After the Jedi Council finished talking with Bastila about our time on Taris, they asked me a great many questions about the actions we took, how I felt throughout it, and whether I noticed anything strange at any time. I let Melar's memories handle that, aside from the actual events on Taris, and maintained that apart from some disorientation when first awakening on the Endar Spire everything had gone fairly smoothly.

Needless to say, I did not tell them about my encounters with Shone and Devre, or the lightsabers I'd stashed out of sight on Sheltered Starlight. I implied strongly that I'd been alone on the Sith shuttle, that the code had just happened to be there, and I'd crashed the shuttle myself in the stress of the moment.

I couldn't be sure how much they believed, but I never got a sense that they even suspected I might be lying or trying to conceal things from them. Were they that confident in their rewriting of my mind? Or did they just not want to risk 'Melar' questioning whether they might mistrust him and searching for deeper reasons which could risk his discovery of the remains of my own life?

They finally dismissed Bastila and I to 'go to our chambers' and while Bastila gave her extravagant bow, I just frowned in confusion. I had no memory, myself or Melar, of having a chamber in the Dantooine enclave at any time.

"Melar, have you forgotten the way?" Vandar asked.

"I don't recall having a place here," I admitted.

"It seems you've forgotten a great deal since you left," Vrook said. "Just what do you remember?"

"Nothing about this academy. Bastila said she saved my life, but I don't remember it."

"Saved your life?" Zhar asked. "That is a strange way of wording it."

"She said I was on the very edge of death for a long time, and that's why we're connected."

"That is closer to the truth," Vandar said. "But more accurately still would be to say that she kept you just this side of life for the time it took your spirit to coalesce."

Whatever that meant. "I don't remember anything about being dying or living or whatever. And I don't know the way to my chambers."

"The room at the end of the hall, through that door," Vrook said, pointing. "It's for guests, but since you'll be staying a while it's been assigned to you on a semi-permanent basis."

"Thank you." I didn't like the sound of that. Having a semi-permanent room assigned within such easy access of the Council chambers.

I left them and hurried up the sloping hallway to my new quarters. It was a sparse room, typical of Jedi. Bed, storage lockers, shelf, a few trinkets for ornamentation.

I waited only long enough to ensure that no one was watching, then slipped out. I carefully coordinated my movements to coincide with no one looking. Since I could sense the entirety of the base I easily avoided being seen, though anyone else with as strong a Force sense as myself would be aware of my general location. I had to trust they had better things to do than observe me constantly.

The Sheltered Starlight was refueling and taking on supplies from the exotic dealers that Dantooine boasted. Though the planet's surface was covered with endless plains now, in the past there had been enough of interest that the few archaeologists and treasure hunters authorized to search the planet could make a tidy profit.

But that didn't mean I could delay. Ulen owed us nothing. Owed me nothing. And I had to retrieve my lightsabers before he departed. Tracking a smuggler was harder than trying to catch a squid barehanded.

I had spent enough time in and around Sheltered Starlight during our trip that my mental Force map contained every keycode Ulen had entered. Including that on the front hatch.

I waited until a clear moment, then strode confidently over to the ship and punched in the code with the casualness of familiarity. No one questioned me, or even glanced twice.

I was halfway to my room when the ship vibrated, the engines powering up. With a hiss-slam the front hatch closed and sealed itself.

Of course. I hurried up the stairs and toward my room. A heavily-armed trandoshan stepped in front of me from her own room, grinning maliciously.

"Melarserav," she hissed, blurring my name together into a single word. "How surprising that you rejoin us."

She patted a Tarisian noblewoman's purse tied casually to her belt, and a quick check with the Force verified that it was mine, containing Shone and Devre's lightsabers. "Interesting person, carrying weapons of the Sith but following a Jedi."

"What do you want?" I asked. I didn't have time for this, if Ulen was taking off soon, I needed to be back on the ground. I didn't have any of the Jedi Council's files yet, and I didn't have Bastila. I would need both before I returned to Malak, if we were to regain what was stolen from me.

"You are a valuable person, Melarserav," the trandoshan hissed. "It seems you made quite an impression with the Sith."

Melar's instinctive panic swelled in the back of my mind, trying to burst free of its containment, but my instructions and threats held my mental state steady.

I crossed my arms and glared at the trandoshan. "If you're some kind of bounty hunter, you ought to know better than to threaten someone like me."

"I think not," she slurred. "You hide your abilities from the Jedi so well, I wonder if you are not just a lucky man with stolen lightsabers. A Jedi would not stand while I hold their possessions. A Sith would not have spoken this long without attacking. You are something different, Melarserav."

"What I am is very irritated," I said.

I pulled on the Force, strained to project it across itself into the past, show me actions before they occurred. An extremely advanced technique, and not one that I'd spent much time training in before my defeat. The Force usually fed what precognition was required at any given moment, and increasing physical and mental speed and reaction times had always seemed more valuable. What did it matter if you saw your defeat coming, if you were too slow to avoid it?

Now, without any access to physical Force abilities, a better grasp of precognition would have been very useful. But my mind was focused enough it hardly mattered. The trandoshan began to move, and I moved first.

Observation: weight imbalance, weaponry excessive. Overconfident. Calculation. . .

I stepped aside, twisting her arm so she flailed sideways with the momentum of her step, let the recoil spin me back slightly, then moved just ahead of her, ducking and slipping away from every blow she made. Once she stopped overcommitting, I resumed intercepting her attacks or directing her momentum against her.

It took less than a minute to knock her to the ground, disarmed, my lightsabers resting comfortably in my hands again. I flipped them on, the hum a pleasant counterpart to the ship's engines.

"Next time you decide to steal a lightsaber," I whispered, bringing the crimson blades close enough that she'd feel their heat, "check that the owner is really a brainless thief and not the most powerful Force-master in the galaxy. I could kill you now. I could twist your mind on itself until you didn't know your family from your worst enemy. I could bind your soul to my own and make you my slave forever. I could do anything and there's nothing you could do to stop me."

"Yess, my life is forfeit to your strength," the trandoshan said. She sounded almost eager. She tilted her head, grinning up at me.

"Your culture, I believe, honors life-debts," I said. "If I spare you, save you from your rightful death for challenging one so far stronger than yourself, would that not mean that your life belongs to me in honour, not death?"

She hissed at me, snarling and shaking her head. "You would twist our honour. Kill me."

"And what if I refuse?"

"You cannot create a life-debt by saving me from yourself," she hissed. "It is a paradox. A deception."

"But if another rescued you from me, that would qualify?" I asked.

She snarled again, but nodded. "You bested me in a fair fight, you have proven your strength."

I deactivated my lightsabers and took a step back from her.

"Then let me tell you a story," I said softly. "There was a man, stronger and wiser and more powerful than anyone in the whole galaxy. Than anyone who had come before, or would come after. He was betrayed, lured into a trap, and destroyed by a hundred of his friends and enemies working together. If this man had lived, and tried to kill you, do you think you would survive?"

She sat up, hissing in a way that sounded almost like laughter. "No."

"And there was another man, an explorer. Kind and caring, with a family of his own. This man was no great warrior, but he had a code of honour. He would lie, and he would steal, but he would never do so without need. If the first man tried to kill you, and the second stepped in to save you, would you owe him anything?"

She laughed again. "The man of honour is no fighter. He would die."

"If he saved you, if he found a clever ploy to convince the powerful man to spare you, what then would you owe him?"

"My life and honour," she admitted.

"Then here is the truth," I said, shifting my mental state into Revan entire. My voice rang firm and strident. "I am Revan, conqueror of the galaxy, master of the Star Forge. I have found you weak and unworthy of life."

I ignited the sabers and took a half-step, then allowed Melar to slip in, completely take over, block Revan out to only a whisper. "And I am Melar Serav, explorer," I lowered my weapons, felt the softness tinging the edges of my words. "I choose to save your life."

Removing the division, I slid back into the more comfortable shared persona. "So, nameless one. Now that you know the truth of what I am, you must choose your own fate. Will you die at Revan's hand? Or serve Melar?"

She shook her head and laughed. "You are a madman," she said. "Voices and lies." She raised her chin defiantly. "I do not give my life to a deception. We fought, and I die. That is how it must be."

I'd certainly given her every chance to join me. If she chose not to take it, that was her decision. I'd told her too much to let her go free. Either she swore to serve me or died. I couldn't afford to have the Jedi learning of my survival until I had the information I needed and was well away from Dantooine.

"What was your name?" I asked.

"I am Shekhyzhen," she replied.

"I regret this necessity," I told her, "but you have made your choice."

"Yes," she replied, unrepentant to the last. She didn't flinch in the slightest as my saber removed her head.

"Wasteful," I muttered. Then I strode to the other occupied compartment. Sheltered Starlight was well out of Dantooine's atmosphere by now, so I would need to speak to Ulen at some point about returning. But a few hours in space wouldn't hurt anything at present.

If Shekhyzhen wasn't working alone, if the other passenger was her partner or associate, I needed to discover it at once.

I had no intention of leaving enemies at my back.


Author's Note:

Sorry about the delay in posting this; I've had it practically finished for days now, but completely forgot to finalize and post. Life is kinda crazy right now, plus I'm trying to focus on finishing Fall With Me at present. This shouldn't interfere with next month's chapter, but time will tell.