Revan leaned back against the craggy surface of the boulder, his eyes fixed on the nearest Sith guard tower. Looming over the barbed wire enclosure, the tower stood on stilt legs fastened together by a crisscross network of metal beams, its perch an ugly box of corrugated metal. Topped with an enormous megaphone, the tower stared down at the flat shell of the Sith base, a one-eyed monstrosity, its gawky silhouette made stark and strange by the first beams of a rising sun.
He was watching the tower window, waiting for the signal from T3 and the Chiss snipers that would let him know they were in position. If the plan was to succeed, they didn't have much time left to take the towers. Soon the buzzer would sound from all the surrounding towers, summoning the Sith troops out of the barracks for their morning training. The timing needed to be precise if they were going to use their limited resources to maximum effect. He did not savor the possibility of engaging Chiss soldiers in a hand-to-hand battle with these Sith and their 'sabers, a fight that they could not hope to win.
He shifted his position slightly, if only to give his cramped muscles a break. The morning dew was already beginning to dampen his robe, reminding him why he hated late-night stake-outs.
"Where's a Jedi army when you need one?" he sighed.
Shira stretched her legs out and gave him a sideways smile. It was hard to tell when she was being friendly and when she was having a secret joke at his expense.
"With everything that's happened, Revan, there aren't many Jedi left. The ones who survived are back in Republic space trying to pick up the pieces."
"Do you wish you were with them?"
"No," she said.
She paused for a moment, looking up at a gunmetal sky slowly fading to the dingy white of a kinrath egg.
"I mean, there are people that you miss, right? There always are. But I don't know if I ever belonged there. Nobody, not even the Jedi Council, can really make someone an exile. In the end, I chose it for myself."
Revan glanced at her pale, clear-cut profile against the jagged backdrop of the rocks. He knew that he should answer her, if only to take back a bit of her trust, but he didn't have the slightest idea what to say. He felt a supreme sense of relief when he saw T3's beam flashing from the window of the guard tower and he knew that he would not have to formulate a reply.
He prodded Shira with his elbow and pointed towards the window. "They've taken the tower. It's almost time. We need to advance."
Dusting off the back of her robe, she went around the side of the boulder to where Sandor was sleeping.
Revan clambered to his feet and scanned the horizon. Everything looked clear enough, but he didn't like surprises unless he was springing them on an enemy.
He was so wrapped up in his surveillance that Shira's voice was almost enough to startle him.
"Revan? I thought you should know - I gave Sandor a vibroblade. He's going to need something to defend himself with out there."
He turned and saw Sandor's red eyes gleaming behind her, his blue face almost black in the half-light.
"You gave him a knife to stick in your back? I don't like it. We'd be better off leaving him to the mercy of his Sith friends. Let him see how friendly they really are."
"I told you, I'll handle it. We're going to need him."
"For now," Revan said. "Don't get too attached."
He turned to Sandor and tossed off a few choice words in Cheun before they high-tailed it towards the base, insults that he was grateful only he and the prisoner could understand. It wouldn't bother him in the least to see this torturer get skewered by a Sith blade – he'd seen thousands of better men die. Force, he'd killed them some of them himself and he carried their deaths inside of him like rocks in his stomach. Shira could keep her Force bonds and her bleeding heart, but he wasn't going to compromise the mission so some cowardly murderer could clutch at her robes and protect his own worthless life.
"What did you say to him?" Shira whispered.
"I told him that I'd be watching him," Revan said.
It wasn't technically a lie.
Atton rolled over in the narrow bunk, pulling the covers more tightly around his head so that the fabric almost managed to block out the noise of HK pacing, back and forth, back and forth over the floor outside, stalking imaginary Jedi through the ship's corridors. Every once in a while, he could even hear the droid purring little affirmations to himself as though he was sizing up a kill with gleaming-eyed satisfaction.
He had a feeling he was going to have to finally make use of that dreaded hydrospanner. But not tonight. Tomorrow.
He was still feeling pretty woozy from smoking the dregs of Mira's old spice stash and so even if he couldn't quite get to sleep, he couldn't quite peel himself out of bed either. He shut his eyes, huddled under the blankets and tried to think of something nice, something distracting enough to shut out the ceaseless clank-clank-clank of HK's feet against the deck.
Damn droid. Stupid droid. Tomorrow he'd deal with him.
They charged onto the base grounds amidst the fire of laser cannons, the bone-splintering impact of grenades and scattered shrapnel, sniper shots slicing through cold morning air suddenly so thick with curses, shouts, dying gasps.
Shira whirled her saber around, its violet beam deflecting the onslaught of turret fire from the base rooftops. With the Force behind her, her body sped through the instinctive movements, charged with a divine velocity that exceeded the strength of her arms or the power of her legs.
Behind you!
Sandor's voice in her mind. She spun around, just managing to dodge the Force pike thrust at her back.
Seeing her blade, the hooded Sith trooper pulled back and put up a defense with the pike. He was panting hard under the black fabric shrouding his face.
She flicked her hand forward and felt the Force gust through the air, knocking the heavy body down into the muddy grass. She let Sandor finish the job with a few strokes of the vibroblade.
More Sith underlings came running, trampling down the bodies of their wounded and their dead as they came. Even amidst the rattle of the turrets and the sharp hiss of 'sabers, it was possible to hear the sickening crunch of bone under black boots.
She fought hard, maneuvering herself around Sandor so that he faced the slavering guard hounds rather than the quick beams of Sith officers or the Force pikes of the lesser soldiers. The hounds were challenging enough, hulking white beasts that lunged forward gnashing their teeth and whisking barbed tails like scythes.
Each time one of them managed to wound Sandor, she could feel the teeth tearing at her own skin and she could hear his silent cursing, the babbling panic that comes when you are staring down death for the first time. She had forgotten that feeling a long time ago and she didn't like to be reminded.
Lightning rippled across the battlefield and green clouds of poison gas hung in the air, a toxic haze that made every face look as though it was in the first stages of decay.
She caught glimpses of Revan as they wended through the maze of thrashing bodies, the grassy battlefield turning into a pit of mud under their feet. The Force was always at his finger's ends and he wielded it as a devastating weapon. Sparks danced over his palms and then crackled over the field in a bolt of blue lightning. He knocked opponents over as though they were flimsy pazaak cards scattering left and right and then choked the life out of them.
They met at the heavy double doors of the Uxturran base.
"That didn't go too badly," Revan said.
Shira turned back, evaluating the heaped bodies on the battlefield. "Well, we made it this far anyway."
Revan smiled and shook his head as if to admonish her. He grabbed hold of Sandor's arm, almost wrenching it out of the socket, and pressed the Chiss prisoner's hand into the handprint recognition detector set in the door.
Shira rubbed her own arm defensively, even though she knew the pain was only a product of the force bond. "Force, Revan, do you mind?"
"What?"
He didn't get it.
She heard Sandor voice a protest to Revan in quiet Cheun, but she couldn't decipher the thought behind the words.
Revan just gave a bone-dry chuckle, pushing Sandor's hand deeper into the detection device as the lights around it flashed red. "Did you hear that? Did you hear what he said?"
"No," Shira sighed. "He can shut me out sometimes."
"The Chiss murderer just informed me that I hurt him," Revan said. "Poor guy, I guess he'll have a bruise. I'll be interested to see if a Chiss can turn black and blue."
"You did hurt him. You hurt me too. When he's in pain, I can feel it through the bond. So watch it."
Revan's energy shield cast tints of gold and infernal red across his impassive face.
"Alright. Sorry. I didn't know. I realize I'm not the paragon of Jedi virtue. Call it pragmatism."
"I saw you Force-choking those Sith," she said. "I just hope you're being careful."
"You have to fight fire with fire sometimes. I promise you, I'm watching myself."
The light circling the detector turned green and the base doors began to slide open.
Atton awoke to the darkened dormitory, unsure of how long he had been sleeping. He breathed a sigh and brushed the hair back from his sweaty forehead, hunger squirming through his stomach.
That's the big problem with smoking spice in space, he thought. When the inevitable appetite for greasy cantina fare rumbled in, you could be sure that all you'd have to eat was canned, dehydrated or made of paste.
He could have sworn HK clanked in to 'check' on him while he was half-asleep, but that could be a side-effect of the spice too. After all, he was pretty sure that he'd locked the door and he didn't see any assassin droid-shaped holes blasted into the metal wall.
It was probably just his imagination playing tricks on him, although he liked to believe his subconscious could come up with better material than a vision of HK informing him about the dangers of recreational spice use.
Atton leaned over the side of the bunk, his hand feeling for clothes strewn on the floor. When his fingers connected with them, he was surprised to find that they weren't the usual wrinkled heap of cloth and leather, but a neat, folded pile.
Creepy. It was like somebody's mother had come to visit. In his experience, tidiness was definitely not a side-effect of spice use.
His belt lay atop the pile, with both blasters carefully tucked in their holsters. He tugged on the black leather belt and it snaked out along the floor. It didn't weigh as much as it should have, but it took him a second or two to realize that the loop at the end was empty. Frack.
He tore through the folded pile, cursing under his breath. He searched the beat-up jacket, the faded white shirt, shaking each item of clothing as though he could rough it up and force it to give evidence.
It wasn't there. But it had been there when he went to sleep. He felt a sense of foreboding, a numbness spreading through his hands and feet.
His lightsaber was gone.
Revan hobbled forward, favoring his right leg. The Sith blade had made a long gash down his left thigh, severing muscle from bone. Shira's attempts to heal him with the Force were proving just enough to keep him on his feet.
"There's a central chamber just ahead," Shira said. "The control room, the barracks and the prison cells branch off from there."
He nodded. "Then that's where the last real resistance will converge. They're getting desperate."
"Be careful, Rev. We're getting desperate too. Want me to try and heal you again?"
"This is the best we're going to do right now. Let's press forward."
The adrenalin would keep him going. He managed a limping jog behind Shira and Sandor, passing under a high-arched door into the central chamber.
A tall figure stood in the center of the candle-lit room. She faced away from them, seeming to contemplate the enormous throne before her. A long braid of hair trailed down her back, the strands alternating between black and white. She cast a long shadow over the crimson rug.
"[So you come,]" she said in sibilant Cheun. "[You have purged the lesser ones, but the loss of the weak lackeys and diseased underlings cannot trouble me. You will die before you take my seat]"
The woman turned, revealing features that had once been lovely, queenly, but were now a determined mockery of beauty. Pale scars knifed across her face and the flesh of her cheeks was pierced and threaded with silver chains. Set deep in their sockets, her mismatched eyes gleamed even in the dark, one a vortex of dark blue, the other a rusty brown. Her mouth was like a fresh bruise.
It took Revan an instant to fight back the horror of that leering face and find the words to answer her. "[Your worthless throne? After you die, we'll break it into rubble.]"
From the corner of his eye, he could see Shira leap forward, her 'saber poised to sever the woman's head from that impossibly tall body draped in shapeless red cloth.
The violet 'saber swung through the air but just as it was about to connect with that withered neck, it stopped short.
Shira hung in the air for a moment, transfixed, seeming to dangle like a puppet on a string, and then the spell broke and she was hurled backwards, almost colliding into Sandor.
The Sith woman's elongated shadow extended even further across the red carpet. The black streaks seeped out of her braided hair and her blue left eye faded to a rusty brown.
Suddenly, her shadow stood up, another body clothed in a long black robe. Atop the tall body, a mirror-image face floated like a scarred moon, cheeks threaded with gold chain, dark blue eyes embedded in those deep sockets.
The Sith woman smiled at her shadow and the shadow smiled back.
"[I am Duenia the Divided One,]" she laughed with two sets of mouths. "[You will find us difficult to kill.]"
Revan took on the white-haired Duenia, while Shira and Sandor fought her shadowy twin. The pain in his leg plagued him as he ducked and dodged Duenia's Force attacks, as he leveled his own, the room vibrating with the clash of their powers. There was no time to heal the wound amidst the flicker and flash of lightsaber beams.
Duenia's double-bladed 'saber spun towards him but he managed to parry the attack, using his superior strength to push her backward. She attacked again, a vicious stroke, and this time he felt the saber sear across his shoulder.
Lightning sparked on his fingertips, crackled down his palm and then blazed out at his opponent. The electricity wasn't enough to cause Duenia much harm, but it shielded him for a moment, long enough to collect himself.
He glimpsed Shira pressing forward against Duenia the Black, the violet whirl of her blade distracting the Sith woman from Sandor and his vibroblade. The Chiss prisoner crept behind the dark woman, flanking her.
He'd almost forgotten that Shira had a secret weapon too, another body that she could use as a puppet in this fight. He backed away from Duenia the White, concentrating on the Force crashing against his body like waves, an infinite sea encompassing every body, every mind, all things seen and unseen. He would make this power do his biding.
Pale braids flying, Duenia seemed to float across the floor. There was a look of wicked triumph on her face.
"[What? You run so soon? You cannot face me and yet you would challenge Asmortis? Fool!]"
Both of Duenia's mouths screamed as Sandor plunged the vibroblade into Duenia the Black's spine. Shira's lightsaber stabbed into her chest, burning deep into the flesh.
Writhing in pain at her twin's death, Duenia the White lunged at Revan with her lightsaber, the blade slashing through the air.
She didn't move fast enough. Using the Force, Revan pushed the black throne forward. The heavy stone chair toppled onto her tall form and hit the floor so hard that it cracked the stone tiles underneath.
Blood seeped into the carpet, pooled in the interstices between the grey stones and dyed the Sith's white hair a lurid pinkish red.
"I told you I'd break that throne," Revan said.
Shira bent forward, resting her hands on her knees as she caught her breath. "Tough fight. Are you okay?"
"Yes, I'm fine," he said, grinning at her. "Since when did you start caring so much?"
"You look terrible. Your leg is a mess. You're going to have one hell of a scar."
He looked down at the wound. It was particularly ugly by candlelight.
"It happens. A little souvenir from Uxturran, I guess."
"The prison cells are just west of here. I'll go on alone," she said. "I need you to get on the comm.-link and order some back-up. Try to get ground troops and anyone with medical training. From what I've seen, any survivors we find are going to need immediate attention."
He stared at her, the pain in his leg getting worse by the minute. Since when was she the one giving the orders around here?
"I don't think you should go in alone. You don't even know Cheun."
"I can handle it. I know what I'm facing. You're hurt, Rev, and truthfully, you're not going to want to see this. The things they did to those people – like you said before, there are some things people are better off not knowing. Just get Otranian to send in some back-up and let Sandor take care of your leg."
She didn't wait for an answer, just ran off towards the west corridor. It was as though she'd borrowed a page from his playbook and appointed herself leader. He didn't like it, even if she was trying to spare him. In the end, the apprentice always wants to usurp the master's place, he thought. The old Revan had mutilated his closest advisors and unhinged Malak's jaw for even the slightest hint of insubordination. The new and improved Revan might be a touch friendlier, but he still didn't like to share power.
Revan limped over to the pedestral where the throne had once stood and sat down on the cold stones. He eyed Sandor warily as the former healer ripped cloth from the bottom of his tunic and began to dress the wound.
"[Don't start thinking that because you've helped us you're going to get off lightly,]" Revan said. "[I don't know what you did to those prisoners yet, but I'm going to collect the details. I'm going to make sure you pay.]"
Sandor didn't look up from his work. "[On the planet I come from, we have a saying: 'Everyone pays in the end, but you don't always see the money change hands.' Your religion – the Force, you call it – it is supposed to balance all things, is it not?]"
"[You don't know anything about the Force.]"
The makeshift bandage wrapped tightly around Revan's leg, covering the searing red of the wound.
"[Perhaps not, but I do know that if you hurt me, your friend will feel the pain. She's trusting you to behave yourself. Besides, without my help, you cannot enter the Xendrin base, where Asmortis rules the last of his kind.]"
"[And what do you know of Asmortis? Probably nothing at all. You're too far down the chain of command to have seen a Sith Lord.]"
Sandor snickered and finished tying off the bandage.
"[I know enough to ensure my life is still valuable and I am wise enough to hold my tongue. That will have to be good enough for you, although I admire your efforts to wound my pride and make me talk. Very clever. Not so effective as your woman friend's tactics, but we all have our own talents.]"
Revan tugged lightly at the bandage. The cloth held firm. It wasn't Force healing but it was good - it would keep the muscle together and the dirt out of the wound.
He scowled, displeased by the Chiss killer's usefulness.
"[Tell me, what's your talent, Sandor? Other than murder and betrayal?]"
Sandor chuckled, his gaunt face somehow becoming even narrower when he smiled.
"[I make good bandages. Even for my enemy.]"
Shira opened the cell door, a narrow slat of light from the corridor widening to reveal the outlines of huddled bodies and the glimmer of fearful red eyes. Someone was crying in the darkness.
She stepped into the room, choking back the stench of bodies, living, dying and dead, crammed into a steel box.
Her Cheun was still limited, but she'd picked up a few words through the force bond with Sandor. She just hoped it would be enough to calm the prisoners. Otranian's team would arrive soon enough.
"[Hello,]" she said. "[Rescue here. No Sith.]"
An emaciated woman struggled to her feet, her hands clutching at the walls, her bony knees shaking. They had starved her so that her ribs rippled through her dark blue skin, but when she rose, she spoke in low, mellifluous voice, a voice that seemed to belong to a singer rather than to a prisoner in rusted shackles.
The survivors began to rise, to disentangle themselves from the dead. Some of them were maimed, some burned and some seem to stare beyond Shira as if they couldn't see her standing in that open doorway, as though they would always be locked inside the enormous metal coffin the Sith had built for them.
The sobs from the corner became louder, more insistent. Shira crept towards the Chiss prisoner, watching where she stepped.
The Chiss man's frame was wracked with grief as he rocked a small doll-like body in frail arms. He was young, but he already had the face and the body of an old man. His head was bald except for a few feathery tufts of hair near the top of his skull. He stared down at the dead child, whispering to it and muttering to himself.
"[Help here.]" Shira said, suddenly feeling helpless.
She crouched down and tried to get the man's attention.
"[Help you.]"
Her Cheun was dreadful, a blunt instrument, but even if she were as fluent as Revan, Shira didn't know if she could have been any more articulate in this situation.
The man looked up at her, blinking into the light
"[No help,]" he said. "[I will stay.]"
She sat down beside him and tried to Force-heal him as best she could, but it didn't work. He kept resisting her attempts, still clutching the small body in his arms, cradling the child's head in his hands. He refused to let her comfort him. She could only hope the Chiss medical officers would fare better.
It wasn't long before Otranian's soldiers swept into the room and took control of the situation, loading wounded prisoners onto stretchers, deciding who needed immediate medical attention and who could wait for care.
Shira helped them to lift some of prisoners onto stretchers and offered what Force-healing as she could, but without knowing Cheun, she knew there wasn't much more she could do.
She went back and sat down beside the Chiss man, leaning back against the cold metal wall. She stayed with him and they both waited, as still and as silent as two stones, until soldiers came to take the man away, laying him and the small body of his son on the same stretcher.
It was difficult to trust in the Force, to put her faith in something so exquisite and unfathomable in the midst of the ugliness that seemed to be closing in upon them all. Shira sat in the dark for a little while longer, as the room emptied out, as soldiers marched through the corridors outside, as the rescued prisoners cried out their relief and their horror. She wondered what Tahet would have wanted her to do.