it’s like I suddenly lose this extra dimension I have on you. Can you—do you think you could try it again?”

Fascinated, Aithne blocked off the connection once again. Carth actually flinched. “Wow. Yeah. That’s . . . that’s disorienting. I didn’t . . . I didn’t think it would feel like this. Is this what it’s like for you? With Bastila?”

Aithne leaned back against the rim of the sink. After she had begun training on Dantooine, she had identified several of Carth’s more heightened abilities as being actually symptomatic of slight Force Sensitivity, probably inherited from the larger-than-normal gene pool of Force Sensitives upon Telos from the Jedi Support Corps stationed there. His profound skills as a pilot; his reflexes in a fight; the feelings he sometimes had about people and situations. She’d observed after a while that he did make some passive use of the Force on a day-to-day basis without realizing it, mostly to aid him in connecting to and getting a feel for other people. But everything she’d observed from him had been passive and unconscious—a natural extension of the way Carth lived his life and understood his environment rather than any focused observation of his environment through the Force or manipulative skill.

But he was more aware of the bond between them than she would have thought. Had been so on a higher cognitive level than she had known even before she’d pointed it out. Now that she’d told him, he was showing he also had the ability to isolate it within his mind, recognize it. The terms he was using hinted that he might have been using their bond to form his opinion and impressions of her more than either of them had suspected.

But his experience would be different than hers. Even if he’d been on a level with a Jedi and in practice using his abilities, the way they felt to him might not be the same as the way the very same abilities felt to her. Aithne spread her hands. “I don’t know,” she told him. “I’m not in your head, Carth. Not completely. I can’t fully experience what things are like from your perspective.”

Carth wasn’t quite looking at her physically. His eyes focused on the laundry table, the wall. But amazingly, even with the direct connection between them shielded for the moment, Aithne could feel him fumbling for her through the Force, reaching out with the senses he had only just discovered he had to see her that way. She wondered, were Force Sensitives below a certain threshold actually untrainable, as the Jedi said? Or was it just that no one wanted to take the time to train abilities which might not be so impressive? Could people like Carth, if they were made aware of what talents they did possess through the Force, still learn to be sharper, clearer, more powerful, and more at peace? Elitism is right up the Jedi alley.

Or was it just that Carth’s bond to her gave him greater access in this one respect? Aithne waited while Carth puzzled her out, stabbed at the edges of her, and scrambled for her center. It was different than when Bastila tried. Bastila knew what she was doing, and when Bastila did it, she was deliberately trying to force an intimacy. Carth—Carth was exploring a new facet of himself, a whole new way of experiencing others. It was just as intimate, but not nearly as personal, and somehow, Aithne felt no urge to psychically slap him away.

“I think—when you’re not doing . . . whatever it is you’re doing, it’s like you’re more there for me,” Carth mused. “More real, somehow. Like I said, I had no idea. I didn’t even notice until just now. It didn’t—it didn’t ever bother me.” His eyes moved up to focus on her again, his explorations done. “It’s bothered you? It must’ve, if you had to shut it down earlier.”

He watched her. Aithne tried to figure out how to say it, how to be truthful without blaming him, gentle without hiding anything. “You remember back on Taris? How Bastila’s stress over her time with the Vulkars gave me a headache?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

Aithne sighed. “When I told her, she was able to deal with her emotions and shield them from me so what she was feeling didn’t hurt me anymore. But you don’t have the Jedi training that lets Bastila do that.

“I want to be clear,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I don’t read Bas’s mind. I don’t read yours. I don’t think I could without a much more conscious effort and a lot more training in specific dimensions of certain Jedi skills, and I wouldn’t want to even if I could. But with Bastila, for me, her mind is a more or less constant background noise that tells me where she is and how she’s doing. I know when she’s calm and when she’s excited. I sense her anger, frustration, fear, and indignation—a whole lot easier than I can sense anybody else’s, ever, and all the time. That doesn’t mean I know how to interpret it. I don’t necessarily know why Bastila feels what she feels, nor can I always even say what she’s focused on.”

Carth had folded his arms. “And with me?” he asked. His face had set, braced for what she had to tell him. He knew it was worse.

“It’s louder,” Aithne admitted. “Military discipline ain’t like Jedi discipline, Republic. You people are trained to be professional, not to show your feelings in work settings. You aren’t trained to filter through and release all your emotions to begin with or to psychically shield them from people sensitive to that kind of thing.”

“And it hurts you?”

He was relentless. Aithne winced. “If it hurts you. It’s worse if I’m dealing with my own stuff relating to whatever’s gone and upset you.”

“An echo chamber,” Carth recalled. He nodded slowly. “I—I’m sorry. I haven’t meant to . . . share more than I’ve said. I certainly wouldn’t’ve wanted to hurt you.”

“No, I know,” Aithne told him. “Like I said, it’s not your fault. It’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you feeling bad over something you can’t help—or freaking out over all the deep, dark secrets I might be picking up on.”

Carth’s mouth turned up at one corner. “Hah. No—I told you right from the beginning, the days I had secrets worth extracting are past. Anything I didn’t talk about—it was because I didn’t want to think about it, not because it was dangerous. I—I really don’t have much to hide.”

Aithne searched his face. “So it really doesn’t bother you, being bonded to me like this?”

Carth smiled, a little self-consciously. “You know, if anything, it’s a little flattering to know I can feel even a fraction of what a Jedi can, can create or have a Force bond like you or Bastila. I’m sorry to hear you’ve been uncomfortable sometimes since Taris. And I appreciate that you haven’t wanted to intrude. You—you should do what’s safest and most comfortable for you. But honestly? Now I know, it’s a bit weirder having it shut off like this.” He winced again and tilted his head, peering at her like he was trying to see her better, and she felt him trying to sense her in the Force again—sense her the way he was used to sensing her.

Something in his expression tugged at her. Made her want to open the door. Aithne remembered how she had felt the first night they had left Dantooine, when she realized that in all her powerful and conflicting feelings about Carth, she had never once considered what he might want from her. Now, in his own way, he was telling her again what he preferred, without going so far as to make any demands. And suddenly, she wanted to give. Suddenly, she wanted to connect to him. She wanted to share.

With the Force, a thought could be an intention in the same instant. She brushed Carth’s mind once again, for the first time doing so deliberately, letting him feel her, letting him in.

His expression focused once again; his body relaxed. Something in him seemed to calm and unwind, and something else seemed to come awake. “Yeah. There you are,” he murmured. “I got it.” His smile widened and suddenly was nearly blinding, and she felt a pulse of pure delight within the Force.

It was gone just as quickly, and he stepped closer. “Aithne, earlier, when it was too much for you. I watched that psychopath torture you. I . . . I watched you scream. I thought you would die right in front of me, and I couldn’t even move.”

Aithne closed her eyes, wondering if she could just sit with it. She heard him step closer. A hand skimmed down her arm. She let him untangle her arms and take her hands in both of his.

“Forget that,” he said. His voice had dropped low. “Aithne, are you alright?”

Aithne exhaled and leaned forward. Carth’s arms enveloped her, and she rested her cheek against his shoulder, feeling the rough fabric of his dark combat suit against her cheek. “I wasn’t sure I wasn’t going to die,” she admitted, feeling her vocal chords grow thick. “I wasn’t sure we all weren’t. Carth, it hurt.”

She couldn’t cry. She knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t completely relax into him. Every minute, she had to keep her senses attuned to the room’s exterior, to anyone listening or otherwise paying attention. Every moment here was stolen time. “I didn’t know what to do,” she whispered. “I thought—kill him. Let him die. For all the people he’s killed. Children. Because if Uln killed me, he’d kill you and Jolee too. But then I thought, I’ve killed children too.” She swallowed, remembering Lashowe and Shaardan. “Just because they were in the way, or because I thought they were. Then I thought, you wouldn’t like it. But then I thought, having you stand there, it had to have been like Telos, even just in a small way—”

Carth’s arms tightened around her, and a wave of emotion flooded over their connection. “Not in a small way,” he corrected her, his voice as choked as hers. “Aithne, if I had had to watch him kill you, if we’d somehow got out anyway, I would’ve never been able to forget it.”

Aithne’s chest ached and her stomach seemed either to tie itself in knots or come undone. She had known in the tomb when Carth had come to that Jorak’s little test would be just as much a trial for Onasi. She had felt deep inside herself that somewhere along the way and despite all their disciplined intentions, Carth’s attraction and friendship for her had begun to deepen and grow into something that could seriously damage him. She couldn’t qualify exactly what it was that Carth felt for her, but it was powerful, and it had changed him. It had changed her, knowing that he felt it. Her guard, always weaker than she’d wanted it when it came to him, had been reduced to so many splintered fragments sometime when her back was turned. Or when he’d decided to start trusting her with his story. Or when she’d decided to risk everything for Dustil. And there he was, terrifyingly immediate and much too close, and she without a single quippy warning or flirty “back off” to hand—just . . . wanting him. All of him.

“I was so stupid,” he was saying. “I knew Jorak Uln was hiding out around there somewhere—I should have been ready. I should have been more careful—”

Aithne pushed him out to arm’s length, looking up into his face. “I should have been more careful,” she disagreed. “You did your part. You warned me, twice. I didn’t go slowly enough. I got overconfident. Everything that happened in there today was on me.”

One of Carth’s hands came up. He brushed her cheek with the thumb of his glove. “You did what you did, because of me?” he asked her.

“A little because of Bindo’s sad, judgy eyes,” she admitted. “Mostly because of you.”

Carth wasn’t holding either of her hands anymore. One of his hands had found its way to her hip, and the other was perched on the nape of her neck, playing with the irritating baby curls back there under the main fall of her hair. Somehow, her hands had climbed up his chest to find purchase on the outer layer of the breast plating of his combat suit. “I don’t mind you wanting to do the right thing because of me,” Carth told her. “I . . . I’m proud. But Aithne, don’t put yourself in danger for me. Don’t.”

Aithne shook her head. “I won’t promise that,” she told him. She swallowed, and pushed him away again, extricating herself and stepping away from the worktable. She went back to the washbasin, pulled her new robes up dripping, examined them, and threw them into a machine. She took a guess on the settings and selected a cleansing program.

Carth was a better person than she was. He just was. If bouncing around the galaxy together had taught her anything, it was that. The Sith might want her more. The Jedi might think she was the key to saving the Republic. But if you considered the pair of them in the light of which of them was likelier to be a net force for good and have a positive impact on more people, she’d put her bet on Onasi every time. She’d rather save that than save herself. And honestly, after everything that’d gone down here, she’d rather act in a way she knew Carth Onasi could approve of than trust in her own chancy moral navigational systems. Even if it was dangerous. Even if it hurt her. The galaxy would probably be a lot better off.

She felt Carth at the edges of her mind, felt him watching her. She could feel his consideration. “You know, since we got here, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I used to . . . I used to think the Dark Side was a fancy name for something that I see every day. Corruption is everywhere. People are greedy and stupid and do horrible things. But I don’t know. I’m starting to think it’s different for the Jedi. Like there’s this evil watching them, waiting for its chance. You have so much courage and strength in you, yet, somehow, it cuts both ways, doesn’t it?”

He was coming at it sideways, but his little speech made it clear he knew how she’d struggled since coming to Korriban. Aithne wrapped her arms around herself. She felt small and dirty. “It’s harder here. I don’t like the person I’ve been here. I don’t like what I’ve found out about myself.”

“Yeah, I’ve . . . I’ve noticed you’ve been having some difficulties. Thank you—for trusting me enough to tell me. Has it . . . has it been too hard to manage?”

His voice was almost too kind, considering his horror outside the Czerka offices. Aithne squirmed. “It hasn’t—it hasn’t just been the Sith in Dreshdae. I’ve done . . . I’ve done some bad things while we’ve been here, Carth. A lot of bad things. And I didn’t always even realize or regret it right away. I don’t always realize or regret it when I’m doing bad things. It’s been . . . kind of awful, realizing the Jedi are right about me.”

She heard his steps behind her and turned to see him close to her again. “Aithne—you know it’s not just you, right? That’s not what I’m saying here. The Dark Side’s a danger for all the Jedi. I mean, how many of Revan’s followers turned into Sith, in the end? It was . . . it was most of them. Juhani nearly killed her master one day when she got angry, and Bastila—I know she struggles too.”

Aithne scoffed. “Bastila? Seriously? Goody-two-saber, there-is-no-emotion Bastila? That kid looked down at Revan, the Sith Lord who’d just killed her master, and she felt compassion for her.” She wondered if it had been Revan somehow, here on Korriban. If the visions of Darth Revan were starting to get to her, corrupt her. But even as it crossed her mind, she knew it was self-delusive wishful thinking, just her trying to comfort herself by blaming everything she’d done on someone else. Everything she’d done here had been her, not Revan.

 Carth shook his head. “This isn’t like you,” he said. “Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone has weaknesses. The thing is to keep moving forward, not to give up. You—you’re stronger than you feel right now. I know it. And once upon a time, you knew Bastila had her own problems. Don’t . . . don’t put her up on a pedestal just because you feel down right now. Don’t discount what you can do because you had a few rough days. Neither of those things will help either one of you. I mean, neither one of you are fully trained. And maybe . . . maybe you can help Bastila with what you’ve learned here. Just . . . give yourself a little grace, beautiful.”

Aithne stared up at him. Would he say the same if he knew all she needed grace for, she wondered? And did he know that to the Jedi, he was just one more temptation to resist, and rapidly becoming both the sweetest and the sharpest one she faced? Would he tell her to give herself the grace for him? On impulse, she hooked her hand over his shoulder, bobbed up on her toes, and kissed his cheek. But before she could step back and away, he caught her hand.

“Aithne. I don't like the idea of you going into that tomb alone tomorrow.” His eyes were dead serious as he looked into hers, and this time, when she felt his concern over their bond, she felt his awareness that she felt it—and that he didn’t care. She couldn’t brush him off with a joke this time like she’d done on Taris. And while she knew Carth was a protective person, she also knew he wasn’t only speaking out of a protective instinct.

So she nodded. “Alright,” she said. “So worry about me. But worry about yourself and Jolee too. I wouldn’t put it past one of them to try something while we’re gone in hopes of making me easier to manage when we get back.”

“No, we’ll go low-profile,” Carth agreed. “Take a comm and hide out until you need us. But Aithne, will you be okay? Not just with the politics. Not just with whatever trial they have in store for you. But with the Dark Side? I mean, you heard what Jolee said. Who are you going to have in there?”

Aithne didn’t need to stretch out her senses to feel Korriban waiting for her. The air licking against her skin, the ground pulling at her feet. This planet was saturated with the evil of millennia, and it was still dying of thirst for more. And she had lakes of anger and arrogance within her just waiting to be tapped.

She tried a smile. “Maybe I’ll radio Hawk and get Bas to meditate for me,” she suggested. “Maybe knowing you’re gonna check my eyes for yellow when I get back will keep me honest.”

“I will,” Carth told her, completely straight. “And I will worry. But—for what it’s worth, I do believe in you. I do think you can resist. You can do this, Aithne.”

“Eh, going on a galactic domination kick tomorrow wouldn’t be as fun,” Aithne said. “I wouldn’t get to do that with you.”

Chapter Text

DUSTIL

Dustil didn’t sleep the night before he left the Sith. Four years he’d been a prisoner, so long he’d forgot he was one. The Sith had told him he’d been chosen—he and a few of the others—chosen for the strength they had inside them. They were superior to everyone on the whole surface of Telos, they’d said, the only ones worthy to serve the Sith, and perhaps, someday, to be among them. They were lucky to be so special, so singular.

Dustil had played their games for years. He’d kicked and he’d clawed, moving from one unpredictable, crazy master to another. Learning to read danger signs, how to be dangerous himself. He’d learned to keep his mouth shut and his eyes and ears open, to move fast and hard but never to give himself away. He’d learned to use his anger, his drive to stay alive—not just to live but to excel among a thousand people who would eviscerate him at any sign of weakness. He’d determined he wouldn’t just be a Sith servant; he’d be a Sith. And one day, sooner than any of them thought, he’d be strong enough that no one would ever try to touch him again.

But somehow, it had all got twisted up inside his brain. He’d let himself forget that those first days on Korriban, he hadn’t thought he was special or lucky to be chosen at all, that he’d wanted to kill the Sith for the fire he’d seen raining down on his homeworld, not be accepted as one of them. He’d stopped trying to just survive the masters and started trying to make them happy, stopped thinking about revenge as an act of justice on the Sith and started planning it as a way to climb the ranks. And eventually, he’d started thinking he was strong enough, good enough to be accepted. Eventually, he’d started thinking he’d won respect among the Sith, that he had friends. Family.

But the teachers he’d thought liked him now only thought of him as a weapon. If they were pleased with him, it was because he was deadly and driven, not because of who he was. And the friends he’d made along the way? They’d been slaughtered. Or run away. Or they would kill him the second they thought it gave them an advantage.

They’d call him a deserter now. Send out the hopefuls to kill him just like Thalia and the others. Dustil didn’t think he’d merit anything like his father’s formal bounty. He was a first-year Sith, untested in any real battle. If they figured out Dustil had run away with his father, maybe. But mostly, they would think he was weak. A failure and a fool just like the others.

How many of them could have survived over the years if the Sith had anything like sense or decency? The Sith were the real fools. A twelfth or less the strength they could have. And as for vengeance on them, Dustil couldn’t think of a better way than helping out Bastila Shan the Jedi prodigy and the woman the Sith thought even deadlier than she was take down Darth Malak himself.

But his “friends” in the Sith academy—the ones he had left—would kill him in a flat second if they knew what he had up his sleeves. He could never come back. Dustil didn’t ever want to come back. But . . . he didn’t know. It had been all he’d known for four years. He’d been a different person back on Telos. A child.

When he heard some of the guys in the dorms down the row start moving, doors opening, Dustil figured it was time to get out of bed. He dressed in two minutes, gathered everything he’d set aside to take in a rucksack small enough to look like a bag for a day trip to the city, grabbed his last breakfast from the academy mess, and left the building.

He wore civs. It wasn’t unusual for folks to do that whenever they wanted a little bit of fun in Dreshdae. Once you got past the initial high of being taken for study in the academy, you learned pretty quick that sometimes it was better not to be dressed out in town. Sometimes it was better if the shopkeepers and pretty girls weren’t afraid for their life as soon as they saw you. Sometimes you wanted to buy a belt or a datapad and hear the bar news without civilians stammering. Sometimes you didn’t want everyone to stay away.

Stars, how had he ever forgotten just what the Sith were?

The Twi’lek wasn’t supposed to meet him at the docks for a few hours, so Dustil did his best to kill time looking like that was what he was doing, to avoid anyone seeing he had a knot in his stomach the size of a tooka. He went to a cinema to see a holo. Bullied the ticketer into giving him a discounted price. Grabbed an extra drink while he was there and took it down to the docks to watch the ships going and coming in. Bet on a derbit fight some thugs had going on. He said hello to some people he knew from the academy and explained he’d decided to take a little R&R. Sucker-punched one of the hopefuls who saw them talking and asked him for a medallion, then let one of his old instructors treat him a few credits for a drink.

He didn’t head to the cantina until it made sense for him to be looking to buy some food there. He didn’t stake it out, though he scanned the crowd for other Sith when he walked in. Dak Vesser, one of the workmen for the Sith archaeology team, permitted into the academy but not actually accepted into a training class yet, was the only one he saw. Dak wasn’t quite a decade older than Dustil, and everyone knew he’d recently come from the Jedi. Not completely unheard of, especially in the upper ranks fighting in the war, veterans of the Mandalorian Wars, but the new ones often had to pull their weight doing odd jobs around the academy before they really got a shot. That Moran had been accepted so quickly into the competing class this year had been a statement of how much Master Yuthura believed in her—or how enthusiastic she was about using her. The academy didn’t usually think ex-Jedi had the stuff.

Vesser wasn’t really on anybody’s scanners yet, and Dustil dismissed him pretty quick when he had a chance to look the guy over. It wasn’t even lunch yet, and Dak was more than halfway gone. His eyes were bleary, he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and everyone in his corner of the room was steering clear. He probably smelled pretty bad. He’d been one to drink when he’d first shown up, Dustil remembered, though he’d cleaned it up in the last few months. But it looked like Dak had had a relapse. He wouldn’t be able to put up any kind of fight in his condition. Might not even be too aware of anything he saw.

Dustil ordered the daily special and a drink, extra ice. He sat at a table facing the door. He was there maybe twenty minutes before Mission Vao showed up.

He was glad his father’d told him what to look for, because Vao wasn’t the kind of person he usually thought of when someone said “Twi’lek girl.” She was skinny and covered up, and when she ordered her meal from the bartender, she spoke Basic with a Rim native accent.

Still, she was cute enough. Nice face. Pretty shade of blue. Along with the Basic, the tattooed-on eyebrows signaled human-friendly, but she looked dangerous too. She moved like she could use the blasters she carried, and her round gray eyes looked wide awake and alert to the whole cantina. When she saw Dustil, those eyes went even wider for a second, but then she snapped right into character. She turned away, like she was bored, then looked back over her shoulder at him, kinda sneaky but also like she halfway wanted to be caught. Like she was liking what she saw.

Nice performance, Dustil thought, without enthusiasm. In five seconds, he could see that this might work. It made sense that a guy might want to be the person this girl didn’t size up and send to hell in a minute. That he might think he was dangerous getting close to a girl so obviously comfortable with her weapons.

Personally? He halfway wanted to get up and leave. Head straight on back to the academy. Or else try and beg for transport someplace else away from Father and Aithne Moran and whatever the hell they were up to.

Vao was a kid. Maybe a year or two younger than he was. And Father and Moran were trusting her to smuggle him onto their ship before they left? Why?

Dustil tried to relax his jaw. It was his best shot. He knew it was. Father and Moran had a ship. A crew. Word was, they’d taken out an entire Czerka outpost on Edean. They said they had a Wookiee; he’d heard about a Mandalorian. They could protect him and get him away. If he left Ebon Hawk and tried to make it on his own, he’d be all on his own. He didn’t have the resources to get off Korriban in a hurry, not without bonding himself out to someone shady to do it, and he wasn’t going to be a servant again. He wasn’t going to be a slave.

Dustil signaled the bartender.

He used the money from his old Sith teacher to buy Mission Vao’s drink. Asked this one be made without ice because it fit his character. He just hoped Vao would be smart enough not to drink it.

When the bartender served her and explained, Mission looked back over. Her acting was perfect. She curled her lip then hid a smile and tossed her lekku back. Then she swiped the drink off the counter and sashayed over without tasting a drop.

“You know if you wanted to introduce yourself, you could just say ‘hi,’” she informed him. “What kinda loser drinks in the middle of the day, anyway?” She sniffed at his drink and scoffed. “Particularly some watered-down poodoo like that. You’re pathetic.”

At close range, Dustil felt even less like playing this game. Vao was probably only a few centimeters off from her full adult height, unless she’d hit it already, but you could see how young she was. She didn’t wear any of the stuff on her face you saw on the waitresses or cantina dancers, or even on some of the Sith girls his age when they went into the city. And he could see her blasters—one on each hip, just like Father. The one on the left looked pretty new.

Keep it innocent. From me and not just Aithne. Dustil understood how the plan was supposed to work. He’d agreed as soon as Moran and Father had brought up they had a girl on their ship around his age that she’d be the ideal person to meet him in Dreshdae and get him back to that ship without arousing suspicion. But he didn’t like it. Pretending he wanted to go off with this kid and spend a night on her ship somehow felt skeevier than actually doing it. Even if he’d felt remotely like befriending the girl from the second the old man had said what he’d said.

But Dustil took a sip of his drink. That was the next step in this farce, not to believe a word the girl said, because hey, she’d come over, hadn’t she? “Hi,” he said ironically.

Mission grinned. “The name’s Mission Vao, and—” she looked over her shoulder, saw no one there, and fumbled. “and I’m in town a couple days stocking up my freighter. What’s your name and story, kid?”

It was the first slip-up she’d made. She’d started looking for someone else, someone who was normally with her. The Wookiee or the Jedi, Dustil wondered? The hidden one that’d be following Mission in case she got into trouble or he got a little fresh? Neither of them could be here now, he understood. It had to look like it was just him and Mission. But he wondered where the Jedi was.

“Dustil,” he told her. “Your freighter, is it? Sure it’s not your daddy’s? You’re a little young to be spacing on your own.”

The tone was right—aggressive teasing in the same lane she’d opened up for them—but the words were wrong. Too real. Too close.

And Vao’s cheeks had turned violet. “I’m old enough,” she parried. Her lekku twitched. Sensitive spot, Dustil gathered. “Freighter might as well be mine. The crew’s useless without me.”

“I’m sure. What do you do for them?” Part of him didn’t want to hear it. Part of him really wanted to know. What kind of part did Father and Moran see him playing once he was aboard their ship? Stars, if he was headed right back to daycare, he was out the first rock they hit off Korriban.

Vao preened. “You’re looking at the chief supplier and priceline negotiator for Ebon Hawk!” Mission cracked a smile then and stopped the crowing. “Least, they’re letting me try it out while the boss does some higher-value negotiations for rare Korriban artifacts in the valley.” That was her character, then—either here on Korriban in general or in this interaction with him. The captain’s pet, a precocious little braggart, dangerously indulged but overall unimportant to her mistress’s broader schemes.

“And your boss isn’t worried you’ll run into any trouble here in Dreshdae?” Dustil asked, letting his tone do the rest of the work.

The color rose in Vao’s cheeks again, and her lekku twitched. She was uncomfortable with this, but she looked him up and down anyway. “Why? You know where any trouble is?”

“I might,” Dustil said. “What do you say we get out of here and I can show you?”

“Buy me dinner first, space-for-brains,” Mission retorted. “It’ll soak up that drink you’re trying to drown me in. We’ll talk, and then if I still like you, we might see.”

“I’m not hungry,” Dustil said, gesturing to his own finished lunch. “I don’t just want to sit here and watch you eat.”

Vao raised her eyebrows. “What, and you can’t manage seconds? You couldn’t go for a dessert? Come on and keep me company, idiot.” She slid into the chair opposite his. Dustil rolled his eyes.

“Fine. But you can buy me dessert.”

“Deal,” Mission said. They signaled the bartender. Vao ordered a burger and some fried vegetables, and Dustil ordered a blue milkshake, and they paid according to the negotiation.

“So. You think you got out of telling me about you with your ‘little girl’ joke, but I remember you never answered. Start talking, Dustil,” Mission said.

Dustil pushed down his annoyance. This pushy princess routine she was running was getting real old real fast. “What? You can’t handle a little mystery?”

“Some mystery!” Mission scoffed. “I can read you like a datapad, mister.”

This he wanted to see. “Shoot.”

Mission sat back, looking at him over the edge of her drink, which she still hadn’t touched. “Alright, sure. You got your clothes from the Czerka outpost a few streets over, but they’re a few months old. That plus your accent says you been here a while, but you aren’t a local. You’ve been here a while, but you don’t live here in town, ‘cause if you did, you’d find something better than that mass-produced slave labor crap. Also, you’re probably not exactly rolling in credits, ‘cause the food here’s dirt cheap, but you sent me the cheapest liquor on the cantina menu, and you weren’t exactly happy to spring for dinner too. That means you want something from me, and pretty bad too.

“So. The accent. Outer Rim, like me, but not Korriban-local. Short on funds, so you probably didn’t get here on your own. That says bondslave or capture, probably of one of these Sith who live here. Stop me if you need to.” She said the last in the same casual tone as all the rest of it.

Dustil’s fists clenched on the table. “No, you seem to be doing just fine without me,” he said. “If I’m a slave, how’d I pay for dinner at all?”

Mission considered this. “Could’ve nicked it from your masters, but I don’t think so,” she decided. “You walk like you can handle yourself and you got some type of weapon concealed in your right sleeve, so I think you joined the Sith. Maybe as a soldier. Maybe as an assassin. Heck, maybe you trained as a full-blown magic-wielding whatever. Sith must pay something, or no one would stay. But they aren’t what you expected. You didn’t get what you wanted out of the deal. Sometimes you get tired. So, you dress up in the one civilian outfit you got and go and try and chat up some stranger. How am I doing?”

Dustil slid his lightsaber out of the wrist holster into his right hand and left it palm up on the table. “Full-blown magic-wielding whatever, at your service. Are you scared?”

“Do I look scared?” Vao asked him. “If you’d come at me wanting to prove your superiority over the whole damn galaxy by personally smashing me to a pulp, that’d be one thing. But you didn’t. You bought me a drink.” She sipped her first sip of the afternoon, winced, and put it down. Popped a vegetable chip into her mouth instead.

Dustil slipped his lightsaber back up his sleeve. Some of the people he knew would want to smash this kid. She had a big mouth and a swagger she hadn’t earned. “You’re pretty good. If no one told you about me beforehand. Dreshdae’s a pretty small town. Sure you haven’t been stalking me, Vao?” The way she’d run it down like she’d just seen him and known was impressive. He’d give her that much. But Moran had told her about him.

“Why? Would you be mad?” Vao asked. Dustil looked into the Twi’lek kid’s eyes. Behind the surface-level flirtation, she was asking him a question: did he really want to leave? How did he feel about his father finally tracking him down?

Dustil dropped his gaze. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

They left the cantina after Mission had finished eating. “Anyone following us?” Vao asked him.

“Your Jedi,” he told her. “Can’t see her, but I can sense her, and I can tell she’s not one of mine.”

“Dark Side, you mean,” Mission said. She regarded him as they walked, an even more thorough gaze than she’d leveled at him in the cantina. “So. You’re Carth’s kid, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I figured he had had one, once. He never told any of us till we found out you were alive and here, but he’s had this fatherly thing going ever since I met him. I figured if he didn’t have a kid, he had to be the single bossiest man in the entire galaxy.”

“Fathered you a bit, I gather,” Dustil shot back.

Vao went purple again. “Hey, I ain’t out to move in on your old man,” she protested. “You can keep him, s’far as I’m concerned. Carth’s a good guy, and he’s my friend. I figure now that you’re back, he might stop mollycoddling me so much. I can take care of myself.”

“Huh. They wouldn’t let you leave the ship without a Jedi escort,” Dustil sneered.

“Because your buddies are murdering people all over the place out here!” Mission came back. “You know how many bodies and casual tortures I’ve seen since we docked here four days ago?”

“If they couldn’t protect themselves—” Dustil started, then swore, viciously. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Mission Vao walked with him several steps before she said anything. “You don’t really think that, do you? That people who can’t protect themselves deserve . . . whatever happens to them? You can’t.” Her voice was small.

Ever since Father and Moran had told him about Selene, ever since they’d shown up, Telos had been playing in his head. Like a broken holovid you couldn’t get out of the projector. Like a holovid you couldn’t switch off. Again and again and again, he saw the fire raining down on his homeworld, was dragged screaming into that Sith warrior’s fighter. Again and again, he was kicked and stun-cuffed into silence, dumped in the dirt on Korriban after three weeks with two dozen other prisoners. He’d been nearly starving. He’d wished he had starved. And almost everyone who’d been there with him that day had died or been killed since.

Again and again, he made friends with Selene and some of the others. Locals from Dreshdae, some of the younger academy students. Again and again, he let them talk him into trying to follow the masters’ advice, trying to break his chains. He challenged the masters to let him prove his strength, and he did it. He’d killed a friend in the tomb of Naga Sadow for his graduation. And they’d killed Selene.

“I don’t know. It’s what they told us. It’s how I—forget it.”

“Dustil—” Mission’s voice was soft.

“I said forget it!”

Mission shot him a sideways glance, but she let it lie. “Alright. Ebon Hawk is up this way.”

She led him out a door into one of the Dreshdae private hangars. Dustil looked up at his new home. She was a Dynamic-class freighter, white with red detailing suggesting a bird of prey on the nose and wings. She wasn’t much to look at if you didn’t know ships, but Dustil had studied them since he was old enough to know what his father did. Ebon Hawk would be able to fly.

A small noise behind them let him know their Jedi companion had finally decided to reveal herself. Dustil turned, halfway expecting to see Malak’s most wanted, but the shadow Moran had warned him about turned out to be a Cathar instead. She was tall and powerful, dressed in simple, unornamented black robes. They mimicked the Sith, but the Cathar didn’t feel like a Sith. Dustil sensed wariness and regret from her, but also a serenity and control more characteristic of the Jedi Order.

“Decided to join us, have you?”

“Dustil.” The Cathar’s voice was quiet and accented. She stepped forward, extending her hand. “It is good to meet you. I am Juhani.”

Dustil shook her hand. He wasn’t scared, but the feel of it still set his hair on end. It was strange, feeling the human shape of her hand covered in leathery pads and short, warm fur. “I . . . uh, I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing for his inadvertent shudder. “You’re the first Cathar I’ve ever met.”

“We were never a far-ranging people,” Juhani answered. “And we are rarer than ever in the galaxy, thanks to the Mandalorians. It is nothing. If I may: you look very like your father.”

“Yeah. I’m getting that impression.” Before Carth had dropped out of the sky a couple days ago, Dustil had actually forgot they’d used to say that. He’d forgot he did look like the old man. He’d used to look like his mother too, at least a little. When he’d been on Korriban a year or two, started forgetting what she looked like, he would stare at himself in the mirror and try to remember, try to find her face somewhere in his. More and more, he couldn’t, though. When Carth had shown up, though, he could see himself in that face. He hated it. But Moran, Vao, now Juhani—the second they’d seen him, they’d been looking at someone else.

Mission was watching him. She put her hand out to touch his arm. “Come on, Dustil,” she said. “Let’s introduce you to the rest of the crew.”

AITHNE

After a wash and a mending, Aithne was liking the shyrack cave robes more and more. Honestly, she knew she’d probably be better served in Addison Bettler’s armor today, but she didn’t want to wear it. She was sick of pretending. The robes she’d found in the shyrack caves were soft and strong. They were full of power that didn’t feel like the Dark Side at all. And when she wore them, she didn’t look like a Sith.

Aithne picked up her lightsaber. She’d switched out the crystal last night. The green crystal Dorak had given her back on Dantooine felt a little resentful, if she wasn’t imagining things. Miffed she hadn’t been using it these past few days. But it hummed reassuringly in her mind when she gripped the hilt of the saberstaff now, eager to get back to work.

For defense then. Not for murder, not for vengeance. Let’s go.

Carth had had the bed last night. She looked at him there, at Jolee beside him on the floor. Both of them were still sleeping. Better to leave them that way, Aithne thought. She didn’t want to deal with any more fussing from either of them. Quietly, she slipped from the room.

She found Uthar and Yuthura. She saw traces of a sleepless night across Yuthura’s face, but Uthar seemed as placid as ever. The three of them made a silent journey to the valley, to the tomb of Naga Sadow. Uthar spoke to the Sith on guard, and the two of them stepped aside. Aithne followed the Sith masters into the one place she’d been trying to reach since her arrival on Korriban. It was as dark and dusty as any of the other tombs she’d visited. The same cobwebs and dangerous animal droppings everywhere, but a darkness ran through the heart of this place deeper than any she’d felt yet. She recognized this darkness, though. She’d felt it before on Dantooine and Kashyyyk.

Uthar and Yuthura stopped in the entry passage. “We have arrived to your final test, young Sith,” he murmured. “You have earned the right to see if you shall become one of us.”

“Indeed you have,” Yuthura purred.

Wynn’s eyes cut to Yuthura. “Is that a tone of mischief in your voice, dear Yuthura?” he asked. His voice was honey sweet and venomous. “You should know by now that no scheme is certain.”

Yuthura’s eyes glinted. “As should you, my master. But I was only agreeing. Should we not get on with the test?”

Uthar eyed Aithne, a new suspicion in his gaze. “Yes, of course. We are in the sacred tomb of Naga Sadow, child, the one discovered by Darth Malak and Darth Revan years ago. You are to follow in their footsteps and reach the ancient Star Map that lies deep within. There you will find a lightsaber, amongst other things. The lightsaber is for you, your initiation present. Return to us once you have it. For you, the test does not end there.”

“I didn’t think it would,” Aithne muttered.

“Be very cautious, here,” Yuthura warned her. “This tomb is like the others in this valley, and many of its old defenses remain active.”

Aithne studied Yuthura. She wondered, was the Twi’lek warning her friend or the ally she required to strike down her rival?

“Do you understand what I have told you?” Uthar was asking. “Are you ready to begin?”

Aithne looked him over. She didn’t give him the courtesy of a reply but instead headed off into the dark.

She was going to have to go to Tatooine next. There weren’t any excuses left for Mission. But as Aithne cut down the third wraid, she thought how nice it would be if one of the Star Maps happened to be located on a lush resort world instead of the hind end of nowhere surrounded by unpleasant wasteland and hostiles. Manaan was probably the nicest worlds of the two leads remaining, but Manaan was going to be a political swamp, which wasn’t a whole lot better.

The route through to where she guessed the burial chamber was supposed to be led through an acid spring, too wide to leap over even with the Force. Grumpy and irritated, Aithne moved to explore the corridors off the main passage for a workaround. There was some ancient Sith tech guarding a separate chamber for the Sith Lord’s primary weapon in one. She ran into trouble when she went the other way.

The second she stepped out of the hallway into the cavernous chamber to the west of the main passage, she sensed the danger. Peering through the darkness, she saw them: not one but two hulking terentateks. In between her and the room she needed to search.

Alright. Break it down. Close quarters. The chamber was big, but not nearly as big as she needed to keep away from both beasts at once. She hadn’t brought a gun powerful enough to take them on from a distance; Ordo’s monster repeater was the only one they had on Ebon Hawk that might be able to do the job in time. Contain them, then. Control the battlefield.

How? Don’t focus on what you don’t have. What do you have?

Retreating out of the chamber and a good ways down the corridor, Aithne began to rummage through her pack and realized the Force had been good to her. Since Jolee had joined the team, when he went out with her, he took the medical pack she’d used to carry. As a consequence, when Mission wasn’t with her, Aithne moved the demolitions and security gear over to her pack with the Star Forge datapad and other informational gear. She had about eight inactive and disabled mines in the main compartment of her backpack, ready to partition up any battlefield she needed. And tossed into the top was the sound-dampening stealth belt she’d used to deescalate things with the assassin droid in the tomb of Marka Ragnos the day before. She wasn’t the best stealth operative. Could she sneak around in the dark corners of a room containing two Jedi-killing monsters long enough to set up the traps that would let her take them down alone?

Time to find out.

Aithne blessed the overpowering smell of death and dust all these Sith tombs had as she crept through the dark side of the terentateks’ lair, moving as slowly as she could so as not to give off the slightest noise. She prayed, so far as she was able, sending her respects to the Force. Not that it’ll do much good. The Force will do what the Force will do, and it’ll favor what or who it’s gonna favor, and it doesn’t much care if you’re out here trying to save the galaxy or take it over. You’re good for your own sake, or you’re not good at all.

Still. Please don’t let them come for me before I’m finished setting this up.

She lined up traps on four or five lines of approach to a particularly hard-to-reach corner in the terentateks’ chamber, and prayed additionally that multiple explosives going off at once wouldn’t collapse the tomb on her.

It’s been here for a couple thousand years. It’ll be fine, right?

The corner—not completely coincidentally one of the strongest structural places in the room—she left free of mines for a three-and-a-half-meter radius. When she looked over everything and decided she’d done all she could, she laid her pack down a little ways away from her feet, opened the side pocket, and grabbed out two particular grenades.

She pulled the pin on the adhesive and lobbed it at the terentatek on the left. Pulled the pin on the plasma and threw it at the terentatek on the right. Then she took up a defensive stance and waited.

The whole tomb shook. Two terentateks roared in too confined a space, and Aithne set her teeth against the din. The smell of blood and burning flesh joined with the dust and bones. One terentatek stood raging against the sticky morass engulfing its feet and claws. It would tug its way free eventually. But Aithne would have a crucial half minute before it did.

The other terentatek was gushing blood out of several burning, oozing wounds upon its body, making its way toward her. It hit the minefield first.

The mines didn’t stop it. It kept going, red eyes narrowed at her in rage and hatred; it had enough cunning to know she’d caused all of its pain. But the creature had cooked its feet before it reached her. Bleeding from a dozen wounds inflicted by the explosion of two separate frag mines, nearly mad, and smelling like the kinrath in the Shadowlands, it bore down on her.

Aithne was ready. With the double-bladed lightsaber extended, she adopted a form that would make her like a beast herself. Using the Force to strengthen her arms and legs, she met the terentatek power for power, ignoring the crashing and cascading dust that was the other terentatek, breaking free of the adhesive grenade and trying to find another path through the minefield to help its mate. There was no room for that one. The first took up the entire space in front of her. She’d blocked off the creatures’ ability to flank her.

The rancid, venomous breath of the terentatek assaulted her. Teeth as long as her hand gnashed centimeters from her face and spittle flew into her hair. Aithne didn’t back down. As the terentatek clawed for her vainly, she twitched her lightsaber, and the ends of the monster’s claws went flying. It screamed and tried to ram her. With her own muscles screaming, Aithne shoved out with the Force. She couldn’t shove it back. It was born and bred to resist attacks like that. But she could keep it at bay. She kicked out hard into the thing’s putrid, bleeding underbelly and slashed it across the face, then down through its gut as it reeled, leaving the entrails burning and steaming away in the air of the tomb.

The creature fell toward her. With a second mighty kick, she forced it away and prepared to meet its mate.

The second terentatek hadn’t been as hurt by the first grenade she’d hurled its way as the one she’d chosen to fight first. Adhesives didn’t do anything like the damage that plasma grenades did. But as it had tried to find an avenue to her, maddened by its failure, by the screams and the scent of its mate’s blood, it had stumbled into far more of Aithne’s mines.

By this point, the second terentatek was a pathetic, tortured wreck. Half-blinded, one arm entirely blown off by a plasma mine, it was heaving, staggering around the tomb in devastation. Aithne almost considered leaving it, except for the fact that the thing would heal and go on to hunt Jedi all the more in the future. She vaulted the corpse of the first creature, and that was where she made her mistake.

As she moved out of the corner, she lost the ground advantage. Suddenly, the creature had room to maneuver. As she stepped, she saw its head turn, and that was all the warning she got.

The tail whipped out on a trajectory she was unprepared for. Aithne dodged the blow that would have clubbed her insensate to the ground. But she couldn’t completely avoid one ripping spike. It tore through her robe sleeve, tore through the skin and muscle of her forearm. Aithne cried out. Instantly, her arm was on fire with pain. Throbbing and protesting at the punishment. Blood began to well up from the wound at once, dripping down her arm to the stone below.

Aithne grit her teeth and pushed back her rage. The last thing she needed was to lose control like the creature. Instead, she shifted to a more sideways stance and a vector that would have her fighting on the terentatek’s blind side. Coming at it in a series of short runs and jabs, working mostly with her right hand and the double-bladed lightsaber, she was weaker than she had been against the first terentatek. The fight took longer. But if she was weaker, so was the second terentatek. She got a strike in on its inner leg, another tearing wound across from the blown-off extremity that made the terentatek howl. Its cry broke off back in its throat, dying off into a wounded gurgle.

Using the Force for springs, Aithne leapt up and drove her lightsaber down like a spear. She ripped it through the terentatek’s heavy carcass off that second, ragged wound. She waited until she felt the life leave the monster’s body before she turned her back.

Hissing, Aithne cradled her left arm. Her sleeve was black and wet with blood. She couldn’t even see the wound beneath. That was possible even if the creature hadn’t hit anything vital, she knew. Flesh wounds could bleed a lot. She didn’t feel as though the terentatek had broken her arm, rather, she felt as though it had landed a glancing blow.

Now she wanted Jolee’s medical pack, needed a shot of kolto to slow the bleeding, congeal the wound, bandages and tape to wrap it. She found a single basic medical pack in an interior pocket of her own pack—the kind with basic antiseptic and some small bandages. She would have to make do. Aithne dressed her wound as best she could. It was tricky to tie her bandage one-handed, to tie it tightly without turning it into a tourniquet. Breathing deep, Aithne reached out to the Force, trying to ignore the angry edge, and drew on her body’s natural ability to heal itself.

The wound resisted. The terentateks were anti-Jedi. Force resistant, creatures of black magic, even the injuries they inflicted were hard to heal. Slowly, she felt the blood loss through the wound begin to abate. But as the thinnest possible scab formed over the long, deep slice in her forearm, she felt a sick sullenness in the wound that lingered—severe bruising, but . . . but something else.

She had to get out of here.

Aithne made a cursory search of the terentatek nest. She found a third datapad dating from the Great Hunt, and in the bones and trash where the terentatek had been denning, there was something else. A crystal called to her hand. Aithne closed her bloody fingers over it, and it sang.

The crystal sang a song of light.

Peace, serenity, and righteousness emanated from the crystal in her hand. A warning as well: this crystal would refuse any act of Darkness. It would simply cease to function. Any Jedi who added this crystal to their saber was effectively creating their own leash. But for a Jedi committed to the Light, to defense, to protectiveness, and to standing against the Dark—it would blaze.

The crystal both called and challenged Aithne. It wasn’t hers, it told her. She couldn’t claim it. But she could earn it.

In the depths of Korriban, the crystal shone like a star, and its warmth, so different from the dry, resentful heat of the Sith homeworld, grounded and comforted her. Aithne slipped the crystal inside her pack, into the hidden compartment where she had kept her lightsaber to begin with.

She crossed to the room she had been trying to reach from the beginning, the secondary chamber she figured had to have a way across the acid spring blocking the way to the burial chamber. She was right. Nestled into secure compartments of two decorative obelisks in the center of the secondary chamber were two high-grade Sith-manufacture grenades, one that contained a flammable adhesive that would set everything it exploded upon alight, and another a high-grade propellant cooling agent, capable of freezing just about anything.

“That’ll work,” Aithne muttered. Ignoring the pain in her left arm, she made her way back to the main hallway. Keeping the fire grenade back for a rainy day, she pulled the pin and threw it into the acid pool blocking the way. She stepped back and held her arms over her face against the acrid steam, but after the steam cleared and she could look, the pool had frozen, sure enough. One more test. She assumed if she’d picked the fire grenade, she could have exploded the entire tomb. Proved herself too stupid to be a Sith.

Aithne limped over the frozen acid, grateful it had frozen in waves that gave traction to her boots. She opened the door into the primary burial chamber, and right across from the bones of Naga Sadow, just as she had suspected, was the triangular column of the third Star Map.

Pulling out the Star Map datapad from her pack, Aithne knelt by the column. It opened, and Aithne attached her datapad to the feed to download the information.

When it was done, she looked over the information, feeling a sense of bitter futility. She had three new landmark coordinates. Just three. A massive hole remained right in the middle of her datapad map. It seemed like a lot of work, so much pain and trouble for so little gain. Aithne consoled herself that for all she knew, without the three reference stars the Korriban map had just given her, it might prove impossible to find the Star Forge in the end.

Beside the Sith Lord’s sarcophagus, there was a statue of some kneeling sycophant or other. In its outstretched hand it held the lightsaber Uthar had instructed her to bring back. Aithne looked it over. The hilt was black leather with ornate brown stitching forming evil letters in the ancient Sith tongue on it. When she put a single finger on it, she could feel the twisted, synthetic crystal inside. She left it where it was and left the chamber.

Uthar and Yuthura were waiting for her. Not at the entrance as they’d planned but on the frozen acid pool. Aithne took a quick catalog of her physical condition. She was exhausted. She felt her wound throbbing with every heartbeat. The skin around the injury felt hot. It was her nondominant arm, but with a double-bladed saber, that didn’t matter much. She should’ve taken the Sith lightsaber, but even as she thought it, she felt a revulsion at the idea and knew she couldn’t have done it.

Uthar glanced down at the double-bladed lightsaber she carried, a weapon she hadn’t come into his academy with but a weapon he hadn’t given her. “You have returned to us. But where is the lightsaber you were bade to fetch?”

“I decided it didn’t suit me,” Aithne answered, glancing at Yuthura. The Twi’lek woman was on edge, wary, but Aithne also sensed she was still hopeful, still waiting for her moment.

Uthar was watching her, probing, assessing. “No,” he said. “Dear Yuthura, I believe we have both been played for fools here. This one has had her own objective from the moment she entered our academy.

“The day Yuthura brought you into our competition, I recognized the name you gave. It took me some hours to recall from where,” Uthar said. “Many here at the academy do not know I was not among the Revanchists. I am one of the last survivors from Exar Kun’s war for supremacy. When the Jedi triumphed over us, the Sith retreated to the edges of the galaxy to watch and wait and grow stronger. My master was among them, among the ones who plotted and manipulated, stoking Mandalore the Ultimate’s desire for power and conquest to make war on your Republic. The chaos of that war and the ascendance of Revan and Malak opened the way for our return—the return of the True Sith. So, I was not there when Revan first split the Jedi and flew to war, nor was poor Yuthura. Yet I have studied the patterns of Revan and Malak’s rise, the new wave of young Sith they have brought to be. Better than my apprentice, it seems.”

Yuthura’s lightsaber ignited. “Say what you mean at once, old fool,” she snarled.

“Liat Ser’rida,” Uthar replied, a cruel twist to his lips. “It was the very name she bore before she became the symbol of the Jedi Resistance to Mandalore. Before they began to call her after the movement she had founded, and she picked up the helm of the dissenter out of the ashes of Cathar.”

Aithne went cold all over. Revan. Revan stalked her on every world, everywhere she went, every breath she took. She had felt drawn to Liat Ser’rida, the Guardian, the near-heretical historian who’d been a major organizer behind the Revanchists, then disappeared right at the start like a ghost. Because she became Revan. Why hadn’t she thought of it?!

She’d been so sure Liat Ser’rida was a cipher, a dead end. She’d shown up to Korriban claiming to be the Dark Lord reborn.

Shock emanated from Yuthura, and Uthar smiled coldly. “I see neither of you were aware of the history. I had wondered whether you were an imbecile or a madwoman, lost in your own ambition, child. And now we see the truth. This is the woman you have trusted, Yuthura: a Jedi spy foolish enough to take the identity of the most notorious slaughtered Sith in recent years. By mistake.”

“Who are you?” Yuthura demanded, moving so she faced off with Aithne.

Aithne stretched out for the shadow of any electrical impulses, a sign either of the Sith carried a comlink. When she saw they didn’t, she reached back with the Force and crushed her own. “Aithne Moran,” she answered.

“Possible,” Uthar purred. “Possible. Lord Malak’s most wanted opponent, combing the catacombs of Korriban for intelligence of the Sith. A fairly recent recruit to the Jedi Order, unaware of its history and consequence. Or perhaps it is just one more lie. In any event, you are a traitor. You have talent, child, but no wisdom. Not uncommon characteristics within this tomb, it seems. Come, Yuthura, we will destroy this pretender and forget any planned unpleasantness between us. For now.”

Yuthura hesitated. Aithne saw it. She did not activate her lightsaber but appealed to the Twi’lek master. “I lied, Yuthura. To protect those under my command. I told you what truth I could. You can’t say I didn’t. And now you know the truth, you can’t say I won’t be willing to help you kill him. You know it’s just a matter of time now. He’ll eliminate you as soon as he can. So the question is whether you want to fight that fight with me, or without me.”

Yuthura hesitated a moment more. Long enough. “With you. Help me kill him,” she said.

Uthar’s face hardened. “So. It is open treachery, is it?” he asked. He activated his own lightsaber, but even as he mustered his strength, he realized there was far less of it than he had thought. The poison Aithne had left in his room had done its work. “Ugh! No! My strength leaves me!”

Yuthara examined him. “You are weak, and the Force has abandoned you. We have made sure of it,” she said, darting a grateful glance back at Aithne. She had begun to wonder if Aithne had followed through. Aithne wondered how far Yuthura would trust her in a moment. The truth was, they were all fighting wounded.

But Yuthura’s support compensated for Aithne’s own weak left side. Yuthura fought at her left, filling the gaps in Aithne’s own defense as they pressed down on Wynn.

Uthar Wynn had spent his entire life sitting on the sidelines. His entire childhood, he had crouched at the edge of the galaxy, cowering with the remnants of the Sith. He had spent his entire adult life manipulating others to do his fighting for him. Now, poisoned, fighting off two younger Force users, he was soon overpowered. But as he fell back before Aithne’s attack, he watched her emerald blade with a smile playing about his lips, taking pleasure in the cracks forming between Aithne and Yuthura through her deceit, even as they brought his death.

At last, Aithne cut his legs from under him and in the same moment, brought her blade around to remove his head. It went rolling across the frozen acid, yellow eyes still staring.

Yuthura straightened out over the body, looking back at Aithne with a mixture of fierce victory and wary gratitude. “Thank you. Uthar is finished, and a new order is brought to the academy. Yet now, we have the matter of your deception. You stand an enemy to the Sith.”

Aithne admitted it. “I do. And while a bit of routine backstabbing is accepted among the Sith, you don’t want it known that you’ve been associating with spies and traitors to get ahead.”

“I don’t,” Yuthura confirmed in her turn. “What a shame you were not sincere in your intentions, as I was. We would have made a mighty partnership, and I believe what I said to you: you did have the makings of a great Sith, my friend.” She raised her weapon, and that was when she first realized something was wrong. Her eyes flashed as she realized what Aithne had done.

“Better than you knew,” Aithne murmured.

“You betrayed me! Not just the Sith—me!”

Aithne stood back a moment, lightsaber at the ready, refusing to make the first move. “You came to me for help with this,” she answered. “If I used you to forward my own purposes here, it’s no more than you did to me, and you began it. There was information I needed. You made it easy for me to get. But do you think I didn’t know as soon as you drew me into your stupid little academy politics and I really started to play, that you would see I wasn’t the brute-force pawn you wanted? You think I didn’t know you planned to kill me too? Excuse me if I wanted to make murdering me a little bit harder for you.”

Yuthura mustered the Force within her, trying to burn out the poison. But it had seeped through her pores over half an hour of her evening bath last night. It was well and truly in her system, and it would be days till she was free of it. “Damn you!” she roared. “I—I will destroy you for this. You—you will never leave here alive!”

Aithne brought up her lightsaber in the double-bladed variant of a Soresu block. Once again, she fell into the pattern of endurance, of resistance to the Dark. Once again, she made herself a wall for the ocean to crash against, a break for the fire to asphyxiate across. Her arm screamed every time she blocked Yuthura’s strokes. She had begun to feel hot all over, to sweat. She delved deep into the Force to sustain her. She could outlast Yuthura. She could do that much.

The Twi’lek tried playing to her weak left side, tried to force her to expend strength she didn’t have to spend defending on that quarter. Aithne simply gave way before her, dancing in a circle on the frozen acid, making Yuthura chase her, speed the poison more quickly through her body.

She refused to even meet Yuthura’s aggression. She didn’t hate the Twi’lek. She was doing what she’d been taught. Acting out of her rage was easy for her, controlling it, harnessing it—that was harder. Somewhere inside Yuthura Ban, there was a girl burning with the desire for justice, a woman who had wanted to free her kindred, a woman who had been stricken to learn she had forgotten that mission. Yuthura Ban wasn’t any lazy, cowardly corruption at the heart of this place. And Aithne sensed she could be brought back. That she could have her own moment standing above her crimes lying in the dust of Korriban and say, “No more. Enough.”

Just like Juhani before her, Yuthura began to pant and gasp eventually. Her strokes became wilder, less disciplined. Aithne let the first opening pass. The second and third and fourth as well. On the fifth, she kicked out beneath Yuthura’s guard. The woman reeled back from her with a winded gasp. Aithne flicked her saber tip up and struck the hilt of Yuthura’s saber from her hand, sending the red blade spinning end over end away to the ground. The frozen acid began to sizzle beneath it.

Aithne leveled her own saber at Yuthura’s throat.

“I yield!” Yuthura cried, throwing up her hands. “Please! You are . . . too strong for me. I was a fool to think otherwise. I am . . . at your mercy.” She was panting and gasping, sweating herself.

Aithne fought to control her own breathing, not to show just how much the fight had cost her. She withdrew her blade a hair’s breadth. “You’re assuming I possess it?” The words were a challenge.

Yuthura laughed softly, helplessly. “I think you do,” she said. “Or . . . rather, I think you can. You are not yet lost to such things . . . as I am.”

“You yourself said you still have compassion. Too much compassion for a Sith.”

“You are a Jedi.”

“Am I? After this?” Aithne demanded. “After everything I’ve done?”

Yuthura’s face worked. Her eyes shone. “I do not know. I hope so. Please.”

Aithne lowered her lightsaber another fraction from the ready position. “You could call down hundreds of Sith on me before nightfall. Sith from all over the planet. And if they didn’t catch me, they could queue up behind me like a comet’s tail across the galaxy. Why should I take that chance?”

Yuthura shook her head. “I . . . I do not know. I cannot tell you. I can . . . I cannot ask you to trust me. I will not . . . I will not even say it seems I could not—” she broke off.

“—It seems you could not trust me either?” Aithne finished. She deactivated her lightsaber and lowered her arms, biting back a wince and a groan. “You’re wrong. I never wanted to kill you, and the poison you’ve been dosed with won’t. It’ll leave your system within a couple of days.”

“I . . . I know. I recognize it, from lighter doses I took willingly earlier in my studies.”

“It was just an insurance policy,” Aithne explained, shifting. “I shouldn’t have used it.”

“No; in this, at least, you acted with some wisdom,” Yuthura disagreed. “I felt . . . I felt I had to kill you. I felt there was no choice. You had . . . you had reminded me of a time before I became a Sith. I . . . I didn’t want to think about that.”

Aithne jerked her head, and Yuthura stood. The two of them walked away, off the acid pool. “Why?” she demanded.

Yuthura’s lekku waved with her discomfort. “All the things I wanted to do, all the wrongs I wanted to right . . . I haven’t done any of it. I would have accepted your enslavement of those men and allied with you anyway. It all just got farther and farther from my mind. All I’ve cared about is power . . . and myself.” She looked back at Uthar’s dismembered corpse on the slowly thawing pool, her burning lightsaber near it, and for the first time, Aithne saw something like regret cross her face. “This isn’t the person I was,” she murmured.

Aithne nodded. “I know. That’s why you’re not on the acid with him. Here are my terms, Yuthura: you want me to spare you? Leave that lightsaber to melt with Uthar. Leave the academy. Make your way back to Dreshdae, and get out. You don’t have to go back to the Jedi. I couldn’t care less about that. It’s not the path for everyone. But you leave the Sith, and you spend some time thinking about how to reclaim that girl who wanted to free the slaves instead of killing her and everybody else in your rage against the galaxy.”

Yuthura stared at her Sith lightsaber. “I think . . . I think you’re right,” she said after a long, long moment. “And it gives me peace. Maybe peace is what I need after all. The Jedi tried to show me that. I don’t know if I can ever go back to them . . . but I can’t stay here.” She nodded, accepting Aithne’s terms. “They will try to kill you, at the academy,” she pointed out. “With Uthar dead, without me to explain, they will know you are a traitor. You’re wounded—”

“You let me worry about that,” Aithne told her. “One final test.”

Yuthura gave her a slight but genuine smile. She began to walk away, but then she paused. “May I ask—why Revan? Why Liat Ser’rida? If you did not know—”

Aithne felt all her fear and anger and uncertainty crash in around her once again. Held at bay while she had focused on Yuthura’s redemption, now all of it grappled for her attention once again. Why Revan, indeed, she wondered? Why was it always Revan?

She forced a smile. “I suppose it really was a mixture of idiocy, like Uthar said, and that I didn’t have nearly enough time to switch the story once I got here and realized I’d need to be a Force Sensitive and not myself. It’s really the stupidest Force-damned joke I could imagine, and all on me. Well. The Jedi keep telling me that me and Revan have a lot in common. Maybe I just felt drawn to the name.”

“You know, I sensed you might be deceiving me on many fronts, but never about that,” Yuthura mused. “Never about your name. I wondered whether you truly wished to join the Sith, whether you had truly fled the wars. But ‘Liat Ser’rida’ always felt true. In a way, it almost seems fitting. For a woman who could rule the galaxy to reject that path, instead claiming the name of the woman who surrendered her name to conquer.”

“Please. You’re good, but I also cheated to beat you, and beating you doesn’t mean I could take on the galaxy.”

“I think you could,” Yuthura disagreed, smiling. “I truly believe you could. And whether you do or not, I sense that, beyond question, you have a destiny. I wish you well with it, my friend.” She bowed, and there was only the faintest trace of mockery within the gesture. “May the Force be with you.”

Aithne watched her go. “And also with you,” she murmured. After a moment, she tightened the bandage on her arm and readied herself to follow.

Chapter Text

BASTILA

Bastila felt the draining, pulsing ache in Aithne’s left arm as if it were an echo in her own body. Sometime in the last two days, Aithne had finally learnt to utilize her shields correctly—a response to the mental anguish she had felt immediately after experiencing a great deal of physical pain, along with an onslaught of hatred, love, and conflict. Her mind was more inaccessible to Bastila now than it had been since the day they first met again on Taris, but behind the shields, underneath, their bond still held fast.

As of yesterday, Aithne had not fallen. It had been close, very close at times. Bastila had spent the greater part of the past four days on tenterhooks, nearly certain that at any moment, Aithne would give up the fight, embrace the Darkness, and return to them a grasping, selfish, and ruthless Sith. She had sensed wave after wave of helpless rage break over Aithne, felt the call of Korriban upon her spirit. She had felt Aithne’s sense of inevitability, her despair and resignation. She had felt the moments when Aithne had detached, released herself into the rush of the currents upon this world. And Bastila had felt it when Aithne was drawn back—by Carth, by a Sith, by her own resolution. And—she hoped—in some small measure, by Bastila’s presence at the other end of their bond, willing her to stay strong in days of near-constant meditation, ever since Juhani had urged her to release her worries and actively intervene to be of help.

Bastila could not sense Aithne’s aura now. She could not sense the timbre of her thoughts. She sensed only Aithne’s pain, her weakness. She could only hope for the best.

Through the eyes of her Battle Meditation, she could sense Aithne’s position, the obstacles that faced her. She was very near the Star Map now. Bastila had willed the beasts in the caverns Aithne delved not to detect her. With her mind, Bastila had held a blind over their senses until Aithne was ready, and it had taken nearly all her strength. The beasts were formidable; even Bastila’s Battle Meditation could not protect Aithne completely, and Bastila had felt the blow from a distance as one of the cunning monsters had struck at her charge. She had sensed Aithne triumph and had moved her mind afield, to where two deadly near-human Sith waited with less than peaceful intentions.

She had lent Aithne and her ally strength against the master, done all she could to slow the master’s reaction and beat against his morale. Later, she had exerted her will against the second Sith, willed her to listen to Aithne’s words, her resolve to bend to Aithne’s. It was not as difficult as Bastila might have anticipated. Aithne had made inroads into the woman’s heart already. She had been half wanting to surrender before the battle began, waiting for Aithne to give her an excuse to lay down her blade and the Dark Side, and Bastila felt a rush of joy and pride for her companion.

But she was worried about Aithne’s wound. She could feel its heat across the distance between them. She could feel the sick pulsing of the injury, the dead, resigned way Aithne’s body was accepting the injury, giving into weakness. She was not just wounded; she was poisoned. Every moment, Aithne was losing strength. And Battle Meditation would not heal her.

On the other side of the ship, Bastila heard the access port of Ebon Hawk slide open. She heard voices—Mission’s and Juhani’s, and a human male she didn’t know, speaking in the same register as Carth, in a similar accent, but with a harsher edge to the voice. Mission and Juhani had returned with Dustil Onasi.

Bastila’s aura stretched out to sense the newcomer and recoiled. Carth’s son was a Force Adept, it seemed, and he carried the unmistakable taint of the Dark Side. Emotion emanated from him like radiation from a star. Anger, jealousy, confusion, loss—and above it all, the pain. Pain so thick and sharp, Bastila could only relate it to Mission’s after Taris. She did not know how Dustil Onasi could stand it. As she explored the feel of him through the Force, she sensed Dustil’s resistance to the Dark Side’s foothold in him, but curiously offset with a nearly equal resistance to the Light. The boy did not know what he wanted. He had turned his back upon the Sith, but he had not come to join the Jedi.

Steps sounded down the corridor, and Bastila looked up to see a tall, dark young man peering down at her in her position on the floor of the women’s dormitory. It was as though someone had taken Carth’s features and twisted them slightly—lengthened the nose and narrowed the lips. Carth kept his hair military regulation with the aid of certain products; Dustil had cut his ruthlessly short. That, together with his expression, gave his face a more brutal cast than his father’s.

“Hey. Try asking next time, would you?” His voice was curt and irritated. “I didn’t come here to have the Jedi pawing all over my intentions just like the Sith. Leave it, will you?”

“Forgive me. I did not mean to intrude, but you are . . . rather difficult to ignore. Dustil, I presume.”

“Shan.”

“Indeed—I—” just as Bastila started to think what else to say, she sensed something else on the perimeter. Dustil tensed at the same moment. Bastila rose to her feet.

“We’re under attack!” she called. “Canderous, Zaalbar, to the gun turrets! T3-M4, reinforce the airlock! We’ve got to hold here until the others return from the academy!”

Dustil swore behind her, and across the ship, she felt Juhani’s despair, heard Mission yelling something at the Cathar about a Sith in the cantina.

“We’ll talk later, Dustil,” she told Carth’s son shortly. “Right now, you need to evacuate the dormitory. I must meditate—do my best to keep us all safe until we can escape.”

“Awesome. Droid—hold off on the double lock on the exit,” Dustil shouted, drawing a Sith lightsaber from his sleeve. “Cathar, you’re with me. I’m not just going to sit here like a rat in a trap. You were our exit detail, you brought this on us, you can damn well help me hold off Vesser and his little friends!”

CARTH

“We’ve got a report of an intruder at the door to the valley! A Jedi spy has infiltrated the academy! Masters Uthar and Yuthura are gone—presume murdered! To arms!”

Carth and Jolee had been waiting for the shit to hit the fan all morning. They’d known when Aithne went in to Naga Sadow that Master Uthar, Master Yuthura, or both would be dead before Aithne came back out. They were ready when the alarm went through the academy. Carth had equipped the double vibrosword Aithne had used as Addison Bettler. It had cortosis weave and gave him more of a shot against attackers with a lightsaber than his blasters, where any Sith half-capable with the Force could just reflect his fire right back at him. He was hopped up on stims, and when the alert started to spread, he activated a high-end energy shield that would protect against a certain level of energy around him. He had to hope the boosts they gave him would be enough.

“Stay behind me, sonny,” Jolee warned him. “You wait for me to make the first attack, get the Sith on the defensive. Then you move in.”

“You got it,” Carth promised. “I’m not out to get killed here, Jolee.”

“We need to get to Aithne and then make our way to the door. Brute force our way straight through to Dreshdae and get off planet as soon as possible.”

They left the training room they’d been holed up in since Aithne’s departure—it was closer to the exit to the valley than the dormitories. Jolee let loose a wave of the Force, and the emerging Sith in the corridor went flying. Lightning crackled out of Jolee’s fingers, and his own lightsaber, changed back like Aithne’s to its own proper crystal and color, blazed ahead of him in the guard position.

Carth ran cleanup. He stabbed right and left, going for the weak spots in the armored Sith, thanking the Force for the substandard suit design Aithne was always criticizing in their enemies. On the uniformed ones, it was easier. He didn’t bother trying to go for the kills every time; precision like that took time they didn’t have. But he made sure the Sith didn’t get up.

Out in the broader instruction room featuring the door out to the valley, it was harder. The Sith instructors were here, and they were already on guard. One caught a bolt of Bindo’s Lightning upon his blade, deflecting it off to blast a carbon mark into the stone floor. Another Sith held a fist beside her head, marshaling the soldiers behind her into formation.

Carth and Jolee took up positions back to back as the door to the valley opened, and Aithne—pale, sweating, and with her left sleeve black with blood—staggered into the room. Her eyes were wild, only half focused, but even as she entered, she cut down one of the Sith guards by the door and held a second in stasis.

Carth moved to her on instinct. Somehow, he knew where to step, how fast to move. He dodged one lightsaber stroke, cut a blow at the legs of the Sith who’d dealt it and felt it connect. Somehow, he knew Jolee had the gunmen, the Sith in formation behind the lady Sith. He knew everyone else in the room would be distracted by Aithne’s entrance, the realization that she was the infiltrator the alarm had warned against.

He attacked the guard Aithne had in stasis, and he felt her snap into rhythm. Her rhythm, though—it was off. Usually, Aithne was at the forefront of a battle. She took on the toughest opponents while the rest of them picked off outliers and kept a watch on the perimeter. Now, though—now, she seemed to be focusing hard on him, on defending him, like she didn’t have the energy to do more. Her movements, far from the fluid power and decisive energy they usually possessed, were hard and jerky. She was panting.

“Are you okay?” Carth shouted at her, moving in under a Sith teacher’s guard as Aithne held off his offense, moving almost entirely one-sided, heavily favoring her left arm.

“No!” Aithne shouted back. “My arm—”

Carth killed the Sith. Jolee was closing with them, taking point on their avenue toward the exit, bringing them into formation. The two gunmen were down. So was their Sith commander. Three more Sith were closing in on them, and Carth could hear the crash of moving armor down the hall.

He moved Aithne back to his right flank, so he was on her left. “Fight with the Force if you can,” he told her. He felt her nod wearily.

Jolee parried the strokes of two incoming Sith. He was everywhere. He moved like an acrobat, like a warrior, and Carth wondered how he’d ever thought of Bindo as old or out of touch. His mouth was a grim slash, and his eyes were dark, like he’d been right where they were before. Carth tried his best to back him up, using everything he’d been drilling with Ordo in their journey from Dantooine and more. He tried to move like Aithne, to move the way he’d seen her move with a lightsaber. He took the path of least resistance, struck wherever he saw an opening. He did his best to trust her to guard his flank because he had to, but part of him was always aware of her behind him. The way she was gasping, turning whiter and whiter every minute, even edging on green.

They fought their way through the training room, through the rotunda. They faced down four Sith riot troopers by the exit—Sith soldiers in higher quality armor than the others, better equipped, with belts of grenades and plasma staves. Groaning, Aithne extended her fist, and two of them froze in place. A grenade flipped toward them from a third, and with impossible dexterity, Jolee switched his grasp upon his lightsaber so it faced hilt out and batted the incoming explosive back at the troopers with the grip.

A plasma grenade exploded over the riot troopers, melting their armor in places, leaving them wounded and screaming. Carth and Aithne struck out at them on the way past, and Jolee led them out the door. Carth slung his vibrosword into its holster on his back and drew his right-hand blaster as they left, moving to Aithne’s other side as he did. He swung his right arm around Aithne’s waist just as her knees began to buckle.

“Nuh-uh, keep going!” he urged her. “Just a little farther.”

He fired three warning shots at a Sith loading cargo on a nearby platform. Jolee brandished his lightsaber, moving ahead of them.

They had made it into Dreshdae by the time Aithne completely collapsed. Carth went with her, going to his knees so she didn’t hit the ground. He could feel the fever burning through her. When he put his fingers to her pulse, it was too faint, too rapid. She was dying.

“Jolee,” he said.

“Yes, I feel it,” Bindo said, kneeling beside them in the street.

“Beautiful, you gotta talk to us. What’s the problem?” Carth asked her. He’d seen the wound on her—a long gash on her forearm, it looked like, but not enough that she should be bleeding out. There wasn’t enough blood on her for that, either.

“Terentatek,” Aithne rasped. “In the tomb. For—forgot the blame venom sacs on the tail.” Her eyes were going in and out of focus again.

Jolee rolled up his sleeves. “Get her out of the street,” he ordered. Carth nodded. He carried Aithne a few more steps into an alley.

“P—put me down, flyboy,” she whispered “I—I can walk.”

“The hell you can,” Carth told her, voice far harsher than he wanted. The same fear he’d felt yesterday in the Tomb of Tulak Hord clawed at his chest again. He’d realized then like he hadn’t before—just how much Aithne Moran had come to mean to him. That he didn’t care what her name had been, who the Sith thought she was, or what game the Jedi were playing with her. She’d risked her life for him, put the whole damn Republic and her soul on the line for him and for his family. Whoever and whatever she was, she was on his side. She was on his side like no one had been since Morgana. After he’d rejected her, hounded and suspected her across four separate star systems, still she was on his side. And he could not lose her.

He lowered her to the ground, situated her so Bindo had room and access. Took off his helmet to see better. “You help her,” he told Bindo.

“I intend to,” Bindo answered. “Sit still a moment, lass.” He tore the rip in her sleeve wider, pushing it away from the messy, clumsy bandage over the wound. He untied the bandage, exposing a long, deep slash in the muscle of Aithne’s forearm. It was scabbed over and wasn’t bleeding anymore, but that was the absolute best he could say for it.

The flesh around the wound was angry and inflamed. It was swollen. The edges of the scab cap leaked an ugly, stinking white pus, and dark red streaks raced away from the wound, up toward her armpit.

“G—gorgeous, isn’t it?” Aithne said, a smile playing around her lips. “But there were . . . there were two of them . . .” Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she collapsed into a dead weight in Carth’s arms.

Somehow, Carth felt the power gathering to Bindo beside him. He placed his right hand right over the stinking, swollen wreck of Aithne’s arm. His left hand gripped Carth’s shoulder. “Call her,” he ordered. “You keep her here, sonny.” Releasing Carth, he placed his left hand over Aithne’s heart. He bent over her and closed his eyes, beginning to mutter to himself.

With two fingers, Carth brushed the tip of Aithne’s chin. Panic squeezed his heart. He could . . . he could feel her slipping away over the connection she’d revealed to him the day before. That sense of her he hadn’t even known he had but which, in retrospect, seemed so evident, so much a part of how they were together. “Aithne,” he murmured, reaching for her with everything inside him. “Beautiful. Look at me. Jolee—Jolee’s gonna try and get the poison out, but you’ve got to work too. Work with me, beautiful.”

At the pressure from his fingers, Aithne’s head lolled to one side. Carth turned it back. “No,” he said. “No way. Aithne, you don’t get to die on me. Don’t you dare.”

At the word dare, Aithne’s eyelashes fluttered. Carth could swear he felt the surge in Jolee’s energy. “Yes, keep going!”

Looking down, Carth saw fresh blood welling up around Jolee’s right hand, along with a hideous, yellow-green venom.

“Come on, beautiful,” he said. “You’re not going to let a little thing like this beat you.”

“Carth?” Aithne’s voice was slurred. Her eyelashes fluttered again, and then her eyelids opened. Her eyes came into focus, and color started coming back to her cheeks. Immediately, it flooded back out. “Oh, I don’t feel so hot—” she muttered. She convulsed and rolled away from him. Bent over on her knee, she held her head in her hands and heaved, staring at the ground, but she didn’t vomit.

Carth and Jolee waited until Aithne’s nausea had dissipated.

“The poison?” Carth asked Jolee.

Jolee shook her head. “More likely the reaction to passing out. The body’s response to a loss of consciousness isn’t nearly as romantic as it looks in holovids. She’ll be fine.”

“How did you—I tried,” Aithne was gasping. “I couldn’t get past the Dark-Side sorcery nature of the injury!”

“Mm. It was probably worse because that monster aimed to hurt you when it swung. All the Dark Side power in it was trained on resisting you,” Jolee reasoned. “Add that to a few decades’ more practice—”

“You’re the best healer I’ve ever seen or heard of,” Aithne told him, lifting her head, beginning to rise to her feet. She looked down at her wound, scabbed over once again, the swelling and inflammation gone. She flexed her arm. “Jolee—you saved my life.”

“Let’s not make a big deal out of it, shall we? I’m your medic. It’s what I’m here for. I’m just glad you got to us in time.”

Aithne rose and hugged him. Jolee looked surprised, then touched, and he squeezed her back. “There now. Stop that. You’re safe now. Be tangling with terentateks again in no time.”

Aithne let go of him. She turned to Carth and glared. “Now. What was that, Onasi? You didn’t think Bindo could handle it?”

Looking at her, with her sleeve a wreck, standing there tall and proud like she hadn’t just been dying on the ground, Carth was suddenly furious. “Damn it, Aithne, if you’d just taken a couple toxin antidotes with you, he wouldn’t have had to! I told you not to do this!”

“I’m not a bantha,” Aithne replied, repeating his own words back to him with maddening calm and rationality. “I can’t carry everything. Turned out I needed the mines I had in my pack. Alright, we might need to diversify them just a little, especially when one of us go out on our own—”

“Oh, you think?”

Aithne stepped up to him and took him by both shoulders. He felt the pressure of her mind on his, knew what it was now, that it was her, wrapping the Force around to reassure him. “Carth, I’m fine,” she told him. “I’m going to be fine. It’s alright. Breathe.”

With his heart still pounding, the tension of the last ten minutes coursing through him, desperate for release, Carth leaned forward, grabbed her hips, pulled her to him, and kissed her.

Her body went rigid with shock, and for a split second, Carth was sure he’d made a terrible mistake. Then she went warm and soft in his hands as she relaxed and leaned into him. Her arms climbed to twine around his neck, and her lips moved against his.

A wave of excitement—of rightness—flowed right through him. He wasn’t sure if it was from him or her. Her thumbs ran over his cheeks and her fingers carded through his hair. In response, he could only squeeze her hips and pull her tighter against him. She was softer than he’d dared to imagine, tasted better than he’d dreamed.

He’d come so close to losing her.

Jolee clearing his throat behind them reminded Carth they weren’t alone, and reluctantly, he drew back from Aithne, smiling. He felt like laughing. Her brown eyes were wide and dazed—her expression somehow charmingly poleaxed. For all the flirting she’d done ever since they met, he’d completely caught her by surprise here.

Her cheeks flamed then. She turned red as a Corellian kavasa, and the hands that had stroked his face just seconds ago came up to cover her face instead. She ducked her head, and Carth could sense a sudden wave of overwhelming embarrassment and confusion. How had he missed it before? It was as if now he’d located her along the Force bond she had described, he could feel her emotions like an astral tide.

He moved forward again, catching her hands, drawing them away from her face, making her look at him. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t do that. Don’t hide. It’s okay. It’s fine.”

Suddenly, he wasn’t worried about it anymore. Her complicated place among the Jedi, their increasingly complicated life. They could work it out. He wanted to. He tried to show her, stepping in quickly for another, quicker kiss. She let him, face turned up toward him, eyes still confused, but something like happiness in the back of them. He squeezed her around the shoulders once and let go. “We should meet up with the others.”

“If you two feel you’ve finished here,” Jolee said mildly. Carth looked sideways at him. The old man didn’t look the slightest bit surprised. A smile twitched underneath his goatee, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. Carth nodded, respecting the old man’s pain, recognizing a man who missed his wife. Jolee hadn’t said much about her, just that at one point she had existed, but he’d got the impression things hadn’t ended well.

Aithne cleared her throat. She straightened her robes, grimacing at the ruin of the left-hand sleeve. “Damn,” she remarked. “I just fixed these.”

BASTILA

In the end, the battle back at Ebon Hawk had been a simple thing. A small surprise attack by a former Jedi named Dak Vesser and a handful of Sith he had rounded up from within the city. He had been a previous acquaintance of Juhani, and she, Mission, and Zaalbar had had a run-in with him earlier in the week. Initially, Vesser had been uninterested in furthering their acquaintance, had indeed wanted to steer entirely clear of whatever mission Juhani had been assigned by the Council, but when he had seen Mission meeting with Dustil Onasi, he had connected Dustil’s surname to Carth’s, listed on the wide-release bounty from Lord Malak. He had realized who Juhani had to be accompanying.

More than slightly drunk, and wishing to hurt Juhani, he had gathered as many Sith as he could convince together for a try upon the bounty. In fact, there had been only seven of the enemy, and between the Ebon Hawk’s guns and the lightsabers of Dustil and Juhani, Vesser’s attack had been entirely neutralized within two minutes.

Juhani mourned the loss of a man who had been a fellow padawan with her—a friend. She grieved some small role it seemed she felt she had played in Vesser’s downfall. But she understood too that he had made his own choices, and Bastila sensed she would eventually find her peace. She had not cut down Vesser, in the end. Either Canderous or Zaalbar had done that—a blast from the guns had taken him down in a single shot. He had died quickly and without pain.

Bastila was far more worried for Dustil Onasi. He had cut down no fewer than three of the attacking Sith, including one man he claimed was one of his old instructors. The taste of his anger still filled the air around the ship, acrid and metallic. He had fed upon it during the brief skirmish, as the Sith did, and the hate was stronger in his heart now than it had been before the fighting began.

She watched him anxiously as Mission paid off the dock workers, bribing them with a few hundred of her hard-earned credits to forget the entire incident. Still, when the docking bay door opened and their missing companions entered, she immediately went to them.

The sleeve of Aithne’s robe was a tattered mess. She herself felt fine to Bastila’s senses—healthy, even—but for a while there, she had not been. And Bastila had sensed other things in her near vicinity in the last few minutes.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

Aithne nodded. Dipping her hand into her pack, she pulled out a datapad. She tossed it to Bastila. Bastila caught it midair and examined it. The Star Map. A handful of reference points that had not been there before filled out its center. They were still a long way from their goal. “Jolee took care of it. He saved my life.”

Zaalbar, who had been standing near Mission and the dock workers, now crossed the hangar to the old man. He roared something softly, with his hand over his heart, clearly expressing thanks to the old Jedi.

“Yeah,” Mission added, coming up as well and taking the old man’s hand. “Thanks. From both of us.”

“Oh, less of it,” Jolee growled. “It wasn’t all me. The lass did a great deal of coming back herself, though I think Carth here helped some.”

Carth showed no reaction to the old man’s words. His face was carefully blank. Aithne, tellingly, blushed deep crimson. The move, Bastila saw with disgust, had probably been Carth’s.

Dustil’s eyes narrowed. “Did he? Father. Moran. Welcome back.”

“Looks like you had some trouble,” Aithne observed, sweeping her eyes around the dock workers, dragging Sith corpses out of the hangar.

“Just a bit. Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Dustil answered.

“We should all get off planet as soon as possible,” Bastila said. “The Sith will not remain in confusion for long. How much did they learn about you?”

Aithne shook her head. “Nothing,” she answered. “By the end, they knew I was a Jedi and a spy. None of the survivors had any idea of my true identity or Carth’s. Or, no one who’s gonna talk. No one but Dustil ever saw his face.”

“You are certain no one will speak of your presence here?” Juhani asked. “Trust, I have learned, is difficult to sustain.”

Aithne glanced at Juhani, taking in her posture, the swollen undersides of her eyes. “Do we need to talk, Juhani?”

“No,” Juhani told her. “It is nothing to do with you. I—perhaps I may want to talk, in time. But today—no.”

“Fair enough. We’ll leave it be,” Aithne said.

“Will you speak with me, Padawan?” Bastila asked her. “You’ve been busy, in your excursions upon Korriban.”

Aithne’s eyes cut to her, and though her shields remained rock solid, Bastila saw the annoyance cross her face. “Sensed that, did you?” she muttered. “Let’s go,” she said, more loudly. “Carth, get with Teethree. Set a course for Tatooine.”

Mission squealed and flung herself at Aithne. Aithne caught the teenager with a grin.

“Well, we’re overdue,” she reasoned.

Carth smiled too. “Roger that,” he agreed. He turned his bland, professional mask toward Bastila. “Of course, I’ll need my copilot to take off.” Blast the man, he knew Bastila needed to speak with her. As if he really ever actually needed Bastila in the cockpit! “Dustil. You all set up in the dorms?”

“We kinda got sidetracked,” Dustil said.

“Come with me, then,” Canderous said. “We’ll get you squared away. You’re in luck: we’ve got just the one bunk left. Women’s barracks is full up. I’m Canderous.”

“Dustil,” replied the same.

“No. I never would’ve guessed,” Ordo said provocatively.

“We’ll get you on the duty rotation by tonight,” Aithne added as the two men walked away.

“Oh, sure, don’t spare the new kid, even the first day on the team,” Dustil shot back.

“Seems to me you’ve already joined the team,” Aithne said, gesturing at the bloodied hangar. “Might as well join all the way.”

Dustil scoffed, but as he went off with Canderous, Bastila felt a certain easing in his spirit.

The rest of them filed into Ebon Hawk behind them. Teethree beeped a greeting, and Carth began relaying him instructions. Reluctantly, Bastila made her way up to the cockpit, fuming.

The trouble was, she liked Carth. He was rational, intelligent, and loyal to the Republic. He was a talented warrior and a talented pilot, and his natural rapport with Aithne in many respects had been an asset. It was this connection that had allowed them to establish a collaboration when Bastila was still reeling after her capture by the Vulkars. It was his support that had grounded Aithne against her feelings of obligation to Mission, to Zaalbar. Bastila did not discount the possibility that it was Carth’s example which had given Aithne the final push to throw in with the Jedi. She had sensed Carth served as a moderating influence upon Aithne, an anchor against her angrier, brasher tendencies.

The Republic could end up owing Carth Onasi quite a debt, in fact, yet she could not approve of his becoming romantically involved with Aithne, and not merely because all the teachings of the Jedi said the feelings between them were as likely or more to prove a dangerous distraction to Aithne than they were to help her. Carth had no idea what he was doing. He believed he was falling in love with someone, but without full knowledge of who and what Aithne was, he could have no true agency or choice in their alliance. And he could not have full knowledge of who and what she was.

Bastila had no idea if Carth could accept her, knowing her full story. He had not been trained in the ways of the Jedi. His military discipline enabled him to focus on an objective. It had not taught him to let go of all he felt and exercise compassion, compassion in the face of every reason there was to hate and fear a person. There were moments when Bastila herself nearly cowered before Aithne, hurt Aithne with her flinching, and she knew that Aithne was not the woman she had been. Could Carth love her if he knew? Whether he did or not, could he keep the knowledge of what she was from her if he knew? Bastila did not believe he could.

She did her part readying Ebon Hawk to fly in silence, contemplating how to express herself without making plain the nature of her concerns. Carth was too clever. He and Aithne both already knew too much, suspected too much. If she gave anything else away, it could give the game entire away.

“This is unwise, Carth,” she started finally, as Carth lifted them off of Korriban. “Whatever has grown between you and Aithne, it must end. You must see it. It is too dangerous—to her and to your son.”

“To Dustil?” Carth repeated, glancing at her. He frowned. “I don’t—it’s been a long time since Telos, Bastila. I just—I’m just happy to have him with us.”

“He is in danger,” Bastila repeated. “He stands upon the very brink, Carth. I can feel the Dark gulf before him, waiting to consume him. For years, he has been taught to embrace it, to fall into it and give into his basest instincts. The Sith did not convince him—not entirely. But he is vulnerable. You do not know one another. Not now. You do not know what you each have been through. Effectively, Dustil has left everything he has known for a stranger—one who has let him down once before. He’s afraid, and that fear only feeds into his anger. He needs your support right now. He does not need you distant from him, focused upon Aithne.”

Over the months she had been doing this, Bastila had learned the best lie was a truth, offered up as a completely plausible alternate explanation. Nothing she said now was untrue: she could feel how Dustil needed his father, his desperation for Carth to catch him now he had leaped. She could feel the insecurity that burned inside him every time he looked at Aithne beside his father, every time Mission spoke, the sense of displacement, abandonment.

But after a moment’s consideration, Carth shook his head, though his hands had tightened on the controls. “The Dustil I knew never liked to be babied,” he said. “When we showed him the truth about the Sith, he faced it like a man. He did the right thing. The son I knew is still in there. It’s been four years since Telos. We’ll—we’ll deal with them. We’ll find a way to get to know each other again. But we’ll do it as we are now, as things are now. We—we can be strong and brave enough for that. I’m not going to freeze everything for Dustil. No one else will. If I love him, my job as his father is to help him face the world around him . . . not keep him wrapped up in a blanket till he feels better.”

As he spoke, Carth’s face grew more and more convinced, and more at peace with his decision. His hands relaxed. “He likes Aithne,” Carth said, mostly to himself. “I can tell he does. And she understood him, the second we ran into him. Understood him better than I did, than I can.” He looked over at Bastila then. “Like you and Jolee and Juhani will be able to understand him. I—I think you all can really help him.”

 “We’ll do what we can, Carth,” Bastila promised. “But you have to understand—Jolee Bindo is the most experienced among us, and he is next door to an exile and never rose to be a master. Juhani has only just become a knight. None of us has ever trained a pupil. We are not equipped to deal with the training Dustil will require. The Jedi—”

“Not yet,” Carth said definitively. “He’s not ready to be a Jedi yet, and I don’t want him to be. Not until and unless Dustil makes that choice. I want him trained—but just to resist the Dark Side. Just to fight it. Not to be a Jedi.”

Bastila was lost. Theoretically, she knew there were other ways to resist the Dark Side than to be a Jedi. She knew of other Force Sensitive cultures in the galaxy, Force wielders who did not practice the Jedi arts. But she didn’t have the background information, and they didn’t have the time to seek it for Dustil Onasi. Dustil was not their mission. Dustil was not her mission. She wished to help him, of course, but . . .

“Tell me about Aithne,” Carth said, flipping a dial as he pushed them into orbit around Korriban, heading for their exit into hyperspace. “You think I’m a danger to her.”

“I do,” Bastila agreed, happy to be back on the subject. “She stepped off onto this world distracted and distraught, and it left her open to the power of the Dark Side. She was distracted and distraught because of her feelings for you. She pushed herself to the limits—for you. I know you witnessed her struggles groundside, more closely than I could, even despite our bond. It must have occurred to you that without her feelings for you, her fight might not have been so desperate!”

“I can’t help what she feels for me,” Carth said. His tone was edged. It was a warning.

“No, but you do not have to encourage her, Carth,” Bastila urged. “I know you care for Aithne. Care enough to let her go. Let her focus on what must be done. Since we met you, you have maintained your professionalism with Aithne. Do not abandon it now.”

“Look. Bastila,” Carth said at last. “Aithne told me a bit about Force bonds while we were down there, and it seems to me you may have been abusing yours a bit. Listening in where you shouldn’t. I know the Jedi put you on this mission together, but Aithne’s her own person. She makes her own decisions. I don’t know what you want with her, but you can’t just keep . . . keep spying on her and manipulating her and just expect her to fall in line.”

“I only want what’s best—”

Carth cut her off. “You’ve been using her since Endar Spire, and maybe even before that. I keep wondering why the Republic decided to freeze her assets and press-gang her into service to begin with. It happens on active fronts when we need common soldiers, but not way out on Deralia. Not with a scout. No. The Jedi wanted Aithne from the beginning. And we’re pretty sure you guys are messing with her head. That’s even aside from all the eavesdropping I’m just now realizing is going on.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Carth. This is more important than you could possibly realize—”

“Try me.” Carth’s voice was calm, but Bastila could hear the quiet anger beneath it. “I’ve picked up enough. I know you Jedi think Aithne is the key to defeating Malak and the Sith—Aithne, and not you. And I know somehow, Malak knows it. Oh, he’d like to get his hands on you, alright. He knows if he can capture and turn you, he can win. But he also knows that Aithne can beat him. I haven’t figured out just how yet,” he admitted. “And I don’t think Aithne really knows either, though I think she has a couple really nasty ideas. But we both have a feeling you know the plan, and you’re very deliberately not telling her.”

Bastila was frozen. Trapped. “I—you’re right,” she whispered. “It’s true. She is the key to all this. But the situation is more delicate than you can imagine. Believe me when I tell you: her very soul hangs in the balance, and my every action has been as much for Aithne as it has been for the galaxy. She cannot know the truth. And because she cannot, I cannot tell you either. I’m begging you, Carth. Please trust me. Step back from her. For both your sakes.”

Carth stared at her. “You really believe that, don’t you? You’re telling the truth.”

“As much of it as I can,” Bastila promised. “Because I care for her. Please, Carth.”

Carth searched her face. “Damn. She’s been right. All this time. You—you’re terrified of her, aren’t you? You care for her, maybe, but you don’t trust her for a second, do you?”

Bastila felt a flash of anger. “You saw how close it was on Korriban!”

“Yeah, and I saw her turn away,” Carth retorted, eyebrows furrowing, angrier himself now. “You want to know what I saw on Korriban? I saw a woman push herself to the very brink for me, for my son, and for the sake of the galaxy. I saw her sick with the evil we saw down on that planet, with the fact she had to participate.” They hit their coordinates, and Carth punched the hyperdrive. Bastila sat back as Ebon Hawk jumped to hyperspace and the motion of the ship seemed to cease, but for the hum of the hyperdrive engine.

“I saw her make mistakes, yeah. A lot of them. I saw her struggle. I saw her slip. But I also saw her withstand torture before she allowed a murderer to die. I saw her risk her life and cover to persuade people away from the Sith, to save refugees and take the dangers they faced onto herself. She’s brave, Bastila. She’s strong and good. And she deserves better than you and the Jedi Council. You think worrying about me and Dustil brought her closer to a fall on Korriban? I think her biggest issue right now is all of you looking over her shoulder, waiting for her to fall. Feeling you all creeping around inside her head, when she hasn’t trained enough to understand anything you’re doing.”

Bastila was silent. Doubt and anger gnawed at her. She should be above such things. She knew she should. Bas, if we’re gonna play tug-of-war, you think you’re gonna win? Aithne’s gentle question from Dantooine haunted her. How much had Aithne’s spirit crept into hers over the months? Perhaps Carth was right. Perhaps Aithne’s greatest weakness now was the weakness the Jedi saw in her. Could that very doubt prove Bastila’s own undoing?

“You will continue to pursue her?” she asked. She knew her words were abrupt.

“I haven’t been,” Carth told her. “Aithne’s always been very open about the doubts she has about me, about us, and I haven’t wanted to get her in trouble with the Jedi. Till now, all the moves have been on her side, and she’s expressed some very definite boundaries. She—she hasn’t always followed through, though, and I’ve been more okay with it than I expected. But now—” he paused. “I care about her, Bastila. She’s been there for me, for Dustil. And I want to be there for her as well. I’m still not out to get her in any trouble, and I’m not out to mess around either, but if the two of us find—find some area we can navigate, in between there, I think you ought to mind your own business. And trust her.”

He shut his mouth. His eyes stared straight ahead, and Bastila sensed no hesitation from him, no indecision. Just hard resolve and peace with his choices. Bastila felt a wave of confusion sweep over her once again. She remembered what Aithne had said when Carth had first turned down her proposition, that she hadn’t made the offer she had made out of any Jedi detachment but rather in a spirit of fear and selfishness, that Carth’s approach that day had been the one of generosity and compassion. She recalled Juhani’s question, mere days ago, whether the feelings between Carth and Aithne actually constituted an attachment. On Carth’s side now, she felt they did, yet Bastila was still uncertain of Aithne’s feelings. Would she cling to him selfishly, unable to let him go, putting his needs before the whole of the galaxy? Had she done so on Korriban? Or was her pursuit of Dustil’s safety something noble and right?

She was unsure. She felt drawn into a quagmire where there were no easy exits, no simple solutions. One thing she did know: this Carth was a healthier and a happier man than the one she had met on Endar Spire. “You’ve changed, Carth,” she said at last. “There was a time when you’d have died before trusting Aithne. Or anyone.”

Carth didn’t answer.

Chapter Text

BASTILA  

Hours into their journey, Aithne appeared to realize Bastila was not going to seek her out. She came up to the cockpit. “Bastila. You wanted to see me?”  

Bastila turned in her chair to examine the woman before her. Aithne’s expression was polite, but her shields were solid stone. Her posture was guarded. Carth Onasi spoke of trust. It was abundantly clear that over the weeks and months they had been working together, Bastila had somehow contrived to lose Aithne’s, if she had ever had it.   

The closeness they had developed over Aithne’s six weeks on Dantooine was all but gone, destroyed, Bastila realized, by very little on Aithne’s part. It was nearly solely Bastila’s responsibility, the result of months of imposed secrecy and dire admonitions that had so far proved completely unnecessary. This estrangement had come about through the pile of half-truths and lies Bastila had been forced to tell and the prying she had done in her anxiety. She had not made herself a safe place for Aithne’s confidences. Furthermore, she had driven away her companion with all her nagging and hovering. And Bastila found that she regretted the change, regretted the distance and suspicion that had grown between them.   

“No,” she said. “I think you know what I would say. I believe you feel what you need to within your own heart, and any other worries I may have may merely be my own fears. I apologize. I’m afraid I may have been a bit overzealous in your protection. I’ve overstepped. I did not mean to.”  

Aithne frowned. Her eyes darted from Bastila to Carth, beside her. “Carth, have you two been talking?”  

“I may have suggested Bastila should mind her own business a little more. Put some faith in you, especially if she wants you to trust the Jedi.” He didn’t turn around to face them but kept his eyes firmly on the controls.  

“Wait. You told Bastila that she should trust me .”  

“Yes. I did.”  

Aithne’s mouth opened. She gaped at Carth. “I—I genuinely don’t have anything to say,” she stammered. “I—thank you.” Even as she said it, however, Bastila could see Aithne disagreed with the pilot now. “You don’t have to,” she said to Bastila, referring to putting any trust in her. “You shouldn’t.”  

Bastila felt her mouth twist in irony. As comforting as it was for Aithne to tell her that she was justified in her fear, she felt that Carth had a point. “I should,” she said. “You may have wavered at times, but even notwithstanding a few bad moments down on Korriban, you have done nothing so far to warrant the suspicion you have been met with. From me or from the Jedi.” At least, she had done nothing in this lifetime.  

But this seemed to anger Aithne. “I haven’t, have I?” All at once, the barrier between their minds dissolved. A series of images and impressions assaulted Bastila’s memories. “I tortured men to death—twice! Once I felt remorse immediately. The second time, I justified it, said he had it coming anyway. I lured not one but two children to their deaths, kids no older than you and just a few years older than Mission or Dustil. I tricked and manipulated them into trusting me, and then I killed them—one by proxy, and one by my own hand. I lied and backstabbed my way through that academy as well as any Sith Lord could do it. I drew one of the masters into trusting me, made her so vulnerable she believed I was the first friend she had had in years, and then I turned right around and put poison in her bathtub. Bas, if I learned anything on Korriban, it’s how right you and the Jedi have been. There is something seriously wrong with me.”  

“You didn’t make Yuthura trust you,” Carth corrected, flipping the switch for Hawk to go on autopilot, continuing on her preset course. He turned his chair around to face them. “She’d decided she wanted to use you before we ever walked into that academy. And as for the rest of it—to some extent, you had to beat out the other Sith. You had to do it to get access to Naga Sadow.”  

“I could’ve done that just by finding the droid in the tomb of Marka Ragnos, memorizing the Sith Code, and claiming I killed those bodies we found in the shyrack caves,” Aithne told him, ruthless. “Could’ve beaten Kel and Shaardan in the dueling ring; don’t think I would have even had to kill them. I didn’t have to do any of the messed-up things I did down there. I chose them. I did that. And I can’t ever take it back.”  

Bastila felt she might tremble if she didn’t exert control. The forces that had drawn Aithne down into the Darkness in another lifetime were still very much a part of her. It was true. She did well to acknowledge her failures now. Yet, Carth had spoken wisely too. In the end, Aithne had turned away from that path. She was resisting. “You cannot,” she told the older woman. “But there are close to a dozen you met on the surface of Korriban by my count who would not be alive if not for you, and sometimes you saved them only with great risk, trouble, and personal suffering. There are at least two and maybe several more who are returned to the Light through your guidance. When push came to shove, you chose the Light, even facing every temptation. Accept responsibility for your failures, but take credit for your victory as well.”  

Bastila’s troubled mind, her jealousy, colored her words, and Aithne felt the shadow, the halting in her spirit. At once, her expression of stubborn self-recrimination shifted to one of concern. “Bas,” she said. “Are you—are you okay?”  

Bastila tried to smile. “Not really, no.”   

Aithne peered at her. “Come with me,” she said, walking away. Bastila glanced at Carth. He nodded and waved, dismissing her to follow Aithne. Aithne led her to the conference room, and when the two of them had entered, Aithne turned around and shut the door, usually left ajar. “Sit,” she told Bastila.  

Bastila sat, and Aithne sat diagonally across from her, neither directly beside her nor with the entire dining table between them. “Talk to me. Without any of the games or mental push-and-pull, what’s on your mind?”  

Bastila hesitated. She twisted her chair and her hands. Trust her , Carth had said. Carth Onasi. He didn’t know what he was talking about . . . and yet . . .   

“You were in considerable danger of falling down on Korriban,” she said finally.   

“I agree,” Aithne said calmly.  

“You have been slipshod in your discipline and in your adherence to the tenets of the Jedi Order—some of this is excusable given the protracted nature of your training—yet some of it I must believe has been intentional neglect.”  

“You’re right,” Aithne agreed again.   

“Your stance on attachment . . .?” Bastila asked, hesitant.   

Aithne sat back in her seat, her hands folded in her lap. She looked thoughtful. “I’m still working it out,” she admitted. “I think there’s merit in the Jedi position. Politically speaking, avoiding procreation in the Jedi Order helps avoid the rise of Force-wielding dynasties and Force-slinging blood feuds, naturally. On the other hand, we seem to have an enormous civil war every few decades anyway. The Sith keep on coming back. Avoiding emotional entanglements does assist in emotional discipline, but it also doesn’t really challenge it, does it?”  

Bastila saw what she meant. The Jedi sought to remove themselves from temptation. So isolated, they might be in less danger from the Dark Side, but the discipline they prized lost its value when all the situations which might test and develop it most were shunned.   

“Who’s stronger?” Aithne asked. “The Jedi who masters their fear, their anger, and their passion while avoiding all the things that tempt them most to fear, anger, and passion, or the Jedi who lives a full life and still maintains their control? But then there’s the time commitment—Jedi with families naturally pay the time cost of those relationships. They will never attain the mastery of the Force, of lore, or of lightsaber combat that a Jedi who has nothing else to do may gain.”  

Aithne was matter of fact about this. She acknowledged that there was merit in a Jedi’s singular focus upon the Force—in knowledge gained, skills mastered. She spread her hands. “I can see all sides of it, you see. Observationally, on the one side, I find the Jedi lifestyle often overly rigid, sterile, and stagnant; while Force Sensitives who abandon the Jedi precepts on attachment in particular are far more volatile and likelier to go off-the-rails crazy, and often homicidal. But if they don’t , those Force Sensitives who manage to find some kind of balance are often the wisest, most compassionate, and most effective Jedi.  

“Do I think I can strike that kind of balance?” Aithne paused. Bastila waited. This was the question, she knew—was this woman strong enough to live outside the traditions of the Jedi that she found so rigid, so sterile, without falling to the Dark Side? Or was her temptation to do so only symptomatic of an arrogance and vanity the Jedi had seen all too often?    

Aithne sighed after a moment’s consideration. “I think everyone hopes at some point that she can have it all, do it all. I—things have usually come easily to me, and I may—I apparently do have a tendency to overestimate my own strength. I don’t know what you and Carth have talked about. I don’t know what you may have sensed between us. But—” Aithne went red, and her voice dropped lower. “I still want him, even more than I did before, and in ways I didn’t before. But it’s the good in me that wants him. I know it. And he makes me want to do the right thing. More than I ever want to do it on my own.”   

Bastila felt a sad wistfulness. “We used to talk like this on Dantooine,” she murmured. “You used to talk with me about what they were teaching you. Back before the mission, back when it was all theoretical. I quite enjoyed that time.”   

It seemed so long ago now. Those six precious weeks—after the nightmare of Taris but before Bastila took up her charge in earnest—they had been an oasis of peace amid the storm. Bastila had had six weeks to get to know Aithne Moran, to get to like her, to accustom herself to the idea of her mission before all its danger resumed. Six weeks of training. Six weeks wholesome physical exercise with their lightsabers, where neither of them fought to kill but for the sheer practice and enjoyment of the art. Six weeks of spirited intellectual debate, where they might disagree but could do so maintaining respect for one another. Six weeks where Aithne had permitted Bastila to help her, and Bastila could help her honestly. Looking back, those six weeks had been a treasure.   

Aithne met her eyes, and there was a rueful acknowledgment and sorrow there. “So did I.”  

“It’s different here in the field,” Bastila observed. “Talking about your actual relationship—or potential relationship—when we consider the benefits and drawbacks of the Jedi position on attachment. Considering your actual ability to resist the Dark Side or pursue the Light instead of your mere potential for either. Or mine.”  

Aithne searched her face. “Yours?” she repeated. Bastila could feel the intensity of her regard.   

“I cannot help but compare us,” she admitted. “I wonder, if it had been me on Korriban, if the bounty were not an issue, would I have done as well? If I had been forced to play the game to advance among the Sith, seen everything you saw, and felt everything you felt—for myself and not just secondhand—could I have stayed strong? And if I wavered, as you did, could I have come back again? I have thought about it a great deal since you finally perfected your personal shields—congratulations, by the way.”  

“Just needed the incentive,” Aithne murmured. “I don’t advise that particular motivational method among the Jedi.”  

“Yes, I was quite distressed for you when I sensed what was happening in the tombs,” Bastila said. “Only the knowledge that I would surely be captured and helpless to aid you kept me from coming.”  

But apparently, it had not been Bastila’s distress over their bond that had moved Aithne to need to protect her mind so badly she mastered what she had found so difficult before, for her face creased in confusion before her expression cleared. “No, I—it was Carth,” she explained. “He’s just on the untrainable side of Force Sensitive? He saw it, and—”  

Bastila nodded. It was something of a relief to discover her concern for Aithne had not breached her own shields in that moment, and it made sense that Carth’s emotions might have been particularly volatile at the time. Perhaps it shed some light on his current emotional state as well.   

“You were saying?” Aithne prompted her.  

“Yes,” Bastila agreed. “I am not satisfied that had I been in your shoes, I would have done any better, and it troubles me. If I may—what made you come back to the Light? How do you remain strong against the Dark Side? For me, it has always been a constant battle!”  

Saying the words at last made her shame and frustration well up inside. She had suppressed them both for so long. For the first time, however, rather than try to maintain the ideal Jedi image, Bastila let Aithne see what lay beneath the surface. She shared her own struggle. She was so confounded and frustrated by, so jealous of Aithne’s seeming strength. Bastila had been meant to guide and be an example for Aithne. Yet when she imagined standing across from a heartless murderer and withstanding torture to spare his life—she could not. She could not imagine feeling the desperation for the endangered child of her lover that Aithne had felt on Korriban without feelings of selfishness, jealousy, and anger corrupting everything. Her feelings for her own parents were still so complex and painful, and she had not seen them in nearly twenty years. How much more so must Aithne’s feelings be for Carth! And the anger, the impatience Aithne had tasted in her time on Korriban, the anger and impatience that had so nearly damned her—how had she turned away? How had she held back from exacting vengeance on all the Sith?  

Aithne reached out and took her hand. In Bastila’s mind, there was a similar sensation, Aithne expressing both her presence and support, a willingness to listen, without fear or judgment. “Tell me,” she said.   

“I’ve never found the Jedi path an easy one to walk,” Bastila admitted. “I have always struggled for control over my passions. I’ve always been too quick to anger, too quick to get involved. My instructors constantly berated me for it. I’ve often dreamed that I might be able to confront Darth Malak myself. I dream I can use all the power I have to kill him and stop all the death and destruction. I just think about all the evil that the Sith have caused and I . . . I get so furious. Yet we are told these feelings are the path to the Dark Side—” She broke off, too overcome to go on.  

Aithne was still for a long time, absorbing what Bastila had shared with her, and Bastila saw how her emotions were at war in her face, without even reaching out with her feelings to gauge Aithne’s response to her confession. Aithne felt sympathy for her, but she had no words of comfort. “Well, they can be,” she said instead. “One of the Sith I turned—and can someone please find me a more condescending term, please—” Bastila laughed, a little wetly, and Aithne continued, “She had originally left the Jedi because she came from slavery. She saw so much evil and injustice when she was a child, and she wanted that evil gone . It was her sense of justice that wanted it, her sense of fellowship, and her compassion. None of those things were evil in her, in and of themselves. They were good. But they made her angry, and they made her impatient. She couldn’t find a balance. She couldn’t find her peace. She thought among the Sith, her anger might eventually lead her to justice. Break her chains and all that. That’s what they tell them in all the propaganda. But the more she dwelled on her anger and the power she needed to defeat her enemies, the less she remembered the people she had originally wanted to save.”   

Bastila tried to understand, tried to get there. She knew Aithne was speaking wisdom. She had felt the truth of Aithne’s words in the woman’s own experience upon Korriban—it had been Aithne’s rage against the violence she had witnessed, against the system she was forced to participate in, that had first moved her to violence. Yet as she acted upon her anger, she felt the wrongness of her actions less and less. The Dark Side was narcotic, yet Bastila could not grasp how good, noble people so quickly became corrupted! “Would I become the very evil I want to destroy if I used my power to eradicate Malak?” Bastila mused. “The very idea that I could become that evil; I just can’t fathom it! It just doesn’t seem possible. How could I?”  

“It’s easy.” Aithne’s voice was flat and harsh. “That’s the terrifying part. Your mind can justify anything, and once you’ve done something once, it’s just that much easier to do it the next time. And you don’t realize you’ve gone too far until you wake up with the corpse of some kid you never had to kill at your feet, or till you’re staring right at two slaves when you swore to wipe slavers off the face of the galaxy, and you realize you didn’t even see them. Even scarier to me is the idea that a lot of people don’t ever wake up.”  

She was right. Bastila knew she was right. “You’ve learned wisdom the hard way,” Bastila told Aithne. “Forgive me. And—I know it is not a comfort to you for the times you failed on Korriban—but somehow, it comforts me. It’s a relief to hear, somehow, that not everything is easy for you.”   

Bastila felt petty and perverse even as she said it. It was humbling, yes, to always feel so out of her depth beside Aithne, to always know her power and her destiny could not compare. Yet, the last thing she should be doing was taking comfort in Aithne’s weakness. People had been killed, and the galaxy needed Aithne to be strong. Everything depended on it. If Bastila herself was weak, she should look all the more to the Jedi teachings for her strength.  

But Aithne did not blame her. “No. I think I should have probably been practicing more discipline. Been a little less arrogant,” Aithne smiled, though the expression had little mirth. “Bas—in the field? People help. Jolee told me: It’s always easier to resist the Dark Side with the influence of others. Folks to hold you accountable, give you perspective. Remind you how much you stand to lose by giving in. It helped me, toward the end. I know you have this thing about helping me stay in the Light. Maybe it could work both ways? You can talk to me, you know. Like we used to. Even if you don’t want to talk to me yet.”  

Aithne’s humility shamed her. Bastila looked up into the kind eyes of her companion and felt herself to be so small. To Bastila, Aithne had only ever been patient and forbearing. She knew, had known nearly from the beginning that Bastila was lying to her. Spying on her and attempting to leverage their relationship. Yet, aside from the odd acerbic comment, Aithne had continued to wait, had continued to show compassion.   

Bastila was rapidly coming to the end of her tolerance for her orders from the Council. If Aithne struggled with the Dark Side, what of it? Bastila did as well. Bastila wanted to trust in Aithne. Aithne deserved the chance to be trusted. Bastila wanted to tell Aithne everything. Tired of pretending to be Aithne’s friend, Bastila wanted to actually be one.   

“I do want to talk to you,” Bastila whispered. She felt a traitor even as she said it. “To some extent, I have always wished to do so. I wish I could be more open. I wish there need not be any secrets or walls between us. I—you have earned my respect. My admiration. And I’m tired. Yet—my orders come directly from the Council. I cannot—I cannot say that I know better.”  

Aithne’s eyes became even more intent, and then, deliberately, she withdrew from Bastila’s mind. She did not raise her shields. Her mind and emotions remained open to Bastila, but her presence had pulled back. She was making it clear that Bastila had her privacy, that she would not take any confidence or clue by force.   

Suddenly, Bastila was terrified. Dashing tears away, she stood. “This is too dangerous,” she said. “Please, forgive me. If you can, forget I ever mentioned this.” She strode from the room, fleeing toward the cargo hold. She needed to meditate.