Chapter 10: Highs and Lows
It was just so bright.
Mission switched back and forth between squinting and blinking furiously as she looked out the window of Kyrena's apartment. The sun glinted off everything, making it so bright she could barely see. How could anyone see through that?
However they did it, Mission was determined to get it down by the time Kyrena got dressed from her shower. Rather, from her second shower – she'd had one just last night when they first come up from the Lower City. Maybe being in the Upper City really did do something to you. Who ever heard of someone showering two days in a row? Certainly not anyone that Mission had ever met.
…
Kyrena stepped out of the shower in a cloud of steam and took a slow, deep breath. It felt so good to be clean again after the grime coating everything in the Lower City. Almost as refreshing as the hot water was the chance to just let everything go for a little while, to not think of anything, to have no pressure or expectations, for just a few minutes.
She toweled herself off and pulled on her clothes while trying not to remember that she hadn't been able to wash them as well. She pulled her damp hair back, snapped her boots on, and stepped out of the refresher to face the day.
Right. Priorities. She needed weapons and credits, information, and bonus points for finding Carth again. Fortunately, the long shower had borne fruit. She had an idea, but for it to work she'd need a little help . . .
Kyrena smiled as Mission did her best to pretend that walking along the broad streets of the Upper City was no big deal. Zaalbar kept focus a lot more successfully, but that may have had something to do with the ugly looks the human passersby were giving them.
"Come on guys, let's pick up the pace. We need to get off the streets before someone calls over a Sith patrol."
Zaalbar growled an agreement and before long they found themselves knocking on Deadeye Duncan's door. Kyrena had to hand it to Duncan, he was one cool customer. Opening his door to find a giant Wookiee in his face and all he did was blink once before picking her out of their little crowd.
"Ah, Mysterious Stranger, you have returned. I was beginning to worry." Duncan gestured them inside while Kyrena shot Mission a warning glance to halt the question already half-way out of her mouth. Duncan closed the apartment door behind them as Kyrena stepped into the sparkling apartment and felt her shoulders sag at the visual relief of such a calm, clean space. "Yes, things have been . . . interesting. So interesting, in fact, that I'm going to have to ask to pay later for your lesson."
Duncan's eyes narrowed. "I see. Normally I would not agree to such an arrangement, but I will make an exception for you."
Kyrena paused, curious. "Why?"
Duncan stepped aside to allow Zaalbar to rumble past him and pick out a spot against the wall. His eyebrows scrunched in a barely perceptible wince as Zaalbar's none-too-clean shaggy coat slid down his spotless wall. Mission sat next to him, already playing with Kyrena's datapad she hadn't notice Mission borrow.
Duncan shook it off and turned back to Kyrena. "To be honest, I'm not quite sure. The way you fight, it . . . intrigues me. There are moments when the way you move . . . "His jaw tightened momentarily as he hunted for the words. "Sometimes, when you are the most focused, when you can glimpse the whole beach from the single grain of sand, the way you move changes. It is not something I have seen before, and I wish to know what it is that is buried beneath the surface within you. It is difficult to describe. I can only help to draw it out and help you see." His eyes brightened. "But for that, we must practice, and that means getting out on the floor."
In moments Duncan was leading them through warm-up stretches. And, as before, as they fell into the pattern Duncan began to speak.
"You have begun to learn of the earth, of perspective. That is good. You are beginning to see. But to see is nothing if you cannot move. Today we will speak of water. For something so fundamental to life, it is poorly understood. Many speak of it taking any shape, of its formlessness. They make it into something complex. That is not how my people think of water. Water is very simple. It goes form high to low. Always, it is moving towards its goal. Many speak of its forms; water has but one form, one shape – the shape it must take on to reach its single goal."
"To fight as water is not to know every style, every avenue of attack. It is to take the one that flows downhill. It is to make decisions with all the certainty of a glacier, the speed of a rainstorm, and the power of a waterfall."
"Before I have fought you as a stick in a stream, something to push against. Today I fight you as a boulder, and you must be a river."
Kyrena paused for a moment from the exercises that were going more and more quickly as Duncan got caught up in his speech. "So what, I'm supposed to flow around you?"
Duncan, too, paused, his breathing still light while Kyrena panted. "No. The boulder is an obstacle. You must go downhill. That may mean over me, around me, through me. All you have to do is focus on going downhill. I will show you."
Duncan stepped over to the weapon rack and tossed her a practice sword. Then he tossed her a second. Kyrena fumbled the catch, surprised, but managed to juggle them without dropping them.
"Today, you will learn some flexibility as I alter my style, so that no matter what comes at you, you can go downhill.
Kyrena raised a practice sword awkwardly in her left hand, disconcerted that it felt heavier than the identical blade in her right. She looked up as Duncan advanced purposefully and gulped.
The next few hours were brutal.
Duncan drilled her relentlessly on all the strikes and blocks, insisting she do them with both hands and berating her for not practicing. She was too tired to protest that circumstances hadn't exactly been accommodating.
"Focus, Kyrena. You are losing your vision, hang onto it. My feet, remember? Watch my feet, my movement. Don't' think action and response, feel it."
"I'm trying." Sweat stung Kyrena's eyes, distracting her for a moment and sending her stumbling. She bit off a curse as Duncan's blade batted aside her left-handed block with contemptuous ease.
"Come on, stop flailing around with sticks and move. Don't fight me, beat me; don't struggle with me, overcome me. Don't overwhelm me, outmaneuver me. Move! Victory is downhill."
He'd been muttering this gibberish non-stop for the past twenty minutes, and Kyrena's temper snapped. Fine, dammit, she wouldn't try to fight him, she'd shove one of these sticks straight into his smug face.
Her eyes shifted away from his body, his weapon, and onto his gloating smile. Her stance lowered, left foot sliding further forward to match her left arm while her right pulled further back behind her. Duncan's face changed expression, but she was already moving, already attacking.
Kyrena glided forward, and as he had a dozen times already, Duncan attacked with a two-handed overhead attack to force Kyrena backwards and onto the defensive.
Don't let him control you.
The thought sprang unbidden, but it was right. She pivoted on her left foot, spinning out left past Duncan's smashing blow while bringing her own swords up in a rising slash, one after the other. Duncan took a half-step back and brought his own blade up quickly to ward off Kyrena's right hand practice sword from smashing into his shoulder. The momentum of both her blow and his rising block took their blades high, leaving Duncan completely exposed to Kyrena's left-handed followup.
Duncan half-stepped, half fell backwards. "There! Did you see that? Did you feel that?"
Kyrena paused, eyes unfocused, trying to catch the feeling as it slid through her fingers like the water Duncan wouldn't shut up about. Yes, there had definitely been something. It was . . . it was strong, but it wasn't the terrifying darkness that she had felt before. This was different. It was . . .
She sighed. It was gone.
Duncan straightened. "Gone, is it? Ah well. Maybe we can make it happen again. Get those blades up, here I come."
…
Kyrena took a slow, deep breath, and tried not to smell the damp mildew so prevalent in the basement of the arena. Okay, you can do this. Think watery thoughts, or something. She sighed, and once again the loudspeaker sputtered. It was time.
She stepped onto the platform, unconsciously checking the stun pistol at her hip and the dulled twin swords on her back. The hydraulic lift whined into life and raised her slowly into the roar of the crowd.
Kyrena squinted against bright lights and took in the arena as quickly as she could. It was smaller this time, closed in, and flat. Ice's platform was the full length of the arena away, which was only ten meters away. The floor was flat, no obstacles.
The dampener clamped onto her back and the seals on her weapon holsters snapped open as the crowd roared louder still.
Ice grabbed her sword and charged straight at her, her face a picture of tense concentration. Kyrena drew her own blades and met her attack with a cross-bladed block. Ice disengaged her blade hard, shoving the swords aside, and rammed into Kyrena with her shoulder. Kyrena stumbled back a step before hitting the back wall. She rolled aside as Ice slammed her blade down into the wall where her head had been a moment before.
Kyrena came out of her roll and started easing backwards, sliding along the circular wall. Ice charged at her again, swinging her sword violently. Kyrena kept up her retreat, ignoring the restlessness of the crowd, and used her blades to bat aside Ice's attacks. Come on Kyrena, think. See. Adapt. How do you win this?
"Get back here, schutta! Stop running like a coward." Ice snarled at her before her face went blank again.
What was that? The famous Ice Queen . . . that was it. It was a mask. And beneath it was . . .
Ice whipped her blade sideways in a vicious, reckless swipe. Duncan would have ducked beneath it and punished her for it, but Kyrena slid backwards instead. That would have been meeting her head on, fighting her. The river did not challenge the rock, it simply flowed downhill. The most direct way to win.
So she danced. She flowed backwards, slid sideways, dodging as many of Ice's attacks as she blocked. The crowd started to boo, but as she got into a rhythm, the feel of the duel changed. Ice chased her around the small arena, and her mask started to crack. Her attacks became even more aggressive, wilder, as her frustration started to get the better of her. The crowd started to catch on to her tactic, and slowly the boos turned to laughter.
And that was the last straw. Ice paused for a moment from her assault and looked at the crowd, a thousand people laughing at her, pointing at her.
Ice snapped.
She howled in rage and charged after Kyrena, all thought of defense gone as she launched an all-out attack.
Kyrena slid backwards, using her swords to slow Ice's attacks long enough to get out of the way before her blocks were batted aside. There was no way her one-handed block could stand up to Ice's two-handed power attacks. She waited, a small voice in the back of her head wondering how her thoughts were so clear, so focused, in the face of raging violence.
Ice overextended, swung off-balance with her sword extended, and Kyrena struck. She stepped in close and slammed both blades into Ice's stomach. The dampener fired, saving Ice from internal injury, but not from getting the wind knocked out of her. She folded over Kyrena's blades and collapsed in a gasping heap on the ground. The crowd roared its approval and the fight was over.
"I don't like this plan." Carth toyed with the pair of binders in his hands. "I really don't like this plan."
Selven covered her eyes for a moment as she lounged on the lone couch. "For the seventh time, Carth, I heard. We've gone over this. We approach the Exchange negotiators and offer to trade you for information on Bastila. By the way they react we'll know if they have any information, which will tell us if they have her or not. If they don't, then the Sith have her, or maybe one of the gangs. I'll disagree with their price and we'll leave. And no, Carth, again for the seventh time, there's no chance she's still free out there somewhere. She's a twenty-year-old girl with no skills aside from the Force, and if she uses it the Jedi-hunters would have fought her immediately. Face it, she's a helpless little girl lost in the depths of Taris. She's caught, Carth. And that means we need to find out by whom, the exchange has the best contacts and information in this part of the galaxy, and they don't do anything without seeing the profit up front, and the only thing we have that's worth anything is you. Now stop dithering and put on the binders. I'll pull them off when we make a break for it. You'll be fine.
Carth paused from his pacing and stared at the binders for a long moment. He surreptitiously checked the knife he's stolen from Selven. Come on Carth, this has to be done. For the mission, for the Republic. He took a deep breath. He shuffled from one foot to the other.
Finally, Carth slipped the binders over his wrists and clicked them shut.
Selven popped off the couch and rolled her eyes. "Finally. You're such drama queen. Come on, let's go."
Kyrena sighed in relief as she lay on the thin metal bench in the locker room, arms behind her head, one leg dangling off the edge with the other propped on the bench's edge. The sketch of a plan in her head had depended entirely on winning this fight with Ice. Okay. Step one done. A huge, gigantic, stressful step one, but never-the-less, just step one.
Alright, time for step two.
She climbed to her feet and reached for her clothes.
-
Carth trailed after Selven nervously as he led the way through the Tarisian crowd. He didn't know where he was, where they were going, or who they were meting. He was relying on someone he hardly knew in hostile territory. This was about as far as he could stretch his trust. The second thoughts were running through his head at a klick a minute, but it was too late for that. He was committed.
They wound their way through the filthy halls of the Lower City for nearly twenty minutes, crossing through several buildings, until at last Selven slowed.
"Well, Carth, this is the end of the line."
He turned to see Selven pointing her blaster at him, standing well out of reach. Fury roared through him, fury tinged with despair. He knew. He knew it, and he'd done it anyway. "You traitor!" He pulled on the binders but they didn't budge.
Selven looked mildly affronted. "Traitor? I'm no traitor. I already have contacts with the exchange, Carth, and they don't have her. The gangs are too caught up in a stupid war to pay attention to a lost little girl. That leaves the Sith, but I have to get inside their data center to figure out where she is." She shrugged humorlessly. "And let's face it Carth, you're just a pilot, and they're a dozen for a credit. Now let's go."
Carth ground his teeth, but he didn't have much of a choice. And worse, a little worm of doubt was crawling in his head. Could she be right? No, of course not. But what if she was? If he'd learned anything on this planet it was that he was out of his depth here, down on the ground, dealing with people. Don't do this to yourself Carth. I mean, he'd nearly gotten himself and Kyrena killed getting drunk. You've been down this road before, and it ain't pretty. What had he actually accomplished thus far, anyways? Kyrena had done pretty much everything. Don't do it, Carth. Stop. Maybe this was something he could actually do, something that would help the Republic. Seriously Carth, you always regret doing this, every time. Maybe they were better off without him. It wasn't like anyone he'd ever tried to save before had survived. Please, stop thinking like this. Don't do this.
The fire went out of his eyes, he bowed his head, and started walking.
…
The Sith had set up camp in one of the biggest buildings Carth had ever seen, using the passages to the neighboring buildings like fortified chokepoints. The place was buzzing with activity as hundreds of Sith, some in uniform, some fully armored, milled around a massive server cluster writing reports on personal consoles, analyzing data, and scanning communications channels.
Selven pushed him ahead, her blaster pistol shoved in the small of his back, past the guards who waved her inside. She guided him through the crowd, evidently looking for someone. Within a few minutes she'd spotted her contact and steered him over to see a harried-looking officer in his mid-thirties, though his hair was already graying. He spun around from his desk on a swivel chair and gave Selven a searching look.
"Shalina? What are you doing here? I thought I told you not to come back unless you had something big for me."
Selven finally holstered her blaster and stepped past Carth to casually lean back against one of the computer consoles that was unoccupied. "You told me to come up with something big, so I found something big for you."
The officer gave Carth a skeptical once-over. "Right. And he is who, exactly?"
Carth's eyes were drawn to movement from the corner of his eye. Selven's hands were moving behind her back as she carried on her conversation, toying with what looked like a customized computer spike. She was feeling for the data port.
What do you know, she was telling the truth after all. In a manner of speaking, at least.
"This, Lieutenant Kip, is Carth Onasi. He's a pilot, a Republic officer. He was on the ship you boys blew up, what, two weeks ago? I thought you might like to meet him and ask how he's avoided capture for so long from the diligent effort of such a dedicated effort at finding Republic fugitives."
Well, at least Selven's use of sarcasm was universally directed instead of just at him. It made him feel . . . odd. She was betraying him, selling him out. But she was doing it for the mission, for the Republic. It pissed him off, but at the same time, it didn't. Maybe . . . maybe this was justice. But at least he could give a parting gift, a final shot at making amends for all his shortcomings.
He hunched his shoulders and allowed bitterness to show on his face. It wasn't hard. "I wish I had never left home."
Selven glanced sharply at him before smoothing her features back into a mix of carefree cocksure confidence. Behind her back, her hand slid to the left and locked into the data port with a gentle click.
"Very well, Shalina. I'll check this out, this one time. But if this doesn't pan out, then don't come back. Ever."
Selven raised her hands in front of her placatingly, the computer spike secreted away once again. "Alright sir, senior officer Kip, sir, with honors. I get it. But this one's for real, I swear."
Kip rolled his eyes. "Right. Now get out of here." He dismissed Selven with a wave. "Hey, private! You, yes you! Get over here. Take this prisoner to a holding cell for interrogation."
"Hey, Kip."
The Sith turned, surprised to see 'Shalina' still there. "What?"
She smirked. "I promised the idiot I'd wish him good luck before we started this little mission together. So . . ." she turned and gave Carth a penetrating stare for a long moment. Then she gave an almost imperceptible shrug. Her voice was all hard sarcasm, but her eyes softened for a moment. "Good luck, sweetie"
The officer whistled. "Damn but you're cold. Hey Shalina, I take back what I said. Are you free next friday?"
…
Carth lay where he'd fallen when the interrogators had finally given up on him. The cold floor against his left cheek was the only thing keeping him conscious. His mind wandered, half awake, flitting between the background buzz of holonews reporting sporting results from across the galaxy, the whispers of times long gone, the rumble of the com center that never slept, and the dark whole deep inside of him of memories he never touched.
The interrogators had been brutal, but careless. They'd had a lot of people to interrogate, day in and day out, and almost all of them were false leads, wastes of time. Because of that they hadn't searched him very well and he still had Selven's knife on his arm. But what was the point? He was surrounded by Sith. Going down swinging was all great in theory, but was it really worth it just to kill some farm kid from Alderaan, or Delaria, or wherever who had no idea what he had gotten himself into?
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but Carth was too tired, too bruised, to gather the energy to really think about it. No matter. It wouldn't make a difference in the end. He'd come up short once again.
"Thanks Skip. And now move on from the Coruscant Chin-Bret Premier League to local sporting news. The shock-boxing tournament has been put on hold as we await the resolution of the current political situation due to nearly half the contestants being stuck in customs and unable to arrive by the starting date. As a result, the local dueling scene has been getting a lot of attention."
"That's right Stephen, and the increased attention couldn't' have come at a better time for one particular duelist, the flamboyantly named 'Mysterious Stranger.' Now I know, with a name like that it's hard to take a duelist seriously, but that might just be the psychological edge she needs to take down her opponents."
"And take them down she has, Stuart. This newcomer has been tearing apart the Carpathian Sector circuit, downing Deadeye Duncan, Gerlon Two-Fingers, and in her most recent bout, the famed Ice. The oddsmakers are already having a field day trying to predict the outcome of her next match with the legendary Marl. If she gets through him, she could end up facing the Twitch in the first challenge to his crown since Carl Maduvovitch was killed in a freak accident during his duel with the rodian."
"I'm already excited for this next match Stephen. In fact, I'm already a part of the hype train. Every success for her is also a good thing for the sport, getting some new blood in the game and bringing in new fans, and her timing couldn't be better."
"Right you are. In fact, Melissa Steele is there now with the winner in a post-match interview. Melissa?"
Carth forced himself to climb to his knees and pay attention. He peaked through the force cage wall and out onto the receptionist-desk-turned-prison-guard-station where the station was playing. The holo view flipped off the studio and switched to a stunningly pretty woman and, next to her, Kyrena. She looked no worse for the wear, though her face was still flushed from her recent efforts in the ring.
"Thanks guys. I'm here with the winner who's taken the dueling circuit in this sector by storm, the Mysterious Stranger. Tell me, how does it feel to have climbed the ranks so quickly?"
Kyrena blinked and turned turned to look directly into the camera. "It feels good, Melissa, really good. I'm excited to keep my climb going, but honestly, right now I'm really looking forward to heading back home and resting up for the next couple of days before I jump back into the swing of things."
"Thanks Mysterious Stranger, and again, congratulations on your most recent victory. Now, back to you in the studio."
Carth collapsed back to the floor again, but he kept his mind going. What was she talking about? A home, here on Taris? But she was back up in the Upper City. The only place she could mean was that nasty little apartment. And she said she'd be there for a couple of days . . .
It was a message, a message to him. She was telling him where he could find her and for how long. She could have, should have, just left him behind and got on with the mission, but instead she'd dropped some bread crumbs out there for him to find a way back. He wouldn't let this second chance go. Somehow, some way, he'd find a way back, and he wouldn't let her down again.