Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic
Taris

Part One

Carth Onasi looked up from the datapad panel with a frown. He thought he had heard something. Best to be safe than sorry, he edged closer towards the sliding door to lean his head closely. There were some arguing noises coming from the corridor, but nothing relative to him whatsoever. He let out a relief sign and went back to the desk, picking up the datapad once more.

It's been three days since they landed on this planet. The escape pod that carried Carth and Skye did not exactly have a smooth landing. It had experienced some strong air current when it entered the atmosphere and shaken violently. When it crashed onto the surface, the shock was so severe the safety harness broke. They were tossed and bounced all over the place inside the escape pod. Skye eventually got bumped onto her head and knocked her unconscious.

Carth managed to flee the landing site before the authorities arrived, carrying the unconscious Skye with him. He found an abandoned apartment complex nearby, which was quite handy. They could use it as their base while waiting for Skye to wake up and looking for Bastila.

He glanced at Skye, who did not seem to have a pleasant dream. Her slender brows were furrowing. She was thrashing about in bed, mumbling something inaudible. The fragility he had seemed in her on the Endar Spire was once again coming back to her. She looked terribly vulnerable.

"…NO, do not go down that path…"

"Nonsense…"

"…Do you think you can get out of this?….alive….."

"…I am sick of this…action…"

Against all his common senses and logics, Carth abandoned his work once more, leaned over and put his hand on hers. It immediately had some degrees of calming effect, because her stiff body relaxed almost straight away and the woman drifted into a deeper sleep-a place where no nightmares could trouble her. He drew over the blanket, tugged around Skye tightly before quickly stepped back.

He still could not believe this was the person both the Republic and the Jedi Council risking everything wanted to protect. Yes, from the dossier she seemed perfect. And the excellent training and astonishing reflex had proven the stats were correct when they were on Endar Spire, but other than that there was nothing remarkable about her.

All right, perhaps that was not entirely true. She was amazingly beautiful. His heart missed a beat every time he looked at her velvet blue eyes. They were full of emotions and ragged thoughts. But these also had nothing to do with why she was added in the last minute, why they refused to tell him her role on this mission, and last but not least, why did they decided to come to Taris- a remote planet so far away from the Core World? Things still didn't add up.

Carth's eyes drifted onto Skye Imarr again. On one hand, he would like to, even crave to, know her a bit more; but on the other hand, he wanted nothing to do with her. He understood too well- the more he knew her; the more he would start to like her and eventually trusting her, like he did to others in the past. Who could guarantee she won't betray him, like Saul did? There was nothing as painful as being betrayed by someone who you once admired and relied your entire life on. No, he did not want to experience that again. NEVER.

x x x

It was one of those dreams again. Skye knew it. It was the same female Jedi. She was not along this time, there were several other Jedi accompanied her. She could see herself stood the bridge, watching them slashing through the elite troopers who were escorting her. Skye gripped her lightsabers firmly. There was a sense of panic and anxious rose within her, which had never happened to her life before.

The Jedi finally made it in front of her. When the final trooper fell, the female Jedi looked at her with triumph: "You can't win!"

"Don't be so sure, young padawan!" Skye heard herself sneered, switching her lightsabers from one hand to the other.

The female Jedi took a step forward and was going to strike. Suddenly a strong vibration tipped everybody over. Someone had attacked Skye's flagship.

Skye was badly hit. She lied on the floor, panting, slowly loosing her consciousness.

The last thing she saw was the female Jedi approached her with great caution….

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Skye was screaming when she woke, hands waved about in front of her frantically before rolled onto the floor from her bed. She immediately jumped up; her body was into a combat mode and her eyes scanned around the room wildly.

"Glad to see your are up." A familiar husky voice came from the corner of the room. Skye turned her head and looked straight into a pair of auburn eyes, filling with a mixture of gratefulness, relief and concern. Quite a handsome man, Skye thought vaguely.

" Had a bad dream, huh?" The man asked and quickly introduced himself when he realised she was still glaring at him with a blank expression on her face: "I am Carth Onasi. Remember?"

"The Commander on the ship. Yes….sir." Skye looked at him for a few moments before opened her mouth.

"How you feeling?" Carth handed over a mug, indicated her to sip.

Skye did. There were some soups inside. Quite a yummy one, too. But she guessed she feel that way because she was hungry.

"There are also some foods here." His head slight cocked toward the table: "I suppose you are hungry?"

"Oh, yeah." Skye's oval broke into a faint grin, admitting: "Starving. I could eat a Kath Hound!"

She slipped out of bed and stumbled towards the table, grabbing the first food she could reach and beginning to stuff them into her mouth. Her luminous sapphire eyes glanced around the room as she kept her mouths occupied. Carth folded his arms and watched her with great amusements. Most women he knew of, including those well-trained female Republic colleague of his, were always very careful about their food munching manners. Here she was, eating away without a care of the Galaxy. It was either she was really hungry or…

"Arh…where are we exactly, sir?" After a few minutes' feeding frenzy, Skye managed swallow a big gulp of bread in her mouth and asked.

"We are on Taris. Remember?" Carth frowned: "My Force, the bump on your head caused greater effect than I had estimated—"

"Oh, I know that!" Skye snapped, rolling her eyes: "I mean, where exactly are we on Taris, sir?"

"In some abandoned apartment." Carth peered outside the window next to him: "Our pod landed in the Upper City. It was…quite chaotic and confusing at the scene. I managed to drag you away from the crash site before they realised what just happened and found this complex. By the time the Sith arrived, we were long gone. Pretty neat hideout, huh?"

"Yeah…" Skye gazed around the room: "Are you sure no one lives in here? This room looks really luxury, surely…"

"Oh no, the door was wide open when I came in. I am pretty sure there is no one lives here for a long time. Taris is a run-down planet. There are quite a few abandoned apartments like this throughout the Upper City."

"Oh, right…" Skye moved away from the table and pace around the room with the soup in her hand. Occasionally she would stop and inspecting certain features in the room.

"….I suppose I owe you my thanks." Deep blue eyes were back at him after a few moments' silence..

"What for?" Carth quirked his eyebrow.

"You saved my life, sir." Skye gave him a soft smile: "We barely knew each other. You could have just leaved with the last escape pod without me."

"There is no need to thanks." Carth's face went pink: "I've never leave my men behind on a mission and I am not about to start it now. And another thing…."

Skye looked at him questionably.

"Stop calling me 'sir'. There are only you and I on this planet so I suggest the formality will not be necessary. Carth will do."

"All right, thank you….Carth." thanked Skye sincerely. It gave Carth some degree of joyfulness when hearing his name passing her lips, but he chose to ignore it for now.

"…..Urh…I think we should start discussing our plan on Taris ." Carth let out a dry cough, trying to change the topic: "I did a little scouting around while you were out. Apparently there were other escape pods crashed not very long before ours did. They crashed at the Under City."

"Oh."

"I think Bastila were among one of those pods."

"Bastila?" A hint of panic flickered past her large eyes, but it was gone within seconds. The commander thought he must had imagined it.

"The Commander onboard the Endar Spire ?" He looked at her with great concern: "I really should find you a doctor to have a good look at the bump at your head…"

"And the Jedi, right?" Skye waved her hands impatiently: "Trask told me already. He also mentioned part of our job on this mission was to ensure her safety."

"So you know. Well, that makes my briefing a hell lot easier. We'll need to go to the Under City to see if we can find Bastila." Carth concluded.

"…Why do I have a feeling that it is not just a simple stroll-down-the-park to go to the Under City?" Skye finished up her soup and put the mug down. After a moment of hesitation, she picked up a bread roll and started tear it to smaller pieces, popping them into her mough.

"No, you are right, it won't be. The Sith had declared martial law and put a planet wide quarantine on Taris. There are patrol officers everywhere. Entrance to Lower City and Under City are now under the heavy guard. No one is allow to travel anywhere without proper authorisation paperwork." The Commander explained.

"Jolly good." Skye commented gloomily. She slowly walked over to the footlocker at the corner, tilting her head: " Are these..."

"Go ahead, it's unlock." Said Carth.

She opened it: "Oh, so here are my things."

"So you suggested we head out, see if we can find a way to sneak pass those Sith officers and then to the Under City to find Bastila." Skye asked after checking her gears and started to strap them on.

"Yes. Then we can think about how to get off this planet."

"All right, let's go then." Without further delay, she stood up and turned to the door.

"Are you well enough to head out?" Started, Carth expressed his concern.

"I'm fine." She carefully wrapped her lekku around her neck and slid a vibroblade into the pouch fasten on her belt. Left hand rose up and gently touched the bandage on her forehead. It still hurt a bit, possibly because of the bruise, but it should be fine: "My head still attach to my body, is it not? No worries."

"Okay…urh, before we leave, there is something I'd like to warn you." Just before they exited the door, Carth looked at her seriously: "The Upper City, urh, how do I put it, the Upper City citizen are mostly human."

Skye raised her eyebrow.

"They seem to have some nasty little problems with other species." Carth finished his sentence.

"Oh, I get it." Skye looked at him with mild affront: "So are you suggesting me staying in the apartment and let you out running around instead?"

"No, no." Carth's both hands were up: "I just want you to be careful. You won't be receiving much 'friendly welcome' here."

"….Point taken." Velvet blue eyes stared at him for a few minutes before turned around to press the open bottom at the side of the door.

They were in the corridor. Immediately there were troubles.

A group of Sith officers, strickly speaking, several battle droids lead by a Sith officers, were questioning two innocent looking Duros.

"All right, this is raid. Both of you standing against the door, now!" The Sith officer announced with a nasty smile on his face.

"But,.sir. You just raid this apartment. Now you are carrying out another raid! How many times are you going to do this today?" One of the Duros complained loudly, completely ignoring his companion's strong hint.

The Sith officer's reply was to fire the blaster at him without a word. The poor Duro did not even have a chance to pull out his rifle. He died.

"Now, any more question regarding how we preform out duty?" He waved his rifle about in triumph, then he noticed Skye and Carth: " What's this? A shutta and a human in the apartment? Since when we had this kind of trading business in the Upper City?"

Skye's gaze on this officer immediately burst with fury. Those Sith soldier's mouth certainly a hell lot dirtier on their mouth than her Republic colleagues'. She pulled out her blaster and pointed at his head. Carth did likewise. A series of clicking noise followed, everyone ended up have a blaster in their hand and pointed at the opposition.

"Watch you mouth, young man! Or I will personally do the mouth cleaning for you!" Carth snapped and warned.

"Oh, really? I would like to see you try! My warbots, gun them down!" The Sith officer sneered and began to fire in an instant.

The two parties start to exchange fire. Skye took a dive towards the left, pulled out a grenade from her pack, gently tap the 'safety detonation disable' bottom and threw the beeping ball at them. The Sith soldier saw its coming but unable to instruct his droids and himself to get away on time. With a loud bang and awful lot of smoke, all his droids were gone and he was injured quite badly.

"You…you…" The Sith officer's eyes almost bulge out with anger, he became cursing loudly. He threw away his rifle, pulled out his vibroblade and charge straight at Skye.

Skye skilfully turned her body sharply to the right to avoid the coming blade attack and pulled out her short sword. The Sith officer staggered forward a little because of the excess force he used. Skye used her elbow hitting the back of the officer. The next minute he knew, he was on the floor, making more frustrated scream. He quickly backed to his feet, turned around and charged at her again. Skye jumped into the midair and spung. She waved the sword in her hand. The blade cut through the Sith officer's shoulder. He let out yet another even louder scream, turned around and fluttered his vibroblade frantically at her. This time Carth blaster stopped him before he even reached her.

"NEVER, EVER, called a Twi'lek woman 'shutta'!" Skye kicked the dead body crossly a few more times after he collapsed, followed by a series of very insulting names in all sorts of alien languages.

"All right, all right! He is dead! Let it go, will you!" Carth tried to pull her away. He couldn't help himself grinning. The way her eyes sparkle when she was feisty was absolutely amazing.

"…You had no idea what it was like to be called such a ludicrous insulting nickname way since you were at a very young age." Skye's eyes glared at Carth, still panting.

"Oh, I've been tag with even much much more ridiculous names all my life, this is nothing…" Carth threw her a smile before turned his attention at the remaining Duro, his eyes showed genuine concern: "Hey, buddy. Are you all right?"

"[Thank you very much, mate. I am quite fine. Compare to my less fortunate friend Ixgil.]" The Duro replied in Durese.

"He said he's fine." Skye translated as Carth looked at her enquiringly.

"[Ixgil shouldn't make such a smart-mouth comment like that. I tried to hint him, but … oh well, thanks anyway for your help.]" Duro continued.

"Shall we get rid of those?" Carth's head tilted at the bodies: "The Sith will manage to niff our track if they find their people's dead body lying here."

"[Tell your friend not to worry about the body, my friend.]" Duro intercepted before Skye replied: "[I will look after them. Think of it was a token of thanks, for saving my life.]"

"I got a feeling he said he is going to get rid of it for us, am I correct?" Carth looked at Skye, who gave him an affirmative nod. "Shall we move on?"

They thanked the Duro before continuing towards the apartment exit.