**I own nothing, this is written using my original character which I created for the Vast Empire writing club***
The long blades of emerald grass swayed in the wind on Ansion. Ayme narrowed her eyes at the small box she had been attempting to wire for over a month. Her sister Aryanna lay nearby, looking up every so often from the holonovel clasped in her hands only to shake her head in frustration and return to her reading. The sun was getting low and it would be dusk soon, the twins would need to go home and have dinner. Based on the increased frequency in Aryanna's routine she must have been getting hungry.
"Ayme are you done yet?"
The eight year old raised her eyebrow and grinned at her older twin. "No."
An exasperated groan was the only verbal reply. Aryanna threw her arm over her face to block what was left of the setting sun and her sister's tinkering.
The box had been nothing more than a collection of wires when their father brought it home. He had found it at a shipyard and had mistaken it for a food processor component. When he discovered it was nothing more than the broken remains of a droid motivator, he had gone to throw it away. Then his youngest daughter appeared out of nowhere and dove across the kitchen table to save it from the compactors.
Returning from her musing, Ayme glanced at her sister to find her looking with disgust at her project.
"What is that thing going to do anyway, you've been working on it forever. And I'm sick of being your babysitter since you got [i]lost[/i] that time because you [i]had[/i] to climb that tree and mom couldn't find you." Aryanna spoke to the clouds, her hands waving wildly to emphasize her aggravation with Ayme.
"What, do you have a problem with trees now?" Ayme replied. "Anyways how else am I supposed to see the ships land in the spaceport?"
Aryanna sat up and regarded her sister for a long moment. "Dad doesn't want us going into town, he doesn't want us [i]thinking[/i] about going into town. He would be super mad at you if he knew that's why you climb that thing."
Ayme sat back, her eyes watching the horizon. Nothing had been the same since their uncle Jed had left with their older sister Zasati. The Katash family had become overprotective since that day and Ayme didn't fully understand why. She was a child and the whispers of adults were too complicated and boring to bother trying to decode.
The younger twin turned the box upright and took a deep breath, preparing herself for disappointment if the commands she programmed didn't work. "Command. Go." The box lifted and rolled a meter in a straight line forward then lost momentum and stopped. "Command. Return." The box immediately lifted again and rolled back to Ayme along the same path.
The young blond girl smiled with a toothy grin, enjoying the moment of victory for all that it was worth. Her sister on the other hand looked confused and even more annoyed than before.
"Seriously? Are you kidding? That's [i]all[/i] it does?" Aryanna shook her head and stood quickly, pacing as she attempted to formulate a sentence through her anger. "Four weeks and it moves a meter back and forth, really?"
Ayme opened her mouth to respond. She was still sitting on the grass, looking up towards her older sister, who was waiting in a state of agitation for her response. The twins thoughts scattered as they became aware of the dark shadow creeping along the grassy plain. They traced the lines in the ground upward towards the sky, to a ship as it was about to land a few meters from their home.
That was when she heard it, a sound she would never forget. The sound of her mother screaming her name.
"Ayme!"
Havock bolted up in the cot on her personal transport. Her shaky hand slapped her face, sending sweat sprinkling down her fingers and arms. She ran the same fingers through her soaked hair as she attempted to catch her breath. Her lungs were burning as if she had been breathing nothing but fire for hours. She swallowed in a vain attempt to produce some moisture in her dry throat and looked for her chrono.
0248
She collapsed back to the bed and closed her eyes in the darkness. The nightmares had become worse as she became more attuned to the Force. Only they weren't actually nightmares, but memories she had forgotten after the accident.
Feeling her heart rate finally reach some semblance of normal, Ayme rolled to a sitting position in the cot.
She had only used the sparsely decorated bedroom for sleeping, which was an activity that occurred less and less of late. That night she had managed almost three hours, and it appeared that would be all her restless mind was going to give her.
"Ah well, I know an engine room that needs attention." Havock looked down at her sweat soaked tank top and shorts. "And why don't we test out the water filtration system too, on the way."
The final piece of the upgraded hyperdrive system locked into place with a clank. The hyperdrive she created didn't have a specific designation but she'd clocked the rating down to 0.7 during her last test. It was one of the many systems she worked to upgrade on the ship, and the effort had cost her several cuts and bruises as well as the majority of her bank account.
It felt like a lifetime ago when Aeos had given the brand new E-9 Explorer to her. At the time, Havock had no clue why the older woman had given such an elaborate gift, and it was against Zasati's personality to explain. Perhaps the vessel was an attempt at a bonding. A tentative connection between two sisters who had always struggled to communicate.
It was a beautiful specimen of spacecraft, with orange highlights along the hull and upgraded systems throughout. Ayme Katash had been working on the ship in the Citadel's hanger since she returned from her last mission for the Order. She had touched down thirty days before, walked along the tarmac and directly into the [i]Katash Revenge[/i].
Her choice not to report upon her arrival had its consequences, with both Kami and Aeos yelling at her for not reporting as soon as she returned. Why should she have? The mission had been in the Order's terms a failure. They had sent her to look for a Sith artifact and all she had discovered was artificial intelligence technology. While it had been something of interest to the Council, it had not been the objective of her task.
Ayme found it hard to care what they thought. The mission had proved more valuable to her personally and in her progression in the Force than any other single had been assigned to look into a disturbance at the Klavan Mansion on Torrance. It had been the home to Noma and Doctor Roget Klavan, the latter being a scientist in his prime over half a century before.
Roget Klavan was a brilliant mind, even fifty years ago, and he spent his last decade on Torrance perfecting artificial intelligence for droids. She had witnessed the incredible advances he had made when she ran into his personal droid. Protos was the name he gave the humanoid looking droid. The name was meant to signify a line of advances along the same premise that a droid with intelligence would be infinitely more useful to their human counterparts than one without.
Protos was a fascinating creation.
He stood taller than Havock at about six feet and had a humanoid face and proportions. His metal extremities had been dyed a pale color, in contrast to his silver body. To her he looked like an ancient knight in a metallic armor. The droid gave her a companion, one that was loyal and only very slightly less advanced than the AI she installed in the ship's computer.
Roget had created the perfect laboratory assistant with features Havock had worked to scale down. She didn't want to detract from his mechanical beauty but she had to keep the droid from overloading its programming again. The AI mixed with the plethora of tools loaded by its creator, sent the droid into a mental breakdown similar to the effects of post traumatic stress after his master died. It took the machine years of isolation to get a grip on its new life, she wasn't sure how long it took Protos to find her though.
"Do you require assistance Havock?" She looked up from the engineering floor to see Protos standing in the doorway.
That was another rather heated argument. Everyone questioned how a droid had tracked her back to Lopen. After a short analysis it was clear that nobody in the galaxy knew Protos existed much less tracked the droid. Still there were many in the order that refused to trust the machine that now called the [i]Revenge[/i] home.
"Did you finish the weapons systems already Protos?"
He declined his head before he responded. "Yes Havock, the systems are operational."
"Good I'm about to bring Noma online then we can see how my wiring skills are."
Protos lacked humor, it was one of the many draw backs to his programming that - based on Klavan's notes - had been corrected in the upgraded processor she found. Ayme constantly wished Jaenna could have been with her on Lopen. If she had been there she could have helped with the installation of the computer system, it certainly would have gone faster, and with less burn salve.
She arrived in the cockpit to find the board green for the first time since she started tinkering. Ayme nodded in approval then flipped the final switch.
A human woman in her late forties materialized in the cockpit behind her. She wore a Vast Empire Army dress uniform with a full complement of medals.
Havock turned to face the woman and smirked. "Went for the full dress huh? Interesting choice Noma."
The avatar of the ships computer relaxed her pose and crossed her arms. "According to my programming I can choose any form and dress that fits the situation." She looked away, mimicking human movement as she accessed the files. "This was to improve my ability to act as a decoy in the circumstance of unauthorized boarding, ship to ship communication, physica..."
"Yes, yes." Ayme waved her hand. "I remember, I programmed you."
"Indeed you did Ma'am."
Ayme slapped her hand to her thigh in aggravation. "Blasted I thought I got the name fixed. Noma I'm not [i]Ma'am[/i]." She pointed her thumb at her chest. "Me Havock."
Noma cocked her head to the side, considering the data. "You are Ayme Katash, call sign Havock. Dark Jedi Knight, member of the Vast Empire Army High Command, engaged to..."
"Okay. So if you know, then why are you..."
"Because you dislike it, Ayme."
Havock blinked trying to expunge the dumbfounded look she had. "Remind me again why I gave you a personality?"
Noma smiled sweetly leaning in so she could whisper. "Because Protos is boring."
===~~~===
[i]
Kuzma stood in the darkness allowing his eyes to adjust to the contrasts so he could make out the stone around him. He had no idea which planet he was on this time, but he knew that he was in a cave. He hated caves even as a boy. He could remember the joy on his siblings' faces as they would coax him into the deep rocks near their home for some pointless adventure. To him the natural enclosures were nothing more than dark and predictable. Even the scene before him had become as commonplace as darkness in a cave.
The woman held a lightsaber in her hand, the long orange blade extended towards him. He could see the faint glow of the hilt through her clutched fist. The blue orbs of her eyes were tinged with red as she glared down at him.
He had fallen to the hard rocky floor of the cave, although he had trouble distinguishing if he started on the ground or standing anymore. The visions happened so frequently they had started to run together in his subconscious mind. She advanced on him, her eyes never leaving his face. He wanted her to speak.
"Who are you?" He pleaded.
Her lips gave no reply, yet she kept coming.
The orange blade raised and the fatal swipe came quick, sending him jerking out of his vision.
[/i]
Kuzma Tirrell was instantly returned to his apartment on Terminus. The traffic on Terminus created a dull roar he could hear from his apartment, which most would find annoying. He enjoyed the noise, it allowed him to feel the outside world but refrain from seeing it.
He stood in front of his modest transperiglass window and let his eyelids fall heavily. The deep breaths helped his mind focus on the vision of the future. This was his daily ritual, to look forward and pray for a new outcome. So many years now, his mediations all ended the same. The woman with the blond hair appeared and was the cause of his death. He maneuvered the aspects of his life, spent years researching and finding her identity. He went to Torrance, then Ansion, and then finally to Terminus. Nothing changed, the visions remained the same.
Ayme Katash was going to kill him.
He spent several moments getting his breathing under control. The vision of Ayme Katash had been plaguing him for the past fifty or more years, seeing her kill him always sent a shiver down his spine in a primal way. Chasing the girl over time and space had dominated his life, he wasn't sure how to live in a world where Katash wasn't going to kill him in every foreseeable outcome of his future.
He absently milled around his room, changing his clothes and performing the mundane grooming tasks of daily life.
Kuzma had moved to the trade hub so many years ago, yet one would think he had only arrived less than a week based on the number of items in his apartment. The acquisition of possessions seemed so pointless in the grand scheme of things.
The Sorcery of Rhand had been his guiding principle since his birth. He had been raised on Rhand in the heart of the Sorcery. His father and all his siblings possessed the gifts the Dark gave those that were worthy.
Yet for all his gifts, he could not change the outcome of his own destiny. He would die and Ayme Katash would be the one to kill him.
The locations changed, the times, the years even. No matter what he did he couldn't avoid the inevitability that one day he would die by her hand.
At a young age it was clear to everyone in his family that Kuzma had the gift of Darksight. The ability to use the energy that connected all living things to see the past and, more importantly to him, the future. This was a common Force power for the Sorcery of Rhand and one that had been studied over centuries of masters. The Rhand believed not in the Force but in the Dark. The two were interchangeable in the practical sense. He had mastered, through years of meditation to effect the past and future in small but significant ways. Thinking about the resources at his disposal thanks to his birthright always gave Kuzma a feeling of pride.
Using his skills Kuzma had planted small markers in Ayme's already fragmented memories. He had already guided her to Torrance, to the Klavan's mansion, to the device that woman had tried to protect. He spent years with Roget Klavan, assisting him in his research. There was so much knowledge that died with Roget, and that was the point. As far as the good doctor was concerned Kuzma was nothing more than a dream, a muse. The beauty in its simplicity still brought a smirk to his face.
[i]Always move the small pieces and make them do the work for you to move the larger ones.[/i]
In the past he had attempted more direct approaches to his Ayme Katash problem. He had tried to kill her outright three times, every single time the outcome left her injured but alive and his life in ruin. He had lost the people he loved, places he called home, and a portion of his sanity along the way.
This time he hoped her altered memories would do his work for him. Have her come to him rather than the other way around.
By now she would have received his gift and by her own conviction or through orders she would be compelled to seek him out. She would come and his plans could finally be put into real motion. The waiting reminded him of the horrid years before she was even born and the lack of influence he felt during those decades.
She would come, it was just a matter of time. Then he could unravel the puzzle that was Ayme Katash once and for all. With that thought he smiled at his reflection in the transperiglass and turned to start his day.
"Ayme someone knows you are here, and that compromises the Order."
Havock apathetically tossed the hydrospanner in her hand to the couch with little regard to how or where it landed. She walked through the living area of the [i]Revenge[/i] on her path towards the bar, which had recently been stocked. She had been actively tuning out most of the conversation with her sister since Aeos had arrived unexpectedly on her ship carrying a nondescript package.
"Zasati, I don't know how many times I need to explain it. It's been weeks, I have programs monitoring comm traffic, [i]you[/i] have been monitoring everything. I realize a droid finding me sounds like a scenario that had to be set up by someone, but this droid is different."
Aeos shook her head slowly and regarded her younger sister. They had got along once, before they realized their blood connection. Since then, Aeos had become distant and their relationship had suffered. Havock knew the woman cared, or she wouldn't keep trying to steer her away from trouble.
"You also have had yourself holed away in this ship like a hermit. You never come out, you've missed sect meetings, people are starting to talk."
"Heh." Havock took a long sip out of one of her whiskey bottles. The inflection of Aeos' tone didn't go unnoticed. "If I didn't know you better Zasati, I'd almost say you were concerned."
Aeos' blue eyes flashed with anger. "The Order isn't some bar wench spreading rumors Ayme. If they feel threatened they eliminate the threat. Right now you are an anomaly, you had better hope what they find on you isn't damning. Not even I could save you from your fate."
Havock glared at her sister. Aeos was always overprotective, harsh in her delivery, but typically right. The younger woman stayed silent and took another long drink.
"Just open the package already, Kami told me I needed to be here when you did that."
Havock abruptly ripped the bottle from her lips, causing some of the amber liquid to dribble down her chin. She absently wiped at it as a feeling of pure confusion permeated from her mind to her features.
"What package?"
Aeos rolled her eyes and dropped a seventy by seventy centimeter commonplace container on the top of the bar. "That one."
Havock frowned and traded the bottle in her hand for the package. "Where did it come from?"
"It arrived on the headmaster's desk, the only writing on it is this small Aurabesh here on the sealant."
She held the box closer and could make out the tiny letters H-A-V-O-C-K in the galactic basic language. "And it was on Raziel's desk?...yea I'm getting decapitated. You're right."
"Ayme be serious for once."
"I am." She took a deep breath and shrugged. Reaching into her side pocket she pulled out a large combat knife that made Aeos step back.
"You just have that sitting in your pocket?"
"Oh hush already."
The sealant cut easily under the pressure of the sharp knife. She tentatively opened the container to reveal a smaller metallic box. Old wires stuck out from the bottom of the battered device. It looked similar to a droid motivator, the same shape and contours covered the dark metal. The memory hit Havock so hard she physically staggered back.
Aeos frowned and let the concern in her voice leak into the words. "Ayme what's wrong?"
"Who sent this? Where did it come from?" Havock grabbed her sister's shoulders, the pitch of her voice rising. "How did they get it?"
Aeos grabbed Ayme's forearms, securing them to her shoulders, then pushed hard with her legs, pinning her sister against the bulkhead between the bar and a couch.
"Ayme look at me."
Havock struggled futilely in her grip before slumping down in defeat and meeting her sister's gaze.
"I need to you calm down and think." Aeos continued. "We don't know where it came from, but it's a mechanical box, can't you tell me?"
It was the same box from her nightmare, or memory. It was the device her father had brought home so long ago and almost threw away. The one she tinkered on for a month just to make it respond to a simple move command. It should be a buried and forgotten hunk of metal by now, yet there it sat in a small brown container with her name on it.
"I'm sorry if I'm interrupting, but your heart rate increased dramatically just now."
Aeos frowned and turned to look at the woman with long brown hair tied in a pony tail that had appeared suddenly in the room with the siblings. The woman leaned against a large lounge chair, clad in common garb that would not have been out of place in the streets of Corellia.
Aeos turned quickly back to Ayme. "Who in the seven hells is that?"
"I thought I was supposed to be calming down, that tone certainly doesn't help." Havock smirked at her sister then cocking her head to the side to look at the avatar she continued. "Hey Noma, say hi to Aeos."
"Noma?"
"Hello Aeos. Do you need me for anything Ayme?"
"Not right now, bugger off."
Aeos turned just in time to see Noma roll her eyes and evaporate into the holoemitter in the ceiling.
"In case you are still curious, [i]that[/i] is what I've been doing for a month." Havock tapped the arms holding her indicating it was safe to let her go now.
She felt a curiosity, both through the Force and in her own self. This was a device from her childhood, from a dream that she had just relived that night, no less.
She approached the container and reached inside.
[i]
The room around her disappeared in a flash and she was back on Ansion in the field again. It took her a moment to gain her barrings and reorient her eyes to the surroundings. On typical visions she would smell the rain approaching in the far off clouds, and hear the bugs flying back to the field after a long days work. This time it was different, everything felt two dimensional and more like a story being told to her than a Force vision of her own past.
She walked over to the twins and observed the scene once again. Her eyes glanced up at the horizon knowing the ship would come and her parents would die soon. A sadness washed over her at the realization, but something about the entire scenario seemed wrong.
Ayme saw imperfections in the vision, things that shouldn't have been there. Birds were flying in awkward patterns. The blades of grass at her feet blurred at the edges. Even the house seemed less defined than she realized before. It was almost as if the memories had been manufactured by someone, rather than lingering in her memory waiting to be found.
She narrowed her gaze then jerked her head up at the sound of the gunboat as it appeared overhead. The darkness carried in a change in scene. The grassy fields of Ansion melted away to reveal an expansive city. Towers stretched up towards the stars, reaching, grasping for something intangible.
Her gaze rested on a balcony, and a small gray figure of a man standing precariously close to the edge. He held a small device in one hand and a hydrospanner in the other and was working with a gleeful intent that was palpable in the air around her. Ayme drew in closer and felt the shock of what she was seeing hit her like a wave. The device in his hands was the same box she repaired on Ansion as a child, yet this man had it. His face was obscured by the hood of his robe, and she had no way of knowing if what she was seeing was recent or from when she was a child before the box was discarded. The vision slowly started to fade. The last thing she saw before the white haze overtook the images was the man admiring his work with a sinister grin on his grizzled face.
[/i]
"Terminus." She whispered.
"What?" Aeos looked up from the lounge chair. She seemed slightly disoriented as if she had fallen asleep while she waited for the younger woman to complete her journey.
"I think I need to go to some place called Terminus." Havock released the device and stumbled back using the wall as support for her damp body. She could feel the fatigue that came with her longer meditations. She needed to rest and probably eat some food, but she knew that more than anything she needed to find out who that man was and why it was that a piece of junk from her childhood was suddenly so important.
The docking clamps locked into place just as the [i]Katash Revenge[/i] arrived in the crowded spaceport. Ayme had to wait almost an hour for clearance to land due to the number of spacecraft ahead of her. Terminus was at the very edge of the galaxy, just on the cusp of Unknown Regions. It was considered the last stop for ships traveling on the Corellian Trade Spine and the Hydian Way to the farther reaches of the galaxy.
Ayme turned to glance behind her at the holoimage sitting in the navigators chair and nearly jumped out of the viewport.
"Noma, what the hell?"
Being only activated a handful of days, Noma was a program in her infancy. Although she could tap into every system on the [i]Revenge[/i] she was still something of a child with a room full of new toys. Lately, her favorite game was to alter her appearance using the subroutines Ayme installed.
The ships computer had complete personnel files for anyone Havock had previously worked with. She had been thorough in the data and in her security protocols for the ship. The [i]Revenge[/i] could not be accessed by anyone she hadn't set up as a back up user, and there were very few people that would fit into that category.
The image of the woman now sitting in the co-pilots chair was one of those people.
The red hair stood out in contrast to the green star on Jaenna's cheek. But it wasn't Jaenna, which is what made the eerie attention to detail more jarring. She sat with one leg over the arm rest of the chair, and her fingers absently twirling a lock of hair near her ear, the same way Jaenna used to.
"Something wrong?"
Ayme took a long deep breath and stood keeping her fists clenched.
"I'm only going to say this once. Jaenna Caldwin is off limits, I don't want to see you using her image again. I will rip your central processor out of the guts of this ship with less effort than one takes to sneeze."
Her voice stayed even through the ultimatum, although her heart rate was well above normal. She started to pace, her eyes flicking from Noma to the viewport and the people milling around the hanger.
"You don't even have it right, Jaenna looked like that when we first met. That was years ago, not now."
A sudden wave of depression hit the woman as she realized how long it had been since she had seen Jaenna, and how long it would still be. There was much to do for the Order and her recent outings had been less than productive, which meant she had to prove that she could be of use. This was her own quest, a mission born out of her visions. She could only hope that with the Force more involved in the planning of the mission would mean a more successful outcome this time.
"Why are we here Havock?" The way the avatar cocked her head made Ayme twitch. She wanted more time to understand Noma, just as Noma seemed to be curious about her.
[i]So answer her, why are you here? What made this so damn important?[/i]
It was then Ayme realized just how tense she was. Her muscles were knots and that combined with her lack of sleep was a volatile combination.
"I'm not sure, it just felt like going anywhere else would be wrong."
It was time to let the worries of her other life fall behind her and focus on her task. In her visions there was a faceless man, dressed in a cloak, standing in a cave. They spoke, almost amicably, and then she killed him. Every time. The man in the robe that was manipulating her life somehow had become a reoccurring event for her in both her dreams and meditations.
The Force was leaving breadcrumbs for her to follow, and she accepted the fact that this could be a trap. It wasn't wise to blindly follow the markers left for her, the ones that seemed to lead right into his hands. Yet it was the fastest way to find out what the man wanted and why the Force felt it was worth going through so much trouble to attain it.
She could feel the anger inside reaching a boiling point. There were too many questions and not enough answers. The very air around her instantly became agitating she wanted to scratch and crawl her way out of her skin just to make the frustration go away.
"Ayme..."
"Change, now!" Havock roared her hand going fruitlessly to her lightsaber as she stood in a single swift movement. The only thing she would be able to damage was her own ship, yet her anger longed for a release.
The image of Jaenna smiled sadly then faded quickly into Noma Klavan in casual dress. "Better?"
Ayme only nodded, keeping her teeth clenched she turned and headed towards the exit with Protos.
The ramp descended with a clank to the hangar floor. Ayme was distracted, giving last minute directions to Noma as Protos walked ahead of her. She didn't see the man in the cloak standing less than a meter from where the ramp landed, until she was seconds from bumping into him.
His face wasn't familiar but the aura of energy surrounding the man confirmed his identity to her instantly. She stepped back and her hand flew to her side. "I don't know who you are, but to hell with rules, you flinch and I'll have my weapon in my hand and slicing your guts before you can do anything else."
Ayme's heart beat was loud and fast in her chest. Her eyes gained the alert look that came with a spike in adrenaline, and they watched the many diverse beings that wandered in and out of the hangar, even as she motioned for Protos to cover her.
"My name is Kuzma, Ayme."
She snarled and stepped up until she was inches from his face. His breath hit her cheeks in even, slow, pulses.
"I will ask this once. How do you know my name?"
He offered her a long, sinister, knowing smile. "That is not the right question. But in the interest of building trust, I'll answer. I've known you a long time Ayme Katash, but now it's time for you to know me."
The lack of actual information in his answer was infuriating to the young Krath knight. Her teeth clenched and she yearned to use the Force to send the lightsaber at her hip to her outstretched hand, but she knew that wasn't going to answer her questions either. With every ounce of willpower she stepped back and regarded the man before her.
Protos had moved into a flanking position behind the man. "My droid can also crush your windpipe, just so you are aware."
He nodded and glanced back at the silver droid. "I'm fully aware of the capabilities of Protos, I was there while Roget built him."
Ayme's eyes narrowed. This Kuzma knew far too much about things he shouldn't. She suddenly found herself wondering if Aeos was right all along, if the droid really was some kind of trap. Her eyes drifted to Protos as her mind feared that she had opened the Order up to an attack.
"Oh Ayme, I have no interest in your [i]Order[/i]. Just you." Kuzma lowered his hood to reveal an older man with thinning black hair and grizzled cheeks. His eyes gave off a yellowish glow and his skin was deathly pale. "Follow me, and believe me when I tell you, if I wanted you dead, I have my own bag of tricks that I could have already employed."
She sensed something disingenuous about his words, but less in regards to his desire to kill her and more in the fact that he could have already accomplished the task. Her instincts told her to turn around and fire up the ship. Ayme's mind was running rapidly over the various scenarios and attempting to choose the path that didn't end with her getting killed on Terminus when only two people knew where she was. Neither of those people were Jaenna, the one person that mattered. Yet if it was on a mission for the order, it was conceivable that Jaenna would never know what happened to her.
"Your mind is fascinating, does it ever stay on one subject long? Or do you live in this perpetual soup bowl of thoughts at constant conflict?"
Ayme glared at Kuzma, if there was one thing she hated it was someone invading her thoughts. Kuzma's capacity to blaze past her mental barriers with no effort what-so-ever was concerning.
Havock motioned towards the silver droid. "Protos goes with me, and I will give you one hour, after that I can leave when I choose. That's the deal or I go back on my cozy ship and jet out of here."
He cocked his head to one side to regard her then smirked and nodded. "I find that amicable to my needs, it's this way."
Kuzma turned, keeping his eyes on the path back to his apartment. He could sense the young woman raise the boarding ramp and softly pad behind him. She was smaller than he thought she would be in the flesh. He had been so excited to finally meet her that it clouded his purpose. Ayme had been apart of his life for so long she truly felt like a friend that he had been long separated from.
"It's not far, I trust the journey here was uneventful?"
She glanced at him, he loved how off guard she was put by his words. It was the right approach, he thought, to act as though he knew her already. The true visions were his alone, while hers were constructs by his hand, carefully crafted to show only what he wanted her to see. Keeping her on her toes would force her into the frame of mind he needed, one of apprehension and fear. That was how he would get the answers he wanted from her and eventually eliminate her as a threat to his future.
"It was fine."
Her voice was dry, she was able to control her emotions. The revelation was startling to Kuzma, and took him aback for several moments. He had always taken her for a hot headed punk that lucked into her gifts in the Force. This child, by circumstance or serendipity, possessed the skills that he himself had lacked in his youth. His mind suddenly considered the possibility of enhancing her talents himself rather than snuffing them out like a flame.
He didn't want to admit it, but he yearned to know why she had power. Why she, someone so distant, has become an immovable object in his future. Even destroying her somehow ensured his own death. He must understand her, draw her close, find her power and take it from her, all the while perhaps making his future ever more certain by teaching her.
The door to his apartment slid open and he removed his cloak to reveal a dark tunic underneath. "Please come in, make yourself comfortable."
Ayme's eyes wandered quickly over the apartment. There was little in the way of furniture and even less in decoration. Kuzma dropped his cloak on a chair and wandered over to the kitchen. His lack of concern for a stranger and her droid in his personal space was off setting, but she got the impression that was the point of the entire charade.
"You have an hour, don't waste your time with tea."
Kuzma released a hearty belly laugh from the kitchenette. He carried his small cup of tea back into the living area and regarded the young woman with an unsettling gaze. "What do you see?"
"An anorexic hermit that likes to stalk younger women while drinking tea."
He raised his eyebrow and took a generous sip from his tiny cup. He reached over and grabbed a datapad off the arm rest of his chair. Kuzma closed his eyes for a moment and gripped the device in his hand, then in a quick motion he tossed the datapad, which she caught in mid-air.
"What do you see?"
Ayme felt her eye twitch, she could feel the energy through her palm from the device. This man knew details about her life and now he even knew her Force abilities. Since joining the Order Ayme had been enhancing her natural gift for mechanical things. She could touch any device and intuitively know every gear and part, know who made it and why, know how it was used. It was an intimate relationship, and one Kuzma apparently wanted to abuse. She was curious of his endgame in all this, and there was only one way to find that out.
Tentatively she reached out and touched the device with her mind.
[i]
The landscape faded from a city to a large tan mountain. There was water in the distance visible from her elevation. Havock knelt and touched the stones wondering what this place could possibly have to do with the datapad.
"This is Rhand."
Her head jerked up towards the voice, it was Kuzma standing two meters away from her looking wistfully towards two boys playing down the mountain from them. She looked at him, completely abashed with the impossibility of what he was doing. No one had ever invaded one of her visions before.
"That is myself and my brother, Agrin. We were not even ten yet." He didn't look back, he simply started walking down the rough terrain towards the memories.
Ayme frowned unsure of Kuzma's intentions. Still she was content to see what she started to the end, so she followed.
Two boys sat huddled together near a small pool of water. They spoke quietly to each other.
The older boy picked up a small pebble and tossed it into the water. "Watch Kuzma. Look at the way the stone makes patterns in the water. Every time a thousand different variables will effect the outcome."
The boys continued to talk quietly to each other, but the Kuzma Ayme had come to know interjected. "You see Ayme, as I was taught, our past and future they are both affected by the present. You simply can not assume that the present is the time in which you currently exist. The present, in fact, is merely the collision of each possible past and present, the epicenter of a great quake. Like the stone being thrown in the water. You could pick any of them off the ground and each one could create an infinite number of patterns in the ripples. The gift, is knowing which stone to pick because you [i]know[/i] which pattern it will create. That is our gift Ayme."
[i]
The image faded and they were again in the apartment on Terminus. "You imprinted that memory on the datapad on purpose, so I would see that specific day."
"Yes." He sipped his tea nonchalantly and based on his body language that was all of an answer he was willing to volunteer.
"What do you want from me?"
Kuzma smirked and walked softly back to the kitchen. He tinkered around moving things for several minutes before returning to the living area.
"What do you think of what you saw?"
Ayme frowned and glanced at his hands. They looked old with enlarged knuckles clinging to wrinkled skin. What they were missing was a weapon. During the entire ordeal Kuzma had not worn or even hinted at wanting a weapon. Still there was something off about his intentions, and his hour was up.
"I think you wanted a friend for your stroll down memory lane. I don't know how you shared the vision with me though, that's a new trick."
He shrugged. "I can teach it to you if you like."
"I am no apprentice old man."
Kuzma laughed. "Of that I am aware, Ayme. Consider it a collaboration of two professionals."
Ayme started to pace like a caged animal. Her eyes glared at the man. "There was something familiar about that vision."
"Have you visited Rhand?" The way Kuzma's lip curled at the end of the sentence caught Ayme's eye. She had seen that expression on politicians when they asked rhetorical questions.
"No. But you knew that didn't you?"
Kuzma laughed. "I only know what you, or the Force, wants me to know Ayme."
"The way you entered that vision...from what I've read that's been done but can only be accomplished with a few subjects. You have to navigate their brain patters, learn their Force barriers, study them."
Kuzma raised his eyebrow and nodded. "That is the only way for it to be so seamless. You can perfect it to the point that the person would never even know you are there."
Her blue eyes narrowed as she turned towards Kuzma. "You didn't seem to be having much trouble being in my head."
Kuzma smiled. "No, I did not."
The implications racing through her head came hard and fast. Ayme already struggled with knowing what had happened in the parts of her past she lost. She had come out of a year long coma when she was only a child to have no memory of anything before. It took her years to even know her name.
Ayme stepped closer to Kuzma so the volume of her voice could remain a whisper. "Did you...put images in my head that weren't real?"
Kuzma's eyes glimmered as his smile got even wider at her question. "What do you think Ayme?" He cocked his head to the side waiting for a response. "I'll answer all of your questions, and more. All I ask is just for you to stay here a little longer."
The breeze caught the loose strands of her hair as they stood on the edge of one of the taller buildings. Kuzma had found that depriving ones self of normal stimuli could often bring out latent abilities, it appeared though that Ayme had a gift for repression far beyond his expectations.
[i]Ayme was the key, she had to be.[/i]
Kuzma had spent the majority of his life using every Force power he could cultivate to stop Ayme Katash from killing him. The only variable he hadn't thrown into the mix was using her power to bring about her destruction along with his own.
It was far fetched even for him but at the end of his rope as it were, he had few ideas left. If it was his destiny to die at Ayme's hands, then she would suffer and ever person she cared about would be destroyed in the wake of annihilation.
Ayme slumped her shoulders in defeat. "I don't know how many times we are going to go through this Kuzma. My power is specifically attached to mechanical devices. I cannot just see the past and future when I desire to."
Kuzma sighed in frustration and looked out on the horizon. "You use the devices to bring you focus, but you have the skill latent in yourself. With practice you will develop it, you must only seek it within yourself Ayme."
The sun was setting for the fifth time since Ayme had arrived and the only progress he had made was possibly some bonding with the young woman. It was infuriating that the girl destined to kill him since birth was so weak. He could have simply pushed her off the building to the solid duracreet below. Of course, though she would die he would in effect be killing himself in the process. The whole situation was becoming so ridiculous it was laughable.
Kuzma let his mind drift to what his life was before Ayme Katash arrived in his visions. He was a promising disciple of the Sorcery of Rhand, just has his father had been before him. He and all his siblings were taught early the principles that would guide their life. In his early twenties he was given the job of technologies advisor to the high council. They would send him throughout the galaxy seeking new devices and programs that would benefit the Sorcery in some way. At times, he was convinced they collected bits and pieces around the galaxy to use as bargaining chips in their quest for knowledge. This position is what eventually led him to Roget Klavan and his droid technology.
Torrance, he remembered it like it was yesterday. The small town, the rolling hills, Roget's beautiful wife. Kuzma loved everything about it. Roget was easy to influence in his state of health and Noma needed companionship. He could have stayed with her when Roget died, they made plans. Of course that was until the day he saw Ayme for the first time.
He had settled in the woods for a meditation. Given his particular influence on Roget he didn't need to be at his side as much while he worked on the device that Kuzma would take with him to the council.
Ayme saw Torrance in flashes as she stood on the ledge. She couldn't get a clear image but she knew she was seeing Kuzma's thoughts, and that he was far to distracted to notice.
The vision was of a future on Torrance, many years in the future. He was happy, calm, with Noma in the mansion. They even had grandchildren laughing and playing in the parlor. The door swung open to reveal the dark woman, her blond hair blowing in the wind as the sky became cloudy. She lit her orange lightsaber and made her way through the home, never speaking as she mowed down the children first, then his beloved Noma before finally holding the blade to his throat. She smiled then gave him peace after the torture of losing all he loved. He hated her that day, but knew that to keep Noma safe from the Sith he had to go, so he did. When he returned for the device Noma was gone, Protos was gone, and the device was gone.
Kuzma vowed on that day that he would find the dark woman and make her pay for everything that she had taken from him.
Ayme swallowed, feeling the rage cascading off Kuzma she decided it was time to interrupt his reverie. "Enough, I don't see anything."
Ayme jumped off the ledge towards the roof exit, and would have kept walking if Kuzma hadn't grabbed her arm. He squeezed tightly against her muscle. "You lack patience." He spoke the words in disgust. This girl was not the all powerful being he had built her up to be. She was nothing more than a petulant child.
His hand continued to squeeze her arm. She yelled in anger and pain. The sound shook him out of his own train of thought. He realized his own loss of control and released her staring at her as she walked quickly towards the roof access.
Ayme burst through the doors to Kuzma's apartment. The vision on the roof hadn't been clear, but she had seen enough. The sense of dread that had been building since she arrived had only gotten worse. She wished she knew what Kuzma really wanted out of her, but it had become clear that he wasn't going to give up that information and she wasn't getting anywhere looking on her own.
"Protos, time to go. Send a signal to Noma to get the ship ready." The droid nodded and got to work.
She was about to walk out of the apartment and leave Terminus forever when Kuzma appeared in the doorway.
"I do apologize, I forgot how hard it is to be a teacher I'm afraid."
"Bull shit." Ayme tossed her sack to the floor and stepped up to Kuzma's face. "Why don't we cut the crap and you tell me why I'm really here."
His yellow eyes searched her blue ones. He looked bemused at her willfulness. She refused to look weak in anyones eyes, which was a flaw when in came to controlling ones emotions. It was an aspect of her personality that she would have to continue to work on if she wanted to grow.
The conflict was growing within Kuzma. He knew that this entire exchange was ruining the efforts he had made over the past five days working with the dark Jedi Knight. His frustration had won out over his logical course of action that was disintegrating more every moment that passed.
"Tell me what you did with it?"
She sighed and turned back. "Did with what?"
"I have searched Protos although I doubted that would be where you hid it. I know you have it, I know you went to Torrance."
Ayme scratched her head, then stepped in the doorway to get close enough so she could whisper as she spoke the words slowly. "I have no idea what you are talking about."
"Torrance, the Klavan mansion, the processor that Roget was working on. I know he finished, and I know you have it."
She blinked then laughed in disbelief. "Really? That was what this was all about?" She paced shaking her head. "No it can't just be that, there has to be something else." She stopped at stared at Kuzma for several long moments. Ayme made her way through her memories, the visions, attempting to piece together the puzzle that had been created with shards of glass. With every touch came pain and understanding.
The cave. It all came back to the cave. Her eyes narrowed as she zeroed in on the answer. There were no caves on Terminus, the planet had been overtaken by the sprawling city hundreds of years before they had arrived.
"You want to keep me here, so I can't kill you in some cave?"
Kuzma scoffed then laughed so hard he doubled over. "The cave was only the most recent version of the same scenario Ayme." The way he said her name it sounded like a curse. "You have been the bane of my existence. Trust me, I would have killed you long ago, or your mother before you were born if it would change anything. Instead it always ends the same, with you slaughtering me for no reason."
"No reason? I can think of a few reasons right now that are quite valid."
Kuzma lost the control he had tightly wound around his soul. A lone vase on the mantle shattered, it in retrospect did seem out of place in the meager surroundings. From the shards of pottery flew a dual lightsaber into Kuzma's hands. The blades were a twin light red, the glow lit his face bringing out the creases from age.
Kuzma spun the blade and started to circle Ayme. "I grow tired of the games, I have been playing them for two of your lifetimes girl."
Her eyes met Protos and she motioned for him to close the entrance and wait in the hall for her. She could tell that there was a reluctance to comply but an inability to go against his master's orders.
Ayme took a deep cleansing breath and let her eyes indolently moved back to Kuzma and his spinning blade. When she knew her voice was calm and steady she continued. "You spent all this time and effort, I find it atrocious that you would waste all of that for a lightsaber duel. Especially one you claim to know the outcome of."
Beads of sweat started to form on his forehead. She was calm, collected, it was beyond infuriating. She should be terrified at his sudden display of power. She was supposed to be in awe of him and cower at his feet to beg for forgiveness. Nothing about this girl matched the woman in his visions. [i]Why? What kind of power is this? Why doesn't he possess it?[/i]
A flash of cruel disappointment came across his features as he raised his hand and blasted a pulse of energy into Ayme's chest sending her flying against the closed door.
She felt her body crack against the hard surface as she tumbled helplessly to the floor. The pain shot through her chest to her joints as her mind forced her to focus on the man that had attacked her rather than her injuries.
She coughed as she slowly climbed to her feet, using the frame around the entry to steady herself. "So what Kuzma? It was taking to long to show me how to not kill you myself so you decided to just give up?"
Kuzma started to pace before her. "By the Gods you are so much like your father." That got a reaction. Ayme froze and her fists clenched. The blue eyes flashed a hint of red for the first time.
He smiled at the reaction to his words and continued to press. "I watched him, and your mother for years you know. He was just like you. Stubborn, cocky, infuriatingly intelligent, but consistently more concerned about others than himself." Kuzma watched her face contort in anger and extended his taunt. "That trait gave him this air of confidence, the kind a person has when they hold a thermal detonator and know that regardless of their own fate the people they fight for would not have to fight that particular battle again."
"Why?" Havock growled the word between clenched teeth. Her hand found her lightsaber, although it remained deactivated as she waited for his answer.
Years of wasted planning and study, blown in one moment because he saw her face again. Noma. He should have been there for her, she should have faced his fear and found a way to work through it with her rather than the path he chose. Instead he had spent the majority of his life running from a shadow of a thousand possibilities. And it was all [i]her[/i] fault. [i]She[/i] appeared in the vision, [i]she[/i] butchered his family, and now [i]she[/i] possessed Roget's invention. If Kuzma couldn't have his family back he could at least complete his last mission for the Sorcery and find some honor.
"The box, Ayme, Roget's box, where is it?"
Her hand gripped the hilt tighter and smirked. "Destroyed, for all intents and purposes."
"What do you mean?" Kuzma roared and raised his blade. Her eyes flicked up to the light red beam above her head and raised her eyebrow.
Ayme lit her orange blade and blocked the blow, deflecting it to the left as she stepped to her right. She was decent with a lightsaber, although she probably wouldn't last five minutes with any knight from Eagle sect.
"Kuzma, the program was installed, altered, it's gone."
A primal battle cry escaped the man's lips. It was so raw, so full of pain that Ayme flinched and staggered back several steps. He clutched at his chest and took a handful of floundering steps away from her. He was muttering to himself, the words were barely coherent, but he seemed to be flipping between failing a mission and failing [i]her[/i].
Ayme extinguished her blade, she relaxed her shoulders and tilted her head in an attempt to make eye contact.
"No!" He screamed at her. In one movement, Kuzma dropped his blade and grabbed Ayme's hands, forcing the cold durasteel hilt into his chest. All she had to do was press the activator and his body would slide helplessly to the floor. "Kill me, please, it's your destiny to be the one so please just do it already."
He was pleading, just like in all the visions, only it was for his death rather than his life as he always assumed.
She felt it in her gut first. A fluttery feeling that spread quickly and morphed into a wave of nausea. The room changed, all around her were images, each one slightly different than the other. As she looked the abstractions increased and decreased in number. She felt dizzy as her mind processed what she was seeing. Each one showed her in the same apartment but in one Kuzma was dead, another she was dead, yet another they were fighting. Every time she focused on one another changed, each blink brought a different outcome. Ayme closed her eyes tightly to make the visions assaulting her stop, when she opened her eyes again she was on the floor covered in sweat with Kuzma standing over her.
Tentatively she turned her head to look up at the man. "So now, you finally see." There was a resolve in his eyes now, as if a purpose was returned to them.
She started to slowly rise to her feet, finding her muscles fatigued from the experience. Kuzma stepped over her and released another burst of energy from his palm sending her back to the durasteel floor.
He muttered a command to Protos as the droid started to advance on him. Protos froze in his tracks and could only stand helpless as Kuzma left the apartment complex.
Ayme ran up the boarding ramp yelling Noma's name the moment she had cleared the entryway. She had no idea where Kuzma was going, it was possible that he had already left the planet, it was also possible that he figured out that Noma was the program he was looking for and had decided to steal her even in her altered form.
The program Roget had created was mostly intact but to get her to fully integrate with the [i]Revenge[/i] systems it required adding of subroutines that would allow her to access those systems and act as the ship's computer.
"Noma!" Ayme was already through the cargo holds and had rounded the corner by the cockpit. Her heart was racing as she sprinted to the crew area then she stumbled to a stop.
The avatar was leaning back with her feet on the gaming table adjacent to the bar. Her hands were clasped behind her head as she raised an eyebrow at Ayme. "You called?"
Protos, unable to slow down as fast as Ayme, barreled past her and almost slammed into the wall next to the bar. Havock groaned and rubbed her temples. "Protos, did you pick him up on sensors?"
The droid turned curtly. "No Havock."
She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the pain permeating her body. "Noma has anyone attempted to gain entry since I left?"
"No Havock." Noma responded attempting to modulate her voice to the same inflection Protos had used only a few seconds before.
Ayme nodded letting the exhaustion win given her lack of other options. A feeling of loss struck Ayme then, she almost fell back to the ground and would have if she didn't grab on to the wall. It wasn't Kuzma, it was closer to home. "Zasati?"
Ayme ran to the cockpit and raised her secure communications link. She scrambled through every channel she knew of that Aeos would answer. When that failed she cursed and fell to her knees, concentrating, attempting to contact her sister through the Force. They had a link, one that Aeos loved to ignore, but it was still there. Even if Ayme couldn't get an answer usually she could at least get an intention or location.
In frustration and fatigue Ayme punched the back of her pilots chair.
"Ow." Noma pretended to feel the punch as she stood in the doorway watching her owner.
"Something is wrong with my sister, I can no longer sense her in the Force. All communication is lost."
"Is she dead?" Noma asked matter of factually.
Ayme turned her head slowly and stared at the image of the middle aged woman for a long time before answering. "No, that would be different. We need to return to Lopen, prepare the ship for departure."