A word on Knights of the Old Republic: Highlights - I had been entertaining the idea of doing a full KOTOR 1 fic, but ultimately decided that it was simply too much of a bother. Therefore: I bring you the Knights of the Old Republic highlights. Rather than do my take on the entire game, I'm just writing out some of the scenes that I liked the best, and doing them in my own way. As you will notice I do not follow the game dialogue, and I deviate from the story on some counts. I only do that when I figure that it makes more sense to do it my way, or when I simply like it better my way.

Star Wars and all information pertaining to it is the property of Lucasarts Ltd. Knights of the Old Republic is the joint property of BioWare Co. and of Obsidian Entertainment. The short story both preceding and following this disclaimer is an unauthorized piece, spawned from my own imagination. As such, the plot and any original characters are the property of the author. Any money made from this story is against the consent of the author, who is not receiving one thin dime.

Chapter 1

The man known as Maric Dargic surveyed his new quarters with lacking enthusiasm. By what logic had he traded a couple of decades on Kessel for military service? Damn good logic, in retrospect. Even the cramped quarters in the Endar Spire's residential wing were better than digging for spice in the dark. And he hadn't even really done anything wrong. So maybe he did the Corellian run with a few hundred kilos of spice and CorSec on his tail, but so what? If the Republic were so concerned with stopping smuggling they should go straight to Nar Shadaa, Nal Hutta, or Sleheyron. With a sigh, Maric deposited his olive green duffel next to the bunk he claimed as his. He lay down and pulled out a dirty magazine. All humans, he didn't see the appeal in naked Twi'leks.

Some time later, as he was admiring a slim brunette that drew him for some unknown reason, a loud cough drew his attention. "This had better be important." Maric grumbled, glancing over his mag. He was greeted by a soldier in an immaculate uniform, with a large chin cleft and short curly blond hair. "Who in the Sam hill are you?" Maric asked the interloper, his hand straying to the modified blaster on his hip. Maric had several bounties on his head, so it paid to be careful. At least he didn't have anything to draw Calo Nord's attention, something he thanked his lucky stars for every day.

The soldier saluted. "Private Trask Ulgo, ensign with the Republic fleet stationed on the Endar Spire." Trask declared. Maric snorted. A sycophant if ever there was one.

"Maric Dargic, captain of the freighter Liberty, current record holder on the Kessel Run, and serving five to ten for smuggling." The smuggler introduced proudly.

Private Ulgo was more than a little taken aback by his roommate's colourful history. "You're a smuggler?" he asked incredulously.

Maric nodded. "Got picked up in Coronet by the Corellian Security Force with a little over the 'recommended' volume of andris for a freighter to be carrying. CorSec busted me, offered me five to ten in the Navy or twenty in Kessel, so here I am. Drink?" he offered, reaching into his bag.

Trask was flabbergasted. "How come you aren't in uniform?"

"Didn't get one."

"You should be on duty!"

"Not 'til we pull out."

"How did you get that magazine?"

"Told 'em I was simple and it was a picture book. Look, d'you want this drink or not?" Maric had already begun to drink from a bottle he had pulled from his bag, and was dangling another enticingly.

Trask was speechless. "Personnel are not allowed to consume beverage of an intoxicating nature." He quoted primly after a stretch of silence.

Maric smirked. "C'mon, it's real Alderaanian whiskey." He spoke with the air of one instructing a child in the ways of the world.

Trask did his best to be strong, probably reciting the pledge they made all new recruits memorize, but finally gave in. "To new friends, and fighting for the Republic." He toasted, clinking the neck of his bottle against Maric's.

"I'll drink to that." The smuggler returned. And they did. A lot.

---

In less than a week on board the Endar Spire Private Ulgo and Captain Dargic had gained quite a reputation. Maric had broken Trask of his obsequious ways, and one or both of them was almost always under investigation for any number of practical jokes.

Two weeks after the Spire had left Coruscant it had been summoned to Dantooine, where it had been essentially taken over by Jedi. Maric got a good look at their leader, Bastila Shan, and was immediately impressed. What a body! Of course there was no chance that a Jedi would take to a guy like him, but he could dream right?

Not even three days after picking up the Jedi, Maric was jerked from his sleep by the intruder alarm and his roommate practically breaking down the door. "What the Hell is going on?" he shouted, struggling to be heard over the blaring alarm. Trask was less successful, and made several failed attempts at communication before Maric simply vaporized the klaxon with his pistol.

"We've been boarded by Sith, the ship can't hold out much more. Come on, we need to get to the escape pods!" Maric was impressed that his friend could fit that entire sentence in one breath, but he complied. Of course he took an extra coupe of seconds to pull on his reinforced flight suit and grab his bag.

"Alright, let's get out of here." Maric encouraged, a good ten minutes later. The Sith had evolved to firing turbolaser batteries, which made walking an interesting practice. The Spire was in lockdown, which meant that the door out of the dormitory section was locked, but Maric had smuggled a few computer spikes past the inspection. Unfortunately the open door met them face-to-face with some armoured Sith troopers.

"For the Republic!" Trask cried, firing his blaster pistol wildly. He actually managed to take one of them out, eventually, and Maric caught the other straight between the eyes, or where he imagined the eyes would be in those damned mirrored visors. A quick frisk of the corpses uncovered a long sword, which Maric kept, and a handful of grenades, which were divided about evenly. Maric followed Trask through the maze of corridors, having never bothered to memorize them, taking out small pockets of soldiers on the way. Finally Trask back-pedalled quickly from behind a corner. Maric shrugged his shoulders deliberately. "A whole group of Sith." Trask mouthed. "Seven or eight of them."

Maric thought hard for a moment, then remembered the grenades he had taken off the first victims. He relayed his plan through a series of hand signals, then they put it into practice. Maric leapt out from behind the corner, rolling a stun grenade from each hand across the floor. The Trask came out, wielding both his and Maric's blasters, and shot down as many as he could before the grenade effects wore off. One actually survived to take a shot at the unarmed Maric, which hit him in the side of the chest, before he was taken down. A quick hit from a medpack and he was well enough to travel.

They didn't have to go far before earning a break however as the next door revealed two Jedi, one in black robes with a red lightsaber and one in brown with a blue, locked in combat. Trask wisely suggested they stay out of it, to which Maric was only too happy to comply. Shortly after defeating the Dark Jedi, a turbolaser blast on the hull caught the Jedi in a lethal explosion. Trask grabbed the remains of the two lightsabers and ran for the next door. Lo and behold, the path splits. Behind door number one, a very menacing looking Dark Jedi. Behind door number two, who knows? Shouting something about 'holding him off,' Trask dropped his pack and rushed towards the Dark Jedi, vibroblade held high. Maric did not need to see through the sealed door to know that his friend had just been gutted.

Through door number two into the Starboard of the immense capital ship, also known as the home stretch. A short corridor opened into the maintenance module, where two Sith troopers fell before Maric's deadly combination of heavy blaster and long sword. A nearby console was rerouted to show the camera feeds, revealing a large number of troopers between him and the escape pods. Fortunately he had enough computer spikes stashed away to 'accidentally' overload the conduit in the room, doubling his odds. He threw the door open, firing several shots blind into the rising steam from the char-grilled Sith corpses. Some scattered cries of agony informed him that he had been on target. He crept silently through the mist, and when it dissipated he found himself behind a Sith Elite. Fortunately the conduit had weakened the Elite's powerful armour, so it only took one hard stab with the long sword to deliver a mortal wound. Maric opened the door to the escape pod hatch, head swimming from his exertion, and came face-to-face with Commander Carth Onasi.

The Commander looked nearly as surprised to see the smuggler, as the smuggler was to see him. "So you're the one who Ulgo was bringing in? What happened to him anyway?" Maric didn't answer, but Carth understood. "Never mind. There's only one escape pod left, so let's get going." Maric filed dutifully into the cramped pod, which disengaged from the Endar Spire moments before the Republic Capital Ship exploded.

---

(anger)
The Dark Lord Revan stood on the bridge of his Interdictor-class flagship. One gloved hand was raised, clenched in a fist. Power radiated from his emotionless armour, a soldier dropped dead behind him. The letter of condolence sent later to the man's family would read cause of death as asphyxiation. The last cries of another being, a dark Jedi, filled the room. The young Jedi Padawan, what was her name? Bastila, yes that was it, had killed him. Revan made a mental note to increase the training. Slowly he turned to face the trio of Jedi who had so insolently invaded his vessel.

The young one, Bastila, she was head of the strike team? Preposterous. Yet there she was. "You cannot win, Revan." Her voice was pleasing to Revan's ears, and he felt faint stirrings he had thought long ago vanquished. If only they had met under more fortuitous circumstances.

(fear)
Revan brought his scarlet lightsaber blade up. If he were to face his death this day, he would not go down without a fight. The Jedi were young, comparatively; they would be slain easily enough. But maybe the Padawan Bastila could be turned.

(pain)
But Revan's choice was lost to the ages. Moments too late, his Force sense alerted him that Leviathan had fired on his bridge. He could easily save himself of course, but he wasn't that far down the dark path. He focused all his energy into a barrier between him and his anchor, Padawan Bastila. Explosions shook his body, even through his armour, and Revan faced his destiny on his terms.

---

Maric's cool blue eyes opened slowly. Everything was fuzzy, but he could see a bright orange blur coming slowly into focus. With agonizing slothfulness the greyness that Maric found himself in sharpened into a dreary, generic one-room apartment. The orange blue sharpened into Commander Carth Onasi, CO of the Endar Spire. Maric vaguely remembered being placed under review for dying the commander's uniform pink. Shit.

"Hey, are you okay? Can you hear me?" the commander's voice was steadily increasing, as though he thought Maric had gone deaf. The simple truth was that Maric's bodily functions hadn't quite extended into speaking yet. Of course the pounding headache that was racking him didn't help either. "C'mon, say something." The elder man pleaded.

It took a conscious effort, but Maric managed to force his vocal chords into compliance. "K'uur." It was all he could say. Unfortunately the commander had never learned to speak Mando'a. Come to think of it, Maric himself wasn't sure where he had learned it.

At least Commander Onasi looked generally concerned for his officer's well being. "Thank the stars, do you know how lucky you are to be alive?" Maric didn't know, but he had a feeling that he was about to find out. "You had serious plasma burns on the right side of your chest." For the first time Maric noticed the bandages wrapped around his torso. "I did my best to heal them, but I'm no medic."

Maric struggled to pull himself into a sitting position on the bed he found himself on. "So where are we?" his voice had a metallic rasp to it. "And how long have I been out?" A quick catalogue of his body revealed a few new cuts, and some knots in his musculature that would be worked out later.

"We're on Taris, a xenophobic world under Sith control." Maric groaned, and the commander nodded sympathetically. "More specifically we're in an abandoned apartment in the 'human' district.

"The largest district, reserved for the wealthy?" Maric asked dryly.

The commander nodded. "Bingo. And to answer your other questions, it's been about a week since we escaped the Endar Spire." Maric rolled his shoulders and wiggled his toes. He would be just fine.

He clambered out of the bed and looked around for his clothes. Finding the brown pants he had personally armoured, he pulled them on. "So, what's the plan Commander?" He buckled his belt and looked around for his shirt.

Commander Onasi pointed out the garment on the back of a chair. "If we're going to be working together, then you'd better call me Carth." The commander explained. "But our first task is to find Bastila."

Maric though for a moment while he was buttoning up his shirt and pulling on the armoured vest he ware overtop. "Bastila? That's the Jedi who took over the Spire, right?"

Carth nodded. "She hopped in an escape pod as soon as the Sith interdictors pulled us out of hyperspace. Seemed to think that Malak was after her personally." He went silent for a long moment. "I did some scouting while you were out, and it turns out that two pods had been seen. One landed in the upper city, ours, and the other went further down than anyone up here wants to go."

"So we need to find one Jedi, who could be dead, in a planet that's covered by city, with nothing more to go on than that her pod went 'down there,' which is filled with anti-human sentients?" the smuggler summarized. Carth nodded. Maric popped a power cell into his pistol. "What are we waiting for?" he asked with a grin.

Ta-da. Some comparatively large changes to the main plot, but who really thinks that two people could share a room and never see each other?

K'uur is Mando'a for 'hush' or 'be quiet'

R&R, always appreciated