And so the next chapter has arrived (*happy, blaring trumpets and whatnot please*)! Okay, so here you go guys; I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I loved writing it. One more chapter down, countless more to go, but just one away from the end of Taris - thank you so much to everyone who's stuck with the story this far! I really, really appreciate it!

And as for reviews, thank you stranglin and bradwart! You guys are awesome, and since you two were the last ones to turn in reviews, this chapter is dedicated to you both! Hope yuh love it! :D

Okay, so start reading!

CHAPTER TEN

Shadows crackled and flared with bursting energy. The air smelled of lightning.

Scarlet flashed, burning through the computer moorings in the wall beside them and spraying a shower of white-hot sparks as they moved, slashing and dodging and parrying and blocking, ripping the air around them with snarling power, winding throughout the situation room in a lethal dance of sizzling fire that cast wicked colors up the walls.

Exchanges flashed. Blades crackled. Thrusts were parried and kicks were sideslipped, feints were met with twisting leaps and appels were scrambled by ankle sweeps.

Bastila drove her end of the duel with the pure kinetic power of Djem So, raining blows from every plausible angle, moving with swift, graceful steps that outmaneuvered her opponent's heavy, sweeping blows, so as not to give him the opening to hound her into a corner. On the opposite side of their blades, the Sith himself returned with a more lithe style––his footing was elegant, but it strode in near perfect alignment, his strikes weaving and yet heavy and energetic, spun almost intricately and unpredictably together as if the arcs of his blade that flashed faster than the eye could see were instead a spherical halo of faultless bloodshine.

Every one of his blows was reinforced with reserves of the dark power Bastila felt whirling inside his heart.

Synthetic crimson from the Sith's hand whirled and chopped, and crashed down on her blade, shocking her with pain that stabbed through her wrists like spiked garrotes of fire, bending them into near submission. With her senses thrown hazy, the Sith lunged; one stab slapped her blade aside, guiding it slanting away, and reached for her heart––

She met the stab with a rising parry, locking their flaring blades just a hairsbreadth from each other's throats, chest-to-chest. She grimaced past the plasmatic heat boiling down either blade, and watched the Sith's lips peel back over his teeth.

"I sense great fear in you, Jedi..."

Bastila's teeth grated down, shooting bolts of pain into her face. She forced her strength straining into the sizzling cross of blades before her, pushing her entire body against the Sith's burning, crushing strength, which was slowly bearing down on top of her...

She was vaguely aware of Onasi and Revan, both of which who lingered near the slashed walls of the lobby, unsure of what to do––

She hardly sensed the Sith summoning the surge of dark power that blasted her off her feet and crushed her against the far wall with enough velocity to buckle the computer panels at her back. She fell crippled to the floor, her mind a whirlwind of howling, blurry thought. She looked around.

In a quantum instant of the second that the Sith crouched low, preparing to swing himself into a spring-loaded headlong leap, Bastila spotted her lightsaber as it clattered to the floor justmetersaway––

And flipped to life, whistling through the air and slapping into Revan's hands with perfect synchrony as he roared and launched himself at the Sith, blade swinging wildly over his head.

Bastila saw the primal fury in the Sith's eyes flicker like a candle, then wisp to mirthless smoke as emerald fire burned into his spine and chewed through his nerve chord, charring his kidneys and plunging deep into his heart and bursting out through his chest.

The blade shrank away.

Her breath squeezed from her lungs, comprehension wiped from her brain, Bastila blinked and tore her eyes from the body that folded to the floor. She looked at Revan as he staggered from the deepening shadows, stunned with revulsion. Her lightsaber fell free from his slackening fingers and clattered to the floor beside his boots.

.::.

four hours later...

Dawn was limning the skylines as they approached the cantina, the light of daybreak throwing the tops of spacescrapers into silhouette like blaster scorches smeared across the horizon.

Not a word passed between them as they walked, and only the roaring flux of cosmopolitan life filled their silence.

"We should tread carefully from here." she said, glancing sidelong at Revan. "I sensed no deception from him during our last meeting––"

"Neither did I."

He was walking right alongside her, but his voice sounded distant, as if it was carried on the morning breeze.

She looked at him again, studying him. Despite the sunlight on his face a shadow still seemed to hang over him, deeper, darker than before. His expression was calm as stone, but his eyes had turned hard, and Bastila could feel a storm of trepidation whirling inside him, crushing down on his heart with a low, rolling thunder that blacked out the streamlines of his inner light.

And that light, so she felt, was wavering.

With one sharp dip of her chin, Bastila continued. "...but until he proves he's credible, we should be careful. Extremely careful––Mandalorian's and mercenaries are both vile, but when you combine them..." She shook her head.

"I know."

Silence fell between them like a hammer, quiet and tense. She watched Revan step aside as a pair of younglings sprinted laughing past him down the sidewalk, and the smile that flickered over his face turned rueful, then grim.

"I felt his death," he said lonesomely. His voice sounded raw, as if he'd been shouting all day.

Bastila knew he was speaking of the Sith from the base, and she bit her lip, staring silently ahead and trying to appear tolerant. She had never been good with patience, especially while others were trusting that she'd listen––this seemed to be Revan's...or, rather Fallon's...virtue, not hers.

She tried anyway.

"I felt it," he said again, slower now. "and I really don't think I'd be able to handle myself, if it happened again."

"It's because of your connection to the Force, that you felt what you did." she said, "All of life is connected––so were you when part of it fell away."

He shook his head. "Connected?"

Suddenly finding herself where her Masters must have once stood––but with Revan on the other end instead of her pestering ten year-old self––Bastila spoke slowly, picking her words carefully. "The Force is created by all living things. You could say that it binds the galaxy together."

Revan's mouth quirked in a small smile, "So does gravity."

She sighed. "If you really want to put it that way..."

Then she shook her head and continued, "I understand that you're shaken by what happened..." she said, "but you shouldn't let it bother you. At least not for the present."

Something flickered through his eyes, then was gone too fast for her to decipher it. "Is that what you do, Commander, when you kill a man?" He spoke without looking at her, his voice harsh as the rough silicon crags of Corellian singing quartz. "Not let it bother you?"

Bastila blinked. "R––Fallon, you had to do what you did. Otherwise I likely wouldn't even be talking with you right now."

He walked on, unresponsive, and she felt her temper tremble.

"He was a Sith." she continued, "An enemy––"

Revan nodded, digesting her words and the sense beneath them, and yet appearing wholly unconvinced thereafter. Within him, his storm of trouble had scoured open a cold, empty void––the kind of void that, over time, filled with regret and grief and guilt.

Revan blew a sigh, as if all of these feelings could ride away on a single burst from his lungs, and he shook his head grimly. "He wasn't born that way, though."

For a moment Bastila only frowned, and thought––of course that Sith hadn't been born that way. Nobody was ever born with a lightsaber gripped in hand and a lust for death burning in their heart and eyes, but––

A frown slipped down her face. But––what? Did she even have a 'but'?

Bastila's mind drew blanks, and for a long, awkward pause, she found she had nothing to say.

"No one is." she said after several moments. What reply came from her mouth next tasted wrong on her lips––almost hollow, as if the words themselves were just dried carcasses stripped of flesh and deprived of meat, left dangling and vulnerable to kath hounds that wouldn't even take a snap at it while it was naked without substance––

"But we serve our duty to the Republic, whether as a soldier like you, or a Jedi like me." she said simply, "You were only doing what had to be done."

"I know that." He said, "But...how do you find peace with a nightmare like death?"

Bastila bit her lip, her nerves unsettled and struggling to slip back down so her mind could reverse the situation. His statement just sounded too contradictory, too oxymoronic, too disturbing, to be anywhere close to answerable.

She replied at last. "You haven't slept, and you're over-thinking the matter." she said, "You just have to learn to find peace within yourself, with what you've done."

He fell silent, absorbing the words like they were water to a baked sand-sponge in a desert canyon. "That's a lot easier said than tried."

She brushed a strand of hair from her face and tucked it behind one ear. "You need to examine what you've done and find your reasons for doing it, and then decide whether those reasons are just."

Revan nodded, slower this time. "And...if they're not?"

Bastila's mouth compressed to a grim white line. "Then you breath." she said dryly.

A frown rubbed off on his brow, and he glanced her way before returning his stare ahead, clearly unsure of whether she was serious or not.

He said nothing more for the remainder of the walk.

.::.

They reached the cantina a few minutes later, slipping inside the smoky room and scanning the faces around them. Few heeded them in return––the hardcopy stands on this side of the lower city had faded from the search for surviving Republic soldiers to typical chrysalis of life that was swallowed in the rushing metropolis sea miles above their heads. Now most of the occupants around only stared at their drinks rather than on-comers.

They found the stubbly Mandalorian sitting alone in a shadowed corner, his back to the wall as he drained the contents of some brew that looked capable of burning straight through his innards like Bastila's lightsaber. They crossed the cantina floor and eased into the seats opposite him.

"I figured you'd be back," Canderous sighed, then continued. "I heard the Sith base had a break in." he smiled, "I ain't trying to sound too straightforward here, but you've got those codes, am I right?"

Revan leaned back in his seat. From a pocket on his belt he pulled out a flimsi––hyperpressed on it in black gloss were the glyphs they'd watched spider across a screening console in the base's cryptograph center, just minutes after recovering from their encounter with the Sith.

Revan slid the flimsi across the tabletop to Canderous, and watched a wicked grin hatch on the Mandalorian's broad, scarred face. "So when can we go?"

Canderous chuckled, looking actually as if he was on the verge of tears as he gazed down at the codes in hand. "We can go right now." he said through his grin. "Davik's always looking to recruit new talent. I'll tell him how you won that swoop race and mention that you're interested in working for the exchange."

"And I just go in so he can run background checks on me?"

Canderous shrugged, "That's the gist of it, mostly. Those checks won't take longer than a couple of days, but he'll have you stay at his estate while he goes through the standard procedures."

The Mandalorian's grin returned, and he looked up wickedly from under his brow, "...and that's when we haul off like a flock o' mynocks outta hell."

Bastila bit her lip. "It's risky." she said, "We should find another way."

Canderous turned to face her now, his smile faltering. "You got another plan, sister? Or are you just objecting because you didn't think of it?"

"No, I––" Her temper caught, just a little. "No, I don't have another plan. I would rather not place my life in your hands, however..."

"I can say the same about you. That makes us even." he said, then shrugged his meaty shoulders, "Fortunately we both wanna get off this rock, right?"

While Canderous was talking, Bastila reached into the Force. The world around her crystallized and went mute as she shot through the Mandalorian's conscious, skimming over the planes of his mind and sweeping around the jagged ends of faults and plots which stuck out like lances driven into his ice-ridden brain, and she scanned for the pivotal fracture or spider knot or pulsing atom that would indicate the slightest distortion in the story sleeting from his mouth––

She ran into not one lie, surprisingly.

Withdrawing, Bastila made no further comment; Canderous was still talking. "While Davik's checking you out, we steal the Ebon Hawk and escape Taris." he said, rising from his seat. "Come on––I've got an air speeder nearby to take us to his estate. The sooner we're off Taris, the better."

Revan nodded, glancing at Bastila. "Should you head back and get the others ready?"

She shook her head, "Just contact them through your comm once we're in the speeder. It'll look too leery if you don't show up at the estate with your––" her jaw clenched and she waved a hand. "...prize."

The corner of Revan's mouth quirked in a smile, "I thought you were a damsel in distress, Commander."

She felt blood climb in her cheeks, and her stare hardened to chips of stone. "And I thought you were just a soldier under my orders."

.::.

Electrodrivers and crystal circuitry sang through the metal-jointed remains of a living being.

The song was cold and perpetual, eternally infinite. It echoed on––buzzing through the osseous cavities of his skull as planets wheel endlessly through a night with no end; burning down to the pulpy illusion that trembled where a heart once danced; whispering beneath two cold starburst cancers which, only in memory, cradled tears for things loved and things dreamed, for things feared a millennium ago.

The embrace of life and the hand of death that gave it, and ended it just so, the Dark Lord stood motionless amid the doomsong that echoed throughout his body. Only when a voice spoke behind him, did he stir.

"You summoned me, Lord Malak?"

Karath.

The voice that spoke for him rattled in his throat and made the crawling cybernetic nightmare of his face hum with sonic power, a monster's voice crafted for the one that spoke within him.

"The search for Bastila is taking too long. We cannot risk her escaping Taris." he rasped. From behind the view wall his crushing stare focused on the orbiting planetary curve kilometers below...

"Destroy the entire planet."

The angst in Karath's voice forced his words to shiver. "Th... The entire planet––."

Karath blinked. He licked his lips. "Lord Malak, but...there are billions of people on Taris. We'd be slaughtering countless innocent civilians. Not to mention our own men still on the surface––"

The Dark Lord snapped around, and the dark, primal fury of the universe poured into his eyes. "Your predecessor once made the mistake of questioning my orders, Admiral." the shadow said, his tone as thin as glass on a hyperblistering cell of boiling ion fluids. "Surely you are not so foolish as to make the same mistake..."

The one emotion Karath's trembling heart had the will to summon flashed through his eyes, clearly sustaining the weight of Admiral Dirth's deceased memory.

Karath's feet shot back four steps from the Dark Lord's towering presence. "Of––of course not, my Lord. I will do as you command." he stuttered, spreading his shaky before him, then quickly clasping them together so tight that white bands began to stretch along his knuckles. "But it will take several hours to position our fleet––"

"Then I suggest you begin immediately." the shadow said, already returning to the viewport. "You are dismissed, Admiral."

.::.