o.O.o
The blast doors ahead are locked down, presumably controlled from the console nearby. Evren hopes it won't take more than his painfully basic grasp of slicing to open them. He taps a key, relaxes slightly when the interface isn't completely incomprehensible. Considerate of the Rakata, really. He's about to start inputting what he hopes are the correct shutdown commands when a voice emanates from the console.
"Stop. It's time we talked," it says. "I am the master of the Foundry. Once the Emperor's prisoner, now the man you've come to destroy."
Not even a little bit full of himself, is he? Evren raises an eyebrow. "Yes, the one would seem to follow the other, wouldn't it . . ."
"Three hundred years ago," the escaped Jedi continues, ignoring him, "I found your Empire in the stars and stood against the Emperor himself. I was betrayed. Defeated. I paid the price as the Emperor ravaged my mind over centuries, but I gave him nothing. I am proof that the dark side can be resisted."
Oh, fantastic, a monologuer. A smug monologuer. What fun.
"You gave him everything," Ravaszhi says. "There's no room to talk about light and dark when the moral scales are weighed in blood."
What? Weighed in—what has this Jedi done? And what, precisely, is this Darth Ikoral's interest in him and in the Foundry?
. . . Ravaszhi is hurting, whatever the specifics, and Evren doesn't know what to do or how to help or—
"You're in no position to weigh morality, Sith," the Jedi says, calm, patronizing, cold. And then it's back to the monologuing as he continues, "In my time, servants of the Sith invaded the Republic. I gave up everything to seek their masters, and I discovered Dromund Kaas. I have seen the Emperor's corruption—he and everything he's built must be destroyed, or the galaxy will suffer forever.
"You don't need to die with him. Surrender, and you can wait out this war as a comfortable prisoner."
"Right. I'll pass, thanks," Evren says acidly. "Out of curiosity, how do you hope to kill the Emperor?"
The Jedi's answer is immediate, if unhelpful. Why? Why tell them anything? Arrogance, or some ulterior motive? But speculating is a—a distraction from the response itself, because the implications are . . .
"These machines are extermination droids. My infinite army," the Jedi says. And then: "Farewell."
War droids. An ancient factory churning out extermination droids.
Everything he's built.
"He's targeting purebloods, Evren," Ravaszhi says. He joins Evren at the console, not quite meeting his eye, and picks up inputting the half-complete command codes. "I won't be taking him alive."
Evren looks at Ravaszhi and nods. The blast door unlocks, slides open. He ignores it. Genocide. Jedi everywhere on this station. They know. They know and they're still—this—he thought they were different, that they were better than—and how many times will it take before he learns that Jedi don't care. The ones who do are tasked with the impossible and called weak and evil for shattering. The ones who don't . . .
They wear the robes and preach compassion and they would drown the galaxy in the blood of billions if it meant destroying the Sith.
"Good," Evren says quietly. "Let's find this dead man."
Ravaszhi does make eye contact then, stares, hands still hovering over the console. He seems surprised, as if he'd been expecting an argument. And perhaps Evren should advocate for mercy, perhaps he should force himself to think of the Jedi Master as a victim just as much as Ravaszhi was, but—
All three of them have been victims, in one way or another. They've all suffered. Funnily enough, most of them haven't decided that the wholesale slaughter of an entire civilization is an appropriate coping mechanism.
Ravaszhi's smile is small and tentative and fleeting, but a smile nonetheless. "Thank you."
"What are friends for, if not tearing the throats out of genocidal droid enthusiasts?" Evren says brightly. He shouldn't be joking, no matter how much truth there is to it. But right now—hells.
He takes a step towards the blast doors, and the factory beyond. "Onward?"
o.O.o
Another console, another set of blast doors. The treads of Ravaszhi's boots squelch with blood as he walks through them.
"Assessment: you have been exceedingly sporting during our hunt."
Ravaszhi stops before the towering likenesses of the Foundry's Rakatan builders, and a holoprojection of an HK model assassination droid flickers to life in front of him.
"I am HK-47, the master's most faithful ally. Once a mere assassin droid, it is now my burden and my joy to command the Foundry's mechanical armies."
HK . . . postures. He sounds so proud.
Ravaszhi doesn't want to kill the droid, but he'll do what he has to. "Give me control of the extermination droids."
HK shakes his head, something in his posture suggesting an indulgent tut, tut. A secondary holo flickers to life beside him, basic schematics for two of the models Ravaszhi and Evren have been fighting. "The extermination droids are my master's crowning achievement," HK says. "They are equipped with bioscanners capable of detecting Sith genetic material."
There's a staticky noise as the schematics vanish, replaced by—
Two anatomical scans. Two close-ups. It's— it's them, their faces, their bones, their bodies rendered in blue and white, every marker of their ancestry outlined and highlighted and labeled, clinical and damning. Every spur and ridge of bone. Every chemical and metabolic quirk.
Ravaszhi's skin crawls with the memory of torture droids setting their clamps into his mangled limbs, laying his bone spurs open to view. Markers and labels swarm over every inch of his scan in humiliating detail. There's nothing human about him, and it's right there in stark relief for anyone to see. He was born to a Sith family, and to the extermination droids and the Foundry's master and the Jedi, that's all Ravaszhi will ever be.
He doesn't mean to look, he doesn't want to look, but Evren's—Evren's right up there beside him, and there are markers on him, too, meaning . . .
"Any organics with Sith ancestry will be slaughtered!" the HK droid says, almost gleeful. "This includes ninety-seven point eight percent of the Imperial population."
Everyone with Sith ancestry. Not just the purebloods, not just Ravaszhi and his family and the rest of their race (including the odd Republic citizen, innocent and alone in a sea of the right kind of aliens), it's—
It's all of them. Everyone. Slaves and Sith and civilians alike, half the galaxy, beyond billions of people, younglings—
Evren.
If the droids try to get to Evren, they'll be doing it over Ravaszhi's cold, dead body. Ravaszhi cracks his blade, thrumming with the same cold rage. "Come out from hiding and I'll give you a Sith."
"Commentary: As much as I'm looking forward to butchering our enemies planet-by-planet, I have missed the personal touch," the HK unit says conversationally, kneeling down closer to their level.
Evren ignites his lightsabers, as the droid stands again. "Your bones will make excellent trophies to commemorate my return to assassination," HK says.
The holo vanishes and machinery begins to groan and grind to life up ahead.
Next to Ravaszhi, Evren bares his teeth. "Would you mind terribly if there's not much left to salvage of this thing by the time we're done? Though I doubt your project would benefit from bits of something this obsolete."
Ravaszhi keeps his eyes locked on the churning column of Rakatan machinery at the center of the room, but he's watching the ranks of dormant war droids out of his peripheral vision. There are hundreds, and all programmed to target and exterminate anything with so much as a drop of Sith blood.
And all this time, he'd thought Evren was human.
"I won't lose any sleep over this thing's wasted chassis." Ravaszhi's voice is shaking, pain and fury and fear—he'd thought Evren was human—and he has never felt like such a fraud as he coils the dark emotion tight. He half-crouches, tensed and ready to throw himself at the HK the moment it shows itself.
Then the metal construct screams and whines into the gloom above and he's flying, blood-bright lightsaber poised for a downward thrust between neck and shoulder. It leaves him wide open from hip to neck for the spare seconds he's exposed.
Fire boils out of HK's wrist and Ravaszhi screams, pent-up rage shredding his vocal cords in a kinetic shield that barely saves him in time. He falls and rolls and comes up singed, blade snapped around at the last second.
A broad streak flickers down HK's body shield like a scar.
Ravaszhi rises with a grin that's mostly snarl, smoke coiling off his robes, and motions the droid forward with a two-fingered taunt.
He deflects HK's answering blast of fire, just as Evren melts into focus behind them and wrenches at the droid's interior mechanisms with the Force. HK emits a yowl, lurching around to re-aim for Evren.
Who dives away, laughing. "Some targeting protocols!"
"Retraction: You're not entirely unskilled after all. Activating assassination protocols level two."
Almost complimentary, Ravaszhi thinks, pressing forward after the weak part of the shield he now knows that's there. It's near enough to the droid's mechanical vertebrae that if he can get in that close—
"Extermination units, converge!"
Pale arcs of electricity slam into the hollow towers at the four corners of their little battleground in an eruption of light and noise, hard enough to rock Ravaszhi on his feet. The HK winks out of Ravaszhi's vision to the whine of four sets of blaster-canons priming. Exterminator-war droids, four of them, one at each corner of the raised area surrounding the power core.
Ravaszhi throws his lightsaber at one of them to draw its attention and charges another, throwing out his hand to call back his blade.
He needn't have bothered. He can feel a warning thrum as the other two droid's targeting systems lock onto him, whatever sorting algorithms of genetic purity they use painting him as the higher value target.
Evren sprints across the platform and slams into one of the droids' sides, lightsabers leaving deep glowing furrows in its armor plates as he spins. He turns, turns, throws, and his offhand blade buzzes across the intervening space to gouge through the last droid's chassis. He calls it back as the droid veers towards him rather than Ravaszhi.
Ravaszhi deflects his droids' fire into the machinery at the platform's edge, bringing down a hail of sparks. The air turns scorched with smoke and fried wiring, and every deflected blast draws a deep, ringing groan out of the Foundry's heart. The Force screams around him, livid and fractured throughout the machines.
Evren is a bright, bright blur in Ravaszhi's peripheral vision, hurtling and twisting between the two droids he's engaged almost too fast to follow. He jumps, flips back midair, lands behind the first droid—and the second's stream of laserfire screams through the space he just vacated, hammering into its comrade. The droid doesn't stop shooting even as the damaged one keens and staggers. The first droid goes down and Evren blasts the broken machine forward. It hits the other droid, knocks its aim off.
Evren takes a flying leap and brings his sabers down and around and through the droid's midsection, slicing off arm cannons as the rest of it falls to pieces.
The last of the replicating machines goes up in smoke, and Ravaszhi finds himself pinned between his two war droids. He's forced to give ground under the weight of the fire, moving one grudging step at a time to buy himself the space to move.
Something pulls at his senses, a half-warning from somewhere between his gut and the base of his skull, and Ravaszhi ducks to the side. A spray of blaster fire goes over his head.
"Mockery: I thought you were going to show me a Sith, meatbag!"
The HK is back.
Ravaszhi's dodging fire from three sides now. He throws himself out of the way of another salvo, clenching his hand into a fist until his nails bite skin for the pain and the focus. And then he laughs, low and hoarse and unhinged. He has Sith for them alright.
Ravaszhi drives his nails into his palm until blood streams down his fingers and then lunges, left hand out for focus, and seizes HK's weapon with the Force. There's not enough power behind it to wrench the weapon away, just enough to keep the droid from pulling back the trigger as Ravaszhi's bloodied right hand goes straight for HK's visual receptors, smearing its face with his black, Sith blood.
The extermination droids whip around like war hounds, re-target and lock on HK in the blink of an eye while Ravaszhi is still right on top of them. The war droids open fire, too late for anything but insidious calm. Yes, Ravaszhi thinks, this, please this—
Evren slams into his side and they hit the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, skidding across the platform and out of the way just as HK's shields overload in burst of blue and gold sparks. He takes the brunt of the fall and rolls free, is already moving again, is standing and hurtling both sabers into one of the droid's exposed back before Ravaszhi has wholly processed the fact that he's still alive.
The droid goes down in a heavy, metallic screech, a plume of smoke rising from its wrecked chassis.
The last droid standing is listing to the side, half taken apart by the HK's last salvo, trying to retarget. Ravaszhi rises on shaking legs, calls his lightsaber and stalks towards it. One smooth motion has its head clanking to the floor.
Ravaszhi powers down his blade. "We should do this more often," he croaks. His voice feels like it's been dragged through Belsavis' tombs by the heels.
Evren's lightsabers snap to his hands and die with a soft, single hiss. "Are you all right?" he asks. He sounds shaken. "Your hand . . ."
"It's not bad." Ravaszhi angles his body between Evren and his hand reflexively, aware of how his black, Massassi blood must look. "I'm just winded. And you? Are you . . .?" He lets it trail away, looking Evren over and seeing no obvious injuries.
"Never better." Evren cracks a small smile. "I've kolto if you need it, if only to stop the bleeding . . . And, er, sorry about the fall."
Apologizing, when the fall literally saved Ravaszhi's life. Ravaszhi tries to laugh, but it comes out harsh and strained. "I should be apologizing to you for the fall; you broke mine."
Evren pulls a medpack from his belt, shaking his head. "Falling every which way is hardly the worst outcome, all things considered." His tone is light, and he takes a step closer, holding out a hand. "May I . . .? It can be difficult to bandage wounds like that one-handed."
His words are punctuated by the patter of blood falling to the floor. Ravaszhi looks at his hand. He's sliced himself deep enough that it won't heal on its own, not anytime soon anyway, and the last thing he needs is for his lightsaber to slip out of his grip during a fight. Still, he doesn't want to spook Evren. His nails, when they grew back, came in long and dark and sharp. They're claws, really. Taken with his four-fingered hands, the result is . . . generally disturbing.
"Thank you," Ravaszhi says tentatively. He comes forward and holds out his hand, slowly. "It's not as bad as it looks."
Evren takes his hand without comment, and begins to clean the blood away.
Ravaszhi's hand looks monstrous between Evren's, but there's not a shred of horror on his face, and Ravaszhi loves him for it.
Evren's movements are careful and gentle as he applies disinfectant, and then kolto, before wrapping Ravaszhi's palm with a bandage. "Please don't make a habit of that," he says softly. "Not that it wasn't an ingenious tactic, but . . ."
"I won't." Ravaszhi takes his hand back, and resists the temptation to tuck them both away against his sides. He flexes his newly bandaged fingers instead, trying for a reassuring smile. "I don't plan to leave enough of them operational to pull that more than once."
If Evren sees through to his discomfort, he mercifully doesn't call Ravaszhi on it. "I like this plan much better," he says. "Ready when you are."
Ravaszhi casts a look at the broken HK.
Everything but the head is practically slagged. He shakes his head. "No accounting for taste," he mutters. Of all the things to inherit . . . but he walks over and pokes at the chassis with his boot anyway, then picks up the head and peers at the circuitry inside, looking for anything useful. "Do you mind if I salvage this?"
"By all means." Evren coughs. "What are you building, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I'm rebuilding m—my uh, my mother's assassination droid." Ravaszhi flinches at himself. How long a Sith and he still can't apply personal possessives without a crutch? He's going to have to get used to the idea of possessions sooner or later.
He covers with humor, giving Evren an exaggeratedly glum look. "You think the whole line has the same sense of humor?"
Evren eyes the severed head in his hands dubiously. "Perhaps it's less irritating when it's not directed at you?"
Ravaszhi huffs a laugh in agreement, squinting one eye at what looks like the part he's missing to gauge sensitivity, before carefully sliding it out with the Force. "Personally, I think she kept it around on purpose to annoy her Jedi friends. Shall we?"
As they make their way out of the chamber, Evren asks, "You . . . found your family, then?"
A lopsided smile tugs at Ravaszhi's mouth. Technically they'd found him, and they never would've been able to if he hadn't been bumbling around Sith space as a young Knight, all that time ago. "Would you believe they've been stalking me since . . . just before I met you, actually?"
"Really? That's . . . impressive."
Something in Evren's tone makes Ravaszhi turns his head. The questions are there, lurking behind Evren's eyes— were they the ones who cut your hands open and took your fingers out, the ones who did all this—
But he doesn't ask, and Ravaszhi loves him even more. He doesn't want to explain to Evren that he'd asked for this.
"Are they treating you well?" Evren asks after another beat.
Too well. Better than he deserves. It's not funny but—but the Dzwoyat-chul family would storm an entire planet (again) if one of their own was at risk, and Ravaszhi can't help but laugh. It's raw at first, and then it's wet, and Ravaszhi shakes his head again, blinking back tears. "Yes, Evren. They're treating me well." When his voice is steady, he says, "You're welcome to visit me at the estate on Ashas Ree."
"Thank you," Evren says. "I might take you up on that sometime." He smiles, and after a moment coughs and adds: "I mean it— just— thank you."
"Of course." Ravaszhi's heart sinks a little when Evren doesn't accept, but it's probably for the best. He's a danger to others as well, after all. And then, partly to change the subject, partly because it's only polite after Evren's inquiry into his own family welfare: "Are you and your apprentice well?"
Evren laughs. "She's a Lord now, finally. Reporting to one of the very few reformist Dark Councilors and having the time of her life."
Reformist Dark Councilors sound . . . too good to be real. Ravaszhi is about to ask, when Evren adds, quietly: "I miss her."
Ravaszhi knows that pain, only too well. He wishes there were something he could say, but he still aches when he thinks of the friends he lost, and there are no words that have ever helped him. Evren is horribly brave, to let her go willingly. "She must be very proud of you."
"One can only hope." Evren sighs. "All I know is that I could not be more proud of her."
And that's something else Ravaszhi knows— the warmth of a master's pride— ironically, for the first time in his life. He rubs the pad of his thumb between his first and second finger, over the fat, pale scar where his middle finger used to be. It had been worth it. It had. Besides, what had he been saving all those fingers for, anyway? He's never going to teach a Jedi youngling how to place their hands on their first training saber's hilt, and he's never going to help a Padawan of his own add beads to their braid.
His master is pleased with him, and that's all that matters.
Ravaszhi lightens his tone, taking his cue from Evren's tendency to dispel weight with humor. "Who knows," he says, "you may see yourself a grandmaster one of these days, if she trains an apprentice of her own."
Evren gives an exaggerated shudder. "Please don't say that, I'm not ready to even think of that, gods . . ."
o.O.o
tbc