Note:

Okay guys, so here's the next chapter. I might be able to post another one tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. I want to apologize if this chapter here seems a little choppy-writing different sections in this manner is a habit I have yet to break. Also, the first section of this (with Carth) was intended to be the last part of the prologue. I never got around to fixing that and so I'm sorry if Chapter One takes off on a different foot than you might expect.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this!

CHAPTER ONE

The security consoles...

Carth hated this part. Hated it––if the bypass sequence didn't override a door, then came the long security code that took ten seconds to remember and another ten to punch in. And after the security code refused to go through, those glowing letters LOCKDOWN would spider across the display and cycle endlessly through Carth's mind until he wanted to gouge his eyes out and simply die.

Presently, he stood fuming inside the life pod bay, his knuckles stinging red––punching the console clearly hadn't helped. Why he thought it even would, he could not say. But he did know that he just wanted to open the damn door so he could slip into the portside section of the bay, clamber into an escape pod, seal the airlocks and punch that lovely green EJECT key...

He couldn't remember the code to bypass the lockdown.

The Spire shuddered, her superstructures pleading for an end to the turbotorture being inflicted. Carth's eyes flickered to the pod alcove on his left, which now stood corrugated and empty, just like every other one around him.

He actually found himself wishing the bloody Jedi were here––she might actually know what to do in this situation. She'd probably just cut through the door with her lightsaber, or use magic––the Force––to send it flying off its hinges.

By the gods, for once Carth wished that he had been born with those midi-Jedi-chlorien things...

As he glared at the console, a picture of smoking black computer carnage popped to mind, and his fingers began to twitch nervously beside the blaster holstered at his hip.

Then his personal comlink buzzed inside his jacket, and a frown touched his brow. A crew mate––aside from himself––was actually still alive? Honestly, he thought he had sent the remaining survivors on their way to Taris, in the last two escape pods.

He reached for the comm and brought it to his lips. "Copy! Does anyone copy?"

The voice that responded was barely audible, muffled in the static interference crowding the airwaves. It crackled through the comm's scaled speakers. "...this...'lon Cross..."

As Carth started to reply, the walls around him screamed, and the deck threw itself vertical. He slipped and caught himself on the override console as klaxons began to wail somewhere outside the pod bay. Beyond the transparisteel view panels––most of which had cracked under glancing turbofire––the wavering blue glow of the Spire's shields flickered, faded, vanished.

Carth pulled himself upright and began hammering every code that came to mind into the console, his heart leaping into his throat. He barely even heard the doors that led into the bay hiss and cycle open.

"Five-two and forty." came a voice behind him, crackling with the undertones of a lively man scared for his life. Carth spun around, his blaster found his hand––

The man standing before him wore a soldier's uniform, a thick mop of unruly raven hair where his cap should have been, molten bronze chasms in his eyes.

In his hand was a comlink.

"What did you say?" Carth forced out.

"The bypass code. It's five-two and forty." the man said, pushing Carth aside and punching those very numbers into the console––

The portside doors slid into the wall.

"You lucky bastard..." Carth breathed, then said aloud, "Is anyone else with you?"

The man shook his head as he hurried through the open hatchway, scanning the rows of escape pods on his right. "Doesn't matter now. This ship is scrap."

More like superheated spongecake, Carth thought as he glanced out the viewport and glimpsed the Spire's exterior armor––sure enough, the turbofire had blasted the raw durasteel surfaces to a porous consistency. He looked back at the raven-haired man, who was pulling back the hatch of the nearest pod. The hatch hissed on its airlocks and slid away, and the man stepped back.

He gestured inside the cramped pod.

"You first, Commander."

.::.

The turbolift shot up past level after level of the Leviathan's nebulous superstructures. Saul Karath––Admiral Karath; he had to get used to that name––stood in that turbolift pod, his face chalky and pale as curdled gruk slime, his nervous hands clammy at his back.

He could feel the white bands of pressure stretching over his knuckles, stinging, stinging...

Years of disciplinary life molded his features into a calm, confident expression, and yet just beneath the flesh he could feel his blood pounding through his veins.

Surely he wouldn't be held responsible. He couldn't be. It had been Bandon––Bandon––who had let her get away. Bandon had been charged with the strike; Bandon had been left responsible for the outcome of this assault; Bandon had led his own strike force inside the Endar Spire, and they had failed.

Saul had merely directed theorbital forces.

So yes, surely the fault would be driven onto Bandon...

And yet the thought of facing the Dark Lord––the very picture of Malak's unbridled power breeding into cold, raw fury––made Saul's skin crawl. He wished Dirth was here. Dirth would know what to say, or what to do. He always did––

Had, Saul corrected himself. Dirth always had known what to do...

Dirth was gone now. Dead: his final stroke of honor had been his first stand...and his last stand, as well as the only reason that his ranking insignia was now sown onto Saul's uniform––

The turbolift's gleaming doors whished open, and Saul forced one heavy foot out after the next.

At the end of the catwalk that cut through the crew pits, a shadow towered beside the blossoming view wall of battle.

Saul swallowed his fear and proceeded down the catwalk. As he walked, he glimpsed the starboard view: outside, the Endar Spire was a smoldering scrap, now drifting lifelessly through the stars as swarms of strike interceptors swooped in from all angles and fired relentlessly upon the warship––or, what was left of it.

Another sight caught Saul's eye: the blue ion streaks of an escape pod spiraling down through the chaos, burning upon entry into Taris' atmosphere...

Wonderful.

The Admiral returned his stare to the Dark Lord; he stopped just feet away and knelt.

"My Lord," the words worked their way out. "Bandon has reported back..."

The shadow made not a move. He stood like a towering silhouette of perpetual gloom, brushed out of darkness by the conflicting ends of the universe. Draped over his shoulders was a floor-length, clasp-brace cape that pooled around his feet like woven blood. Beneath a crawling nightmare of cybernetics and cold crystal circuitry, there was a face. Beneath that face, some speculated, resided only an abyss––a fathomless void from childhood's endless nightmares, or a breached cavity that cycled right open to the hard, lung-crushing vacuum of cosmic infinity.

Presently, that face stared on, or rather, out––outinto infinity with eyes cold enough to make the stars outside crack and bleed white life into the abyss below.

Something else in the Dark Lord's stare said that he would have loved to watch just this.

Saul continued his report, his body suddenly feeling like a prison, "Lord Malak, we––Bandon claims that Bastila isn't aboard the ship. She never was, or that she escaped before they could reach her––"

"She has fled, like every and any coward."

The voice that ripped its way out of the Dark Lord's black mass was cold and broken, a rasping ghost-voice spoken through the electrosonic vocabulators that were hardwired into his larynx. Saul braced himself not to startle.

He couldn't be sure, but...the shadow appeared to be deepening with every explosion outside, gradually growing darker than the surrounding infinite night...

"My Lord...?"

The Dark Lord's response seemed to be in the anger that made the air around his form shimmer like a living heat. Then he spoke. "Quarantine the planet––the entire planet." he rasped, then added in a tone that made the marrow in Saul's bones boil. "Do not let her escape, Saul Karath. Do not fail me again."

.::.

four days later...

Where night and day had become a perpetual black constant, the neural disruptor clasped around her neck intermingled brainwork with the infinite nightmares of a rattled subconscious.

Time and again, she would feel the dragon's hot breath down her neck; would see his molten eyes glinting like bronze firelight in a dark corner of her cell. She'd startle and wake, only to find herself immersed in a realm that leaked delusion into illusion and sent doubt sleeting across the inside of her skull.

What she saw of her captors was only shifting black mass; figures thrown into silhouette by a crack of white that would spill into the cell every so often. If only she had her lightsaber with her...

She knew she could whip any ten––no, any twenty––of those bastards effortlessly...had the Force been with her.

It was one thing to lose a lightsaber––that genius piece of superpotential force, suspended by the polar opposites of magnetism to create a candent, plasmatic symbol of every Jedi's battle against the dark. But to lose the Force...

Due in no small part to that blasted disruptor that itched at her collarbone, the Force had faded in her. Not completely––completely being what her captors probably intended––but just enough that it had become a whisper beneath the surface of her conscious, like the wind through the dregs of a silenced world.

In the cloudy confines of her mind, there were only the faintest strands of the Force to latch onto. And with those thin ends she had managed to brush away a small portion of the dust that enveloped her foggy head. She'd struggled and swept aside more dust, drilled deeper, deeper––searching for the sparking electrical currents of microcircuitry that ringed her neck, disrupting her thoughts.

She figured that with the right touch of the Force and the right twist of her mind, she might just be able to reverse the polarity of the disruptor's logical integrations––

...and break herself free.

So far this proved to be the hardest feat in the galaxy, next to moving Corellia's mountains. Especially since she felt like a drunken, dull-nerved idiot.

One hell of a long-shot. This feat was far more than one hell of a long-shot, doubtlessly. But by the gods, what other options did she have? Sit around and wait to be rescued?

No one had ever come to her rescue before, and she wasn't planning on finding out how that worked. A Jedi does not settle.

Or, at least she didn't settle.

Hours to a millennium could have passed by the time the wall of her cell slid back, and light spilled in. She lifted her head, squinted––a figure stood in the hatchway.

Her eyes adjusted as the figure moved deeper into the cell.

"Well, how are we feeling?" came a cold, sly male voice. Human, most likely.

Words worked out of her parched throat. She felt a small spark of pride as she managed to nurse some ice into them. "I know how you will be feeling once your hide is tacked up on––"

A resonant chuckle stopped her short. "Lots of bark and little bite––I should've expected as much from a Republic officer."

She stopped silently, her blurry thoughts slowly pulling themselves together. So they still thought she was just an officer...

The stranger continued, "I figured you'd be a little more grateful, considering my men saved you from those damned rahkghouls when your pod crashed in the Under City."

Rahkgouls... She strained at her mind, trying to loosen up some of that dust. She remembered, faintly, white leathery skin and spiny backs, and long, glistening fangs––

And she had lost her lightsaber, somewhere in the wreckage...

The stranger broke her thoughts. "Well, never mind that. Why don't you take a minute and give me a name here. I can't be here all day, and you can't slip into the Galactic slaving lines nameless."

Galactic slaving lines? Her heart flared.

Oh, you bastard––

"Bastila..." The neural disruptor pushed the name out before she could bite it back.

The man chuckled humorlessly, "Bastila...a good, strong name. Catchy. It outta turn some heads."

Anger simmered in her chest, but it didn't boil too high––when she spoke, her voice was even. "And who are you?"

"Brejek Stern––head of the Black Vulkars."

"Well then, Brejek, if you honestly think you can sell me to some dry-rotted clot of slavers ––"

"Sell you?" Brejek laughed. Now Bastila's chest went rigid––she hated it when people interrupted her.

Brejek whistled: one quick, sharp note. A second figure––alien from the looks––emerged from hallway outside and carried something––a chair––into the cell. After the alien left, Brejek sat and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin on his hands. "Let me ask you something, Bastila. Do you have a dream?"

She blinked. What? Of course she had her dreams, her fantasies––and they were only her own.

"Occasionally." she said.

Brejek chuckled. "I see... Well, mine has been mine for years. Do you want to know what it is?"

She didn't answer. It wasn't like she had much of a choice. Brejek continued, "I need control, Bastila. I need people who listen to my command. Call it petty, but every time I see myself in dominance, I smile."

In the dark, Bastila rolled her eyes. This man has mother issues.

"I want control of the Lower City, and you may just be able to help me with that."

She didn't know much about Taris, but from her fragmented knowledge of such a world, a rough picture of the Lower City slewed into her struggling mind.

Her nose wrinkled––she couldn't say she shared Brejek's sentiments.

"You're dead wrong if you think I'd actually help scum like you."

"Well, you my darling, are the prettiest prize I've ever offered up as the Vulkar's share of winnings in the swoop championship––you do know what swoop is, don't you?"

Sonic speeds, high stakes, even higher crowds––swoop racing was the highlight of every lowlife, hutt-spawn's dream. Bastila nodded slowly.

Brejek continued, "Good. Well, I know for a fact that the smaller gangs are gonna come swarming like gruk crawlers to my banner––the Vulkars banner––once they glimpse the dime you could get off a Republic Officer..."

He let the words sink in. Bastila felt her blood start to sizzle. Now she really wished she had her lightsaber with her––she willed herself to physically attack Brejek, but the disruptor at her neck vaporized the thought to atoms and left her slumped against the cell wall.

"Well, I should say farewell, for now––I have some deals to roll out with the other gangs. I'll see you in three days time, Bastila. I hope you like swoop races."

Brejek slipped out of the cell, giving a mocking salute on his way out. The chair was retrieved. The door was shut.

And Bastila's focus went straight back to the disruptor.