"Oh man." I said, sitting up abruptly from my seat. I looked around. There was no one in sight. I could have expected it to happen. I could have expected to have a dream that was too vivid, too true, too accurate for me not to deny that it could, in fact, be happening. Solitude was how my first dream had started as well. It ended in horrible pain, that dream, and I supposed that was why I had shot up from the pillow, sweaty and cold and shaking like I always did. I would not let the reality end like the dream. I had told myself this several times when I had received these visions, but it did nothing to help or hinder my chances of ever changing them.

I just didn't want pain. And that was that. I was so tired of feeling it in my everywhere that I felt almost entitled to this right to fight and to change the pain that had resulted from that nightmare from which I came.

I didn't bother to clothe myself, as my thin shirt and shorts covered me well enough, and I ran around to the main deck. There was no one on the main deck either, but I heard noise down the hall to my left to suggest why.

"May-day, may-day; abort! ABORT!" I heard the man sigh angrily. "Someone get the General—ABORT! ABORT! STAND DOWN! I repeat—STAND DOWN! Civilians on board-!" There was a deafening crash and shake, flinging me from one side of the hull to the next. My head slammed into the metal with blinding force, force that probably would have killed a normal human. How I wished, oh sweetly how I wished it had killed me. "All systems offline! Escape pods have been jettisoned!"

I sighed as the crash happened again, surprising even myself with the lack of urgency I felt with the apparent direness of the situation my vessel seemed to be in. I found I did not care because I had no choice but not to. I would end in pain by the day's end. I knew what would happen, if vaguely, and I knew I would know it as it happened, not before, not after.

After a long, long moment, I decided that I should investigate if for nothing else to save the crew I had picked up. They were nothing to me really, but death was death, and it was not something I could as easily abide to. I had been a guardian of such people, after all. In an older time and life, but in the life that was mine all the same.

"What's going on?" I asked, yawning.

The man turned around. Ramel Sandres was losing his cool. "General—there's a large vessel heavy in pursuit-,"

I felt another crash, but this time, I was ready. I clutched the seat hard to steady myself and took a deep breath of pleasure at the ease of it. A woman behind me fell into me and I caught her as I balanced, surprising everyone in the cockpit.

The man glanced at her as she sat after this, apparently quite shaken, in the seat beside him. "What's the ship ID?" She waited only a moment. A moment longer than I could have. "Elna!"

"The Ravager." She said, as if we should know it.

I sighed angrily. "Elna—more. We need more than that!"

"It's a Sith cruiser." She blinked and laughed a little, holding the results up to me as I snatched them feverishly from her hands. As I did it, I saw scars on my hands that were from these Sith, from these pirates, from these scoundrels. Understanding came with the premonition as I realized that I wouldn't just be facing pain, but excruciating, tortured pain at that. I would be tortured inside of that Sith warship that day…More urgency filled me at the knowledge of this, but I couldn't help but feel strangely relaxed. I could not fight the inevitable—even if I wanted to.

"This can't be right." I said, hard. "Elna—run a cross check…"

"I did." She sat back, throwing her arms up. She laughed a little again. "Twice." She looked up at me. "You're a Jedi, aren't you?"

"Uh—yeah, yeah, I guess."

Elna shook her head and looked at Ramel. He didn't have time to look at her or see the fury on her face; he was too busy piloting. I had the sense that, though I didn't know it, we were moving very fast.

"I told you." She said. She looked back at me. "We are all going to die."

There was another crash as Ramel fumbled to control the ship. I knew he was beginning to panic just as I knew I had to lead him.

"Ramel—you're doing good, kid. Stay calm." I looked over at Elna. She opened her mouth to interrupt, but I felt an increasing harshness in me dislike her. "No—no! Shut up!" I pointed a finger at her. "Go to the main hold and activate the T3-M4!"

"He's a mech droid—there's nothing he can-!"

"Just do it, Mako!"

Elna waited a moment before shuffling past me, struggling to make her way from place to place at the increase of the booms that resonated throughout the chambers.

"What's the droid going to do?"

"Fix it when we're dead." I said simply.

"But…but shouldn't we not be dead, General?"

I walked over to the Galaxy Map. "Yes, that would be nice, wouldn't it?" Ramel laughed. I took it as encouragement.

"You can't…access that." He said, grunting as he tried to dodge a cannon. "It's…uh—locked."

"It's okay." I said softly. "I told you I'd get you into the ship, didn't I? Why would I have done that if I couldn't get into the Galaxy Map?"

"I don't know, but I'm beginning to think we were safer back with the Republic! Who is it that's chasing us?"

"How should I know?" I lied quickly, feeling my pulse quicken. I turned back to the Galaxy Map, staring into the blurred figures that were obscured by the security. "Lohelo'il Ki'ili."

The computer beeped for a moment, whirred to life, and welcomed me with open arms.

"What the...?" Ramel asked in amazement. "How did you-?"

"A close friend and a closer enemy, I'm afraid."

"Is that a name?"

"It was."

"Whose?"

"Doesn't really matter now, does it?"

The sadness inside of me pinched and squirmed like an animal in a cage. But I couldn't unleash it. Not to him. Not to anyone. Such was my path, however difficult it became.

"No really—we couldn't. We've tried everything! We looked up this ship's coordinates and-,"

"You'd know him, but I doubt you'd ever believe me." I smiled at the Map. It was a bad smile, one that hurt my face with sad memories and angry ones. Bitter ones. Horrible memories that I wanted with all my body and soul to forget. The smile stayed, like the memories, and I understood, like always, that they weren't going anywhere, so I forced myself to continue.

"Revan's name," I whispered. "Before the war."

There was a silence and then a sigh.

"Whatever you say, General."

"I told you not to call me that, anymore," I said, suddenly stern. "And I asked you to get me off that Republic cruiser without any questions. Can you do that or not?"

"Yes, General, I -,"

"Not General!" I said louder.

"Sorry..." he said back with a hint of that old attitude I'd once admired. "Old habits, I guess. I mean, I haven't seen you since the war and then after all that we just get a mysterious hail with you asleep halfway into Wild Space with a ship nobody knows anything about! Then, we pick you up and it just happens to be you, of all people, and you won't answer a damn question!"

"The Republic knows it," I said back automatically. "Or...they should. It's the Ebon Hawk."

Ramel's face paled.

"This is the Ebon Hawk?" he asked weakly. He turned to face me. "Why did you bring us here, General? Why did we leave the safety of our own ship just to...I have a family! I don't want to die!"

There was a bang, a crash, and my head made contact with the metal on the ground. I sat up, hearing the voices of countless thousands. They screamed at me to be better, those voices, screamed at me to shrug off mind-numbing pain. So I did as I was told. I stood.

"General!" Elna said from behind me. "General—you're bleeding!"

"Is the droid activated?!"

"You need medical-,"

"I asked if it was activated, Mako!"

As a reply, a hum, little more than a whir, whizzed by me and into the portal by my head. I sighed as I saw the little capable thing, as I saw the thing that had saved my life and the lives of my friends countless times.

"T3! Run a general diagnostic-,"

It beeped at me.

"What do you mean there are no people on board?" I looked to the other two. "We're being hunted by a ghost ship!" I thought hard. "Then where can we land?"

"Who are you talking to-?"

There was another deafening crash and I slammed my back this time. My arms and legs desperately wanted to stay down, but the voices erupted again. The countless voices. So many voices…

I pushed myself up shakily, certain that I was suffering internal bleeding.

"Captain!" I yelled blindly, looking over at Ramel. He was slumped in his chair, forward on the control panel. Elna was beside me, unconscious. There was nothing I could do. The first hinting of panic pulsed through me at the prospect of my capture. The absolute fear was astounding. I hadn't believed that I could have remembered what they had done, as I had used the Force to cut it off like a worm, to forget. I remembered all right. And the voices remembered too.

"T3—set course for the nearest system! We need a jump there now!"

He beeped in response.

The third crash was worst, sending me sprawling down the hallway from the cockpit to the main hold. I slammed my entire body against a corner of the reactor and my head against the wall nearest that. Pain unlike any I had experienced in a long time stilled me. I crawled hard, hearing nothing but the voices and the shouts, and a deafening and strangely distant ring. It was the last time I would ever hear that frequency, but I was glad. It made me feel like throwing up. I told myself that what I was experiencing was nothing.

"Now!" I screamed. I heard myself weeping. It sounded like it came from another's mouth. "NOW, NOW! GO—PLEASE GO-!" Another crash. My head slammed against the wall.

My pain was nothing compared to their pain. I did not feel pain. Pain was not mine. I only carried it. But it was not mine.

A final crash…and the voices grew intangible, so real and so untouchable that I began to cry to make them stop. They were shouting for me to get up and to stay down. They were shouting just to shout. The noise made me sick.

There was a jump. I was unhooked to anything and was flown into the far wall. I ignored the voices, as a self-preservation tactic, and I blacked out.