Author's Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction using Star Wars, trademarked by George Lucas. I don't own anything here- not KOTOR II, not Star Wars, not the characters, and this work is purely for entertainment and not for financial purposes.
This is an unofficial, rough novelization of the events at the beginning of Knights of the Old Republic II, using a LSF Exile. Reviews are appreciated!
WARNING… WARNING…WARNING…WARNING
Dark brows furrowed at the repeated sound clip, the first time any movement had occurred in weeks. The body of a girl floating in a tank finally shifted, cautiously, uncertain of her surroundings. The sudden impact of light in the room caused her eyes to squint as they opened.
Plain white walls. All she could hear was the sound of the computer intercom. There was the sickly bay-smell sitting in the air, and bodies floating in tanks next to her, but they were asleep. Or dead.
She blinked once, twice, deep brown eyes finally adjusting as she checked her peripheral vision. I was on a ship I think…trying to get somewhere…something bad happened…
Abruptly her cell shut off, and the aerodynamics discontinued. She landed on tender feet unused for far too long, and her entire body snapped into combat mode, each muscle tensed, waiting. When nothing came through the doors, she quickly put a hand over her abdomen. She'd tried to channel it, but the Ache was returning now.
Right. It's gone, and I was called the Exile because of it. What was my name…?
Slowly stepping out of the tank, she turned to look up at the inscription. Avery Kess.
Avery. Sounds familiar I guess.
Her eyes flicked over to the body floating in the neighboring cell. Dead, she was certain. As she looked over at each other inhabitant, she marveled. How could she have been the only one who survived?
Turning, she deftly hit the lock on the mechanism at the far end of the room and opened the doors. She had to get out of here and find out what happened. She knew, or vaguely remembered, that something terrible had occurred. She needed to get out now.
She spent a while winding down empty, unnaturally silent hallways, picking up a vibroblade on the way just in case. As she passed down another hall, she noticed a holotape on the desk inside. It was labled as the doctor's tape in the Peragus Mining Faculty. After studying it, she shook her head. It appeared that someone had injected lethal doses of poison into every cell in the bay, but someone like her would be able to resist the amount, and her alone.
So someone knew what she was.
He needed water, badly. He needed to sleep, he needed food, he needed to get out of here…
He'd been standing in this prison cell for three days, waiting, listening to the shouts, gunfire, and explosions outside of the small jail room. His was beginning to assume that everyone outside had died. He had two options. Either he would spend a long, long time in the cell, until somebody opened the door and let him out, or he'd spend a long, long time in the cell and starve to death. He hoped it was the first option. He had something to live for, he just hadn't figured out what yet.
A clanking sound issued from outside, the first thing he'd heard in seventy-two hours. His head jerked up. A droid was attacking somebody, so if that somebody won the fight, maybe he'd get lucky.
The hoped-for sound of the droid self-destructing went off, and then silence. He strained as hard as he could until he heard the faint noise of keys clicking on a computer. A human!
He opened his mouth to shout, but then his jaws closed quickly. What if it was some crazy Jedi who would get into his head? He'd rather starve in this miserable cell than become a slave.
Footsteps were coming closer. He swallowed hard. Not knowing what to expect, he rolled his shoulders and took a deep breath. The doors swung open.
In walked a female, no mistake about it. In the few seconds he had as she approached, he evaluated her. Kinda short, a bit curvy, athletic. He could tell, since all she wore was a brown underwear ensemble. She had long, almost-black hair, brown eyes. His eyes flitted down to her waist. No holster, no lightsaber. She wasn't Jedi. Instead, she was gorgeous.
Before he could hold his tongue, he smirked and blurted out, "Niiiice outfit. What, those miners change regulation uniform again? This is a welcome shift…"
She was close enough now he could see her better. Thick, black lashes surrounded those eyes as she blinked at his statement. Ignoring the comment, she said smoothly, "Who are you?"
"Atton," he said quickly, easily. "Atton Rand."
"What are you doing in there?"
He proceeded to tell her of his plight, hoping she'd be kind enough to let him out, and he had to update her on events that everyone knew about: specifically Revan. She was out of sync with the current world. As long as she'd let him out, he'd tell her anything, regardless of how weird the questions were.
Finally, she told him she'd let him out if he helped her leave. Since he a) didn't have other options, b) needed to escape the ship, and c) was lucky enough that his rescuer was the most fine-looking creature he'd ever been associated with, he had no trouble accepting.
As he finally stepped out of that cell, she flicked her vibroblade and walked out. Admiring the delightful view, Atton gladly followed.
"What's your name?" he asked as they walked up to the main console.
She paused for a second, and then said with a bit of difficulty, "Avery Kess."
"Avery? Isn't that a guy's name?"
Her eyes narrowed, but not in frustration. She was thinking. "I was named after a male. The one who sired me, perhaps."
"'Male who sired you?'" he quoted. "What kind of talk is that? You mean your dad?"
"Never had a dad," she replied in that same uncertain tone. "No family."
"What do you-" He was cut off as the girl hit a transmission button on the console to see the last logs.
What a wonderful first impression he managed. He was gonna go far with this one.
Find cryptic old woman in morgue who is still alive, done. Find out that a division occurred between the inhabitants of the mine because someone like me was in the place and they ended up killing each other, done. Discover there is a droid systematically slaughtering everyone in the mine, done. What a peaceful place I ended up in.
"Can you hear me on here?" Atton's static-fused voice came over her headset, jarring her out of her mental checklist.
"Yes," she replied curtly.
"Okay I can help you out here as much as I can, but if I get too annoying let me know and I'll quit."
"Right. Oh, hey, what's this?"
"What?"
"It looks like I've found one of the miner's old uniforms. This should suffice until I find something more decent."
"Dammit!" A pause. Then, "Good. Er, good. You shouldn't be running around in your underwear anyway. It's distracting. Er, to the droids. I mean."
A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth, and then she stopped, surprised. A smile? How could she, when she felt that gap inside? She was thinking of other things here, processing information, carrying all the traits she used to...just without that link.
The momentary pause cost her dearly. She felt the gap again, gnawing at her. Closing her eyes, she forced her body into the strange, ethereal calm that dulled the wind through the hole. She was dead to the universe: empty, disconnected; she was nothing but shallow senses of touch and hearing and smell. But it was all she had left.
Sulfur pored through the doors Avery rushed through, the metal crashing behind her as she rolled onto the cool, clean floor of the office. Atton's head jerked around to see her for the first time in hours. As she stood and brushed off her uniform in quick, jerky movements, he couldn't help but sigh, disgusted with himself. Even in an ugly miner's uniform, covered head to toe in soot, dirty, overly warm and smelling of burnt droid, she was beautiful. Her brown eyes were a tawny caramel peering amidst black dust as she stood in front of him.
"Done," she declared. She mostly talked in one or two-syllable sentences, he noticed.
"Awesome. Now we just need to do ninety more things before we can get out of here. What did you find out?"
Her lips parted, and her melodic voice gently lilted along. "I arrived at the conclusion that there's a highly trained assassin droid, an HK-50 model, who systematically poisoned or shot every one of the residents here in order to take care of a ship, the Ebon Hawk, and the passengers inside. He's on his way here soon, likely to kill us, so I suggest we stay alert and you find a blaster. Once we destroy him, I can get the docking codes to the ship that just landed; we can board it, get the star map, find this 'Ebon Hawk' and exit the area. What do you think?"
Atton, for a second, forgot how to speak.
She paused, waited, and finally probed him quietly. "Atton?"
Tearing his gaze away from her mouth, he cleared his throat. He missed the one-word sentences. Her voice was distracting. "Uh, no, it sounds like a suicide mission to me. Wandering into that ship and just picking up the star map like it's a delivery? No way. Who knows what's in there, and who knows what happened inside? Especially since no one is answering on the comm link."
"We're going to find out, since I don't see another way."
"Yeah, by all means," he said as she walked past him to the computer, "ignore any rhetorical questions I had and dismiss my worry to tell me we're doin' it anyway."
"Okay," she replied, her fingers rushing over the buttons on the console.
He sighed again, although this time out of frustration. Before he could think of anything witty to fire back at her, a figure in a brown hooded cloak walked up the length of the long room. As it got closer, he was amazed. This "woman" could have been three million years old and he wouldn't have been surprised. She had wrinkle upon wrinkle holding up her saggy face, giant bags under eyes he couldn't quite see.
"You," the old woman croaked out at him. "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"A pleasure to meet you too," he countered with distaste. Sounds like a dying bullfrog…
"Atton, this is Kreia, a Jedi who apparently saved me."
"Jedi? Saved? JEDI?" he shouted. "No way! You can't-"
"She," Kreia cackled, "is a Jedi as well. Why are you so upset?"
Atton stopped, started, stopped again. He stared at the girl open-mouthed for a moment, then, "She can't be. She hasn't dug into my brain, she's not wearing robes, and she doesn't even have a lightsaber!"
Avery dropped her eyes and brought them back up to his face without speaking. Kreia's thin lips curled upwards. "She's had a…difficult time of it. The Force has been stripped from her by the Jedi Council itself, her lightsaber taken from her, and she was removed from the Order."
"What? That isn't possible. I've never heard of a Jedi losing the Force. Don't they need it to breathe or whatever? How are you not dead? And why did the Council do that to you?"
Her jaw set, and she shook her head. "Don't know."
"You don't know," Atton repeated in disbelief.
"I can't remember much. It's coming back, but too slowly for any real memories."
"She is called the Exile," Kreia said almost smugly, "because she is the only Jedi who was removed from the Order, and the Force along with it, and still survived."
"Wait. How do you know more about her than she knows herself?"
"Statement: Ah, there you are Exile. I specifically recall telling you to stay put and wait for help. But you didn't."
"The HK-50," Avery interrupted curtly as the robot armed itself. "We should destroy it and get to the Harbinger."
Avery ordered them with the voice of a natural leader, and the other two followed her without question.
Breath held and fists clenched over weapons, the three were met with emptiness in the Harbinger. The hallway was silent: no voices or steps or even machines. Avery breathed deeply, closed her eyes, and listened, but it was no use. She couldn't sense life without the Force.
Kreia's voice was in her head. "Blood, bodies. There was a presence here that adheres to the Dark side, and he would have attempted to kill you."
Avery made no outer indication of her understanding; she just stepped forward with the old woman.
"Avery," Atton called to her. She started. His voice saying her name sounded foreign to her ears. She turned to see that he hadn't moved.
"You stall us," Kreia snapped.
It seemed his patience lost the battle. "Could I speak to her for just a second, just one, without you interrupting? I said her name. Not yours."
Outraged, Kreia's wrinkled mouth opened, but before she spoke, Avery interjected. "Go on and scout out the area. We'll be there in a moment."
Kreia turned away and stalked off in a huff. Atton rolled his eyes and then rested them on the Exile. Kreia wasn't far enough away, so he had an excuse to move close to her. "Listen," he murmured. "I've got a real bad feeling about this."
One sleek black brow rose. "About being on this ship?"
"Yeah. I have a sort of sixth sense about this kind of thing, and trust me, when I feel uneasy, bad stuff is about to happen. I think we should turn back."
He knew her answer through the look in her eyes before she spoke. "This is it. There aren't any other options. We'll just have to fight whatever's giving you that bad feeling."
"Look sweetie, this is pure survival instinct and it's kept my miserable little life intact for twenty six years. I'm just warning you, keep your guard up or I'll have to get everything together by myself, and it would take a lot longer."
An half-smile lit up her face. "Wouldn't want to inconvenience you."
"No," he said cautiously, not wanting to end their almost-flirting. Or standing so close to her, either. There were small smudges of gray soot on her cheeks that had smeared from her fingers, and her dark hair was falling across her forehead. Way, way too attractive for her own good. "You're a Jedi," he teased quietly as his eyes searched her face. "Gotta remember to keep others first and all that."
She frowned. "What problem do you have with Jedi?"
"Nothing you need to discuss with me," he countered breezily, all traces of playfulness abruptly gone. "I didn't need a counseling session. I just wanted to tell you that you need to watch it from here on out."
Instead of questioning him further, she allowed him his privacy. "You going to stay in the facility?"
"Of course not. I have to make sure you don't blow the whole place up."
As they rounded the corner to catch up to Kreia, the old woman hissed slightly through her teeth. "Behind us."
They whirled around to see two Sith remove their cloaking devices and rush at them with electro-staffs. An old, familiar feeling burst to the surface in Avery and she countered an attack with her vibrosword in a millisecond. Pivoting on her feet, she swung sideways in what used to be a graceful, easy move and quickly slid the sword through one enemy. She hadn't fought like this in years, and the efficiency in her combat had greatly diminished. Too stiff. She had to build it back up again.
The other Sith immediately swung his weapon at her, and before Atton could fire his blaster, the Exile had ducked, reared back up and ran her sword through the attacker. As she stood looking down at the two corpses, she gritted her teeth. That tangy smell of human blood, the frenetic thump of her pulse, the slight ache in her fingers from gripping the hilt of her weapon too tightly, they were all so close, so familiar to her that the loss of the Force became more acute. She'd had the Force back then accommodating all those senses.
"Pretty impressive," Atton said behind her.
"It should be," Kreia stated as the three continued through the ship. "She used to be quite efficient. She could have taken down ten men, fifty: a hundred at a time in the past. She was a general."
"General? In the War?"
"Yes," Avery interjected; peeved at their discussion of her while she walked with them. "I was a general, at Malachor V."
There was a heavy, shocked silence in the air. He might have been there as well, or at least he knew about the place.
"And you lived," he said in a low voice. "How?"
She pressed her lips together as she walked. "I don't know. I only lived in a manner of speaking. But sometimes I wish I hadn't. Incoming."
By the time Kreia had pulled up her sword, Atton had shot a couple down and Avery had sliced through the other two before they were clearly visible. Opening the door at the end of the room, they stepped high over the pile of bodies and entered the cockpit.
Republic soldiers lay everywhere in mangled heaps. There was hardly room to walk, but the three carefully picked their way over to the console at the head of the ship. Atton quickly began downloading the star maps, his nerves clearly showing. "This is not good," he muttered as the file processed. "As soon as this clears we are out of here."
"Well pardon me, I was hoping we could explore around the lavatory for awhile," Avery replied sarcastically. "I'll protect you."
He resisted the urge to grin. Sarcasm. He hadn't expected that. It seemed she was loosening up a bit.
"Many this time," Kreia warned a second later.
Avery's vibrosword flipped out as she turned. "Keep watching it. As soon as it's done transferring, head back to the facility."
Atton nodded as Avery rushed out the doors on the other side of the cockpit, Kreia following behind. There was quite the wave of Sith this time, converging into one circle around the ex-Jedi and her mentor. As each one swung or shot, Avery followed in a slow, natural flow. Circle, duck, jump, slash. Turn, kick, slash, step. A run-through in the back, a quick cut across the throat, a plunge into a torso before jerking to avoid a blaster, and then she paused to catch her breath. It was coming a little easier, faster now. She would probably never be as good as she once was, but she hopefully could adjust enough to be competent.
"Very good," Kreia's voice creaked in approval. "You killed most of them. And you are correct. They are hunting you. For what purpose, I do not know, but we shall find out in due time. You are very important. Much more so than you know."
Avery was getting used to Kreia's malevolent, cryptic words, and knew that when she finished talking, no questions could be asked. The old woman would not clarify what she meant, and it was probably some test of patience. Regardless, the Exile had issues in the present to worry about.
With a slash behind at the last Sith in the room, Avery rushed back into the cockpit to find Atton overrun with Sith. Rushing silently up to the group, she stabbed one and tossed Atton his blaster as his first ran out of energy.
"We have to get out of here. It's done but if I try to run for it-"
"I know," she shouted back as they continued swerving and dodging. "Did it get transferred?"
"Yeah, so if we can finally kill the billions of guys that showed up-"
Kreia sent a Sith reeling to slam back into the wall. "Go!"
They fled amidst shouts and blaster shots to head for the exit. As the door slammed shut, darkness blanketed the room they entered. There was no one around.
"See, this is bad," Atton said under his breath. "Whatever was making me nervous before, it's in here."
