Chapter 3: The Boys Are Back in Town
"- that actually necessary? You as much as planted a giant beacon over our heads! We're supposed to be trying to avoid attention!" Carth shouted as he finished his rant at an apathetic Revan. He was already annoyed with the pilot and it hadn't even been three days. Granted, it had been a very busy three days.
The first stop had been the cantina where Revan had won most of his money. After utterly crushing all of the opponents for the dueling ring, Revan had his second death match with Bendak Starkiller. It went almost exactly as it had before, but this time instead of blowing him up with his own grenade as he had last time, Revan had channeled Force lightning through his new vibrosword (not to be confused with his previous vibroblade, as weapons masters claim there is a significant difference) and fried Bendak alive through his armor. It was a much cleaner victory, and had the added benefit of leaving the armor intact. Revan managed to convince Ajuur to let him keep Bendak's armor and weapons in exchange for his cut of the prize money, which was significant. Well, at least to Ajuur it was. Revan had hit a few more cantinas for pazzak, and was toting around over twelve thousand credits.
Before leaving the cantina, Revan managed wrangle an invite to Sarna's party that night. Another deviance from last time occurred, as Revan convinced Sarna to throw in her lot with him in order to get off-world before Malak glassed the place. She was currently working to acquire him the Sith launch codes, so that they could avoid flying through the fire and brimstone like last time by leaving early. With no need to raid the Sith base, they saved an entire day's worth of planning and fighting. They also skipped the annoying disguises in Sith uniforms, as Sarna just got them a set of freelancer contracts through the Sith embassy.
With blasters charged and papers signed, the trio carved their way through the lower city, leaving behind a trail of dead Vulkars. After a talk with Zax, Revan went to fill some bounties while Kalia convinced Gadon and the Beks to assist them in retrieving Bastila. Revan killed Largo, debtors and deal breakers got no sympathy from him, but he did convince Holdan to cancel Dia's bounty. She would be dead in a few days anyway, but he wasn't a completely heartless bastard. Just mostly. As for Bendak, he had been already dealt with. And while Revan had nothing against Matrik personally, he really could find no use for him since Matrik didn't want to be a part of something like the exchange, and being a part of the Sith Empire would put him in a similar working environment. So he was paid a visit as well.
Now Sven, she was another matter entirely. Firstly, she was female, and she was good looking. Revan was neither sexist nor racist, but he much preferred having pretty women working for him rather than men or aliens. Those were still welcome, but they usually went into the general army forces, whereas Revan's favorites went into the special forces program, and many of those became his Sith acolytes. Sven already met the first two criteria, and she was an ex assassin, so she was definitely skilled. A check for box number three on the application. After convincing her that the entire planet was going to get wasted soon anyway, and that she could have more fun and make more money working with him, Revan now had the Tarisian assassin in his employ. She had to lay low until the evacuation, because the government contract was still out on her, but she would meet up with Revan's crew as they escaped the planet.
All of that had taken a mere two days to get done. But none of that was what had Carth's panties in a bunch. No, what Revan did that pretty much screwed their anonymity was to kill Calo Nord in plain sight in front of a barfull of people. It had gone something like—
"Hey Calo! Long time no see, shorty!" Revan shouted as he strode across the room.
Calo slowly turned toward what he believed was a soon-to-be corpse that was standing just over an arm's length away, and rested his hands on his blasters. Revan seeing this smirked.
"You know Calo I have to admire the way you do things. You're cold, calculating, and efficient. I can respect that. But unfortunately for us, we've got a problem. You recently annoyed me, very, very much. And I need to fix that." With those words, Revan's hand moved towards his blaster.
Calo whipped his plasters out of their holsters, and aimed them straight at Revan's stomach. Or at least he tried to. He found himself unable to raise his arms as there was a body in the way. Revan had immediately closed the distance and was right in Calo's face. Calo instinctively clenched his triggers, only to find that his shots singed the floor and did little else. Revan viciously head-butted Calo, and then grabbed Calo's hands in his, and squeezed. By pumping his body full of the Force, Revan's strength was magnified many times over, and Calo's hands crumpled and were crushed along with the blasters in them when. Stepping back and letting go, Revan watch in amusement as Calo fell to his knees with his ruined hands hanging limp at his sides. The short fight ended rather anticlimactically when Revan fired a blaster bolt point blank into his face. After swiping the man's credit chit, Revan walked away, leaving the broken body lying in a small puddle of blood on the floor.
The entire thing had been rather cathartic for Revan. And despite how Kalia was still aghast at how un-Jedi like Revan was, she still respected his ability and results, just not necessarily his methods. Carth, on the other hand, couldn't care less about Calo. He was just aggravated by how attention grabbing it was. And that was Revan's whole point. He wanted Canderous to be impressed again, hence the dueling ring; and removing Calo would make Davik all the more desperate to hire him.
So now here they were, trekking through the Undercity in search of Mission. They had run into Canderous, who was seen giving Revan an appraising eye the entire time, and Kalia acquired several doses of rakghoul serum from a group of dead Sith troopers. A properly prepared party was more than ready for a rescue mission from Mission when she came running. Two dozen dead Gamorreans later, Kalia, Carth, Mission, and Zaalbar stood and watched as Revan managed to trick a rancor into swallowing a thermal detonator that he had pulled off Calo's corpse. The resulting mess was rather gruesome, but the group fought down their bile as they started their raid on the Vulcar base.
Bastila was having trouble marshaling her thoughts. Now, most would believe it to be due to the neural disruptor around her neck. But as she stood slouched inside the prisoner cage listening to the sound of the Taris Opener swoop race, her confusion had more to do with the fact that she was having an extreme case of déjà vu. It could all have been some crazy dream, or it could be the Force making her relieve one of her old memories, but either way she wasn't worried. She was too busy trying to figure out how this had managed to happen since she could recall she had just been on the Star Forge a few minutes ago.
Which is why when she failed to recognize the form of her favorite person as he came to her rescue, Bastila suddenly became very nervous. Even though she had managed to fight through the pain and reform coherent thought, she still couldn't hear anything over the ringing in her ears from the neural disruptor. When the large armored form in red and black with what was obviously a lightsaber clipped to his belt stepped up to claim the prize, Bastila fervently hoped she wasn't about to enter into some nightmare where one of Malak's Sith got to her before Revan could. Or was it Evans? Since he didn't have his memories back at this point in time she should probably call him that.
When the fight broke out upon Brejik's orders, Bastila realized that she had missed her chance to escape. She had been so focused on her thoughts that she hadn't concentrated on collecting any Force to open the cage. She watched helplessly as the tall figure whipped out a red lightsaber and cut Brejik down before he could so much as raise his blade. The nearby Vulkars swarmed his position, and Bastila watched the dark Jedi effortlessly slaughter the gang members. Several of the smarter ones retreated as their foolish brethren were felled like blades of grass, and when there were no more attackers, he reclipped his saber to his belt, and then walked to Brejik's corpse and retrieved Bastila's lightsaber from it, which he clipped to his left thigh behind an armor plate. He strolled over to the cage, and then twitched his hand and Bastila's collar was snapped in two while the door to her cage opened itself. Bastila felt a surge of the Force as it returned to her and she coiled it around herself, preparing to throw it at the man as she snarled,
"If you think I mean to go quietly Sith," she sneered with as much venom in her voice as she could throw at him, "then you can go space yourself." She was prepared for several different things, but what she wasn't expecting was a familiar tug in the bag of her head as a gruff voice gave a throaty chuckle straight into her mind.
'That's quite a lot of anger there padawan,' the voice said an audible grin. 'What would your masters say about your little outburst?' Bastila kept a neutral look on her face, but there was a gleaming twinkle in her eyes.
'I have but one master,' she thought back, 'and he would smirk and say he likes seeing his hellcat.'
Revan sported a smile that split his face in half, and when he scooped her up in a bridal carry her face broke out into one too. She wrapped her arms around his neck and passionately kissed him. They broke it off with much reluctance, as they remembered that there had just been a battle where they were standing. Revan settled Bastila in his arms as she let her mind slowly slip into his, connecting their minds through the Force bond they shared. He carried her over to where he had parked the swoop bike, and settled her down in front of himself. As he flew the two of them back to their temporary residence, Bastila looked through all of Revan's recent memories. She was quite surprised at the amount of work he had accomplished in less than a week.
Most of the old crew had been gathered up, with a few new additions. He had eliminated two of Malak's major resources in Bandon and Calo, and the bit with that Ulgo character had completely blindsided her. To top it all off he already had the launch codes and just needed Canderous to let him pick up T3 and they could be off. By the time the swoop bike settled down behind the apartment, she had gone over the most important and relevant memories. Bastila entered the room with Revan's cloak around her to preserve her modesty, and Revan pointed her to the pack with his supplies. She dug into his bag and found a set of robes that were similar in design to his outfit, but were lighter and less armored; being closer to what she was used to wearing.
The group was understandably excited when they returned from the cantina to find that Evans had rescued Bastila. Their discussion on how to get off Taris was interrupted by a Twi'lek messenger from Canderous. Revan convinced the group to let him go alone, saying it would impress the Mandalorian merc more than if he brought backup. Before he talked with Canderous in the Lower City cantina, he collected on all of his bounties with Zax, and even sold him a sample of the rakghoul serum. The meeting with Canderous was only slightly different from the previous one, with the Mandalorian commenting on his elimination of Calo. After threatening Janice Nall out of one T3 droid, Revan contacted Sarna and Sven and told them to meet up with him. Revan escorted them back to the hideout with T3 and introduced them to the crew. To say they were wary of a Sith turncoat and a professional assassin was an understatement. But when Bastila vouched for Revan, and them by association, the rest of them let their arguments drop.
Canderous was obviously skeptical about Revan's success as he hadn't heard tell of the embassy being raided, but when Revan showed him the Sith codes he was once again impressed by the man in front of him. A quick visit to Davik let them get access to the Ebon Hawk after they freed its former pilot. Revan was tempted to bring the man along, but the man had no military training, and Revan wanted his pilot combat capable. It looked like he was still stuck with Carth for now. Since they were a day ahead of schedule thanks to Revan, there was no battle in the hanger to the sound of an exploding cityscape. The Hawk set down behind their apartment hideout, and everyone loaded aboard while Zaalbar and Canderous maneuvered the stolen swoop bike (with prototype accelerator) up the ramp and into the Hawk's garage like area. The Ebon Hawk was soon seen cruising out of the atmosphere.
After transmitting the codes to bypass the automatic lasers, The Ebon Hawk jumped to hyperspace before the Sith ships could so much as scramble the fighters. The orbiting fleet of ships weren't on combat alert because they were busy maneuvering into firing position, and it wasn't until several hours after Malak had overseen the planet's destruction that he was informed that a single smuggling vessel had broken through the blockade.
As the assorted crew of the Ebon Hawk gathered together in the main hold at the center of the Ebon Hawk, Revan stood up and grabbed everyone's attention.
"Okay people, let's get to business. I know that each of us come from different backgrounds and walks of life, and many of us may have at one time been enemies. That doesn't matter anymore. From this point on, we're all on the same side. Mandalorian, Sith, Jedi, I don't care what you were, because now you're a part of this crew. You don't have to like the guy standing next to you, but you do have to tolerate them and watch their back, and in return they will do so for you. Any questions?" Revan had unconsciously slipped into his old persona from the Mandalorian Wars, being commanding yet not forceful. Had any of them realized that they were unconsciously falling sway to his commanding presence, several of them would have been alarmed. Carth and Sarna were suddenly looking at Evans like a superior officer, while Kalia was starting to come to terms with his darker leanings. Mission saw a capable big brother, while Zaalbar, Canderous and Sven saw a rising warlord. T3 merely beeped its obedience to the master.
Having received no questions, Revan then settled on his next few moves. "Our first stop will be to Dantooine. Bastila here needs to report in to its Jedi Council, and let them know the fate of the Endar Spire. The rest of us will stock up on supplies while she is busy with the Council. Depending on whatever orders Bastila gets from the Jedi, we may have another destination soon. If not, then I plan to head to Tatooine to meet up with an old friend. For now, get settled in and familiarize yourself with the ship. Port crew quarters for men, Starboard for women. Canderous, I'll need you to stay behind for a minute; the rest of you, dismissed."
"What do you need, Evans?" the Mandalorian merc asked.
"Well, while on Taris I acquired a set of Mandalorian power armor. I was wondering if you wanted it? It belonged to Bendak Starkiller."
Canderous nodded and said that he wouldn't mind having some new armor, but it would need serious adjusting to suit him. After directing him to where it was in the cargo hold, Revan made his way to the Bridge where he sensed Bastila and Carth, so they could set a course for Dantooine.