Foreword:
I'm back!
I've been wanting to do something Star Wars again after my last KotOR piece, and I've wanted to do this idea in particular for a long time now, so
in lieu of an update on some of of my other stories (Dishonored Princess is coming along, I swear!) I have decided to publish this.
Enjoy, fellow Star Wars nerds!
STAR WARS
BASTILA THE EXILE
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 desperately clings to life
aboard a battered freighter near the ravaged world of Peragus...
Darkness.
Silence.
Yet, cold.
Definitely cold, somehow.
Then, unexpectedly, a warmth.
::Awaken::
It grew. It was no longer cold.
Darkness became vibrant color and bright lights. Cold became stunning warmth.
::Awaken::
Silence was replaced by soothing echoes of humming computers.
And Bastila Shan felt the first feeling in a long while seep back into her body. She looked around her, but everything was still blurry. Her body felt oddly warm, lying on something that was smooth and cold.
A few more seconds passed, and she realized she was lying on her stomach. She regained feeling and turned over, finding that vision had returned to her as well. A gray ceiling made of metal, gray walls, also metal, bright light fixtures glowing aside various wire couplings running in various directions along the walls.
She lifted her head, squinted, and braced her teeth against the stiffness that greeted her, and saw large cylindrical tubes of a sort against the walls of the room. She saw it was a circular room now, the tubes (vats, she guessed, from the blue liquid that swirled within their transparent fiberglass exteriors), five of them in all, stood at the edges. The central vat was empty whereas the others each held a figure floating in suspension.
Bastila realized that they must be kolto tanks, then. Somewhere in her mind she recognized the blue liquid container and the faint freshness of a familiar smell that accompanied the room. Or perhaps she was still delirious from… whatever had gotten her here.
Propping herself up by her elbows, Bastila pondered if she had the strength to stand. Despite the rigidity of her limbs, she managed to get herself upright and stumbled to the closest wall, bracing her body against it and trying to recover her wits.
How did she get here? Where was here? How did she get out of the kolto tank? Bastila tried to remember any detail that could help, but the memories she possessed were hazy and indistinguishable at best. The last thing she could recall clearly was her return from the Outer Rim to some backwater planet after purchasing passage on a travelling cruiser sponsored by the Republic Navy.
The images of her "exile" came back to her. Long ago, in a galaxy that seemed farther away than ever now, she had been someone significant. A general, as a matter of fact. A respected knight of the Jedi Order, a step away from mastery of her craft. Vanquisher of the Sith and their evil ways, champion of the Republic, and her favorite accolade, fiancé of the most heroic man in the galaxy.
But now was not that time, nor had it been for a while, at least. Her lover had vanished into the reaches beyond known space, a journey that he had promised a quick return from. That had been over five years ago.
Or maybe ten, or even fifteen. Bastila had lost count after the Jedi had stripped everything from her.
Her connection to the Force, her lightsaber, her respect, her love… all of that was gone now.
So she left all ties behind and wandered the galaxy in an attempt to forget it all. Anytime the memories returned, a bittersweet recollection of her lover and the adventures they had together. The joy she had experienced with him…
… and the thought of it brought her to complete the circle.
She forced herself to think logically, as he had done all that time ago. Given the presence of kolto tanks, wherever she was had medical support of some kind, so it couldn't have been a mere spacer hideout, or at least somewhere unreasonably away from civilized space. And for whatever reason she was being revived here, though she was unaware that she had any need to be revived, which suggested either amnesia or drugs, perhaps both. A lack of clues in her memories led her to become quite frustrated.
Her scowl intensified when she looked down and spotted her own cleavage. The realization that she was wearing only a bikini seemed trivially out of place in a mystery of lost memories and unseen benefactors which propelled the issue to a rather infuriating indignation.
It would explain the cold at least, she reasoned with a sigh.
Bastila felt that she had sufficiently recovered her faculties enough to walk unimpaired, and as such was quite pleased when her trust was validated when she began to move, despite her limbs protesting in earnest.
She also realized that all of the figures in the remaining kolto tanks were wearing some kind of uniform, a blue outfit with minimal other distinguishing features other than a silver logo on the shoulder resembling a star with an emblem of the Republic on the opposite side.
Bastila remembered vaguely being near a Republic cruiser before her memories became distorted, and moreover, the icon's presence indicated that wherever she was, it was under Republic jurisdiction.
Or, she wondered pessimistically, used to be.
Given that nothing so much as a call over the intercom had occurred since her seemingly unexpected emergence from the kolto tank, either she was in the hands of an incredibly incompetent staff (and given that it was in Republic space, this was unfortunately quite likely), or something had happened to distract them from her activity.
On that depressing note Bastila walked to the door of the room. It opened at her presence with a swift click to give her a view of a hallway with two rooms on the side and a door similar to the one she entered from on the far side of the corridor, though this one emitted sparks and appeared to be defective.
She approached it to look closer, but could not find any way to open it. Apparently whoever had placed her here had not thought to provide her with the means to find a way out.
Bastila returned to one of the rooms on the side of the corridor. Inside was a computer terminal that unlike the stuck door appeared to be in working condition, and a lab station stood beside it.
She walked to the terminal and slid a hand across it, remembering that the Republic had upgraded to heat-activated sensors only just before her withdrawal from the galaxy.
The interface held a dull green hue.
"Welcome to the Peragus Mining Facility medical bay." It read in obnoxiously large font.
Bastila scrolled through a list of menu options with a finger. The two that managed to capture her interest were labelled "Patient Logs" and "Holorecordings".
Maybe with those she could figure out whatever was going on around here.
She selected "Patient Logs" and the display adjusted to show the vital signs of five patients (for the five kolto tanks in the chamber, she reasoned), all of which read "PATIENT STATUS: DECEASED" in red text aside from "Patient #3".
"Patient #3", as she noticed upon tapping the item, exhibited "unusual vitality" during their occupation of the kolto tank, and given that she herself had been the only one to emerged, she concluded that the others had all perished for unknown reasons.
Curiosity overtook Bastila and she reversed her selection to bring up the medical terminal's log of when the patients were admitted, and to her surprise she had been the first, with the others arriving all a day later, and even more oddly, all within an hour of each other.
Bastila wondered what explanation could be present for such a scenario, when she noticed a category called "Patient Treatment". She selected it, and with even more surprised registered a chilling discovery.
Over the course of four days, the time of which the patients had all been admitted to the kolto tanks (including herself), they had all been administered a large dosage of sedatives, much higher than Bastila could remember Republic medical bays offering, and from her (admittedly) limited medical knowledge, Bastila guessed it was a fatal amount.
Most of all, Bastila saw that after the other patients had perished as a result of the high dosage, "Patient #3" had received the same dosage twice as frequently, and for the remaining three days.
Bastila held her breath for a long time before exhaling. Whoever had placed her here had also sought to kill her.
She opted to question the terminal as to who had administered this dosage of sedatives, but the terminal proved to be obstinate enough to provide her with nothing. Her blood began to race.
She closed the terminal display with a newfound haste and walked into the hallway, attempting to calm her breathing and focus her mind. So someone or something had tried (and failed, it seemed) to kill her, and she had only escaped due to her former Jedi training and vitality. The door presumably allowing access to the medical bay was defective and for all intents and purposes was now a wall, and all other patients of the medical bay had been murdered. The killer was unknown.
Bastila felt an odd sense of nostalgia mingle with her horror. Situations like these were ones she had once been familiar with, the rise of adrenaline that accompanied her whenever she was with him.
Once a Jedi, always a Jedi, she guessed. Her life in peril, with no solutions present. She grinned despite herself. Revan would have jokingly scolded her for something now, like a –
But the thoughts of him, particularly his name, also brought the pain of his absence, forcing herself to focus.
Think, she commanded her mind.
A method of escape. Bastila imagined that the only way to get out of the medical bay was to get through the stuck door. She did not recall any form of communication system from the medical terminal, and upon further consideration she realized it was a moot point if a killer was operating in the facility; she did not want to cry for help and then alert her attempted killer to her awakening.
But how to open the door? There was obviously no lock to pick, so Bastila concluded that the only apparent solution was the rather Mandalorian approach of breaking through it. Finally motivated beyond her frustration, Bastila cleared her thoughts and returned to the medical bay in search of any kind of blunt object with which to bash a door.
She searched the plastisteel containers against the wall adjacent to the terminal, but found nothing.
Explosives were unlikely in a medical bay. But she did recall the computer say that this Peragus facility was a mining installation. Perhaps mining equipment was here somewhere?
She renewed her search for anything that looked like mining tools, but again could not find any hint to such things. She sighed again and went back to the medical terminal. The "Holorecordings" tab stuck out to her, and she activated it in an increase of curiosity.
A hologram of a uniformed woman appeared to the side of the computer. She spoke in a monotonous tone, suggesting that she was doing this only for routine's sake. The hologram was interrupted with static at regular intervals.
"…still examining the survivors of the damaged freighter – looks like it goes by the name of the Ebon Hawk."
Bastila felt a slight jolt at the name. So whoever had found her had found his ship too. The hologram continued.
"Only one survivor, placed in the kolto tank for recovery. The carbon scoring on the vessel suggests it was in a battle, but no indication of who fired on it… Aside from the lone survivor, we recovered an old woman, no life signs."
Bastila felt her curiosity rise at this information.
"There was also a protocol droid and a utility droid on board – sent both of them down to maintenance while security sorts through the other items on the ship."
More static.
"…could be a Jedi, but we won't know for sure until we get the transmission back from the Republic."
Bastila let out an involuntary gasp. They suspected she was a Jedi! After all this time, she had thought no one could recognize her.
"If she is a Jedi, that would account for the recovery rate… There was a detonation in another one of the fuel vents the droids were working in. We deactivated several of them moved them down to maintenance, but we're still treating the plasma burns…"
Suddenly the hologram was filled with an alarm blare and a mechanical voice over a speaker.
"WARNING: There has been a fuel detonation in the mining tunnels. Emergency lockdown commencing. All personnel report to quarters and prepare for emergency venting countermeasures."
The woman in the hologram jumped at this announcement. More static interrupted the beginning of her reply. "…no, if the ventilation systems are malfunctioning … Evacuate the medical bay! Everyone, evacuate-" She was cut off by more static and the recording ended.
Bastila took a step back from the computer terminal. Well that had escalated quickly. Something had happened in the fuel vents, something that put the facility on lockdown, and what appeared to be a poison attack on the medical bay killed everyone else besides her.
For the umpteenth time in her life, she was thankful that the Jedi had forced her to master resistance against poisons of the body. At least they had gotten that right.
Bastila looked out of the transparisteel window above the medical terminal, and perhaps by sheer coincidence noticed the room opposite the one she currently occupied. A neon sign flickered in blue above the door, reading "MORGUE".
What a cheerful place.
Bastila exited the room with the terminal and walked to the morgue door and, not surprised discovered the faint smell of refrigerated air freshener to hide the stench of corpses.
Of the eight examination tables present in the room, only two cadavers were laid on them. One resembled a male obscured underneath a white cloth, aside from the head, though it was a chilling appearance. The skull seemed to protrude from under the skin, like a ghastly grinning face begging to escape. A blaster wound in the forehead gave away the clue to his demise.
The other body was a more mysterious affair. An old woman in odd, almost familiar looking brown robes. There was no visible indication of her death, or even of a sign of injury. Bastila assumed this was the one that the woman in the hologram had reported.
So this woman, who had likely died of a heart attack or something similar, had been aboard the same ship that Bastila had before she lost her memory. It was a shame that she was dead. Bastila could have used some answers.
She had an uneasy feeling however, as she took her eyes off of the body. The robes resembled Jedi robes, Bastila thought. It was too strangely reminiscent to be a coincidence, but how could it not be? Wherever Bastila was, there were no Jedi. She felt no presence of the Force from this woman.
And as far as Bastila knew, the Jedi were extinct by now. Considering how many threats had been present before she left the galaxy, she had no doubts that the Jedi order had been dealt a fatal blow, what with the Sith, the Mandalorians, and Force knew whatever else had opposed them.
And part of her, as harsh as it seemed to her mind, had wished for that conclusion.
But something caught her eye, something that in hindsight she could not explain. A flicker of curiosity and assurance, until she could have sworn she had noticed it the entire time.
The body beneath the cloth drew her renewed attention like a gravity well, for an inexplicable reason. Despite the smell of burned flesh that rushed to her nose, she was satisfied when she removed the protective sheet from the corpse.
The same uniform that the deceased ones in the kolto tanks had worn was loosely surrounding the corpse in front of her, albeit pitted with blaster marks and below the waist the body was charred to blackness.
But what captivated Bastila the most was the useful discovery of a tool belt that had survived whatever killed the man: a plasma torch! A welding tool under normal circumstances, but Bastila felt confident she could manage to melt the stuck door with it.
But as her fingers clasped the torch, Bastila was met with another astonishing discovery.
She heard a stirring behind her, a shift in cloth, a metal clanking that sounded like unsteady footsteps. She suddenly felt a presence in the Force, as though it had simply 'appeared' in the room.
Bastila turned over her shoulder to see the dead woman in the brown robe standing, with a hand to her head and the other balancing herself against the medical slab.
Before the woman had pulled the hood of her robe over her eyes, Bastila had caught a glimpse of her face. She appeared ancient, and her eyes had no pupils. Yet she did not seem frail or weak as Bastila would expect. An atmosphere of something intimidating, powerful, emanated from the woman, like an odd sense of foreboding. Bastila had half the mind to flee and put as much distance between herself and this dead-but-not-really woman as possible, but again curiosity overrode her instincts.
"Find what you were looking for amongst the dead?"
The old woman's voice was gravelly and flat. It sounded strangely familiar.
Bastila's throat was still dry from the kolto tank.
"I thought you were dead." She murmured.
The sound of her own voice was foreign. As the woman spoke again Bastila absentmindedly wondered when she had last spoken aloud.
"Close to death, yes, closer than I would like."
The woman touched a hand to her forehead again, as though massaging a pain there.
"You have the smell of a kolto tank about you. How do you feel?"
Bastila remained puzzled. The woman's voice was definitely one she had heard before, but she did not have any idea who this woman was. How could it be possible…?
Then she remembered.
"You-!" she began, the voice in her mind returning to her .
::Awaken::
"Your voice, I heard it in the kolto tank!"
The old woman looked nonplussed, perhaps even annoyed.
"It is possible my mind, in my unconscious state, reached out to touch another. It was not intentional, I assure you."
"So you can touch minds, and feign death." Bastila's brow furrowed.
"Who are you?"
The old woman continued to star at Bastila through the shadow of her hooded robes. It a tense moment before she responded.
"I am Kreia, your rescuer, as you are mine. Tell me, do you recall what happened?"
"I don't remember much other than a Republic cruiser carrying passengers from the Deralia system."
The old woman said nothing for a moment.
"This Republic ship, it was called the Harbinger was it not?"
Bastila tried to recall the name. It escaped her, but she did not trust this woman that could return from the dead.
"Yes, I believe so."
"Then I am afraid it was not a passenger ship at all. Though I confess I know little more than you do, I was aboard a Republic cruiser known as the Harbinger. Perhaps you were present as well."
Bastila thought to question this, as the medical terminal had reported an old woman recovered from the Ebon Hawk, but decided not the share her observations with this 'Kreia'.
The old woman began to speak again.
"I fear we must act quickly if we are to find a way to leave this facility."
Bastila noticed how fast she used 'we'.
"'We' do not need to collaborate on anything. I can handle myself while you look like you can barely stand. And regardless, this is a Republic installation. Surely we could contact-"
"Did you not feel at least concerned that there is no one else here alive? The fact that we walk and breathe among these corpses is rather astonishing."
Bastila frowned.
"Perhaps. But the only question I have is how they perished. Someone administered lethal dosages of sedatives to those in the medical bay, and the one over there (she pointed to the corpse that had previously been underneath the white cloth) was burned and shot with a blaster. Something is working here, and I would think that any course of action 'we' should take would involve contacting authorities and having them deal with the situation."
The old woman continued to make no expression. It was somewhat disconcerting to Bastila.
"I leave the exploration of this facility to you, as I would imagine you have more experience in such things than I, though…"
The traces of a smirk graced the old woman's face.
"If I may make a suggestion, you may wish to extend your search for some clothes. It would hardly be a noble first impression to meet one in their undergarments."
Bastila could not believe that an ancient being like this one would have the nerve to make such a comment. It reminded her of her mother, which was monumental in and of itself, as that woman had had plenty of nerve herself.
"Yes. And perhaps some weapons to go with them."
Kriea moved nonchalantly to sit on the medical slab.
"If you must. Though in my experience Jedi such as yourself seemed not to need them much."
Bastila froze.
In response to her unspoken question, Kreia answered.
"Your stance, your walk, tells me you are a Jedi. Perhaps not anymore, nor for some time, but once, yes."
Bastila fought to control her breathing for the second time.
"What affairs I have with the Jedi are none of your concern."
Kreia, though unmoving, gave the impression of a shrug.
"Of course not. Fare well in your search, for both our sakes."
Bastila turned to leave the medical bay. The desire to abandon this woman intensified.
"Just stay out of my way. And my head."
Bastila ignited the plasma torch as she approached the stuck door. Once close she violently struck the lock with the torch, and continued to do so until the door ceased its defense and the lock crumbled. The hinges creaked in response, and Bastila let a triumphant "Yes!" leave her lips.
She walked through the space the door had previously occupied into a large room. It was a rather spacious chamber, filled with insulated walls and durasteel plating, though no attempt was made to disguise the installation's age, unlike the medical bay and its whitewashed interiors and stainless transparisteel windows.
But a rather unsettling detail on the floor was what caught Bastila's eye. A body lying prostrate adjacent a door to her left. The figure was wearing the same uniform as the others, leading Bastila to assume it was the station's standard issue outfit, though this corpse was in even worse shape than the man from the medical bay. Where a face should have been was a hollow skull, apparently melted off of by… something very, very hot.
She forced herself to remain calm. She noticed a small vibrocutter in the feeble grasp of the corpse's hand, prompting Bastila to pick it up. It was a better tool to work with than a plasma torch at any rate.
It was rather fortunate that she did this it seemed, as not even a moment afterward the door opened to reveal two crablike droid constructs in the next room. At the door's opening they turned to acknowledge Bastila's presence. From what she could remember of binary language, she guessed that these droids were not friendly.
Her suspicions were confirmed as they began to shoot at her. Her old instincts kicking back in, Bastila ran to them and brought the vibrocutter down at the closest droid. Surprisingly the metal in its legs gave way to the weak blade, allowing Bastila to stab the droid in its control cluster.
A tinge of satisfaction came to her as oil spurted onto the blade. She had missed this after all, she realized. Her exile had not dulled her combat training, it seemed.
Her efforts turned attention to the other droid, and with a quick slice at the 'brain' of the droid she rendered it disabled as well.
She stooped to examine them, as despite the fact that they were hostile, they did not appear to be combat models. Upon further inspection she discovered that they were only armed with mining lasers, which were deadly on contact with skin, but would pale against even the flimsiest of combat armors.
Another door opened and more of the same droids entered the room for Bastila to test her theory. Indeed, as she destroyed the invaders, she figured that she could probably fight them with her bare hands and not be in any serious risk of injury.
A small room greeted her after she had traversed the chamber that had held the rogue mining droids. It was devoid of features aside from a corpse slumped over a bench accompanied by a set of lockers and a table with a small computer on it.
Accessing it, Bastila discovered that there was little to do with it, other than watch another hologram recording. This one was of a man, but in the manner of the first recording, he was often drowned by static.
"…is this thing on? All right, all hands, especially you Coorta, listen up, because I'm not going to say this again. I don't like what's going on here. Ever since that Jedi showed up, things are getting worse. And it's not just you, Coorta and your miners, or the fights, but now even the droids are acting crazy."
The recording changed, and this time the man was talking to another man, who seemed to cower before him. "So you're in maintenance?"
After a quick "Yes sir", the man continued.
"Then maybe you can tell me what's going on with these droids."
"Sir, I-I don't know. It's like their behavior cores are undergoing binary decay, but I can't find the source. This shouldn't be happening." The taller man burst at this.
"Well that's reassuring! It isn't happening! So the next time we nearly have a breach in the ventilation tunnels, I can just close my eyes and pretend it's my damned imagination!"
He turned away.
"You better give me some answers. I want to know the damage these droids can do if they start mining us instead of asteroid rock."
The shorter man flinched. "Sir, these droids aren't combat models. Their mining lasers are weaker and less accurate than blasters. I doubt those droids could even hit one of us given the chance."
The taller man evidently found this displeasing as he roared at his subordinate.
"Are you blind?! What about the miners in med bay? It's sabotage! And it all started right after the commander said we weren't going to sell the Jedi to the Exchange!"
His anger gone, he seemed to remember protocol.
"So I want you to find out how these droids are being altered. That'll tell me who's trying to clear a path to get the Jedi off the facility. And stop him. In the meantime make sure security's armed with all the ion and sonic charges you can find."
"Yes sir, maintenance control out." The hologram of the short man disappeared.
"Idiot." He muttered, and the recording ended.
The young woman stood and was more confused than before. The security officer had suspected sabotage… and what was that about the Exchange? Someone had tried to sell her?
She tried to remember from all those years ago what the Exchange was. It sounded familiar, like it was on the tip of her tongue, but she just couldn't recall anything other than a vague memory of thugs, hitman, corporate bribery, a cask of juma juice. At any rate, they knew she was a Jedi. And someone had wanted her off the facility, suggesting it was some sort of space station. That complicated things.
She stood from the table and walked to the door on the opposite side of the room. Suddenly her mind felt… odd. As though she was not the only person there. She heard a voice, but it had a strange echo to it.
"Be careful. There is much energy in the room beyond… yet it stems from nothing that lives."
The young woman gasped.
"K-Kreia? What the-?"
The voice of Kreia called to her again.
"Can you not sense them? Reach out. Case aside your sight, case aside what you can see, and instead reach out with your perceptions…"
Images flared in the woman's mind. A room, perhaps the one behind the door she stood before, glimmered in her mind's eye. It was full of corpses, burned and scarred, and above them were more droids, standing idle in the carnage.
How? She wondered.
This couldn't be real.
She opened the door and found the room exactly as how she pictured it, down to the body directly in front of her. Without missing a beat she swung the vibrocutter at the first droid, disabling it immediately. She dodged the answering laser shots, and then disabled the other two droids in swift reaction.
Kreia's voice came to her again.
"Ah, you can feel them. The droids you cannot perceive, but the small oscillations of energy… you can feel that echoing outwards…"
The young woman's mind recalled a name for this sense, this sight. It was something she had not felt in a long time.
"Reach out, feel it. Do not shy away from it again."
The woman felt the surge of everything come back in a rush. It was with her again, and she felt whole. In her absence from the galaxy she had not felt it, and every echo of it she had pushed away. But here it returned.
She had found the Force once again.
The woman clutched her head as all the memories of the Force came back to her. The feeling she had felt when she had first levitated a chair in front of Master Zhar, the sensation of pulling a tablet towards her by using the Force as a tether, the rush she had felt when she used the Force to enhance her sprint.
All of it returned. Then the other memories that had followed did too. Her pride at cutting her Padawan braid, the thrill of passing the Trials despite all the tribulation she had suffered to get there, the feeling of his arms around her when he spoke those words she had desired so…
She felt her identity return, in a way that she had forgotten in her exile. For the longest time, she was simply herself. She had no name, no purpose, no responsibility. She drifted from planet to planet, experiencing nothing, feeling nothing.
But she felt it all now. She was a Gray Jedi, exiled from the Order, but not "evil" like they no doubt claimed she was. She was Bastila Shan, general of the Republic navy, former Jedi, former Sith, and now, a former exile.
She had returned to the life she had left.
Amidst her revelation, Bastila had forgotten that she needed to escape this facility alive and find transport back to civilization, wherever that was. She opened the door to a spacious chamber, where a large and very obviously artificial tree served as the only decoration against a massive computer screen that took up an entire wall and behind it an observation window showing the black reaches of space beyond.
Unfortunately at the sound of the door opening several mining droids noticed Bastila's entrance and promptly opened fire, though with the Force at her side once again they were no match. She felt the rush as she moved across the floor, swinging at opponents with the measly vibrocutter and avoiding laser blasts.
Though she was unfortunate enough to have sustained a sizable burn on her leg, the Force manifested itself as she healed the wound, then took a painkiller stim just to be safe. The massive computer was no hers to access, which she did so, though she was not greeted with much to work with.
With the emergency lockdown in effect, almost all of the functions the computer could serve were disabled, save for a glowing red button that stood out most curiously. She pushed it, and to her surprise an announcement from the computer read out:
"EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN DISABLED. HOLDING DOOR SHIELD DISABLED"
Holding door shield? She turned and saw a door in the back of the spacious room shimmer as the shield around it vanished. Bastila guessed that this was the holding door in question, though what it could hold she had no idea. Seeing nothing else to do with the console, she left it be and walked to the holding door.
Kreia's voice found her again.
"Beyond this door someone yet lives. Be mindful, his thoughts are… difficult to read. But you have nothing to fear from this one. And he might yet prove useful…"
Someone was in there? Bastila opened the door and she indeed found a man standing in a force cage. She felt a tinge of sympathy, having spent days in one of the horrible things once, long ago.
"Are you an angel?"
The man had spoken. His voice did not match his face, as though it belonged to someone much younger than the face of the man who used it. Bastila saw experience in them man's face, the way his eyes squinted at her in scrutiny despite his sarcastic demeanor.
Then again, his following comment convinced her she was overanalyzing.
"Nah, I'm just kidding. That's my worst line. I hope some kid doesn't start using it. I meant to say: nice outfit. You miners change regulation uniform for the better while I've been in here?"
Bastila recognized his 'type' as his eyes dropped to her chest. She usually hated them.
"Keep your eyes up here, and tell me who you are."
He shrugged.
"Name's Atton. Atton Rand. And excuse me if I don't shake hands. The force cage only causes "mild" electrical burns."
"What is this place?"
At this Atton displayed a look of mock surprise.
"You mean you didn't come here on purpose either? I'm shocked, really I am."
"This slice of paradise the Peragus mining facility, the only supplier of shipping grade engine fuel to this corner of the galaxy. Peragian fuel plays havoc with engines, but it gets the job done"
"Well, as long as you don't mind the toxic byproducts and trying to mine it without blowing yourself up. Fun business I hear."
Bastila made a mental note to find a less comically-inclined criminal the next time she was trapped on a mining facility.
"Care to explain why you're locked up?" Atton merely shrugged.
"Security claimed I violated some trumped-up regulation or another. Take it up with them if you want, but they stopped listening to me shortly before they stopped feeding me. Now that's criminal."
Bastila rolled her eyes. Whoever this man was, he was not at all as charming as he thought.
"This facility's entirely deserted. What happened?"
Atton raised an eyebrow.
"You mean, before or after the Jedi showed up? Either way, it's a short story. See, this Jedi shows up, and you know what that means."
"I'm afraid I don't. Humor me."
It was his turn to roll his eyes.
"When there's one Jedi, it means the Republic'll soon be crawling up your ion engine in no time. But the story gets better. See, some of the miners around here got it into their ferrocrete skulls that since the Jedi's unconscious, they can collect the bounty that the Exchange's posted for live Jedi."
"Well, what passes for law around here didn't like that idea, so the two groups started fighting."
Atton grinned. "Then there was some big explosion, and I was sitting here for a really long time, and then you showed up in your underwear and everything got a lot better."
Bastila took a moment to remember her self-control before she dignified a response.
"So the Exchange has posted a bounty on Jedi? Aren't they just a crime syndicate?"
Atton shrugged again. "Don't know much about it. Maybe the Exchange wants one as a trophy, or maybe somebody's got a really nasty grudge against them. Since there's not many Jedi left, it wouldn't surprise me if the bounty was pretty high."
"The ones that weren't killed in the Jedi Civil War ended up switching off their lightsabers a long time ago. Word is, there isn't even a Jedi Council anymore, but who knows?"
Bastila was unsure if he was being serious or not, but decided to assume he was, given the lack of hinting he gave to a poor attempt at a joke.
"A civil war among Jedi? The ones I heard about were between the Sith."
His expression was one of confused disbelief. "Yeah, Revan, Malak, and all the Jedi that went to join them in the Mandalorian Wars. They turned on the Jedi and had a scrap that almost wiped 'em all out. Where've you been?"
Bastila's interest was suddenly piqued.
"That wasn't… a war, well, not a major war. More like a few skirmishes, and-" Her voice faltered as she began to question was had happened in her absence. She had left shortly after her exile from the Jedi Order, but if what this idiot was saying was true…
"You missed the aftermath sister? The Jedi trying to "cleanse" the galaxy of the Sith they thought were hiding behind everyone and their bantha?"
Bastila frowned, thinking of a plausible lie. "I've been… in the Outer Rim for a while. This is all news to me."
Atton shrugged. "Well I wasn't there either, but like all Sith, Revan and Malak turned on each other. Heh, after they turned on the Jedi, of course."
Bastila was struck by the man's judgment of the situation, not only because he did not seem to know who she was or truly of Revan's motivations. Admittedly, Revan's tactics were somewhat… unorthodox, but then again, desperate times called for desperate measures.
Moreover, Bastila wondered if many in the galaxy believed that Revan's defiance of the Jedi Council meant he followed the Sith ideology. She pushed the thought away.
"I was led to believe that Revan refused to let the Jedi Council get away with their cowardice in defending the galaxy. That he saved the Republic."
Atton shrugged yet again. Bastila wondered if it was a crippling addiction.
"I guess. There's rumors all over space about it. All I heard was Revan was trying to pay Malak back for trying to kill her in the first place. You know women… no offense meant."
Bastila snarled at him. "How long have you been in that cage? Revan was a man, not a woman!"
Atton gave her a bright, almost mocking smile. "Meh, maybe I just wished Revan was a woman. I admit it's a guilty pastime of mine."
"Look, not like your half naked interrogation isn't a personal fantasy of mine, but…"
His brow furrowed, then his face transformed into one of realization.
"Hey, wait a minute. You- you're that Jedi the miners were talking about, aren't you?"
Bastila resisted the urge to curse. She knew she had said too much.
"I haven't seen anyone here that's still alive. This facility seems abandoned. Surely you saw something."
Atton gave her another mocking look. "From my beautiful view in this security cage? Look, all I heard were some explosions, some emergency alarms, and somebody on the intercom saying there was a toxic gas leak in the dormitories. I know as much as you do sister."
"Don't call me that."
"I doubt anybody'd survive whatever's going on around here, except…"
He was silent for a moment, apparently deep in thought.
"Hey, you're a Jedi! You can get me out, and I can help you! I've gotten out of trouble loads of times, trust me."
As skeptical as she was of this man, Bastila did not doubt his claim.
"How could you possibly help me?"
"Look, this place isn't a military installation, which means we've got at least a small chance. If you shut down my cage's field from the security interface over there, I can slice a terminal for emergency clearance to get to the hangar. We can grab a ship from there, fly out of here, and then we can got on our merry separate ways."
Bastila frowned. She hated it, but the plan sounded sensible. Almost like something he would think of…
"Alright, I'll let you out. But don't try anything, or I'll cut you down."
He held his hands in a placating gesture. "Hey, I know Jedi, and I know what happens when you mess with them. I'll leave you alone as much as you need."
Bastila walked to the security interface and switched off the cage. True to his word Atton kept a respectable distance as he exited the room.
"Great. Now to business. Let's find the command console."
"Just stay ahead of me, and don't make any sudden moves."
Atton moved a little faster at her words in the direction of the security terminal she had seen earlier that had deactivated the force field to the door of the holding cell room.
"All right, here we are. Now this console's set on automatic hail, hell, you probably heard it when you came in here. The drift charts for the asteroid field around this rock are constantly being updated and transmitted to any incoming vessel so they don't get crushed into space dust by floating debris."
He sat at the chair in front of the computer, his hands moving at a blinding speed.
"Thing is, you can bounce the same transmission back to the comm here, and just like that, you've got access to the communications system from the inside."
He grinned.
"Pure pazaak, the console's ours. Now, all we need to do is reactivate the turbolifts, cancel the emergency lockdown, and- ah, banthashit!"
Bastila grimaced. "You sound like you're about to tell me something I don't want to hear."
"This system's been severed from the main hub, after it was locked down from remote control. You can't even reroute it, it's been cut clean off."
Bastila felt her blood drop a few degrees in temperature. Problems seemed to be everywhere on this damnable station.
"That's not a standard procedure in emergency lockdowns, at least none that I know of. Someone probably did that on purpose."
"Yeah, someone's tried to lock down this whole level tight, no one in or out. Trapped."
He sighed. "Just when it looked like I- I mean, we, were in the clear, too."
Bastila thought for a moment. So there was no way off this level through the turbolifts. But, she did remember with a start that Atton had said the communications system was also accessible. That gave her an idea.
"You said we had all comms online here, right?"
He looked at her, nonplussed. "Yeah. Not much good it'll do if everyone's dead though. Like shouting in a vacuum, basically."
Bastila stood over the console, remembering a long time ago how an astromech droid had infiltrated a Sith warship and rescued her and her companions from a seemingly impossible situation – just like this one.
"But there might be someone we can reach, maybe a droid."
He got out of the chair and true to his habit, shrugged.
"Be my guest. I'm out of ideas."
Bastila took the chair and selected the menu option of the communication system in hangar 25, apparently the only one still online.
After a soft crackle of static, she heard a slow hum, followed by the weak whistling sounds of a utility droid. Thank the Force.
"Is anyone there?"
The whistling sound returned marginally louder.
Bastila's heart rate increased in excitement. They just might have a chance.
"Can you read me? If you can, do a diagnostic, then follow my instructions."
The droid responded with a series of beeps that Bastila recognized as a confirmation that the unit was of functional use. It requested orders to carry out.
"I'm trapped on the administration level of this facility. Can you unlock the turbolifts droid?"
Another whistle, this one indicating at least an attempt to perform her request. It was as much as she could hope for, it seemed. "If you have to, look for one of the emergency safety hatches."
The droid acknowledged this.
"Good. Call back on this channel when you return."
The droid beeped through the comm system again, and then the static came back to Bastila's ears. She smiled despite herself, and stood out of the chair.
"Excellent. We've got a chance."
Bastila nodded. Optimistically, she wondered how long it would be until she was comfortably back in space, with a safe vessel, and as far away from strange murders on a poorly-staffed rock as possible.
As it turned out, the dream of escape seemed determined to take its time in arriving. Hours passed before Bastila heard back from the comm system, and even then it was an artificial voice informing all staff that due to toxic gas being present in the dormitories, dinner was being postponed until later that day.
Suffice to say, all of her enthusiasm had dwindled away amongst the terrible wait and Atton's equally-terrible attempt at passing the time via awkward conversation.
"So uh, how long have you been a Jedi? Um, must be tough, you know."
Bastila tried to ignore him.
"No family… no husband…"
Bastila sighed.
"It's not as tough than enduring false sympathy while you're staring at my chest."
He looked incredibly flustered. "Hey, I wasn't trying to-"
"I was guessing, based on how many other times you've done that in the past few hours."
"I was not doing anything like that at all. I was… looking behind you, at the wall. It has some strange dents in it, and as someone very interested in architecture, I-"
A series of whistling sounds came through on the communication console.
Bastila silently thanked the force and moved quickly to the chair.
Atton looked over her at the console. "Well, what do you know? That little cargo cylinder came through after all."
"It looks like it. But it's odd that it didn't contact me on the comms system."
Atton did not appear to be concerned by this.
"But if he's got the turbolifts working, then we should have a clear shot to the hangar, and then we're outta here."
"No, the turbolifts are locked down manually. There's no way to get around them, so I had him open an emergency hatch to…" She glanced back at the console, but could not divine any further information. "…somewhere."
Panic overtook Atton's face. "Wait, wait. Don't tell me you're taking that hatch down into the mining tunnels. 'Cause I know you're not. That'd be suicide."
A few moments of silence followed.
"You are, aren't you? That explosion I heard came from below. There's probably nothing down there except superheated rock, collapsed blast tunnels, and galaxy knows whatever else this rock could find volatile to react with. You'd be an idiot to go down there."
Bastila nodded. "That's the only option for finding a way out of here. And I'm not going to sit around here and wait for the distress signal to bring in a Republic ship."
Atton simply stared at her.
"Well I'm sure as hell not going down there. You might as well lock me up again if you freed me just to go throw yourself into a nest of gundarks."
Bastila turned to walk away. "I don't have time for your cowardice. I'm going to find the hatch."
"I'll take coward over stupid any day. And just because I'm such a kind and considerate person, I'll keep the comlink up here on just in case you need some help. Not that I'll come running down there, mind you."
Bastila was already out of the door. There was simply no helping some, she accepted.
She retraced her steps through the corridors she had fought the rogue mining droids in until she found an open emergency hatch.
She paused a moment, to think about what she was about to do. Whatever had caused the explosions and incapacitated apparently most of the miners in the facility was most likely still down there, possibly the murderer that was systematically eliminating everyone on the station.
Moreover, it was also probable that once she took this way down, she could not use it to return.
But then again, there was the same chance that a Republic ship would never hear the distress signal that the comms system had been sending out into the vast reaches of space, and without it there was nothing to do but stay on the administration level and starve to death.
Bastila knew that the life of a Jedi involved risks, and even if neither she nor anyone else considered her a Jedi anymore, she knew it was a mantle that she could not refuse.
She entered the tunnel behind the emergency hatch, which closed behind her.
Her journey, she felt, had only just begun.
And so it begins!
Thanks for reading this lengthy thing, and I apologize for the wordiness, but I wanted to get as accurate as I could in this fic. I've been mulling some ideas in my over something like this for a while now, and I publish what I have so far, so here it is.
Stay tuned for the next chapter, which I'll try to get out as fast as I can. I've finally dealt with the family issues I've been stressed out over for these past few months, so optimistically I think I'll have more time to write.
Leave a review and let me know what you think!