Just an A/N before we get started… This is my first Fanfic ever. As such, constructive criticism is always going to be accepted, but any flaming will be ignored.
I do not own KOTOR or anything else copyrighted by Lucas Arts and Bioware. I REALLY wish that I did because then I would not be struggling to make ends meet as a college student. This is going to be a basic retelling of the KOTOR storyline, but with a few little twists and turns along the way of my own creation. The first paragraph of this chapter will be in 3rd person, after the first paragraph it will shift into 1st person mode. Enjoy
"Speech"
Thoughts
Chapter 1- The Endar Spire
Jeff Goshen was thrown off of his bunk as explosions rocked the Endar Spire. Groggily shaking his head, he sits up to take in his surroundings he tries to remember exactly where he is. Looking around the quarters, he notices several bodies lying in heaps As another explosion comes from somewhere deep within the ship, the door leading out of the quarters open to reveal a Republic soldier storms in wielding a blaster, a very bloody and torn up uniform, and a very pissed off expression.
I vaguely remember seeing this guy around, but for the life of me I can't remember what his name is. "We've been ambushed by a Sith battle fleet that was waiting for us just outside of the main hyperspace route passing Taris. I came here as fast as I could knowing that we were going to need some help getting out of here alive, but I see that the rest of your shift mates are dead. My name's Trask Ulgo. I am an ensign with the Republic fleet. I don't know your name, but seeing as we have opposite patrol slots, I can understand why." Trask said. "Right, my name is Jeff Goshen. I'm a soldier turned scout. I don't remember much about my life as a soldier, but I do remember that I served under Revan during the last few months of the Mandolorian Wars. I was a special request or something; it's all a little fuzzy. Enough of the small talk though; we will have time to get to know each other after we get off this ship. Let me grab my gear and we can see about getting to the bridge", I responded.
With the words taken out of his mouth, Trask just nodded his head and stood guard by the door as I donned my brown and off white outfit, strapped my energy shield to my arm, knife to my leg, a vibroblade and some grenades to my belt for good measure. "My blaster was damaged in that last blast we took here, do you have a spare?" I asked Trask. When he shook his head in the negative I cursed. "Well, I'll just have to make do with a sword for now. I can snatch one of any dead soldiers we pass; hopefully there are more dead Sith than there are Republics", I quipped. Just as we turned to leave the crew quarters, the door on the other was blown open by another blast that shook the entire ship. Glancing at each other, both me and Trask knew that this ship wouldn't last much longer and that we needed to get the hell out of dodge.
(Scene jump to Lightsaber battle)
After blasting and hacking our way through several patrols, Trask and I came to a set of blast doors that his security codes wouldn't open. "Here, let me try", I said. After a moment of skillfully navigating my way through the interface, I had the door open. That was the good news, the bad news is that there just happened to be a Dark Jedi on the other side of the doors, but luckily he was too busy fending off an attack by a female Jedi Knight to notice two measly Republic soldiers.
After watching them struggle for a few moments, I grinned as a thought popped into my head. With a nod to Trask, we both opened fire on the Dark Jedi, slowing him down and distracting him enough that the Knight was able to stab him in the throat with her blue saber. As she turned towards us, whether it was to thank us or berate us for getting in the way I'll never know because 5 feet away from her now exposed back, a conduit was hanging free. It chose to send out a deadly arc of electricity into the battle weary woman; thankfully it overpowered her heart and killed her quickly.
Still slightly shocked by the abrupt end of one of our Jedi crew mates, Trask and I continued on our trek to the bridge. As we reached the main doors, we could hear the sounds of blades clashing on the other side. Without another moment's hesitation, we barreled through the doors, blasters firing as fast as we could identify targets. After picking off the last Sith trooper and scanning the main console, I noticed that all but one of the escape pods had been fired and there were only three blue dots that signified friendly life forms still alive on the ship: Trask, me, and one dot that was locked in the room that housed the pods. Having received nothing from that person on the scanner, I assumed it was some rookie that was terrified out of his wits and was in shock.
Pressing forward to the escape pods, Trask and I had to go through a series of blast doors that led to the Starboard Section. Wait, something doesn't feel right. These doors should be on lock down. Its standard system protocol for these to lock when contact to the bridge is lost. Coming out of my musings I noticed Trask had outpaced me and was already to the last set of blast doors so I shouted at him telling him not to open the door. "Trask, wait, don't open that one yet. Something's not right. These doors are all unlocked; they should be on lockdown, right?" He thought for a moment and came to the realization that I had already come to in my mind… we were walking straight into a trap. General logic said that whatever nasty surprise the Sith had planned was waiting for us on the other side of these doors since we hadn't run into anything yet.
"What should we do Jeff?" Trask asked me. "This is the only way to the escape pods that isn't blocked by debris. We've got no other option but to go through this door. I know the layout of this ship better than anyone, and once the door opens the starboard section is on the right side of the room. You still have your frags right?" I nodded. "Good, as soon as the door opens enough for you to fit a grenade through, drop one right on the other side of the door and then launch one as far as you can. Give me your last one and I'll put it into the middle of the room so we at least injure or set off whatever trap they left."
Without being able to come up anything better on the spot, I gave Trask one of my grenades. On the count of three, Trask punched the button to open the door. Following the plan I dropped one grenade on the opposite side and launched the other one as hard as I could through the expanding doorway. Just as I did so, Trask tossed his grenade into the middle of the room. We were treated to the deafening sound of 3 grenades going off in quick succession and then silence. As the door slowly opened the rest of the way, having been damaged heavily by the first grenade, we noticed the carnage we caused. There were the remains of what appeared to be 5 Sith troopers splattered all over the room.
In the middle of the room, however, we were greeted by an unfortunate sight. A moderately wounded dark Jedi wielding a double-bladed lightsaber stood, facing us. Large chunks of his face and hair had been burned off, his right leg was bleeding heavily, and his right arm had a long gash. His clothing had been blown to pieces by the blast and hung on him in tatters. Oh crap, what have we gotten ourselves into now? This guy looks like he could kill us with one swipe of his blade. Options, Options: Um… Option A- Run back in the direction we came from. Option B- Charge him with swords and die an honorable death (not my preferred choice). Option C- I charge him with a sword and let Trask blast away with both of our pistols (better than nothing). Tossing my pistol to Trask, I hoped he would catch on to my plan. I ran at the Dark Jedi as fast as possible and took a mighty swing towards his midriff just as Trask opened up from the right side of the room with both blasters. Giving a battle cry, I continued to spar with the Dark Jedi, who was thankfully unable to go on the offensive because of the joint attack. I knew I couldn't last very long at the rate I was tiring. I could feel the blows becoming heavy with each parry and thrust I made. My opponent sensed this and started pushing back little by little. I was just barely able to keep up with him and knew I would be dead soon if something didn't change. Even though he was wounded, this guy just seemed to have an endless amount of energy. With a plan popping into my head, I let him push me even closer to the hallway Trask and I had just exited which, according to my plan, left him open for attack by Trask who had ran out of ammo in his pistols and was charging him from behind. Taken unawares, the Dark Jedi was cut down with a strike to the head that left him with only half a brain.
Bending over with my hands on my knees to catch my breath, I noticed something sticking out from underneath the dead Sith. Leaning down fully I picked it up and examined it. It was his light-saber, measuring about 12 inches long and an inch in diameter, the tube looked simple enough in its design except for the black and red hand grips that seemed to shift with the light. Going through the rest of his pockets I was able to find about 400 credits, a data-pad that had a Jedi named Bastila mentioned, and a small, but deadly sharp, dagger. As he walked over to see how much longer I would be before I was able to move, Trask noticed me pocketing the light-saber and other items. "Thanks Trask", I told him, "I was dead for sure if you hadn't taken him out,". He merely shrugged and replied "Soldiers watch out for each other. I know he was wounded, but I've heard some pretty rough stories about Dark Jedi's and their battle prowess, but you were able to keep up with him better than anyone I've ever seen that wasn't wielding a light-saber. I'll take the lead until we get to the escape pods; it looks like that fight took a lot out of you." I merely nodded my thanks and slipped in behind him as we made our way to our final destination on this ship.
As we came to the final obstacle standing between us and freedom, I noticed again the sheer amount of explosions that were taking place down the length of the ship. Some sounded as if they were coming from outside where cannon fire rained down, but others seemed to come from within the ship itself. Then it hit me like a pack of rampaging banthas… There were Sith explosives on board the ship that were going off one by one. With eyes wide, I caught up to Trask and hurriedly pulled him by the arm through the door and into what could best be described as hell. As the door shut behind us, I took note of 6 blaster rifles pointed at us by red-armored Sith heavy troopers. Knowing I had just pulled us out of the frying pan and into the fire, I didn't even look at Trask as I raised both hands in surrender. Having sheathed my sword after the battle with the Dark Jedi, I had taken my blaster from Trask and replenished my ammo from some of the corpses that we encountered on our journey. "Drop your weapons", random soldier number 3 ordered. Before either Trask or I had a chance, the door behind the 6 Sith opened and they were all cut down by a hail of blaster fire coming from that one blue dot I remember seeing back on the bridge console. As we rushed past the fallen Sith, I took in our savior. He was wearing a red jacket with a combat suit on underneath it and wielded a pair of heavily modified, albeit outdated, Arkanian blaster pistols. "Commander Carth Onasi", he said, "I've been waiting here hoping you guys would make it. I wasn't able to make any contact because my com-link was fried by a lucky shot. Further introductions can wait, there's only one pod left, we need to get out of here." What I originally thought was a greenhorn turned out to be one of the most well known officers in the Republic fleet. I guess it's true what they say... to assume is to make an ass out of u and me, I'm just glad my assumption didn't get us killed this time. I'll have to make sure I avoid making assumptions in the future. With a nod towards the commander, I said "Trask, you get in first, Commander Onasi, you're next" As Trask got in, I felt the ship lurch beneath my feet and I fell to the floor. As I stood up and regained my balance, I looked at Carth, "Time to go. No time to explain, but we have got to get off this ship NOW." I said. Without so much as a nod of the head, Carth climbed into the pod and, once again, the ship buckled under the weight of even more explosions coming from closer to the escape pod bay. As I crawled to the pod, I could feel the detonations getting closer and closer. With a final push, I just fell into the pod and told Trask to punch it. As our tiny escape pod fired itself from the ship, I could feel a tremendous blast shake us around inside the pod and deduced that the Endar Spire was nothing more than space debris now. However, I didn't have much time to dwell on that, because within seconds, we had entered into Taris' upper atmosphere and were still gaining speed. Carth, even though he tried his best, was unable to slow us down enough to make a safe landing. As our pod tore through the sky, we clipped the top of a skyscraper which sent me careening into the roof of the escape pod and, after trying to fight the oncoming darkness for a few seconds; I succumbed with one final thought… What else could go wrong?