Author's note: despite that fact that it's obviously its incomplete, KotOR II has always been one of my favourite Star Wars stories. Since I have a few months without much to do, I decided to novelise the game. I'm sticking as close to Legends canon as I can: that means a light-sided female Exile named Meetra Surik. A few alterations to canon can be expected. For instance, the handmaiden, Brianna, will still be travelling aboard the Ebon Hawk. I'll also try to include some of the cut content, expanding the story on Korriban and including the droid world. There'll definitely be romance, but don't expect that to factor in for a little while. And as for who'll be pairing with who... spoilers. :P
Please read and review! I'd love some feedback.
A long time ago
in a galaxy far, far away
It is a perilous time for the galaxy.
A brutal civil war has all but
destroyed the Jedi Order, leaving the
ailing Republic on the verge of collapse.
Amid the turmoil, the evil Sith
have spread across the galaxy
hunting down and destroying the
remaining Jedi Knights.
Narrowly escaping a deadly Sith ambush,
the last known Jedi clings to life
aboard a battered freighter near
the ravaged world of Peragus...
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Atton Rand, spacer (human male)
Bao-Dur, technician (Zabrak male)
Brianna, handmaiden (Echani-human female)
G0-T0, planning droid
HK-47, assassin droid
Kreia, Force adept (human female)
Canderous Ordo, Mandalore (human male)
Meetra Surik, exiled Jedi (human female)
Mical, disciple (human male)
Mira, bounty hunter (human female)
T3-M4, utility droid
Visas Marr, Sith adept (Miralukan female)
PROLOGUE
T3-M4
There had been a battle. It had been short and it had been brutal and at some point the ship's hull had been badly compromised.
In the event of catastrophic decompression, T3-M4's programming told him to activate his magnetic footpads and standby for instructions. Almost a full day after the decompression in question, the little utility droid still hadn't received any instructions.
He, for successive owners had addressed him with the masculine pronoun despite his lack of programmed gender, decided to ignore his programming. This, he knew, was a luxury. Not many droids, and especially not utility droids like him, ever got a chance to ignore their programming. Nevertheless, five years of continuous operation without a single memory wipe allowed him the type of personal discretion most droids would find hideously uncomfortable.
Reactivating his systems one by one, running self-diagnostics as he went, he discovered himself in the personnel lounge of a stock freighter. The Ebon Hawk, his analytical subroutines told him now that they'd finished warming up.
He'd gone into power conservation mode shortly after decompression, so he was well-charged. He sent a request to the ship's computer asking for an update on functionality. It responded only with an automated distress call.
The lounge was damaged, with a coolant hose leaking and a small fire burning unabated in several burnt out consoles. That the fire had continued to burn suggested that magnetic doors had sealed off this section from the breach. Unfortunately, radiation scatter was obscuring his scanners so he couldn't determine if any of the ship's small organic crew had survived.
Resorting to visual scanning, he found the body of one crewer: an old woman. According to the medical files in his database, given her utter lack of a pulse or brain functions, she was beyond saving. He turned away from her, deciding to scout the cockpit.
The cockpit was as badly damaged as the lounge, and the navicomputer seemed scrambled. This was T3's bailiwick. He was almost pleased to encounter a problem he could solve. Inserting a datalink into the jack below the computer, he discovered that the battle, for there had been a battle, had involved several strikes to the Ebon Hawk from an ion cannon. This had disrupted the ship's electronics, corrupting much of the navicomputer's data.
Lucklly, T3 kept back-ups of most of the data and was happy to slice the corrupted files and replace damaged segments of code. Within minutes, the navicomputer was online.
The Ebon Hawk was adrift in interstellar space, somewhere in the Xappyh sector of the Outer Rim. That was troubling news, but he needed more information before he could figure out what to do next.
Making use of a backdoor into the ship's mainframe, T3 downloaded as much data as he could about its disposition. A major hull breach had exposed the rear starboard section to hard vacuum. Magnetic doors had sealed off the starboard cargo bay and crew dormitories, saving the rest of the ship. The ship's shields were offline, as were its weapons, sensors and communications array—the distress call the ship's computer was trying to transmit wasn't actually going anywhere. Worse still, the hyperdrive engine was badly damaged.
Once again, T3 was strangely comforted by this piece of information. His crafty subroutines quickly figured out a way to jury-rig it. He might only get one jump out of the broken core, but one was better than nothing.
Most pressingly, though: a lifesign, in the ship's medical bay. T3 recognised that the slumping vital signs of the patient was a bad indicator. Wasting no time, he exited the cockpit and went aft, skirting the old woman's body as he went through the lounge. The Ebon Hawk's tiny, one-bed sickbay was located just to the rear of that section.
T3 discovered that the ship's automatic treatment computer, designed to keep badly injured patients alive for as long as it to get to an actual hospital, was offline. It was the work of a few minutes to reboot the computer and he was gratified to see, moments later, that the badly injured woman in the bed was stabilising. Her heartbeat was thready, but at least it was there.
Bizarrely, the treatment computer had no record of the woman's identity. T3 didn't recognise her. She was a human, blonde-haired and pale-skinned. Her body was lithe and athletic, but according to T3's database her injuries should have been overwhelming even for such a well-maintained body. Curious, but deciding to leave that mystery for later, the little droid went further aft.
As he entered the engine room, he let out a hoot of sadness.
The starboard engine was shattered, completely irreparable. It'd have to be replaced completely. The port engine was functional, but the core that provided power to the engines was leaking radiation, its shell cracked. The ship's shielding was keeping the radiation from poisoning the rest of the vessel for now, but it was only a matter of time before it broke down. If that happened, the woman T3 had just saved would be liquefied by the radioactivity.
T3 scooted forward, his manipulator arms getting to work. First, he used his plasma torch to weld a spare sheet of shielding over the crack in the core. Then he reconnected the core to the port engine, bypassing the damaged connections. Finally, he rebooted the hyperdrive's specialised computer. It was, as he'd predicated, a barely-functioning jury rig, but it would have to be good enough for now.
Loathe to be leaving a job as poorly done as this one, T3 returned to the cockpit and activated the navicomputer. According to its database, the closest habitation was a small mining colony in the Peragus system. The engine would make it there. Just.
As he input the commands, T3 felt the ship shake around him. A quick check confirmed that the Ebon Hawk had made it to lightspeed and was on its way to the Peragus system.
Deciding to check on the status of the patient, T3 returned to the lounge. As he did, he realised a faint knocking was coming from the small cargo hold located just off the lounge. A magnetic door had sealed the hold, no doubt at the same time the rear section had been locked down. T3 realised as he scanned the door someone was bypassing the lockdown.
T3 approached, eager to help, but came up short.
No: not someone. His biological scanners were showing no organic matter beyond the door. Something inorganic was trying to get into the lounge. His electronic instincts, developed over five years of danger and adventure, told him that whatever it was best left sealed off until they reached Peragus.
He was about to sabotage the controls, sealing the door permanently, when the interloper succeeded. The door groaned open. The droid that exited the chamber had battered, blue-grey durasteel armour, spindly, reinforced limbs and a pair of glowing yellow photoreceptors.
It scanned the room and located T3-M4 instantly; the droid moved faster than T3 could react. The hoot the little utility droid gave would have sounded like something approaching disappointment to a human listener.
Then his systems overloaded and everything went dark.
With T3-M4 offline and its only living organic passenger comatose, the Ebon Hawk continued its slow approach towards the mining colony in the Peragus system. It arrived almost a day later.
The miners, unused to anything other massive automated fuel tankers arriving once a month, greeted the damaged, bleeding vessel with a mixture of suspicion and compassion. The passenger was taken to sickbay; the body of the old woman was taken to the morgue; the two droids aboard, both offline, were taken to storage. The miners sent a transmission to the Republic asking for assistance.
The miners went about their lives as they waited for a response. None of them had any idea what was coming.