Thanks are owed to GinsengH for pointing out an error I missed. (Having completely rewritten this story several times over, often with significant alterations to the plot and timeline, a few are bound to slip through.) It has now been corrected. (Incidentally, at the beginning of the story, Revan is 32 and Bastila 27.)


2

Upended

Precisely two hours and three minutes after Grier sent the distress signal, and forty-eight after the corpse of Darth Malak was shot into hard vacuum, a flash of white signaled the arrival of Invincible, the sight of which boosted the spirits of all within the battered flotilla. She was not one of the standard cruisers that formed the bulk of the Imperial Navy, but rather the lead ship of a new class of battlecruiser. Shaped like a four-sided arrowhead, she measured nearly nine kilometers in length-five times that of even Conqueror and her sisters-and bristled with armament from stem to stern. No longer was there any fear of the Republic returning to finish what they had begun, not with such protection at hand.

The evacuation of Conqueror proceeded smoothly and with little sense of urgency, but remained on schedule. A large contingent of the crew had already been transferred to Stormwind, while the rest were in the process of boarding Striker.

Revan, having been outfitted with af clean jacket, was now ofnce more in the captain's chair on the bridge, and was perusing a datapad when Grier approached.

"Sir."

The C-in-C looked up.

"Yes, Admiral?"

"Sir, with your permission, my staff is ready to transfer to Invincible. I should, naturally prefer to have my old comrades with me in my new command."

"Of course. You are at liberty to organize your new command as you deem proper, Admiral."

"Thank you, sir."

"Once the evacuation is complete, you are to proceed with Invincible and the destroyer squadron to the rendezvous point, where you will take command of the 50th Fleet." He turned off the datapad and slipped it into a pocket. "What is the status of Colossus?"

"Her crew have restored limited hyperdrive capability. She will be able to make the jump to Vinsoth, where she can finish repairs."

"Very good. I shall lead Stormwind and Striker to Vinsoth as well, to offload the survivors, and then return to the Star Forge."

"Understood, My Lord."

"And, Admiral, the timetable for Operation Drumbeat still stands. Good hunting."

"Thank you, sir."

Grier snapped to attention and saluted, then turned on his heel and returned to overseeing the evacuation of his dying ship.

Revan took a deep breath and pushed himself up out of his chair. Every muscle ached, and every joint felt as though it had been shut in a door, and he again cursed himself for having been bull-headed enough to even consider frying Malak while in his condition. Oh, well, he thought, at least I can walk.

"General, would you please accompany me to the brig," he ordered Wallen, who had been waiting attentively nearby like a faithful attack hound.

"Of course, My Lord," he barked with a click of his heels.

Wallen followed him into the turbolift, where Revan leaned against the wall throughout the ride to the detention block.

"How do I look?" Revan asked.

"Much better, sir-like yourself again, sir."

"Good…very good."

In spite of the discomfort involved, he straightened his posture to parade perfection as the turbolift came to a stop and the doors hissed open. He strode out into the detention block, past the checkpoint (the sentry there unhesitatingly came to attention and saluted, rather than requesting identification as he did of everyone else), and down the bare corridor connecting the dozens of cells, all of which were empty save one.

Inside, Bastila lay on her bunk, her hands folded on her flat stomach and her eyes closed. She was immersed in a state of peaceful meditation, with all thoughts of death and pain banished from her mind. The little shard of steel embedded in her cheek was just a point in the universe, and one not even in her body, she told herself. There was no pain, yes no pain whatsoever as she focused her thoughts on it, seized hold of the offending debris, and drew it up and out of the wound. She sent it drifting away, then let it go, and heard a faint tinkle as it landed on the deck. No pain. Now she focused on the flesh itself-not her own flesh, of course, just a wounded patch of muscle and skin somewhere in the universe that needed mending-and channeled energy from the current of the Force into the requisite cells, willing them to divide and multiply, diverting more antibodies to the area.

She could hear faint voices then, and knew that they were outside her cell. More disturbing, she could feel a kind of presence within her mind. It was faint, but tasted of passion and…curiosity. A man loudly said something to which she paid no heed, only to be scolded by another man and swiftly leave in a swirl of shame and fear. A hand rocked her arm, and she opened her eyes to see Revan leaning over her. The door was open, and no one stood outside.

"Are you all right?" he asked in a voice that was acoustically sharp-not really rough, but sharp-and yet all the same quite polished and elegant.

She was taken aback by the question, and had to gather her thoughts before responding, "Yes, I'm fine."

"No, you're wounded."

"Not seriously…and I'm already healing those cuts myself."

"You're as stubborn as I," he chuckled, then gestured to the bunk. "Do you mind if I sit here, or are you going to make me use the head as a chair?"

"N-no, go ahead," she said with mild confusion as she sat up.

Exuding pain through the Force, Revan gingerly lowered himself onto the bunk beside her, appearing more frail than menacing, and in fact looked nothing at all like a Sith, and forcing Bastila to remind herself precisely who this man was.

"Have you been treated well?" he queried.

"No one has hurt me, if that's what you mean."

"You are safe under my protection," he said slowly, as though turning over the idea in his own head.

"I heard you threaten your own officer. Do you enjoy killing that much?" she sniped at him, uncomfortable with his supposed kindness.

"I value justice," he corrected her. "And your well-being is…important to me."

"Why? I suppose you know who I am."

"I do indeed, Bastila Shan, and according to records which an agent of mine pilfered from the Jedi Academy, you seem to be rather important. That's beside the point, however, as I spared your life for two very simple reasons. The first is that you saved my life, though I imagine that your motivation for doing so was far from noble."

"I did it because I thought there was still good in you. I thought there was still a chance to redeem you," she snapped.

"Redeem me, hmm? That would presuppose that I am in need of redemption, and that is a point I shall contest to no end. No, what the Jedi term 'redemption' I call brainwashing, and had you succeeded in taking me prisoner, I would only have fought on, to the death, as a soldier of Deralí, rather than submit to so horrid and dishonorable a fate," he declared with genuine fear creeping into his voice.

"You would really rather die than return to the light?" she asked, shocked by his statement, spoken with such conviction as it was.

"Ask yourself which is worse: to die in body, and pass into restful oblivion; or to die in spirit, living on as another person who is but a pale imitation of your true self?"

"Is that how you see it?"

"How else can I see it? During the Mandalorian Wars, when I was away from the influence of other Jedi, I realized that the Order was turning me into something that, deep in the core of my being, I knew I simply cannot be, and did not wish to become. I was ten years old when I joined the Jedi, and even that was considered rather old for training, for the sound reason that a child of that age has already developed a sense of self. The Jedi ideal is to erase the self and to become a servant of the light, and to that I do not hold. I am Revan, I am me, and nobody and nothing has any right to rob me of that. Tell me this: how old were you when your parents gave you to the Order?"

"Don't try to bring me into this."

"Oh, no, because you are a true Jedi, a selfless guardian, a servant of the light," he said scathingly. He leaned back against the cold wall of the cell and let his eyelids droop, arresting their progress halfway down. "The second reason I spared your life is because, when you saved me, I could feel your presence in my mind, and I sensed something…exceptional in you."

"Did you?"

"Yes, something of immense…" he groped for the words, his thoughts and feelings unclear just then. Damned concussion. "…value…and I don't mean your power, considerable though it is."

"Spare me your mind-games, Revan. What else could you mean?"

"I was not speaking of something valuable to me, but of something that…that gives you immense value…as a person," his soft-spoken words were rife with confusion. "What that is, I do not yet know, but I knew then and know now that it would have been terribly wrong of me to kill you."

"And since when does a Sith Lord care about the right thing?" she asked arrogantly, even disdainfully.

"I am not a Sith Lord," he said with a conspiratorial air as he leaned closer. "I lead the Sith, I command them, but I do not count myself among their number. They are useful servants, and nothing more; their philosophy nothing but a pernicious pack of lies, and one which I reject as vehemently as I do the Jedi Code. After all, they give themselves over to anger and hate just as readily as the Jedi give themselves over to compassion. They are all servants, whether they admit it or not, and I refuse to serve anything other than my own conscience."

"So then what are you, assuming that you're not pulling all this out of your arse?" she sniped back at him.

"What am I? Ah, now there's a good question. If you're speaking in terms of philosophy, as I assume you are, then even I don't hold the answer to that, because I don't seem to fit into any named system of belief that I know of. If, however, you are speaking in terms of personal belief, then I can say that I consider myself a moral man, and I hope that, given time, you'll come to understand my morality. You certainly needn't accept it, but I hope that you will at least be able to comprehend it."

Bastila felt genuinely uncomfortable discussing morality with Revan. Sith or not, any man who waged a war of aggression and mass murder must necessarily possess a warped view of morality. Furthermore, the dark side was inherently corrupting, and regardless of whatever philosophy he believed in (if any), he had to be a twisted individual. This was all some manner of ploy on Revan's part, she was convinced. He was, after all, renowned as a highly charismatic man.

"I'll never follow you, Revan," she said defiantly. "I know you want to use my battle meditation in your war, but I would sooner die than turn to the dark, just as surely as you would sooner die than turn back to the light."

"You are very brave, Bastila," he said with a smile, "bravery lying, after all, not in being fearless, but in facing and overcoming one's fear."

"Jedi do not fear death."

"So then you're saying that you did not perform an act of bravery when you fought me? I felt the fear in you. I can sense your power, and that you have the potential to become the second most powerful Jedi in history…after myself, of course." He flashed a sideways smile at the end. There is a terrible power within her, of that I am certain, and that is what she fears, is it not? he pondered.

"You are no Jedi," she shot back contemptuously.

"But I once was. Did anyone ever tell you why I was accepted into the Order?"

"Because the Council made a grave error in judgment?" she replied scathingly.

He laughed merrily and slapped his knee, the first time he had done so in a very long while. "That they did, but there is more to the story. I was born, with the name of Revan Shairen, on the beautiful Outer Rim world of Deralí. Have you've heard of it?"

"I've heard of Deralia, and then only in your personal file," she jibed.

It took a deliberate act of will to conceal the indignation he felt at hearing her use the corrupted Basic version of the name, but conceal it he did.

"And I can't particularly fault you for that, not when she has spent the last thousand years laboring in obscurity, her former greatness all but forgotten by the galaxy at large, and even by far too many of her own children; not when her language and culture have come within a hair's breadth of extinction, and her very name is unknown to the galaxy at large.

"Anyway, when I was a lad, I discovered that I had remarkable reflexes and coordination. At the age of eight, my father taught me to shoot, marksmanship being something of the national sport of my folk, and to both our amazement (and my father's considerable pride) the very first shot I ever fired went clean through the ten-ring (that's a bull's eye in layman's terms). Anyhow, I was soon surpassing far more experienced shooters, even hitting moving targets with uncanny precision, and at great range. Were I not so young and still with many years of school left before me, I could have become a professional competitive marksman, or so I was told. By the age of ten, I had also learned that I had a kind of 'sixth sense' about people: I could anticipate their actions with astounding precision, much as I could anticipate the motion of a target. People began saying that I was a genius who would go very far, up until something truly remarkable happened.

"One day, I was at the local spaceport, where my father worked as a hyperdrive mechanic. I had a holiday from school, so he took me there to see all the ships at the port, and even let me watch as he repaired a power conduit aboard an old freighter. At one point something went horribly wrong, precisely what I do not know, and just as my father turned to retrieve a tool from his kit, the conduit overloaded. I somehow felt surge building up, almost as though I could feel the fire before it ever came, and naturally got the idea to grab my father and pull him out of the way, even though I weighed less than half as much as him. Instead, before I ever laid hands upon him, he and I both went flying through the air and landed about five meters away a mere blink of an eye before the conduit blew. None of the other mechanics could figure out how we survived, but a woman who happened to be making a stop-over on Deralí that day was able to explain. She was a Jedi, and she knew at once that I was strong in the Force.

"So my parents took me to Dantooine, where the Council tested me in every way they could devise, and found that I was very strong in the Force. Now, ordinarily, they would not accept a child of my age, but never before had they seen someone who was able to use the Force without training. In the end, they decided that it was better that I receive training and become a Jedi, however difficult that might be, than stay on Deralí and develop my powers without proper guidance."

"And let me guess: you didn't much care for Jedi discipline, did you?"

"On the contrary. My parents had never been particularly effective in the field of discipline, and I had largely been stuck with the task of whipping myself into some kind of shape up until I entered the Academy. It was actually a relief for me to be in a controlled environment for a change. I had always respected willpower and discipline and hungered for it…I thirsted for control…and the Jedi gave me that control. They taught me to control my emotions and channel the power within me, and my training progressed quickly-much more so than my teachers thought possible, or cared for, I think. I excelled at nearly everything I tried, but there was always a problem: I was too independent, too willful, and too idealistic."

Bastila doubtingly raised her eyebrows at the last word.

"Permit me to explain: I grew up reading stories of great heroes who battled injustice, righted wrongs, and generally set things right. Deralí was, at that time, rising out of a long and grim age of decay and disorder, and so I was a boy who respected order, but who instead saw chaos and crime, and was deeply offended by it. That was why I had seriously considered a political career, even at the age of ten…by the age of nine, in fact, the idea had occurred to me. I saw myself as having a purpose in life, a clear and defined and noble purpose, which was to lead my people, to set things right, to restore the glory of Deralí."

As he spoke, his voice rose, as though lifted by the majesty of his dream.

"But as a Jedi apprentice-and later padawan-I fought no battles against injustice, slew no villains, and set nothing right. 'Were not the Jedi guardians of good?' I was soon asking myself. I caught glimpses of events beyond the Academy, and saw that the galaxy was more horrible than I had ever suspected, and that even when emerging from centuries of decline, Deralí was a far better world than most. Can it be any wonder that I grew increasingly impatient to go forth and do something, and ever more disillusioned with the Order?

"When the Mandalorians attacked, I was convinced that at last my time had come, but no, I found myself, as always, behind the halls of the Academy, despite the fact that I could hold my own with the best Masters of the Order. The worst part of it was not that they would not let me do what needed to be done, but that no one acted. Not one of them made a stand, and I began to wonder if none of them could even see what was so clearly before them? Had none of them the courage to see justice done? I requested permission to lead a group of volunteers in defense of the Republic, and the Council told me that now was not the time, that I was unready."

"You mean they knew that you would turn to the dark side if you were let out on your own."

"What Jedi Masters think they know is neither here nor there," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "For two years, the Mandalorians assailed the Republic's defenses while the Council sat and did nothing. I couldn't believe what I was being told! They were preaching patience while the war was being lost!

"My twenty-sixth birthday came and went, and now the Mandalorians were threatening Deralí herself. I do not expect you to understand this, but to a true Deralin, the homeworld-the seas, the mountains, the trees, the animals…the very soil upon which we tread-all is sacred. We are a part of her, and she of us, and our fate inextricably bound up with hers. Above all, she is not to be sullied and despoiled, but is to be defended by her folk to their very last breath, and in spite of my time as a Jedi, I was still a Deralin, skin to marrow. That world is in my heart and in my blood, and there could exist in my mind no room for debate as to whether or not I should disobey the Council, for my first duty was always to Deralí. That was always the higher calling."

"There lies a further argument for why only the very young should be accepted for training as Jedi," Bastila sniped back.

"Yes, undoubtedly so. The Jedi are so very afraid of love, and I love Deralí. I loved her then, enough to die for her, and, having since returned to her and renewed my ties to her, I love her still more today."

As he spoke, a look came upon him that thoroughly surprised her: his gaze focused on infinity, and there was a twinkle of contentment in his eyes and a softness to his face, all of it so genuine that she could scarcely doubt him.

"Being a reasonably persuasive fellow, I managed to gather a small number of Jedi and set out for the front without further ado.

"My first action was at Bespin, where I led a destroyer wing under the command of an admiral named…Daashyn. Even before my first taste of battle, however, I quickly learned much of the reason why the Republic was faring so poorly: half of its officer were amateurs, and the other half who knew their business were under relentless pressure from the politicians to either 'never yield a meter of ground' or to 'attack, attack, attack!' I was, admittedly, something of an amateur, having been given a rank out of all proportion to my training and experience thanks to a widespread shortage of officers. For his part, Daashyn was somewhere in between, being a professional officer entirely lacking in imagination, and constantly badgered by Coruscant. In this instance, he was being ordered to hold the system ('to the last man,' of course) and to keep the Mandalorians from damaging the gas refineries on the planet.

"Now then, even I knew that it would be better were we granted freedom of maneuver, but there was no telling that to Coruscant…"

"You don't need to tell me the story: I've heard it before," she confessed with some reluctance.

She had, in fact, assiduously followed every report of his exploits throughout the war, secretly admiring his bravery and conviction even while openly disparaging his insubordination whilst among her fellow Jedi. There had even been a few times-always in the dead of night when her mind would race in circles and she would lie staring up into the darkness of her chamber for hours on end before sleep eventually took her-when she went so far as to think of joining him. It was just a wild fantasy, she told herself, but she had thought of it. She would never forgive herself if he learned of that secret, but at this particular moment in time, spoiling his proud retelling of his first victory seemed worth whatever price she might later have to pay.

"I suppose you would have," he answered curtly, chalking it up to merely academic study of the war, and mercifully taking the issue no further.

"Anyway, it suffices to say that my career was on the ascent from the very outset, and that it was not long before I was leading an entire fleet from one victory to the next, sweeping the Mandalorians from the Outer Rim. What matters, for our purposes, was that in the course of this crusade, I saw for myself how the Republic had abandoned so many worlds to their fate, and allowed so many people to become victims…and not only victims of the Mandalorians. When I set foot on far-flung worlds, even those that had been spared the enemy's conquest and occupation, I found a truth that had been kept from me as a Jedi. The Republic does not exist to protect liberty, nor to uphold justice: like so many of those unfortunates who live under its thumb, it exists for the sole purpose of existing. While it lacks the overt tyranny of the Sith or the unabashed brutality of the Mandalorians, for the vast majority of its citizens, it is nonetheless a system of tyranny and brutality. From the cradle to the grave, it regulates what they do, what they eat, how they live; it steals and squanders the fruits of their labor; it indoctrinates them through the mass media that is at once both the puppet and the great puppeteer of democracy; and those most vulnerable and desperate are enslaved to a system that gives them a pittance in return for their independence and dignity. All the while, it coddles vice, subsidizes theft, and showers infinite mercy upon those who have earned only wrath."

Having become visibly agitated, he stopped, took a cleansing breath, calmed himself before continuing.

"I had gone to war to preserve Deralí and all she stood for, which was the diametrical opposite of this. Immediately after the war, I returned to Coruscant, and there I told the High Council of all I had seen and done, and urged them to take action to right the great wrongs of the Republic. After all, were they not the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy? The Republic is a despicable mockery of justice, I told them, but they would not hear of it. 'It is not the place of the Jedi to impose our views on others, only to defend them,' said Master Konnuff himself. What masterful hypocrisy!

"It is an inescapable truth that to enforce justice is to impose someone's view of justice, be it your own or that of another to whom you have opted to defer the responsibility of sorting right from wrong. I told him then and there that I may not always be in the right, but that some view-one view--must inevitably be chosen and imposed, and that I shall forever trust my own sense of justice over that of morally bankrupt politicians. I left there not only embittered, but convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that my future did not lie with the Jedi."

"But what gives you the right?" she indignantly pressed.

"What gives anyone the right? What gives the Senate the right?"

"They represent the people of the Republic."

"Come now, how deep is your head in the sand? Wealthy career politicians who've never lived a day in the real world represent the people of the Republic? They represent the close-minded cliques into which they were raised, and the organizations that fund their campaigns; if they harbor any ideals, these are but hollow fantasies far divorced from reality. So what right have they to govern the lives of others? None whatsoever, but they have the opportunity to do so because their 'constituents' are, by and large, ambivalent cowards who do not challenge their rule. It is a universal truth that anyone unwilling to stand up for himself will invariably be ruled by tyrants. Consequently, if I possess the right to define justice, I do so because I am willing to stand up for myself and my values."

In reply to this she only pursed her lips and folded her arms, silently granting him permission to finish his narrative.

"Now, then, where was I? Ah, yes. On my way home to Deralí, I stopped at Dantooine, that I might recruit as many decent persons as I could. While there, however, I was drawn to an ancient ruin buried deep below a hill to the east of the Enclave and untouched for untold ages. Inside I found evidence of a long-buried civilization, and a star map that would lead me to an ill-defined, though reputedly very powerful, artifact called the 'Star Forge.' The map was incomplete, but it did indicate that there was another map on Kashyyyk. I traveled there, where I found a second incomplete map, and so on and so forth, until I had pieced together the entire puzzle, which guided me to an uncharted planet beyond the Outer Rim. It was the homeworld of a race called the Rakata, who ruled the galaxy up until twenty-five millennia ago. They were a despicable people (even in comparison with the long parade of despicable cultures that have flourished since), killing for the sake of bloodlust and enslaving for the sake of cruelty. Worst of all, however, was their…their butchery of ecosystems."

He visibly shuddered, and his lips curled.

"In their volumes of lore, I found hundreds of examples of their appalling disregard, and even violent disdain, for nature, and of the rapacious greed with which they pillaged her, often quite literally to death. I can easily provide you with a detailed history of their crimes, and shall do so if you grant me the opportunity, but being pressed for time right now, I shall present a single example: prior to the Rakata, Tatooine was a vibrant, living world with verdant fields and lush forests and clear oceans teeming with life. Do you know what it is now?"

"I can't say I've ever heard of Tatooine, much less seen it."

"It's a desert! One vast, endless desert, nearly devoid of life. Murderers and despoilers, I name them!" He again drew breath, calmed himself, smoothed his jacket. "Their empire eventually fell through a combination of disease, rebellion, and endless civil war, until there were only a few thousand of them left. The only measure of good they have ever done-and it was done with the worst of intentions, mind you, and only put to noble use in recent years by myself-was the creation of the Star Forge. This is a space station, the largest in the galaxy, orbiting the Rakatan star, from which it draws matter and energy to fuel replicators of a scale not even imagined by modern engineers. It can build guns, armor, tanks, warships faster than any conventional factory, and at virtually zero cost."

"So that's how you were able to amass a fleet large enough to challenge the Republic."

"That is how I was able to build it. I was able to crew it because the Republic has betrayed its citizens. Good government has but two fundamental, legitimate purposes: to provide for the common defense, and to uphold equal justice through the rule of law. The Republic has failed on both counts, and has instead invented a vast and ever-growing collection of illegitimate purposes, all of which serve only to expand its own power, whilst simultaneously and inextricably diminishing the quality of lives already burdened by the constant threat of victimization at the hands of villains both from without and from within. Is it no wonder that when I offer them a new path, I win more and more volunteers each day?"

"Your arrogance will be your downfall," she countered with a stubborn shake of her head, only to find herself thinking just how hollow that statement must seem.

"A predictably and flawlessly doctrinaire Jedi response. In any case, you aren't one to lecture on arrogance, or so I'm told."

"I beg your pardon," said Bastila, setting her hands on her hips.

Revan produced his datapad and scrolled through a few selections before clearing his throat.

"'…her progress in recent years has been nothing short of astonishing…her power is extraordinary…I fear that young Bastila may be growing too confident in herself. While she is all too aware of the responsibility that presses on her shoulders, she remains very proud of her abilities...' That was taken from the records of Master Vandar."

"You can't fool me that easily, Revan," she said condescendingly. "Is that pad even on?"

He handed it to her, that she might read the text in full with her own eyes.

"With Jedi defecting to my side on a somewhat routine basis, it would certainly seem a valid concern for him to possess. You know the difficulty the Order has experienced in keeping many of its members-particularly its younger members-from straying to the dark side, and it seems that you have struck them as a potential defector, and I must say I can understand why. Anyone with the strength of will to master the art of battle meditation, to sap her enemy's courage and concentration and strengthen her own side, must be eminently powerful. Certainly you can see how Vandar and the other Masters would be much alarmed by any signs of pride in you. They saw what happened to me. To lose one such promising pupil was disastrous enough, but to lose two…"

"I shall never fall to the dark side," she sneered as she tossed the pad into his lap.

"Bastila, your battle meditation is of no concern to me so long as you cannot wield it against me. The balance of power is already in my favor, and so your conversion would serve only to hasten victory, not to actually bring it about. I can manage perfectly well without your talents."

"Yes, but your victory would be much quicker and far less costly if I was at your side, would it not?" she posited. "I can't see how you could pass up that opportunity as casually as you suggest."

"Then you admit that I care how many people are killed in this war? I truly do, you know, but I'm not going to spin you some formulaic speech about how many lives you could save if you joined me and we crushed the Republic here and now. I can tell that you're too canny to fall for something like that.

"But enough of this bickering: I am curious about you. I've spent all this time selfishly rambling on about myself, when I know nothing of you beyond what little my agents managed to steal from the Academy's records. What was your family like? What do you read?"

She again folded her arms, and looked away. "I refuse to play your games, Revan."

"If you insist," he said with a shrug. "The ship is being evacuated, as you must have heard from the intercom announcements, and we shall have to be leaving soon. If you wouldn't mind coming with me…"

"Where are we going?"

"To the cruiser Stormwind. It will take us to my new flagship, which is nearing completion at the Star Forge."

He stood and, to Bastila's great surprise, kindly took her hand. He tugged gently, beckoning her off the bunk, and led her out of the cell and down the corridor. Along the way, he maintained scarcely any grip on her hand, and eventually released it altogether just before they came round the bend to the checkpoint where Wallen waited, along with a plain-looking blonde woman in a dark uniform. Those two fell in behind Revan and Bastila as they made their way to the turbolift, and from there to the hangar deck. There they found that all of the ship's fighters and assault transports had left, and only two shuttles remained in the cavernous bay. These were both of a lifting-body design, more than thirty meters long with flowing curves and four large engines bulging slightly from the stern. Five Imperial Guards waited beside one, while Grier and Delaan stood by the other, and it was, to Bastila's surprise, to the second shuttle that Revan initially veered.

"Do you know this is the second time I've done this, Admiral?" he asked as he returned Grier's salute.

"Yes, sir, I… I am aware of the fact."

"I'm not ashamed of it, if that's what you're thinking." (Which was precisely what Grier was thinking, as Revan could easily read.) He frowned, felt another wave of dizziness wash over him, blinked it away.

"I suppose what I'm trying to say is that there is no shame in this, Admiral. You fought well, and did all that you or any other officer could have done, and it is thanks in no small measure to you that this day was not so tragic as it could have been."

Grier's eyes wandered away, the man letting the words sink in through the gloom that had settled over him as soon as the last of his crew had left, and he found himself waiting by his shuttle with far too much time to think.

"Yes, sir," was all he managed to say in the end.

"There will be another time…another battle." A sigh wafted from Revan's lips. "Too many more," he muttered in a voice too low for Grier to discern the words. "For now, you must look to this day."

"Yes, sir." Grier snapped off a textbook salute. "And thank you, sir."

There followed a momentary pause before Revan led his little party over to their own shuttle. Once aboard, he and Bastila sat side-by-side in the front row, with Wallen, Céle, and the Guards in the rows behind them. As she was fastening her safety belt, Bastila couldn't help running over in her head Revan's mumbled comment, which her own ears had been just keen enough to pick up. She listened to the ramp close and seal with a hiss, and felt a slight pressure change in her ears, and looked out her window, away from Revan. Though she couldn't feel it, she could see the shuttle lift off, heard the landing gear retract with a muffled clunk, and watched the grey walls of the hangar blur for a split-second before being replaced with the pitch black of open space.

The shuttle flew out ahead of Conqueror for a while, then wheeled around and came back past the side of the dying cruiser. From her seat just behind the cockpit, Bastila had a clear view out the panoramic canopy, and could clearly discern the other ships hovering around. They were clearly on course for one of the other cruisers, the Stormwind, but off to the left was a ship unlike the others, the sheer size of which gave Bastila a great feeling of unease. She found herself immediately assessing its design, noting the large, flattened barbettes that were spaced evenly along its sloping surfaces. Matched to the scale of the ship, the guns must be larger than anything else flying, and, equally significant, they were arranged such that all could be fired forward at once, rather than in the obsolete broadsides still favored by Republic tacticians. She found herself envisioning it as part of a larger fleet, pondering how best such a revolutionary design could be employed.

"Behold Invincible, may she live up to her name," said Revan with all the enthusiasm of a tour guide describing the same landmark for the thousandth time. "If she looks at all familiar, it's because she's based on the Republic's own G3 design, which was conveniently brought over by a defector during the peace. She's the first in a new line of battlecruisers, and there are nine more presently under construction at the Star Forge, thanks to which we've managed to beat the enemy's launching date by a solid five months, or so Intel says. When they and the other new capital ships are all operational, the final offensive will begin."

"And the Republic will fall, and so shall begin the glorious reign of the great Emperor Revan, liberator of the galaxy and hero of the oppressed," Bastila mocked him.

"Watch your tongue," Wallen snapped from behind, only to be abruptly cut off by a wave of Revan's hand.

"Your sense of humor is almost as scathing as my own," he said wryly as he patted her hand. "Almost. But if you don't feel like being civil, then we may as well not speak at all."

Holding true to his word, Revan remained silent for the rest of the trip to Stormwind, and throughout the subsequent march to the detention block therein. Once again leaving Wallen waiting at the checkpoint, he put her in a cell more than twice the size of the one she had occupied on Conqueror, and one which possessed proper sanitary facilities.

"This is normally reserved for flag officers and other high-ranking prisoners, but should you desire finer accommodations, I'll try to arrange a cabin for you, despite the present shortage of space aboard. However, I doubt that I'll ever hear such a request from you," he said with a knowing smile. He then scanned the room, eyes locking on an insignificant spot of ceiling. "Do you see that?"

She followed his eyes, saw nothing, then focused on the spot in the Force and discovered a tiny object little bigger than a grain of sand, emitting a faint electrical aura. "A camera. I'd be surprised if there wasn't one in here, so what of it?"

With a clench of his fist, the camera was ground into powder. "Good day, Bastila."

He clicked his heels, bowed deeply from the waist, then shut the door and strode off down the corridor. After a few steps, he turned back, opened the door. He hesitated a moment before speaking again in a cryptically soft tone, "And you were right that you will never fall to the dark side. You are far too pure for that."

Again he bowed, only this time he left for good.

Alone with her thoughts, Bastila had much to contemplate. She could dimly recall seeing Revan, the great young apprentice, when he had visited Dantooine, and remembered being outraged by the attention the Masters had lavished on him. She had been only twelve at the time, and felt thoroughly neglected during the brief time he was there, and was decidedly relieved when he returned to Coruscant after a week or so. Jealousy and pride lead to darkness, she had reminded her young self in an effort to accept the situation. But why did the Council hold her back on Dantooine, rather than sending her to the Temple on Coruscant, as they had with Revan? she had asked herself then, and asked herself again now. Was it that they didn't want two such powerful young students together in one place? After all, Revan had managed to lure many others away on his "crusade." Had she been there at the time, she may well have gone, too. She was so certain she could never fall to the dark side, but so many of her fellow Jedi had undoubtedly thought the very same, and yet fallen. Wallen had once been a respected guardian of the light, and now he was Revan's right hand man. It was all too possible that, had he ever spoken with her face-to-face in those desperate days, she would have gone with him.

She could already see just how perilously persuasive he could be, and recalled how Master Vandar had taken her aside before sending her on the mission to capture Revan, and had issued her a warning.

"Revan is a very charismatic man, whose lies have already corrupted far too many Jedi. If you succeed in taking him captive, you must take great care when you are in his presence, and shut your ears to his words, lest he forever poison your mind."

Why had Vandar said that to her alone? she pondered now. Did this not apply to the others just as much as to her? She had assumed the words on Revan's datapad to have been written by the Dark Lord himself, but what if they were Vandar's? No, this sort of thought was exactly what Vandar had warned her against! She had let Revan's talk get into her head. Clear your mind, she told herself as she lay down and closed her eyes. There is no passion, there is only peace.

You will never fall to the dark side. Those words came shooting into her brain like a bolt of Revan's lightning. Why would he tell her that? Did he think it would make her overconfident? It must have been a subtle link in his lengthy chain of deceptions designed to make her give in to her passions. The more she tried to clear her mind, however, the more she came to believe that he had been speaking truthfully. He was somehow certain that she would not fall. But then why had he kept her alive?

Her life had been upended in a single day, and in no small part by her own decisions, and her mind reeled with questions. There was a very deeply-hidden meaning in his words, and one that frightened her for reasons she did not know.

She lay back, and shut her eyes, and tried to focus on healing her wounds.

Eleven hours later, with lids drooping over bloodshot eyes, Revan ran a comb through his damp hair a few times before dropping it onto the counter of a bathroom so cramped that he could scarcely stand sideways between the sink and the shower door. He looked at his weary reflection, his face still marked by ugly red lines here and there. Having spent more than six hours in a healing trance, the concussion was gone and the wounds were healing well enough so as not to leave permanent scarring, but the back of his head still throbbed as he switched off the light and dragged himself into the bedroom. This was the side of the C-in-C that no one ever saw: the exhausted young man utterly spent by a far-too-long day of grueling work, who longed for nothing more than to curl up in a soft bed and let sleep overtake him. At least he enjoyed his work, which was more than could be said by most people in the galaxy.

As he was crossing the floor of the cramped bedroom (far smaller than what he had grown accustomed to), his thoughts turned to Bastila, and a smile formed on his pale lips. The more he thought on it, the more she reminded him of himself as a padawan: far too self-assured and willful and emotional to ever be a true Jedi. A true Jedi, after all, surrenders herself to the will of the Force. ('Will of the Force.' What humbug! But since when have science and reason been permitted to spoil the absurd 'mystery' of religion?) From what he had seen of her and felt from her, Bastila was equally as quick to anger as he, though she made a strong effort of suppressing it. She wasn't entirely successful, however, and for a twenty-seven-year-old Force-prodigy to still be a Padawan was a sure sign of some "failing" on her part. (What the Jedi would call a failing, that is.) Oh, yes, she has great potential.

He turned down the blue covers of his bed and climbed in, only to find the mattress and pillow were only slightly softer than bare ground, but there was nothing that could be done about it for now, and he was too tired for it to matter much this night. Have Céle requisition something at the next port, he mentally noted. Céle Diric, his aide-de-camp, was very good at finding things, be it suspects or information or lavish furnishings, and possessed more than enough experience at kicking down doors and knocking heads to ensure that she got what she was after. She served him well, and could provide agreeable company when he was in the mood for something other than quiet solitude. He took great care, however, that she never stayed in his quarters with him for too long at one time, so as to discourage any vile and baseless rumors from forming. As agreeable as he found Céle to be, he didn't love her.

"Lights: out," he ordered as his head hit the pillow, and plunged the room into blackness.

There was one person he almost loved. Well, perhaps he actually did love her platonically, but his definitions of love were decidedly blurry, and he couldn't be sure whether he loved her or only revered her, or if there could even be any meaningful difference between the two for a man such as he.

After his discovery of the Star Forge, and while his new military was being assembled, he had held a secret conference of planetary and sector leaders from across the Outer Rim, and there negotiated a treaty of alliance. Embittered by the Republic's failure to protect them from the Mandalorians (an infamous betrayal if there ever was one!), they had turned to the one man who had risen to the challenge, and whose genius had defeated the hated enemy for all time. Thus the Empire was born in secret, with Revan as Commander-in-Chief of its armed forces, while the real governance was to be conducted by a hierarchy of professional civil servants ruled by a council of Imperial Ministers. While Revan preferred not to be bothered with trivial minutiae (and wouldn't have been granted total political authority anyway by his backers, on account of his age and their own desire to retain power), he nonetheless quietly exercised totalitarian control of his realm, by way of a historian and novelist-turned-civil servant.

Her name was Meric Cíam, or more properly Meric-Méthnin as of last year, as she had been granted a peerage in return for her long and exemplary service. She had, in point of fact, served for six years as the Deralín Minister of Culture, and for another five as Prime Minister, before rising to the rank of Imperial Minister of the Interior two years ago. A brilliant and thoroughly ruthless administrator, she had devoted herself to the restoration of Deralí as she had been before her defeat. It had been the one passion in an otherwise ascetic life, and when she first met with Revan, he had sensed that she went into that meeting thinking of him as little more than a charismatic hero who might be useful in the realization of her dream. By the end of what developed into a five-hour meeting, however, he had given her an entirely new dream, which went far beyond her loftiest aspirations. Working together, they would not only rebuild the old Deralín Empire, they would spread its ideals to every corner of the galaxy.

Now she was the de facto civilian ruler of the Empire, and while she still wouldn't take any outright orders from him, she would forever be open to his advice and suggestions, and the two rarely quarreled. Whereas they got on splendidly, and shared the same driving force in their lives, the same ideals and dreams, it would seem to make rational sense for him to possess feelings for her. He deeply respected and admired her (he had, after all, read some of her books even as a boy, and thought them the greatest ever written), and even trusted her, which set her apart from all others who held power. In spite of all that, however, both of them somehow just knew that there would never be anything more than comradely friendship between them.

But what of Bastila? the startlingly bizarre thought flashed through his addled brain. As a matter of course, he knew it was perfect madness to be thinking such things about a woman he didn't even know, let alone one who was his enemy, and he could only attribute it to a combination of injury with extreme stress and fatigue. I never even spoke to her when I was a Jedi, and couldn't have seen her for more than a few minutes before today, he reminded himself. …and yet I cannot shake the feeling that I know her. Such thoughts left him feeling deeply confused, and that was a decidedly unwelcome sensation for a man who preferred to be perpetually certain. Perhaps his thoughts would sort themselves overnight. If I can get a decent rest for once. In other words, if I'm lucky. Right now, his exhausted brain was in the process of shutting down, whether he wanted it to or not.

He fell asleep, knowing that his rest would not be nearly long enough.


For those of you so interested, here's a concise guide to the pronounciation of Deralsbanif. (lit. Deralín speech, commonly shortened to Derals.)

g Always hard, as in "gold."

c Always hard, as in "can."

th Always soft, as in "thin."

ch Soft "ch," as in Scottish "loch" or German "Bach."

ts As in "cats," or Russian "tsar."

tch Hard "ch," as in "church."

hw Pronounced exactly as it looks, rather like an ultra-soft "w."

r Hard following a consonant or short vowel, rolled following a long vowel.

i Short "i", as in "sit."

í Like the "i" in "machine."

ü Fronted "u", as in French "rue", or German "fünf." (Counted as short.)

u Like the "oo" in "moon."

û Sounds like English "you."

e Rather like a "breathless" version of English short "e." Try saying "e" farther back in your throat.

é Like the "ay" in English "day."

ö Front rounded "o", as in German "schön." (Counted as short.)

o Long "o", as in "open."

a Broad "a", as in "swan", unless it is in the last syllable, in which case it is shortened to a sound halfway between broad "a" and a schwa, as in "along."

ai Sounds like English "eye."

au As in German "haus."

á Similar to the "aw" in "law" or the "ou" in "ought."

- The accent always falls on the first syllable.

- In nearly all vowel clusters, the vowels are pronounced separately. (Thus naion-arrival-is pronounced NEYE-on.) The sole exception is "ía," which is commonly run together to form "ya," though never after "r" or "l," in which case the two vowels remain distinct.

- The cluster "ah" is pronounced as a softened, slightly longer version of broad "a."

- When forming compound words, such as Deralsbanif, the attributive ending -ín is replaced with -s when an impermissable consonant cluster (such as "nb") would occur.