A/N: Wow, thanks to everyone who reviewed! I really appreciate all your comments. Reviews are awesome!
This chapter turned out to be sort of short and choppy, so apologies for that in advance.
Atton was the finest pilot that he knew, and that was saying a lot, but clearly there were some people aboard who didn't appreciate it.
"Can't you be more careful?" Kreia asked testily as the Ebon Hawk very nearly missed being plastered across the surface of a small asteroid.
"I'm trying!" Atton snapped. "How would you like to fly this thing with a Republic battleship firing on us in the middle of a fracking asteroid belt?" He jerked the ship around, violently, and winced at the sound of scraping along the ship's hull; still, better than being fried by the laser fire—
There was a jarring thump as something got hit.
"Grab onto something!" he shouted, and flipped the Hawk over and dove past an asteroid.
Of course, the gravity generators would choose that moment to flicker off. Atton was strapped in, but there was a nasty crunch as Carra slammed into the navicomputer; a moment later, the generators came online again, and she fell to the floor with a thump.
"Get us out of here," she said, sounding really rather calm for someone who was surrounded by several million tons of explosive fuel. "Can we jump to hyperspace?"
"What do you think I've been trying to do?" Atton demanded. He flung the ship sideways and two laser blasts flew past them. "But if we try it now we'll hit an asteroid and die, and if we wait for them to clear out the field we'll be caught in the explosion and die—"
Her hand closed on his upper arm. "Do it," she said.
"What—"
"Now."
Atton did it.
There was an explosion, directly in front of them, and for a moment the Hawk was wreathed in flames and burning fuel and the control panel beeped alarmingly—
And then it was all gone, and they were in the cool empty blueness of hyperspace.
"Was that some Jedi trick?" Atton demanded. "What did you do? No way that shot was a coincidence—"
"There are no coincidences," Kreia interrupted. Atton gave her a glare that went mostly unnoticed; she was looking at Carra, and holding on to the stump of her arm as though it pained her. "Through the Force, everything is connected."
Jedi. He was surrounded by them. Atton scowled and turned back to the controls. Carra and Kreia went off together to talk about some Jedi matters. Well, good. He didn't want them around anyway. It wasn't like he was expecting to be thanked or anything.
--
"Are we still on course for Telos?"
The voice came out of nowhere, and Atton jumped. Carra. Damn, she was good. He hadn't even heard her come in. "What are you, a ghost?" he demanded. His blaster was already half-out of its holster; he tried to slide it back discreetly. "Don't sneak up on me like that."
"Sorry," Carra said. She touched his shoulder. "Telos?"
"Yeah, yeah, we're on course."
She nodded. Atton looked at her curiously. "So, what happened to it?" he finally asked.
"To what?"
He rolled his eyes. "Don't give me that. There were plenty of times back on Peragus where a lightsaber would have been helpful. So…where's yours?"
Carra turned away to examine the galaxy maps. There was that odd look again, like she was lost somewhere within herself, and she said: "Exiles aren't allowed to carry their lightsabers."
"Yeah?" Atton was curious now. "Was it red, by any chance?"
"I don't remember," Carra snapped. Her face had clouded over. "Anyway, it was a long time ago, and it doesn't matter."
"All right, all right," Atton said. Probably best just to drop it for now; you never knew what a wound-up Jedi could do to you, lightsaber or no. But Carra wasn't listening. She had already stalked out on him.
--
Another day, another jail cell.
"I told you we should have gone to Nar Shadda," Atton said bitterly. "But does anyone listen to the pilot?"
"Silence, fool," Kreia said from two force fields over. Carra, who was in the middle, and had been listening to their bickering with remarkable patience, only sighed.
"Telos depended on Peragus for fuel. We couldn't have not told them what happened," she explained, for what was perhaps the fourth time. Atton scowled. No wonder she never joined Revan and Malak against the Republic—she was too much of a goody-two-shoes, that's what she was, and she was going to get them all executed.
"You'd think they'd find out by themselves, with an explosion of that magnitude," Atton complained.
"That's not the point," Carra said.
In her corner, Kreia held up her unmutilated hand. "Hush," she said. "Someone approaches."
Well, that was helpful and specific. To be a Jedi you probably had to take a couple courses in obscurity or something: Introduction to Cryptic Phrases; Advanced Techniques in Incomprehensibility—
The door opened, and a Telos guard walked in.
Only he wasn't a Telos guard, because Atton recognized him. He was a minor Exchange thug Atton had met briefly in the back alleys of Nar Shadda; back then the man had been nothing but hired muscle. Well, well, well. He had moved up in the world.
Or down. Whichever.
"Who are you?" Carra wanted to know.
He leered at her. Atton wanted to punch him. "Batu Rem," he said. "Telos Security." Then he smirked. "Or not. Maybe I'm just here to kill you. Electrocuting you will be easy enough, don't you think?"
Of course he was here to kill them. This Jedi attracted attention like flies to bantha droppings.
"What, still working for the Exchange?" Atton asked sarcastically before Carra could answer. "I thought they would've gotten rid of you by now."
Incensed, the man turned to face him. "I'm more than skilled enough to work for the Exchange!"
"Yeah? Is that why you're too scared to face us in a fight?" Now it was Atton's turn to smirk; Rem (or whatever he was calling himself these days) had pulled out his blaster, but of course the force field would deflect that. "Not good enough to take us out on your own?"
"I could take you on any day of the week!" Rem said hotly, banging his fist on the nearby wall for emphasis. As though that would make him less of an idiot. "You're no match for me! I'm the best they've got—"
Their force fields came whizzing down as Rem's fist hit the security console on the wall. Atton rolled his eyes. This guy was about as skilled as a rock.
He reached for his blaster, but Kreia was faster. A moment later her vibroblade was in the false guard's throat and he was lying on the ground in a puddle of blood. Atton glared at the old woman. "You don't think we should've kept him alive for questioning or something?" he demanded.
"He was a fool," Kreia said coldly, pulling her blade free and wiping it on his robes. "I doubt he would have had anything useful to say."
"We're going to have some explaining to do," Carra said. She stepped carefully around the body on the floor. "That wasn't really a guard, was it?"
"No kidding he wasn't—"
"Drop your weapons," a voice ordered from the door. "Lift your hands into the air and turn around slowly. No sudden moves." Lietenant Grenn did not look happy.
"One of you just tried to kill us," Atton complained. All he got for his efforts was a blaster barrel in his face.
"Drop your weapons," Grenn said again, scowling deeply. "And without the comments this time."
--
It took three days for the investigations to finish, and in that time Atton thought he would expire from boredom. He could only play so many hands of pazaak with himself before he got tired of it, and Carra didn't seem inclined to let him see her naked again, and Kreia of course irritated him to no end. So Atton stayed in his room and flicked cards at the ceiling and thought a lot about the Jedi.
Such as, for example, why there were any left.
He had been good. Very good. And there were plenty of people like him still out there, and they had all been dedicated and ruthless. So that begged the question: why was Carra still alive? Or, for that matter, Kreia?
Where had they hid? And how?
And more importantly—why?
Jedi were not the sort to run from threats. Atton snorted to himself and started to pick up the stray cards on the floor. No, they weren't the sort to run, not when standing and making a grand pointless gesture was possible—it had certainly made Atton's job easier. The Jedi he had killed had all been heroic, and now they were all very, very dead.
And the Jedi he had captured had all been broken, one way or another, and for some unaccountable reason Atton felt his throat closing up as he stared at the cards in his hands. Disgusted with himself, he tossed the deck aside.
She was dead, too, and there was no reason he should be thinking of her.
