Notes: This prologue is an experiment to gauge interest in the project. If there is a significant response, I will be sure to continue the story and update in the near future. If not, I may choose to abandon it based on my own continuing interest in the story. I will be significantly abridging certain parts of the story and highly editing others to make the sequence of events flow more like a novel than a video game. In addition, I will be heavily editing the majority if not all of the dialogue in the game. This is not because I have any problem with KOTOR 2's dialogue, but rather because I feel that to copy and paste the game's dialogue into the story would break the immersion of the story and force the reader to picture the events, locations and characters as they are represented in the game rather than as real characters in a novel. I will be making some alterations to the locations in the game as well as to some of the character's appearances for the same reason. All of the key characters from the game will be present as well as a few new ones. I hope you enjoy this first entry.

Prologue

Two hundred meters.

He was running as fast as he could, his boots pattering against the Dxun mud with every step. Driving rain stung his face and soaked his robes. He could barely see ten feet in front of him through the torrent. A shell exploded to his left, splattering hot mud all over his face, and he saw a green-clad soldier go down screaming. He didn't stop. He couldn't stop for anything.

One hundred meters.

The Mandalorian line was close now. It was invisible through the relentless rain but he could feel it. Every lungful of the dry, smoky air stung inside of his chest but he kept running. He sprinted past a crater where a soldier lay clutching his thigh where he had been shot. He leapt clear over a heap of bloody corpses that had been struck by an explosive round only seconds earlier. He felt a rifle shot incoming immediately before it was fired and had just enough time to ignite his yellow lightsaber and bat it aside.

Twenty-five meters.

The armored silhouettes of the Mandalorian soldiers were visible now . He would be on them in seconds. He called on the Force and shot forward with impossible speed. And then suddenly he felt like he had been kicked in the back by a wookiee.

He pitched forward and his face slammed into the earth with paralyzing force. His ears were ringing so loudly that the sounds of the battle were almost completely inaudible. He was vaguely aware of a hand on his shoulder, of being rolled onto his back, and of raindrops on his face. But he couldn't see anything but blackness. His head was spinning. And he was tired. So very tired...

The last thing he ever heard was the far-away, faintly audible voice of a woman, weeping between syllables: "Orin...please...No!"

The few soldiers who happened upon that place over the next few minutes would never forget what they saw: a young Jedi knight, weeping and delirious with grief, with her arms wrapped around the burnt and mutilated body of a man whose legs had been torn off at the knees by a landmine. Her face was pressed against his body so tightly that all that could be seen of her was her soaking wet brown hair than ran halfway down her back.

Meetra Surik wept for what seemed to her like hours, her face still buried in Orin's mangled chest. The battle raged all around her but she heard and felt nothing. Nothing but the lifeless body of Orin in her shaking arms. Her eyes began to burn with tears of rage. She raised her muddy, blood-stained face from Orin's shattered body and her green lightsaber screamed to life. She was going to make them pay a hundred times over for what they had done.

And then, without warning, everything turned to black and the deafening roar of battle gave way to perfect silence with jarring abruptness. And in that silence, Meetra heard the barely audible sound of a woman's voice pronounce a single word:

"Awaken."