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Chapter 5

Harbinger of Doom

"Good thing we have a clear run to the shi-" Atton was cut off by a droid.

"Threat: Master, perhaps I did not enunciate clearly the last time we spoke. I suggested that you should shut down, stay put, and wait for rescue." I spun towards the source of the voice. It was HK-50, the droid Teri had mentioned meeting in the mining tunnels. Well, okay, she hadn't actually mentioned him (it?) by name, but having played Kotor 2 a million times... You get the picture.

"No, you were clear, I just don't listen to assassin droids. Especially ones who try to murder me as soon as I leave their sight." Teri clearly hated this droid. I wondered how she knew that he had killed the miners.

"Statement: Master, 'assassin droid' is a term used for droids upgraded with only the most archaic of kill programs. My function has been referred to as 'wanton slaughter'."

"I don't care what it's referred to as, there was still no reason to kill those miners."

"Teri, I don't think arguing with an assassin droid is going to help us get out of here quickly," I said. "Let's just destroy it and leave."

"Good idea," Atton said, taking a shot at the droid.

"Expletive: Die!" The droid suddenly produced a blaster rifle (or something to that effect) from seemingly nowhere. I ran up close to attack it with my vibroblade when four floating mines uncloaked in the air around the droid. One of them floated up towards me - they were quick little suckers - and suddenly exploded about four feet away. I looked behind me to see that Atton had one of his blasters pointed where the mine had just been. He looked behind me and his expression changed.

"Get down!" He yelled to me. I immediately dropped to the floor as he fired a shot over my head at another mine.

"Watch your back next time!" He called as I avoided the other mines and the shots that HK-50 was firing at random and finally got to where I had been trying to get to - close enough to hit something.

"Self-destruct sequence activated," the droid said before I had even hit him.

"Oh, not good," I muttered. I was the only one around - Kreia and Teri were fighting from afar - so I swung my vibroblade as hard as I could. My first swing hit his arm. My second hit his neck and sliced the head right off. The head flew towards the wall and the body dropped to the ground, sparks flying from the neck.

"Nice one, Laura," Teri said as she came up behind me and checked the destroyed droid for any usable equipment.

"Yeah. What do we do next?"

"We get on that ship."

"The Harbinger. An apt name..." I didn't realize I was thinking out loud.

"What?" Atton and Teri spoke in unison. Kreia just looked at me with a look on her face that told me she knew what I was talking about. I wonder what else she knew about me... I would have to ask her when we got back to the Hawk.

"Nothing. Let's keep moving." We ran up to the docking bay and onto the ship.

I was trailing a little ways behind the others, and so I didn't realize that the others were arguing until I nearly walked into Kreia, who was standing almost right in front of the airlock.

"Then what are we doing on this ship? We were better off in the facility!"

"Yeah, if you want to get shot by mining droids, blown up, or both," I interrupted. "Peragus is doomed. Especially if whoever got to this ship decides to hit it next."

"The child speaks the truth. Our enemies are drawing near. They will destroy the facility in their attempt to destroy us." Well, it was good to get some support, especially from Kreia. It also helped me avoid any weird looks from anyone. But if she was going to call me "the child" for the whole quest, I was gonna end up throwing her out an airlock at some point. It was already getting old, and she had only used it once. I guess it was better than "fool", though.

"We might be able to avoid that if we knew who and where our enemies are," Teri said in a tone that made it clear she was frustrated with Kreia. "Enough cryptic words. Who are these enemies?"

"You will find out in due time, sooner if we do not move."

"Where do we go? The only way off this ship is back where we came from!" Atton was getting seriously near anger. If I had poked him with a stick, I swear to God he would have exploded. "You two are supposed to be Jedi? You two are the worst Jedi I've ever met!"

"Where would you have met Jedi?" I asked under my breath. He turned and glared at me, the angry look on his face telling me to shut up immediately.

"When this ship docked, I saw a fuel line connect from the fuel depot. We can get to the hangar from there if we go through the fuel line."

"Even if we could get to the hangar and find a ship, it wouldn't matter. We'd need the orbital drift charts to clear the asteroid fields, unless you want to have the shortest flight out of Peragus ever recorded."

"What about this ship? How did they get through the field?"

"Well, they have the orbital drift charts. They'd have to."

"So let's get the charts from the navicomputer here. We can worry later about how to get off the station." After she said this, she stood there for a moment thinking.

Normally at this point in the game, there was a little blurb about party members and influencing them to your alignment, but since this wasn't Kotor 2 by far, I had no idea what she was thinking. All I knew was that Kreia would say...

"Our enemies gather while we wait here." I was tempted to say it along with her, but I think that would scare the others.

"Forgive me Kreia, I was distracted for a moment."

"Very well."

I had used that line before, almost every time I played through the game, because it gained influence with Kreia, and it appeared to have the same effect here. It was almost like she charmed us, I realized, and I immediately vowed that I wouldn't be influenced to the point of giving up my secrets the second she asked for them. I trusted her to not turn on me or get me killed, but my true respect - and my back story - was something she would have to earn.

So we traveled around the Harbinger after uploading the orbital drift charts onto a spare datapad. We followed Teri around as if she had an idea of where she was going. She seemed to, but I guess the ability to fake an air of confidence is a necessity to be a good leader.

The ambushes from random stealthed assassins weren't much fun. We did manage to kill them all, though. For my part, I was terrified. Of the assassins, of the fights themselves. Every move I made could easily have been my last, and I knew that very well, but I fought anyway. I had to. If I didn't, the only thing that awaited me was certain death. I guess the fact that I had no real training, or any real idea what I was doing, with a vibroblade didn't help my emotions - or my body count.

The only noteworthy thing that happened - besides the ambushes - on the Harbinger before the engine level events was Teri finding her room. She just stopped all of a sudden in front of an unmarked door, nearly causing me to ram headfirst into her back end.

"What is it? Why are we stopping?" Atton's tone was urgent. He apparently wanted to get off this ship as soon as possible.

"Just... This was my room."

"This was your room? When?"

"Before the Harbinger was attacked and I ended up on Peragus."

"Whatever you intend to do, do it quickly." Kreia evidently wasn't interested in staying on the ship longer than necessary, either."

"No point in being a long time anyway," I said. Going through the Harbinger on the game had always given me the creeps, and it was worse here. All I could smell were the dead Republic soldiers, which didn't make it any better.

She went into the room, opened a plasteel cylinder, grabbed her stuff, and came back out.

"Let's go," she said.

On the engine deck, about half an hour later, I was seriously starting to hate this stupid ship. At least I didn't have to be on it much longer.

We got past the first room and started to turn a corner in the next when we heard heavy footsteps behind us. We all turned around.

The footsteps belonged to Darth Sion. Damn, I had almost forgotten about him.

"Keep going. I will face him alone." Well, I hadn't forgotten about that. Kreia was still the crazy old witch she was in the game, so of course that would happen.

"He'll murder you!" Teri seemed really worried. I guess I would be too if I hadn't known she would do that. And what Kreia actually is.

"He cannot kill what he cannot see, and power has blinded him long ago. Run. I shall be along shortly." She produced a vibrosword from nowhere, ran into the room with Sion, and locked the door behind her.

"Yeah, right, she'll be along shortly," I said with sarcasm clear in my tone. Teri, meanwhile, looked ready to break down the door and kill Sion herself.

""He's gonna kill her! What am I going to do without a mentor! She's an idiot!"

"She'll be fine. That old witch's tough as hell," I told her, turning away from the door. "We have to keep moving."

She stared at me as if she wanted to punch me. If she tried, I'd knock her out and drag her to the Hawk. She calmed down after a bit, though.

"Okay. Let's go." We went through the corridors to the engine room, only to find that the door was controlled by a nearby console. We found the console in a nearby storage room, and Atton managed to hack into it and open the door. We got to the engine, where the fuel line was, and were at the entrance to the line when Teri suddenly grabbed her left hand and fell to her knees screaming as though it had just been cut off.

Oh, yeah. It kind of was. I mean, Teri's hand was fine, but...

"What is it? What's wrong?" Atton was frantic. "Damnit, hold on, it's only a little farther. Don't give up on me now!"

In a few minutes, she stopped clutching her wrist as hard and stood up, a little shakily.

"What happened?" Atton asked.

"My hand... felt like it was being dipped in molten carbonite. I think Kreia's hurt."

"You look fine to me. And not to be insensitive, but any kind of distraction that Kreia's providing is to help us get out of here. She'll be fine. Let's go." Atton seemed really nervous about something, and I didn't know what it was. I wondered, but I didn't ask.

"Ugh, it smells terrible in here," I muttered as we went through the pipe. It was just barely big enough for Atton to fit through, and really dark and insanely smelly, so it wasn't a fun trip. Near the end, where we found T3-M4, the pipe widened out enough for me and Teri to walk side-by-side.

"What's that?" Teri asked, as T3 came into view.

"It's a utility droid. Looks like it was hit with an ion charge and dumped here," Atton said, bending over to look at it, then jumping back as it raised its (for lack of a better word) head.

"I'm going to take a guess that this is the same droid that opened the hatch to the mining tunnels."

Teri spoke to it (him? I'm going to call T3 him), telling him that it wasn't his fault and that we were ambushed by HK-50 too. Apparently she could understand all the beeping because she answered everything he said. I couldn't understand him myself, and I doubted I'd ever learn.

Evidently he told her where to go from here to get to the hangar, because when she was done talking, she told us, "I know where to go. Follow me."

We made our way through the fuel depot to the decontamination chamber, which was pretty much acting like a gas chamber, thanks to HK-50's sabotage. We managed to shut it down and kept going until we finally reached the hangar.

As we walked through the door and I saw the Ebon Hawk for the first time, I was... awestruck. It's a lot bigger than it looks in the game, and I mean a lot bigger. It was probably around three times as tall as me, and about five or six times as wide as I was tall. Beyond that, it was home free. Our escape route. Our way to get the hell off this station.

We ran up the already-open loading ramp directly into the cockpit. Atton took the pilot's seat. I looked past the viewport and saw Sith soldiers surrounding the ship.

"It'll take the engine a little while to warm up. Why don't you go give the laser turret a little workout?" He asked Teri. She nodded and ran to find the turret controls. I headed off to the main hold to take care of any Sith that made it past her. Apparently Teri was a pretty good shot because only two or three Sith made it to me.

Finally, the engines were ready. "Hold on!" Atton yelled from the cockpit. "This is gonna get a little rocky!" I was going to run back to the cockpit, but I barely had time to plant myself in one of the chairs in the hold before the acceleration knocked me over.

When the ship steadied out a little, after we had made it into hyperspace, I returned to the cockpit. The first thing I saw was Kreia.

"How the hell did you make it before we got off Peragus?" And how did you get past me without me noticing, I added in my head.

She ignored me. Apparently I had missed the situation explanation conversation (how's that for alliteration?) because she said, "I have had enough of this. If you wish to speak more of this, I shall be in the crew quarters."

"Aww, don't stop your long, boring rants on my account. I was just getting sleepy-eyed," Atton said. He was clearly uninterested in the conversation, but was looking to irritate Kreia a little more. He was pretty good at that. I wondered if he had ever had siblings.

"Also in private, we will be mercifully free of the opinions of imbeciles and fools."

"Ouch," I said, faking a wounded expression.

She turned and looked at me. "If you are so inclined, you may come and speak after." She then turned and walked away.

"Hmm," I said to no one in particular. "Maybe I will."

Atton turned to Teri. "Maybe you should go check on our passenger, make sure she's all right."

"She looked fine to me," Teri replied.

"Are you kidding? The pain was practically rolling off her. If I were her, I'd be screaming like a stuck mynock. Well, a very strong, manly mynock."

"Oh yeah, very manly. You'd be on the floor, crying your eyes out," I said, rolling my eyes and grinning. I thought he'd end up saying that.

Teri chuckled. "That was pretty quick."

"I have brothers. They taught me well."

"Apparently. I guess I'll go check on Kreia, then." She left the cockpit.

I moved to sit in the copilot's chair, but Atton looked at me and said, "If you want to sit there, you'll actually have to do the copilot's job."

"All right then," I said, and sat in the seat behind it. "Since I'd probably screw something up if I touched anything, I guess I'll sit back here."

"I was only joking. It's just a seat. Not much to do right now, anyway." He leaned back and put his feet up on the instrument panel, careful not to hit any of the controls. I moved up to the copilot's chair.

Since there wasn't much else to do, I decided that as soon as Teri was done with Kreia, I would talk to her. I wondered what we would talk about though. Probably some heavy subject like life, destiny, or my chances of ever getting home.

Home. I missed it. How long had it been since I came here? Three weeks? A month? I wondered if time was passing at home. Hmm... I guess I'd never know. Or I'd find out during my conversation with Kreia.

A/N: 2875 words without disclaimer or author's notes. I'm pretty proud of myself. This is my longest chapter so far... maybe I should throw a party. Meh. This was probably the most difficult chapter to actually get typed out. My motivation level was very low on this chapter, but now that it's finished, that means that Peragus is finally over. I hate doing Peragus. But... I think I heard somewhere in someone else's story that "Peragus is so boring that everybody complains about it, but Telos is so boring that everyone forgets to complain about it." ... Now I don't want to do Telos. But the show (or story) must go on, and so it will. Okay, rant's over.

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