Before the Dawn
By Jedi Boadicea and Arabella
Authors' note: KotOR is the property of LucasArts and BioWare. KotOR II is the property of LucasArts and Obsidian Entertainment. We're just dipping into the story because it's so damn cool that we can't help ourselves.
A huge thank you to our beta reader, Tim Radley. You can find him in our favorite authors page.
1.
It was a school day. There was nothing remarkable about it. Dustil whined powerfully, as he always did, when his mother dragged him out of his dark, warm bed and towed him, still whining, into the kitchen. He grumbled through his breakfast, surly and exhausted; when he complained that he was too tired to go to school, his mother snorted and told him that it was his own fault for staying up past his bedtime and sneaking down to the sublevel to play with the flight simulator until three in the morning. And when Dustil protested that he had done no such thing, his mother grounded him point blank, and for a period of one month, for lying.
"WHAT?" he shouted in disbelief, his mouth half full of food. A month – grounded for a month – it was the worst horror he could conceive of. "You weren't going to ground me for staying up late, so why bother grounding me for saying I didn't?"
"Staying up late was a choice you made that affects only you." His mother stood at the worktop, fitting his lunch into his satchel, her eyes furious – as they had often been, in the weeks since his father had last come home and then vanished again into the Republic fleet. Dustil had tried not to think too hard about how his father had acted on his last leave, how empty his eyes had looked, how violent his voice had sounded, and how frightening his silences had been. He hadn't seemed like his father at all.
Dustil still wasn't sure what had caused the change, and his father certainly hadn't explained anything. Not to him.
"If you want to hurt yourself," his mother went on tightly, "go right ahead. But lying hurts others. Deliberate misinformation can cause great harm. It's the mark of a coward, Dustil, and your father would be very disappointed."
Coward. It was the very worst humiliation. Dustil's face burned, and his fists clenched, one around the metal of his spoon. It cut into his palm; he gripped it tighter. "Yeah, well?" he said furiously. "Who cares? It's not – it's not like he's ever here to find out what I do."
"You know that he can't be."
"Yeah, whatever."
"Dustil Carth Onasi."
She said it very quietly, and it worked. It always worked. Dustil didn't know why, but whenever she used the full name, he felt the heat drain out of him. He knew it was because of his middle name – his father's name – that he suddenly felt like a little kid – which he wasn't. He was thirteen, and in three years, he'd be a soldier too. Or at least, he'd be in training. He looked down at his spoon and tried to get the fire of his anger back. He wanted to rant, to protest again that it wasn't fair, to get her to lift the punishment, or at least cut it back. And then it occurred to him that he'd be better off going for a really good apology – those tended to change her tune a lot quicker.
"Mom… I shouldn't have lied. Don't… don't ground me. Come on."
She turned calmly from the worktop and put his satchel on the table in front of him. "You know the rule," she said. "A punishment is a punishment."
"But –"
"No buts. Try using some of this energy to talk yourself out of the crime next time, rather than putting all your effort into avoiding its consequence."
"But –" he tried again frantically. The bargaining couldn't be over so soon – there had to be a way.
"You heard me. Now put that on and go, you'll be late for school."
"But Mom, a month–"
"No, Dustil. Give me a hug."
Dustil gave her an incredulous look. He wasn't going to hug her – for grounding him, for ruining his life. He threw down his spoon, knocked back his chair, made a vicious grab for his satchel, and nearly dropped it in surprise.
It was really heavy.
"What am I having for lunch?" he demanded angrily, marching toward the door. "Rocks, or something?"
"Yes, Dustil. You're having rocks."
His mother always thought she was so funny.
"Ha ha." Dustil stopped in the doorway with his back to her and slung the satchel over his shoulder, glaring at his shoes.
His mother sighed. "Your emergency pack is in there," she said, and now there was no humor in her voice. Dustil thought she sounded angry – maybe with him, still. "You're to give it to your teacher as soon as you get to the classroom. Don't trade the supplies or mess with the blanket or eat the food I've put in there. And do not touch the stimulants, do you understand me? Those are for medical emergencies."
Dustil didn't have much interest in the stimulants, but he decided to eat all of the food at lunchtime. That would show her. He pushed open the door.
"Don't I get a hug, really?"
Dustil heard her ask it, but he didn't turn around. He was angry, and defeated. He wanted to punish her, for punishing him. He went down the steps and onto one of the long, clean, quiet pathways of the military colony, half a mile from the school where the Telosian soldiers' children went, day after day, all of them returning to homes that were either motherless or fatherless so long as the Republic army was engaged. Not that it was really so bad. Dustil hardly thought about it, most of the time. Not really. Not if he could help it.
"Dustil."
He heard quick footsteps on the stairs behind him, and felt his mother's arms take him from behind. She bent her head and rested her cheek on his hair. She held him close for a long moment and kissed the crown of his head. She smelled like soap and sleep and breakfast, and she was warm.
"I love you," she said. "Learn something today. Make good choices."
Dustil looked both ways to make sure none of his friends were walking past. He didn't really need to get pegged as a mother's boy.
"Yeah, okay," he said quickly, more to get her off him than anything else. "Love you too, Mom – bye." And he wriggled away and hurried forward, casting just one brief look back. She stood at the bottom of the stairs, the weak sun lighting the waves of her dark hair, still a sleepy mess on her shoulders, her eyes lonely and grave and full of pride at the same time, her smile soft and steadying in her tired face. That image caught in Dustil's mind like a holo, though he didn't realize it, and later he was very glad he'd said he loved her. Glad he had turned back.
She lifted her hand and waved. Dustil half-waved back and turned away.
And never saw her again.
The first crack sounded like thunder.
"It's gonna rain," said Vrosh Ruckso, and he glanced out the classroom windows, but only for a moment. He was concentrating very hard on two things: ignoring the history hour, and anchoring the long ends of two blonde braids to his desk without alerting their owner to his activity. Dustil, who sat beside Vrosh, was watching the mission unfold with interest. Bellamy Beal was fun to annoy. Mostly because she was pretty, especially when she got upset. Not that Dustil ever would have said so out loud.
Vrosh, who was wonderfully destructive by nature and whose father specialized in starship repair, knew quite a bit about constructing useful devices from scrap and had already ensnared one of Bellamy Beal's blonde braids, sliding a long, magnetic anchoring pin underneath the binding she used to keep the hair together and slowly – oh, so slowly – revolving the pin down into a firm anchorage through the alloy surface of his desk. His braid-trapping plan was not elaborate, but it didn't have to be. It didn't matter that Bellamy would be able to get the braid over the head of the pin once she figured out what was going on – it was just going to be funny when she got up and tried to walk away.
Vrosh was working on the second braid now, but having a harder time getting the pin's point to bond appropriately. Dustil could see Vrosh's computer unit flickering faintly, probably from the magnetic interference.
"Stupid pin," Vrosh whispered, as he worked.
The second crack of thunder got Dustil's attention, and he turned his eyes to the wide-paned windows that lined the west wall of the classroom. It was odd, he thought, that there weren't any clouds. The sky was piercingly blue; what had been a weak sun this morning had risen to glaring height. It was a crisp, cold, sunshiny day, and it really didn't look like rain. But then, did there have to be rain, for there to be thunder? He was pretty sure he'd learned the answer to that, at one point, but he hadn't paid enough attention to remember what it was. Or maybe it was just some malfunction in the colony's atmospheric regulators.
"Dustil Onasi."
Dustil's head snapped toward the front of the classroom, where Master Teskra, their Bothan teacher, stood at the podium, holo-remote held still in his clawed hand, watching him narrowly. The golden fur was flattened in irritation along his forehead.
"Yes, sir," Dustil said quickly.
"Are you paying attention to the lesson, Mr. Onasi?"
"No, sir."
The class smothered a group burst of laughter. Bellamy Beal flicked her eyes, very briefly, across the row, and gave him a swift, pink-cheeked smile. Dustil promised himself to be more obnoxious from now on, if that was the reward.
"I'm sure you think you're very clever, Mr. Onasi," Master Teskra began, and his fur flattened even further, "but unless you have an excellent reason for your inattention, you will be the cause of a surprise exam, no 'pad access, which will be visited upon the entire class in five minutes."
Now the class did not smother their reply, which was a groan of protest. And now there was no pink-cheeked smile from Bellamy.
Dustil acted fast. "I was actually – well, I was actually wondering something about school," he said, "but the truth is, it wasn't about this class – I'm sorry. I was looking outside, because I heard the thunder, and I got distracted because the sky is blue – I don't see any clouds, so it seemed like there shouldn't be thunder." He sucked a breath and went on. "So I asked myself, do there have to be clouds, for there to be thunder? And I know we've learned this before, but I can't remember the answer. But can you tell me, Master Teskra, because I – I'm really curious."
His classmates exchanged furtive glances of hope.
Dustil prayed he had pulled it off.
Teskra's ears pricked up in apparent surprise – and then his eyes narrowed speculatively – and then… slowly… they widened. On a human face, Dustil would have sworn it looked like fear.
There was another crack of thunder. Closer, this time. Much closer.
"Class," said Master Teskra slowly, the fur on his cheeks standing out now in tufts as his eyes drifted to the window and his nostrils twitched. "I want you to remain very calm."
Every single student tensed and sat forward, alert.
"Please raise your hands if you have not provided an emergency pack – I realize they are not due yet for three days."
A smattering of hands went up, and those attached to them looked suddenly terrified.
Dustil reached down and touched the satchel that sat on the floor beside him, to make sure it was still there. He hadn't given it to his teacher this morning, but he hadn't broken into it as planned, either, and suddenly he was very glad of that. His blood felt hot and sharp and fast; his ears seemed to be amplifying things. He was ready – for what he did not know. He wondered if this was what his father meant when he talked about a rush of adrenaline.
"All right." Master Teskra set the holo-remote down on the podium with a soft click. Dustil had never seen their temperamental Bothan teacher act so calm. "I'll need to step into the corridor and assess the situation, but I'll be right back. If anything – no." He shook his head. "You know the drills, class. In fact – right now. All of you. Activate your desk shields."
A few students scrambled to press the right buttons. Others stayed frozen. Dustil could not tear his eyes from the window, through which the sky was losing its sharp blue definition. A haze was coming into it. Something both orange and black. Its strange light fell into the classroom and made every desktop reflect like flame, casting fire shadows across a litter of frightened faces. And then there was a noise, like something humming just beyond the holoboard behind Master Teskra, until the hum became the sound of air grinding, until the sound was deafening, a toneless, terrible blare of something about to hit – a world about to crack – until the air went suddenly, deathly silent, like a cord had been cut.
"I said now," said Master Teskra sharply, a bark sneaking into his Basic. It was the last thing Master Teskra ever said.
The holoboard exploded, and so did half of the ceiling. Master Teskra was smashed before Dustil's eyes, along with the front row of his classmates, who did not even have time to scream.
But the rest of them did. The noise of real human terror rose up around Dustil for the first time in his life, twenty voices together, swarming in a kind of chaos he had never known, rising through the broken ceiling and into a red sky full of dark and distant ships and the crimson rain of laser fire. Dustil looked up at the ships, and, inside his mind, there opened up a cool, strange place that he had never known was within him, a place that was utterly in order. He knew the world was ending, but he felt a deadly calm.
Never again would he misunderstand what war was.
"Vrosh," he barked. "Get her braid off of there."
Bellamy was screaming. She could not leave her desk. She could not get her hair free. Those students who had not been crushed had bolted in all directions; it was just the three of them in this rubble.
"We have to get out of here," shrieked Vrosh.
"Not until you do what I said." Dustil was steady – he did not know how – as he reached down, swiftly slung the satchel onto his back, and secured it. "They're not going to hit the same place twice in two minutes, there's no point – and anyway, it's just the school, it's not the base." He didn't know where the words were coming from. He checked the sky again – still no Republic ships. Perhaps they had all been blown up by the Sith.
He smothered the thought with willpower like a fist. His father was not dead. His father would come for them. Until then, he would keep himself together.
Vrosh's fingers fumbled and shook and Bellamy sobbed, pulling at the end of her braid with both hands until it ripped away from the pin – which had truly anchored itself at last – with a dry, splitting sound, leaving two inches of shorn blond hair pegged to the desktop. She began to run, still sobbing, through the wreckage of their classroom, until she tripped in the rubble and stumbled down between a chunk of jagged wall and a wide-eyed corpse, where she suddenly slumped and went still.
"She's dead," screamed Vrosh, tears coursing down his face, still working to free the tiny bit of braid that remained, though it no longer mattered. "She's dead, she's dead, I killed her –"
"She isn't dead. Leave that alone." Dustil quickly picked his way through the ruined chairs, gray dust kicking up in swirls around him, the hair on his arms rising in the static of discharged shields. Beyond the broken wall and piles of still shifting debris that ringed what was left of their classroom, much of the remaining school was on fire, its naked structure of beams exposed by the blast. Duraplast walls were melted into foreign shapes, several pockets already shattered into gray and black pieces like liquid sculptures suddenly frozen and then fractured. Smoke billowed into the sky, thick and black.
The far end of the school had taken the brunt of the blast and was almost entirely flattened, a wasteland without survivors except for a few desks at which students had managed to put up their shields in time. A hundred yards away, Dustil could see those few horrified students, releasing themselves from the protective shields and staggering blindly away. His own classroom had been at the other end, a one-story projection from the rest of the taller building, which had collapsed into itself. It was the only reason he was still alive.
Dustil dropped down in the rubble beside Bellamy's limp body and drew a deep breath through his nose – and nearly gagged. He never forgot – never, for the rest of his life – the smell of exactly what had been scorched. All those things that were not supposed to burn.
Vrosh was right behind him, and Dustil instinctively knew why. Vrosh had no idea where to go, and he thought that Dustil did.
He grabbed Bellamy's wrist. It had a pulse. He turned her face to the side and held his hand over her nose. She was breathing. She didn't need a medpac, she needed a jolt – something to wake her. Dustil shook her shoulders and called her name. He rolled her over onto the corpse that lay beside her and gave her face a sharp smack. For one awful moment, as his palm collided with her cheek, the cool inside his mind nearly snapped and gave way to a howling. Had he truly just rolled over the unconscious body of one classmate onto the dead body of another? It was impossible. It was impossible.
There was no time.
"Get into my bag," he said, and his voice surprised him. It had only recently broken and lowered; now it sounded almost adult. "Get the packet of stims out of the emergency pack my mom made."
His mother. His house. It was half a mile away. What if she was –
"Do you know how to use them?" Vrosh asked, his voice trembling badly.
"Just get them out." Dustil was not about to admit that he'd never used stimulants before in his life. He only knew he had to wake Bellamy up and get her out of here; he couldn't leave her. The fire was burning closer all the time. He felt Vrosh's shaking hands fumbling along the cords of his satchel, panicked in their search, until finally Dustil heard the rustle of something being ripped open.
"There." Vrosh sniffled as he handed over the packet and wiped his wet face on his sleeve. "Which one are you going to use?"
Dustil read them, and tried to remember what they were for. His father had shown him this, and he had not paid attention. He hadn't paid attention to lots of things. He had a feeling that he was going to regret every single lapse in focus.
He unwrapped one of the stims on impulse and put it into the cargo pocket at the side of his trouser leg, and then he tore the sterile wrapping from a second one and hoped that he was making the right choice. He had once been given a med shot by one of his friends' mothers, after falling off a speeder in a neighborhood race and scraping along ferrocrete for several very painful yards. He remembered it being stuck into his thigh.
He pushed up Bellamy's skirt to expose the top of her leg, which was soft enough to remind him of what it was and make him blush, even under the circumstances. He sucked a breath and pressed the nose of the pressure cylinder to her flesh. He depressed the plunger, forcing the pale blue, softly glowing fluid into her limp leg. It was the weirdest thing he had ever done.
Bellamy's body twitched once, violently, and Dustil felt the cold fear that he had made the wrong decision. But then she slackened again, and moaned for her mother, and her eyes fluttered open. Behind Dustil, Vrosh let out a long, shuddering breath.
"Help me pick her up."
Vrosh obeyed, and the two boys grabbed their classmate, one taking each side, picking her up under the arms and setting her on her feet. She was heavier than she looked, but Dustil tried not to show the strain, and when she was standing upright again, her eyes came into focus. She got her balance and gazed around, rubbing her thigh where Dustil had punctured it, so much in shock that for a moment she didn't seem to know what she was seeing. But her breath hitched when her eyes fell on the corpse that had just been beneath her, and tears slipped down her face.
"Now… what happens?" she whispered.
Dustil didn't know the answer, but he knew he was the one most likely to come up with it. His gaze swept the sky, and the cold fear returned.
The ships which must have struck them were back, swift and dark, and rapidly descending.
Dustil wondered, in a painfully detached way, just how many capital ships might be hovering beyond his vision among the stars, raining these shadows and this fire down on them.
Landing craft had broken the lower atmosphere; the noise of ship engines drowned out the sounds of the crackling fire, the rattle of still crumbling walls, the snap and fry buzzing of ruined electrical equipment.
The roar of the Sith was deafening.
"We need to get underground now." Dustil could not take his eyes from the ships. They were bigger than the Republic ships. Blacker. More terrible. Not far off, there was another clap like thunder and a distant whistle of laser energy, which meant that not far off there was another explosion into chaos and fear. And the ships were still landing.
"Your house," said Vrosh frantically. "The garage, it's underground at your house."
Dustil wanted nothing more than to go to his house. "No, it's too far – look at the ships, they're on top of us."
Vrosh let out a low cry.
"The gymnasium," Bellamy murmured, barely moving her mouth. "But the… entrance is probably… gone."
"Let's do it." Dustil headed across the ash pits of their wasted school, leading his two companions around the pockets that were still aflame, searching for what had used to be the stairwell underground into the athletic facilities, because there was no doubt in his mind that there would be nothing left of the turbolifts. He soon realized that he wasn't going to find it – that it had surely been glutted by debris – and that the entire gymnasium had probably filled with earth and breakage anyway, when the school had exploded and caved in. They would have to leave school grounds and find the nearest housing complex that was still standing.
Before he could give the direction, the earth quaked, throwing Dustil to the ground. He got a mouthful of ash and spat it out in a frenzy, trying not to think about what it was likely made of.
He was barely on his feet when the ground shook again – and again – and it did not stop. All three of them buckled to the ground, and there was no point in rising. As the black smoke began to dissipate, Dustil realized what was happening.
A wave of Sith drop ships had landed, surrounding them like a swarm of a thousand moths. They were everywhere – on the flattened school, on top of the crushed housing complexes, eclipsing the once-sterile paths of the military colony. They had bombed the area flat, and now it was nothing but an enormous landing strip, razed and smoking beneath an endless army of shining, armored black. There was nowhere to run.
"What are they going to do to us?" whispered Vrosh.
"Kill us," murmured Bellamy, who was still crying, though her voice was steady and she did not move at all. The tears flowed steadily, like a thing apart from her shock.
"Both of you lie down," said Dustil, before he'd thought about it. "They're not here for us – they don't know who we are. Shut your eyes. Don't move, don't speak, I don't care what happens. No matter what I do. You got that?"
Vrosh swallowed hard, wiped his nose again, and sniffled frantically.
Bellamy blinked slowly at Dustil. "What do you mean, no matter what you do?"
"I mean, you play dead," Dustil commanded. "And if anyone comes along – if anything needs doing – I'll do it. Don't either of you move, for any reason, unless – unless someone picks you up, and then you can fight. Do you understand me?"
Neither answered.
"Do you understand me?"
He knew that he sounded like his mother and his father, rolled into one. He heard it, and it both surprised and frightened him.
Vrosh darted a glance toward the nearest ship, from which a ramp was already being lowered, toward the ruined ground. Someone would be coming out of it at any moment. Vrosh barely mumbled an "Okay," and then he dropped to the ground and curled into a ball, silent.
Bellamy's eyes were on the lowering ramp. "I'm never going to see my house again," she said quietly. And then she gently lay down, rolled onto her stomach, and buried her face in her arms.
Dustil lay down on his stomach facing in the opposite direction, his head near their feet, his chin touching the burnt ground and his hands braced near his shoulders, ready to push off and jump to his feet if he needed to. He kept his eyes open. He watched the ship's black ramp touch the ash and soil of what had been his school, just ten minutes ago.
Ten minutes. There was no grasping that. He knew that it could not have been longer, but he did not understand how, in just ten minutes, life had become unrecognizable. It was such a short period of time. Maybe it was a dream. It was ludicrous, like dreams were.
Except he knew that it was real.
The ramp had just completed extension when Dustil saw a figure emerge from the ship, followed by another, and then another. All were swathed in black and dark gray robes that seemed to seep into the thick smoke in the air around them, blurring their edges, making them look like they had risen from the destruction itself rather than descending from a starship. In their hands they held the gleaming hilts of… nothing. There were no blades, in the hilts. Still, Dustil snaked out one hand along the black ground until he came to something sharp and jagged, some beam of broken metal that had peeled from the school in the explosion. He closed his hand around it. It wasn't a vibrobalde, but it wasn't nothing.
The figures were murmuring. They drifted away from the ship and toward the place where Dustil lay between his classmates, and as they came closer, he could hear that two were male, and one female. Eventually he could make out what they were saying.
"… unfortunately they all seem to be dead. Those fools were not supposed to destroy the schools. Darth Malak will be displeased."
"It was Darth Malak who ordered that the surface of the planet be annihilated. I believe his words were that Telos is the target, and not to discriminate."
"And yet he does want to collect all possible recruits, as does Lord Revan, I'm sure. We were not to eliminate schools until they had been swept for sensitives."
"It hardly matters. There will be other planets."
"True…"
"And regardless, the children at a school of this type are too old to train. Any of this age that have not already been identified and tested cannot be sensitive enough to do us good."
The woman laughed. "You spent too long on Coruscant," she said mockingly. "Your mind works too much like a Jedi's. We do not need babies, Eltar. We do not need a lifetime to oppress the passions. We need ever so much less time to fan the flames of emotion, to draw passion out. I believe a nest of volatile teenagers has the potential to be very useful. What a pity this one was snuffed out. Ah well – as you said. There will be other opportunities."
They walked very close, picking their way over the short maze of fallen walls, sweeping their eyes carelessly over the dead. Dustil forced his hand to relax on the shorn metal spike he had grasped, and he made himself close his eyes, though he wanted to keep the strange, robed figures in his line of sight. They were close enough now to notice that he was awake, and he could take no chances.
"Some of these children must have lived."
"They've run away, if they've got brains."
"They won't get far."
There was a pause. "No." The woman sounded like she was smiling. "They will not… Orthon, will you look at that…"
There was another pause and Dustil got the distinct, horrific sensation that three pairs of unkind eyes were resting on the back of his neck.
"How interesting," said a man with a slow, amused voice. "The only intact corpses at this end of the blast, I see. When all the rest is rubble and ash. It makes one wonder if they are truly dead."
Dustil's heart slammed against the earth.
"I suppose there are ways of finding out," said the woman, who sounded like she found it all very funny. "Shall I, or would you like to do it?
"Amuse yourself. Only remember we do not have much time, we must break orbit before the Republic ships arrive. But if there is a sensitive among them –"
The woman laughed harshly. "Of course there isn't," she said. "I feel nothing from these three but fear."
"Nor do I," said the man. "Dispose of them however you like. Come, Eltar."
Dustil heard two sets of footsteps grow distant as a third pair drew closer. Something hard and cold touched the top of his forehead. He could barely breathe. The hard, cold thing tapped his head once, and then again. Softly. As if to wake him up.
"Stand up, little one," said the woman quietly. "Do not make me ask again."
Dustil was too terrified to stir. He thought of his father – the war hero, the great soldier of the Republic – and he tried to find that kind of strength within himself. But there was only fear, as the woman had said, and the shame that came with it. There was only a voice, deep in his gut, that begged him to survive.
He did not want to die.
"I see you breathing, child… and were I blind, I would feel the life still in you. I know you are not dead. Stand up and face me now."
Dustil could not make himself be brave. He felt tears rising. If he did not do something, then he would die on the ground, flat on his face, at the feet of a Sith, in tears. It was the worst kind of ending – he knew he had to change it. But somehow, humiliated as he was to keep still, he could not force himself to move.
"You may save your friends, if you stand up," said the woman, tapping his head again with what might have been her boot. He did not know. "I may let them live." She laughed. "But you must do it now, boy. I shall count to five, and then I shall kill one of them, and then the other, and I shall leave you alive, to live with what you have chosen. One."
Dustil's brain beat against his skull. He had commanded them to lie still. He had said he would do whatever needed to be done. They had trusted him.
"Two."
His fist curled again around the jagged strip of metal beneath his outstretched hand, and he realized his palm was moist with cold sweat. He adjusted it to get a better grip.
"Yes… arm yourself. That's right, child. Three."
If he had left Bellamy where she had fallen, she would have had a better chance of survival – they might have left her for dead. If he had let Vrosh run when he had wanted to, he might have made it further than the ring of ships, and somehow managed to hide. They were both here because of him. He had led them here. He had to act.
"Four, child. And then your decision is made."
Dustil Onasi pushed off with his left hand, his blood beating in his ears, and he leapt to his feet with a long scrap of metal clutched in his right. He plunged his left hand into the cargo pocket of his trousers, fumbled for the stimulant, clutched it, and depressed it through the canvas of his pants and into his own leg. He tossed the empty canister to the ground, and his body coursed with alien vibrancy, making him feel twice his own size.
He met the eyes of his enemy.
They were yellow, gleaming in their sockets, set far back beneath the darkness of the black hood that outlined the shape of Twi'lek head tails. And she was smiling. "Not clever, child," she said softly, and she raised a thick silver cylinder from the folds of her robes. "That will only make what I must do somewhat longer… and infinitely more painful."
"I'm –" Dustil's voice was a rasp. He worked to find it. "I'm not going to die."
The enemy's smile widened, and she raised her empty hilt between them. From its socket, something glinted. Something faceted and red. And then that physical source was eclipsed by a shaft of light that seemed to shoot straight from its surface and into the air between them, beginning in the woman's grasp and ending a foot over Dustil's head, long and focused and pulsing, too bright and brilliant to be anything but what it was.
"You – you –" Dustil choked on terror and awe together. "You have a light – a lightsaber."
He had taken on a duel with a Jedi.
The woman laughed in real amusement. She swiftly pulled her weapon back; it made a sound like a swarm of insects, a rush of pure speed cutting the air, and then it sliced forward with purpose.
Dustil shouted in pain and surprise as the red line of the lightsaber caught the top of his left shoulder, barely a graze, but agonizing. He raised his scrap of a weapon and struck out blindly.
The woman blocked him without moving in her stance. The peeled metal in Dustil's hand smacked flat against the lightsaber, and there was the briefest moment of resistance followed by an odd sensation; a rush of energy moving through the metal in his hand into his fingers, up his arm, into his brain. He staggered back, clutching his head with his free hand, and saw the top of his makeshift weapon fall to the ground, smoking. The lightsaber had sheared it cleanly into halves.
"Enough? Or shall we go again?" The woman looked nonchalant. "We can play for as long as you like. You amuse me."
Dustil met her yellow eyes and felt the first real hatred of his life. Amuse her? This morning he had been a person, and now his life was only an amusement. And he was going to die in a ruined field, between people he would fail to defend.
He made an animal sound, raw and furious, and swung the remaining base of his jagged metal beam at the woman's head with all the strength he possessed.
She deftly stepped out of the way, and the force of Dustil's own swing, unhindered, sent him stumbling forward, crying out as he sought his balance.
"My," said the woman calmly. "What terrible technique. You really should try harder."
Dustil fought back a sob. She might kill him, but she wouldn't make him cry. He gathered what strength was left from the stimulant he had given himself – he knew they wore off quickly – and made one last attack, seeking to plunge the broken metal into the woman's robes, hoping to stab her stomach, her throat, anything he could hit.
She raised her foot, caught him square in the chest, and kicked him several paces back, knocking the wind from his body and the useless weapon from his hand. Dustil barely landed on his feet; he doubled over and searched for breath. He had to breathe, had to recover. He felt the excess energy drain out of him, leaving him cold and utterly human. He did not know what to do.
"But courage, little one," she said softly, circling him with her lightsaber still raised. "You are not dead yet. Try again."
Dustil did not know how anyone could look so pleased as she did about what she was doing to him. He had never seen such sickness. He had heard about the way ruthless tyrants toyed with the oppressed; it had touched the periphery of his mind as a thing that happened to other people, on unfortunate planets, where the Sith had the power to invade and do as they pleased. He had felt fleetingly sorry for those poor people, and then forgotten them, because he lived on Telos, where everything was fine.
"Try again," she whispered, grinning. "I know what you want. I feel it. And it is the only way for you to die with any dignity. Attack, boy. Attack."
Dustil attacked. He launched himself at her, digging into himself for strength, somehow avoiding the beam of her lightsaber and colliding, full-body, with the woman who was going to kill him. He wouldn't make it easy – he would wipe the grin from her face, at the very least. He reached for her eyes – knocked back her hood – nearly clung to her in his desperation to make her suffer –
And then he felt her fist. But it was not a fist. It was deeper. It struck him in the center of his body – inside his body – and threw him into the air, making him spit blood. How he landed on his feet again, he did not know. But he saw her face, and she was not smiling, and he knew he had done something right. Strange power surged up from his gut – for a moment he thought that maybe the stimulant hadn't worn off after all – and he flew at her again, specks of blood flying from his open mouth. He howled when he felt the fist inside his ribs again and was sent back a second time – but she hadn't touched him – how was she –
Was this how the Jedi used the Force?
Dustil ran at her for what he knew was the last time. Again, he felt the strange cold strike of something that was not physical. But this time he was waiting for it – this time he pushed back against it – not with his body, but with something else. Sheer will, and desperation.
The woman took an unsteady step back.
She lowered her lightsaber and peered at him.
And then she raised her hand, and Dustil crumpled to his knees, suddenly filled with cold.
"Your name," she said.
He clenched his teeth and tried to get back to his feet. She moved her hand. He fell again, his head dipping toward the ground under a terrible weight. The cold grew sharper. He heard himself speak his own name as strange fingers pushed through his mind.
"Dustil… Onasi."
He collapsed, breathing raggedly, blood trickling over his tongue and tasting of metal and ash. He saw the burnt ground, the woman's boots, the glare of her lightsaber as she lowered it. And then the glare was gone in a hum of swift sound.
"How unexpected." The woman's voice was no longer amused. Nor was it angry. "Your useless little friends may go."
Dustil heard no response.
"Go," barked the woman, after a silent moment. "I will not give the chance again."
Dustil heard the shifting of his classmates' bodies through the ground against which his ear was pressed; the scratch of their feet on rubble, their labored breathing. He heard unsteady footsteps stumble away, then gain speed… then disappear.
He had done it. They were safe. For a little while.
"How unexpected…" the woman said again.
And then there was nothing. Dustil's mind went black.