"I wouldn't suggest you try to move too quickly. This particular sedative can cause quite strong nausea, I'm told."
Carth opened his eyes painfully at the grating sound of the infuriatingly noble voice. He always thought that Sith would all have intrinsically evil-sounding voices--a deep rumble, a hissing rasp, or a machine-like drone. Saul Karath's voice was none of those. Ruefully, Carth decided such a view of the Sith was foolishly naive.
With a look around, he thought if this was a cell then it was the most accommodating he'd ever seen. Instead of bare, unadorned durasteel panels, the walls were covered in magnificent paintings and decorated with expensive drapery. The floor was covered in rich carpets and furnished with such luxurious furniture it would have satisfied the Queen of Naboo. Topping it all of was a glittering crystal chandelier that was in itself a work of art.
Instead of being surrounded by grim-faced Sith torturers, it was just him and Saul sitting across from one another on kingly chairs.
"Odd place for an interrogation, don't you think, Saul?" Carth asked sardonically. His wrists weren't even bound, though his head was pounding something awful and he did indeed feel like hurling his last two meals. Soiling Saul's fineries would almost be worth it.
Saul Karath's unremarkable, but nevertheless imposing, face took on an expression of patience. "I'm quite disappointed in you, Carth. It's been years since we saw each other last and you assume the first thing on my mind would be how I might torture you?" He shook his head of graying hair sadly. "We're old friends, Carth. Can we not at least talk as civilized gentlemen?"
Carth's bewilderment at his odd predicament had evaporated. He glared at Saul. "You lost that right a long time ago, Saul. No civilized man would cowardly betray his friends and family and bomb a civilian target without warning or provocation."
"Telos was a necessary sacrifice. Darth Malak would not accept that I had truly given up on the Republic until I proved my loyalty."
"Necessary? Did you ever even bother to check how many millions of innocent people you killed just so the Sith would let you into their little elite circle? You destroyed an entire generation of Telosians!"
Carth remembered seeing the casualty lists, their appalling lengths kept growing even after he was too sickened to pay attention anymore. He remembered sifting through piles of carbonized human remains in the ashes of decimated dwellings, digging through heaps of dismembered limbs and ravaged corpses, hoping against hope to find Morgana and Dustil alive, only to have that hope crushed before his eyes. They never even found Dustil's body.
Unable to stand the sight of Saul anymore, Carth leaped from his seat and lunged for him. Unfortunately, he severely overestimated his strength, and underestimated how nauseous he still was. Halfway across the glass sitting table that stood between them, Carth collapsed heavily when Saul's quick fist slugged him in the face. The glass shattered underneath him as he fell to the floor vomiting.
"I treat you with courtesy and you insult me. I try to put you at ease and you insist on dredging up the past. Who is the unreasonable one?"
Bleeding from the broken glass, his jacket soaked in bile, Carth tried to ignore Saul's condescending words.
"I am trying to extend to you a personal favor, Carth. Not many are offered a chance such as this. Were I one of the other admirals, you would most likely be dead by now, as they would be far more interested in your Jedi companions. You've made quite a nuisance of yourself to the Sith, Darth Malak himself has ordered your death."
"What are you getting at, Saul?" Carth asked in irritation, managing to haul himself out of the wreckage of the glass table. Wearily, he rest his back against the foot of his chair.
"Join the Sith, Carth. It is your only hope."
"Never!" Carth spat in response. "I"ll never join you cowards and murderers!"
"Patience, think. This is your life we're talking about. Do you really want to throw away your life just for a decadent government that can't even protect its own? On a whim of some hypocritical Order who demand your obedience without telling you why you are to risk your life? What right have they to ask this of you? After all, your life doesn't belong to the Republic or the Jedi--it belongs to you."
"I'd rather die than become like you."
Patiently, Saul continued to press. "I am making you the same offer as Malak made me. Join the Sith and your life, and the lives of those you care about, will be spared."
"You killed everything I know when you bombed Telos, Saul. You killed men, women, children, babies--everyone. My family died in that attack, because of you!"
"Your son survived the bombing, Carth. He lives still."
The claim caught Carth's attention. In sudden desperation, he scanned Saul's eyes, trying to find deception somewhere in them. Hopelessly, he realized that if he'd been taken in with Saul's duplicity before, there was no way he could tell whether or not he was telling the truth now.
"You're lying. I don't believe you." His denial sounded hollow even to him. Saul's eyes hardened. "Save your breath, Saul. I'll never join the Sith."
"Then it seems you are nothing more than another prisoner, now," Saul sighed. "Very well, then." He snapped his fingers and suddenly six Sith soldiers entered the lavish room, hauled him upright and snapped cuffs and shackles on him.
"I will kill you, Saul," Carth promised as they started to drag him away.
"You were not the only one with a family, Carth. Nor was Telos the only innocent world in Malak's path." For a moment, Carth thought he could see a twinge of regret in Saul's eyes, but it was quickly replaced by cold heartlessness. "Take him to the torture chambers with the others. Darth Malak will appreciate whatever information we can get from them before he arrives."
There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.
Repeating the decrees of the Jedi Code in her mind was comforting to Juhani even as she recognized the ultimate futility of it. Peace and serenity hadn't helped her in the tomb of Tulak Hord; depriving herself of anger, denying her own terror, had very nearly cost her her life. Upholding peace and serenity over all else, even when danger was at the doorstep, was tantamount to freely offering one's life to any brute who saw fit to take it. It was an obscene and senseless suicide of self.
But still, as it had for years and years, hearing the words repeat in her mind calmed her, nonetheless.
Juhani had never liked small spaces, not since the countless times on Taris she'd spent hiding in old dumpsters, trash cans, packing crates, or anywhere she could go to escape the swoop gangs making their regulars rounds and terrorizing anyone in their path. Now, whenever she could feel her own warm breath on her face, she would break out in nervous shivers. The first time Master Quatra had covered her face for lightsabre training, she'd gone into a startled panic.
There could be no such breakdown this time. She would live or die by her secrecy.
The idealistic words of the Jedi Code helped keep her from another panic attack, wedged as she was inside an air duct underneath the port-side dormitory while the Sith scoured the ship above her. They hadn't found her, just as she promised Kono. That alone, that one small victory against the Sith, gave her a giddy flash of joy.
She waited hours inside the cramped duct, her arms and legs contorted into agonizing positions so she could fit, while the Sith laboriously searched every inch of the ship and made a horrendous noise overturning every box and container of any sort, moving around equipment she couldn't even name to search dusty corners, and with every step pounding on the floor with their boots. When finally the incessant racket ended she'd resisted the nearly overwhelming impulse to crawl her way out of the air duct and stretch her limbs, instead waiting another hour to make certain beyond reasonable doubt that they were indeed gone.
It had been plenty long.
At long last, Juhani squeezed herself around the single bend in the shaft and clawed open the loose vent cover below one of the bunks. She laid herself gratefully out on the floor and indulged in a brief moment to stretch arms and legs that trembled with unbelievable cramps. The sensation of blood returning to starved veins and muscles tense as bowstrings relaxing was unbelievable, certainly one of the better things she'd felt in her whole life. She kept her sigh of sweet relaxation low for fear of making too much noise.
As quietly as she could Juhani stood and reached to her belt to activate the stealth field generator.
It wasn't there. With a start she remembered sticking it and her other things such as her blue lightsabre to the side of the duct at about her shoulder-level so they wouldn't dig into her hip bones.
She took a quick look back in the duct and retrieved her things, clipping the belt confidently over the red sash at her waist. She would have liked to click on her lightsabre just for a moment, to be sure it was still functioning properly, but the need not to make noise overrode her desire for immediate fulfillment. Besides value in helping to calm one's self in certain stressful situations, Juhani recognized wisdom in the Jedi Code for its encouragement of rational thought over blind passions.
With a flick of her finger, Juhani activated the stealth generator and its invisible field washed over her, concealing her lithe frame behind an invisible mirage.
It was time for her to rescue Kono.
Kono's mind was jolted out of the grasp of sweet oblivion by the sudden submersion of his head in a trough of icy water. Virtually on autopilot, he started struggling mightily against his captors who held his face under the frigid liquid. This was a mistake. Air left his lungs in a single, desperate rush and the freezing water gushed into his throat and nasal passages.
It was a pain quite unlike anything he'd ever felt before. The water had to be just a few degrees above the freezing point, and its sudden introduction into his system made his head and chest feel as if they were simultaneously expanding and contracting. His clinical detachment from his own pain lasted only a few milliseconds before it hit his brain with the force of asteroids colliding. He felt like he was being stabbed by a thousand icy spears.
The torture lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like hours before he was hauled from the tank, choking on the freezing water as he tried to scream with sodden lungs. It was several minutes of pitiful hacking, coughing, and taking desperate gasps of air between moans of agony before Kono had regained control of himself.
He shivered as he silently took stock of his situation.
The ugly wound on the back of his head stung and throbbed madly, still inflicting on him a headache like only a concussion could give, in addition to the one the ultrasonic buzzing of the neural inhibitor clamped around his head was giving him. Roughly supported by his weak knees, he was hanging naked from a rack by manacled wrists, his head not more than six inches from the waiting water--water, he noted, that was tinted red by the blood that was dripping afresh from the lesion on his skull. Sith soldiers stood to either side of him, and judging by their casual body language they clearly did not considering him a threat--a view that Kono agreed with. His concussion made drawing on the Force nearly impossible and he didn't as yet possess the physical strength required to break steel chains with his bare hands.
Just across the oppressively-shadowed room, strung up on chains of her own to another rack, Bastila stood naked in her bonds, holding herself with impossible dignity. Her disheveled and tangled hair fell in twisted strands over a bruised face that bled rich red from a laceration near her left eye. Somehow she managed to retain her Jedi's grace, even despite her deplorable situation.
Kono attempted to gain purchase on the smooth steel floor with a foot, only to have the back of his knee kicked in from behind. The joint was twisted cruelly and he felt bone crack from the trauma. Everything from his knee down felt like it was being incinerated; it took his ragged breath from him as he gritted his teeth and choked on the pain, an agonized hiss the closest he could come to a scream.
While he tried to catch his breath, Kono felt his head again plunged under the water by the unseen Sith torturer. Even though he knew better than to try to jerk free, he involuntarily flinched from the icy liquid, forcing water up his nose. From somewhere above him, he heard a voice telling the torturer to stop and he was pulled back once more. The chains jerked him suddenly upwards so he was nearly upright, but with his injured leg standing was not an option.
Supported by only his bleeding wrists and trying to cough up a razor of ice from his larynx, Kono looked up into the face of someone familiar.
Saul Karath's aged features were, if anything, even more imposing when seen in person than displayed on the galactic holovids. The Butcher of Telos had all the marks of every great military man who ever served in the Republic. The man had for his entire career made a reputation for displaying feats of sheer brilliance and often utter genius in the war room and on the battle bridge alike. The Sith had used his experience and skills well over the war years.
"Well, isn't this quite the unique situation," Karath remarked.
Kono forced a grimace. "And it's nice to meet you too." His face contorted in sudden agony as the torturer twisted his leg, grinding the cracked bones in his knee joint against each other. In his body's futile but automatic attempt to protect his wounded limb, he strained his wrists madly against the iron shackles, scraping the flesh raw.
"Now, now," Karath clucked, "defiance will get you nowhere. You should know that."
Kono glared back as best he could at Karath's smugly satisfied face. Another twist of his afflicted knee wrung tears of pain from Kono's furious eyes.
"This need not happen this way, you know," the Admiral said. "I'm sure if you put aside this petty loyalty to the Jedi and swear fidelity to the Sith, Malak might be persuaded to spare your lives. You can understand how greatly interested he is in you."
At the moment, Kono hurt too much to squeeze words from his throat. But he supposed it mattered little, as he had nothing whatsoever to say to the likes of Saul Karath.
Bastila did, however. "We will never serve Malak or the Dark Side. The Sith will be defeated, Admiral Karath, I promise you."
Karath chuckled, almost amused. "You are hardly in any position to make such claims, Bastila. Besides, the lure of the Dark Side is hard to resist, I'm told. In any case, Lord Malak will be arriving shortly, and I must admit, he is much, much better at this than I.
"But nevertheless, I intend to make clear to you just how little of a choice you have; you either tell me what I want to know, or this will be only the faintest inkling of the suffering and horror that awaits you at the hands of Dark Lord Malak."
An instant after Kono saw Karath nod to the Sith standing behind him he felt a rod, burning white-hot, press suddenly into the flesh of his back between the shoulder blades.
Pain - hot, stinging, throbbing - became the single focus of his whole consciousness. He could feel nothing but the burning instrument on his skin, could see nothing but his mental image of the glowing point scorching a blistering imprint in his living tissue, could smell nothing but the fetid smoke of burnt flesh. Though he couldn't hear over the sound of his own scream or concentrate beyond his own pain, he knew the exact same was being done to Bastila.
The pain did not relent even when the Sith torturer took away the burning brand. The agony lingered sickeningly fresh, radiating from the dead spot of charred flesh like an invasive poison spreading in the body even after the source was cut off. Kono was long out of breath when the torturer dragged his head back, purposely grasping him by the part of his scalp that was the swollen evidence of his fractured skull.
The white-hot tip of the torture device hovered inches from his cheek as he stared up into Saul Karath's face again. "Let's start with something simple, shall we?" the Admiral suggested in an amiable voice. "Where was the academy you were trained? On what planet did the Jedi carry out your indoctrination?"
His lungs burned for air spent on helpless screams of pain, and Kono could not have answered even had he any intention of complying.
"We will never give in to the Sith, Admiral Karath, no matter what you do to us," Bastila gasped in a voice shattered by agony.
"I'll get to you soon enough, Bastila. I was talking to your companion. I ask again, at which Jedi academy were you trained?"
A glare was all the answer Kono was going to give him.
There was another cruelly impersonal nod of Karath's head. Kono shut his eyes and clenched his teeth in preparation for what he knew was to come. It wasn't as he expected.
"Break his fingers."
Mission had to give the Sith soldiers credit for being thorough. After subduing her and the rest of the crew, disarmed them of obvious weaponry and all armor of any kind, they'd then done a systematic strip-search of every member of the crew. Had they been in a different situation, Mission would have giggled and gawked like a besotted, fanatical worshiper when she'd seen Carth with his clothes off. The Sith confiscated everything they thought could even possibly be considered able to conceal something of conceivable aid in escaping a confinement cell.
But she had to take away points for their foolish belief that shackles, manacles, yards of chain, and a dozen guards would be enough to keep an enraged Wookiee under control. Big Z had not been happy at all being forced to watch as they took every stitch of clothing away from her, including her headdress. The Sith were so surprised by his sudden attack that they'd needed to call reinforcements to get him subdued.
They were thorough, but not thorough enough. After he'd taken off her clothes, the Sith searching her hadn't done anything more than squeeze her chest perfunctorily and fondle a lek in boredom. No, Mission remembered, he'd been quick to sidle over to the unconscious but equally naked Bastila. For some reason that irritated her; like they thought she wasn't as attractive as the Princess Jedi.
Mentally slapping herself, Mission decided it was a good thing not to be the main object of Sith lust. Although, if they had such a thing for naked ladies, she would have expected them to do a better job searching her... She shrugged. They weren't interested in her.
The price of their disinterest had been that fact that they'd blatantly missed the subcutaneous implant in her shoulder.
Back on Taris, she'd learned how to use them from the Hidden Beks. Spies all over the galaxy regularly used field-swappable subcutaneous implants to hide listening devices, tiny holochips, and minuscule tools, among other things. They were just a simple matter of slicing into an area of skin free of major veins or arteries so as to avoid severe tissue damage, pushing the razorblade-mounted implant deep into the wound, and closing it over with kolto pseudoflesh. With a couple deep, bloody scratches from her long fingernails, Mission ripped open the fresh wound she knew was there.
She winced a little, the mild regional anesthetic she'd applied to her shoulder having worn off. Thankfully it didn't bleed very much when she dug the small device out of her arm, but it did hurt plenty. The tiny, bloody chip she held her hands contained the most robust anti-security protocols she'd ever hacked, as well as a supremely useful razorblade to boot.
The chip was only one half of the combination that was going to get her out of the cell, however. And if the Sith had been dumb to miss her implant, they were really dumb to miss her other contraband. Mission supposed it all came down to them finding Bastila more attractive. She chuckled and thought to herself that Bastila would probably faint at the thought of doing what Mission had done to keep her stuff secret and hidden.
It was something Zaerdra had taught her, in a "woman to woman discussion" during one of those rare times when Gadon Thek wasn't around and needing protecting. She'd warned that because of the risk of internal injury and the fact that it hurt like the blazes, Mission should only use this particular technique in the most dire of circumstances. While waiting for the Hawk to be dragged into the Sith docking bay, Mission had decided that this probably qualified as one of those times.
As it turned out Zaerdra was right; it did hurt like the blazes. Mission grimaced and bit back a yelp of pain as she produced the slightly bloody, compact little hydrospanner from its 'hiding place.' She grinned stupidly--yes, sweet ol' Bassie would definitely faint if she ever found out.
Retrieving her cell-breaking kit turned out to be hardest part of busting out. It was easy to separate the wall panel close to the shield door with her razorblade and from there to slice through the rubber cladding protecting the electrical conduits. A few cuts and splices, and she had her impromptu security tunneler jacked into her cell's system. The datachip did its work in under fifteen seconds and the shield door deactivated.
She'd already observed the pacing guards for an hour or two. They were frightfully lax, only patrolling the cells every twenty minutes or so, giving her plenty of time to mosey about.
There was an empty cell across from hers. She deactivated the shield door, ducked out of the hallway, and waited for the next Sith guard to show up. When she saw him passing by, not so much as glancing to either side, she dove for him, the force of her impact sending him tumbling to the floor of her old cell. His blaster rifle clattered to the ground out of his reach as she landed on top of him.
The Sith's shiny silver armor looked pretty, but Mission knew it did a less than adequate job in protecting important things. She rammed her knee into his groin while he was still momentarily stunned. He wasn't even able to manage a scream, just a pitiful wheezing gasp. A solid kick to his head silenced him for sure.
She had to work quickly to get his armor off him and on herself. It was by no means a perfect, or even a comfortable, fit, but it was going to have to do. She couldn't go larking around the brig in the buff. The helmet was a lost cause, so she didn't bother trying to get in on, but the rest wasn't so bad. She was going to need better, but it was all she had at the moment. Although even underneath the black suit and silver armor, she still felt naked without her headdress.
Later, Mission chided herself. She had stuff to do first.
After she'd locked the unconscious Sith in the spare cell, Mission took off. Most of the occupants of the brig were too weary, too pained, too stoned, or too apathetic to give her more than a glance. Mostly they just saw the armor, not even noticing the fact that she was a good deal shorter and smaller than a regular Sith soldier, or that she wasn't wearing a helmet.
A few times she had to hide around corners or behind containers while real Sith passed by. But it wasn't as if she'd never had to hide from anyone before. It greatly helped that they weren't actively searching for her, but even had they been, she'd been in those situations too, so it wasn't like she didn't know what she was doing.
After a great deal of lurking, she found what she needed; a computer terminal guarded by a lone Sith. Stealthily she crept up behind him, at the same time trying to think of how she could take him out without him making any noise. Discovery now would be fatal. She figured she really had only one option, but the thought of it made her heart pound and stomach flutter because she didn't know if she could do it quickly enough.
But she had to do this. There was no way around it.
With a silent wish for luck, she sprang at the unsuspecting Sith. Moving more quickly than she thought possible of herself, she wrapped her arms around his head and twisted his neck as hard and as suddenly as she could. With little more than a grunt, he collapsed, dead as a doornail.
Snapping his neck had been easier than she'd thought. Mission couldn't believe she'd just been able to do what she did. Killing with her bare hands was somehow different from just shooting someone or slicing into them with a sword. She thought maybe she should feel terrible about having done it, but she didn't.
The Sith had massacred Taris, her home, and done the same to a lot of other planets. She knew what they did when they conquered a world; the looting, the pillaging and destruction, the widespread rape, torture, and murder as they passed through cities establishing their domination. They weren't getting any pity from her.
The computer was a simple thing to hack. In fact, she didn't even need to get dirty with any of its sweet innards, as the Sith had thoughtfully provided his authorization pass-card on his fresh corpse. A few key strokes and she'd located most of their confiscated equipment and the cells where the others were being held.
Armed with her dead Sith friend's datapad, Mission downloaded the data and started off, snagging his blaster rifle just in case. Her first stop would be to get her things--she was getting sick of the clunky, poorly-fitting armor and really, really wanted her headdress back. Besides, Jolee was a far cry from Carth, and the old man's skinny frame was something she only needed to see naked as sparingly as possible.
Waking up inside a body bag was something Canderous couldn't recall ever experiencing. It was pretty much as he'd expected it; dark, stuffy, hot, and hard to move in. Fortunately, gnawing his way through the material wasn't so bad, but maneuvering his arms into a position from which he could rip open a hole was a bit of a pain.
He found himself lying on a shelf shared with two other dead bodies. There was no one in the mortuary besides his present company, and they were in no condition to report him to their superiors. He spied his things sitting on a counter across the room and past an examination table.
As Canderous was clambering off the shelf, a uniformed Sith soldier suddenly walked into the austere chamber. He instantly shifted objectives and lunged for the man, driving his hammer-like fist at the Sith's faceplate. When he made contact, Canderous could hear the solid rap of the man's head ricocheting inside his own helmet. It'd probably caused him at least a broken nose.
Still moving forward, Canderous locked an arm under the Sith's chin and grabbed him in a choke-hold a hundred pounds of muscle in the making. He had no chance against Canderous' relentless grip, the wild flailing of his arms and legs did nothing but exhaust the tiny amount of air still in his lungs.
Kicking, clawing, and desperately groping at his throat, the Sith died croaking and twitching in the merciless stranglehold.
Dropping the corpse to the floor, Canderous stretched his limbs and craned his neck until he felt a fulfilling chorus of pops along the vertebrae. Without sparing the dead soldier a glance, he sauntered over to retrieve his things. In short order, his weapon belt was fastened around his waist and blaster rifle slung back over his shoulders. He was ready to go.
Before he left the morgue, Canderous took care of one last thing; he tossed the dead Sith onto the corpse rack.
He had an arsenal to raid.