Lord Silbus' cloak rustled through the air behind him as he strode imperiously down the scanning aisle of Security Zone E, his underlings close behind and the living thorn in his side, Visas Marr, right beside him. Major Vasch had committed almost every last one of his puny toy soldiers to the battle at Security Zone C. This area was so comfortably distant that not even the faintest echo of the mayhem could reach it. When they emerged into the last section of the room, it turned out to have exactly two unfortunate souls guarding it, common troopers flanking the huge blast door leading to MSG Control.
"My lords—my lady," one of them cried as he sighted Silbus and Marr. "How—"
"Stop impeding us and open the door at once, fool!" the Headmaster thundered disdainfully as he and his train came to a halt before them.
After blubbering an apology as Humans were wont to do, the trooper typed an excessively lengthy security code into the door's ray-shielded control panel. Mechanical mechanisms groaned and whined, and the trooper scurried out of the way to stand at attention beside his confederate.
"I hear the battle is not going well," rumbled Zanjo Fel, eying the two guards. Silbus raised a brow, sensing at once that the Iktotchi was reaching out with the Force, sending his will slithering into their feeble, unprotected minds.
"Eh… Not going well, my lord?"
"Not well at all," Zanjo elucidated, his voice rising ominously. "It is a hopeless conflict—we shall all perish. We are doomed. Doomed!"
"Doomed," the troopers parroted in dreadful unison, completely under his spell.
"You must flee for your lives, or the Jedi will get you! RUN! RUN!"
The fools set off at a sprint, dropping their rifles as they went. One of them tripped over his and fell head over heels, his armor making a tremendous racket as he crashed into a desk. But in a second he was on his feet again, fleeing in terror and wailing for his partner to wait up for him, while the Force-augmented echo of Zanjo Fel's hysterical, maniacal laughter chased them down the scanning aisle. Yaiban exercised some restraint as he watched them go, but an amused twitch still played across his lips. Marr and the assassins stood placid and unmoved, as though nothing at all had happened.
Meanwhile, the blast door had finished opening.
"I sometimes think you are hopeless, Zanjo," Silbus chided as they swept down the hallway toward MSG Control. It wasn't that he had any pity for the soldiers, and it did demonstrate that his student had taken to his lessons well. But such juvenile antics were beneath a practitioner of the dark side—especially if he wasn't going to inflict any lasting harm—and he knew that Zanjo knew it.
"Indeed, Headmaster," the Iktotchi intoned with false solemnity.
Rather than continue to belabor the point, Silbus shook his head in disgust and turned his thoughts aside.
Lacking any familiarity with MSG Control or with the base at large, the Sith had consulted the bumbling Major Vasch for a final time. He had warned that their quarry's objective was likely to be one of several master control consoles, spread across the innermost wall of MSG Control. Since Atton Rand and his Jedi accomplices could theoretically come in through any one of the five security zones providing access, Marr and her cohorts would have to spread out and cover each one. Silbus, meanwhile, would be minding the most likely entrance, the one linked to Security Zone C; no matter where they came in, the meddlers would be outnumbered and outclassed several times over.
As much as the Headmaster's spirit was kindled with anticipation at the chance to make these enemies suffer for the damage they had done, he reflected morosely that that would be a mere consolation prize. He loathed this exertion and danger and hoped that Atton and his friends would die quickly—immediately after killing Marr, ideally—thus allowing him to get on with the business of moving in on the academy at Thule and returning to his beloved work…
Things were quiet. For the moment.
Kaevee was trying to pull herself back together, to return to the sense of Jedi tranquility that she had so briefly grasped while back at the landing zone. Or perhaps she had never grasped it at all, and it was Atris who had given it to her. The Padawan repeated her mantra until it became part of her breathing, part of the agonized work of her weary heart and lungs, but peace eluded her, and even the presence of the Force itself seemed very tenuous. Struggling to manage her frustration, she compulsively kicked her heels against the empty storage container that she was sitting on, and she winced as she raked her fingers through her knotted hair.
"We can't go back for it," said Cole for the fourth or fifth time as he paced nearby.
"I know."
"Then stop staring. Just stop. You're making me nervous."
Kaevee wiped her eyes again and looked despairingly about the room. It was a rounded, Y-shaped junction off one of the main corridors, connecting it to two secondary ones. All of them seemed deserted. There was a stink of ozone and the walls were pocked with blaster impacts, but the absence of any corpses suggested that this area's defenders had retreated almost at first sight of the invading sentinel droids.
About forty men had escaped the landing zone alive, and they were spread about the junction. A squad was bunched up around each of the doors, including the one they had entered through, which was the one that Cole kept telling Kaevee to stop staring at. Less than a stone's throw away, in the middle of the room, Major Hawkins and a few officers were holding a discussion around a holographic map of the facility.
Cole passed in front of her again, his words tumbling out of his mouth twice as fast as usual. "Just thank your Force we got in here alive, kid, and those monsters are too big to follow us. I'm telling you, you've got to keep perspective here, it's just a—"
Shut up, Kaevee thought. "Be quiet," she said instead. "Please."
He shrugged and looked away as he continued his aimless walk, but kept babbling. "We weren't supposed to be here, it wasn't supposed to go this way. I run cargo, I'm not a damn soldier, I was never supposed to be…" All told, he seemed to have gotten plenty nervous on his own, since the drexls' attack.
Kaevee closed her eyes, trying to banish her feelings, or at least get them to calm down a little. There were so many—guilt, worry, embarrassment. Anger at herself, at Cole, at everyone. Loss.
She had lost her laigrek. Everything had happened so fast at the landing zone, and then there was that horrifying, mad rush to get into the base. Only after they had gotten into the junction and the major was taking a headcount had Kaevee noticed the creature's absence.
On a certain level, she was baffled that it hurt so much. She had always taken the laigreks for granted—they were merely the servants of the Jedi. And when this single one had inexplicably followed her from the Enclave, off of Dantooine and into the dangerous galaxy, she'd never felt much different toward it. Now it was gone, almost certainly crushed or devoured by one of the drexls, and its absence left a wound in her—or, more accurately, it seemed to expand the wound left by the loss of the Enclave, Emon, and all the Jedi.
She warred within herself, wondering if the laigrek was still alive, if it had in fact just been separated from her and was even then somewhere in the base, compelled by the Force to seek out its master. Several times she reached out, but could sense nothing of the creature—only dark things. The tainted presences of the drexls as they circled in the stormswept skies, the infernal ambiance of Malachor itself, the signatures of dark-siders elsewhere in the base, and the Force-blighting din of the battle raging deeper inside.
The Padawan was drawn out of her thoughts when four men appeared at one of the exits—soldiers, but not ones from the landing zone. As they were escorted to the major, Kaevee stood and went over, close enough to hear the conversation.
The first of the newcomers, some Private Foster, told the major their names and ranks. "We're all that's left of Lieutenant Reed's platoon. Dark Jedi attacked, a dozen of them, came out of the side corridors. Ripped through us like nothing…" He trailed off, breathing deeply and shaking his head at the ground.
"That explains why Reed wouldn't answer his comlink," one of the other officers remarked grimly to the major. "It must've happened right as we were getting attacked by the drexls."
Foster looked up, his already pained face contorting in still greater dismay. "Drexls?"
"Not important right now," Major Hawkins replied impenetrably. "What happened to these Dark Jedi? Where did they go?"
"They swept up the main corridor, through our positions, one by one—"
"To take Hart and his men from behind."
Foster nodded weakly. "We commed the captain to warn him. But that was a while ago now."
"No wonder there's been no report from him either," Major Hawkins said. He dismissed the four soldiers and turned back to the map, his eyes flicking across Kaevee as he did so. For an ugly moment there was silence except for the hum of the holoprojector on the floor.
"A dozen Dark Jedi," someone said. "They're all supposed to have been pulverized along with their academy."
Kaevee shivered and glanced about, only to find Cole had not followed her and was still pacing back where they'd been before.
"We knew some might be in the base," said the major, "but at any rate, there's nothing we can do about it now. Those bastards won't have had surprise on their side—and Rand is up there with Hart. They'll do their job, and we'll do ours: find a way out so we don't all die on this rock. Let's try one of the hangars."
Moments passed as the soldiers prepared to move out, and presently Hawkins again asked Kaevee if any of the Sith were nearby. After taking a moment to concentrate, she found the shadows thin enough to be able to confidently answer that no, they all seemed to be far inside the base where the fighting was. Privately, she had to wonder if the major really put any stock in her Force abilities, or if he only kept consulting her because he'd been ordered to. He was a complete picture of military calm—and indifference—and gave no exterior sign either way. He asked her whether she sensed anything in exactly the same way that he kept asking one of his officers if Captain Hart or Atton had answered their comlink yet. Like Kaevee, the officer always answered no; he added that there were occasional spurts of dense interference, suggesting that a Sith jamming device, knocked out by the Monitor's bombardment, was coming back online.
Kaevee and Cole followed close behind the major as the formation tramped through Singularity Base, leaving behind the parts where the fighting had been heaviest. They took a few side corridors and occasionally cut through storage areas, machine shops, and small office wings. Though there were no guards or ambushes, they were repeatedly halted by security force fields or blast doors. But each time, an officer at the front plugged his datapad into a nearby console, and a moment later the barrier opened.
They passed through a mess hall where tables were covered with abandoned trays of food and drink. The smell was not unpleasant, but Kaevee did not welcome this reminder of the simpler, saner things in life. Maintenance droids which resembled repulsor-equipped trash cans hovered about, attending to several large spills. As they passed by one of them, Cole made an unpleasant sound in his throat and spat on the floor beside it. The droid squawked indignantly at him, and a nearby trooper snickered.
Down another hallway, the soldiers at the front turned a corner. There was a shout of "Contact!" followed by a brief report of blaster fire. When Kaevee and Cole came around, they saw the men dragging two dead Sith troopers out of the way of yet another blast door, which was already grinding its way open. Their objective, one of Singularity Base's main hangars, lay beyond.
It was a huge room, big enough that the convoy of transports could've landed here, had they been able to blast through the curved, thick-armored bay door that formed the western wall. Flocks of shuttlecraft were nestled up near the ceiling, cradled within huge robotic docking claws, while a row of troop transports sat on the black metal deck. Though buttressed by thick landing struts and studded with laser turrets, the elevated command decks and rounded sides of their hulls lent them some resemblance to archaic submersibles. The hangar had another entrance on the opposite wall. Scattered about were parked hover-ferries and forklifts, containers, and big lumps of obscure machinery that must have been cannibalized starship components. A few of them sat in the middle of shining, dark-hued puddles.
A double-size door on the left wall led to an expansive, windowed control room, where a firefight ended just as quickly as it began. Major Hawkins hovered about, bellowing orders. As the soldiers began to swarm all over the place, Kaevee looked at the big gray transports and wrinkled her nose. The air stank of something like burnt oil.
"I don't like it," she remarked. "This was too easy."
"You remember what happened the last time you said something like that?" Cole's look of hostility quickly faded, though, and he seemed calmer than before. "Well, don't worry, we're not out of this yet." He spat on one gloved hand and wiped it over the top of a nearby crate, collecting a thick smudge of grimy black dust. "Look at this place," he said, wiping it off. "Doesn't seem like they've been taking care of it. I think we'll be lucky if any of these ships are fueled. Probably need to slice into the controls, get the hangar doors open. We better hope Atton doesn't turn on that doomsday machine too soon…"
"Terrick!" barked a voice. It was the major, striding their way. "Those transports are locked up tight. You know anything about slicing?"
"I— Uh, yeah, a little," stammered Cole, suddenly looking embarrassed.
Hawkins pointed at one of the transports, where a couple of men were clustered around its hatch. "Then go see if you can give Hanz a hand."
"Yeah, right away," Cole said, but the major was already hurrying off toward the control room. The spacer looked at Kaevee, rolled his eyes, and left her in the center of the hangar. "Just look at this dump," he grumbled as he went.
The Padawan slowly wandered through the hangar, trying to concentrate on maintaining her Force sense—and on holding back her dread. She hoped Atton was all right.
Atton might've expected the place to be quiet once everyone was finally dead, but it wasn't. For a start, there was the deep, monotonous blare of some klaxon—it had always been there, but sound of the battle had drowned it out. Charred, half-molten computers and other machinery hissed and pinged. Wires and conduits spat sparks as they dangled from the ceiling. From time to time, there was a burst from a rifle—but the same rifle each time, not several trading fire. The blade of the lightsaber in Atton's hand fizzled and crackled like a hungry flame as he turned this way and that, emerging from the haze of war.
Just a few meters to his right, the huge, dark disk of the blast door stood embedded in the savaged wall, its duramentium surface the only thing in the room that hadn't suffered a scratch. The Sith must have shut it after them when they had charged through.
He took a step, tripped over something—someone—and fell to one knee among the burned bodies that nearly carpeted Security Zone C. He extinguished the saber and put it on his belt, holstered the blaster that was in his other hand, and grabbed a rifle that someone had dropped. He checked its power cell and rose, steadying himself.
There were more noises. Muffled, gasping screams. Whimpers. Tight, determined voices. He looked toward the latter sound. In front of the scanning aisles, two battered Republic soldiers were crouching, fumbling with a medpack beside a third man who writhed on the ground, his left hand and right forearm gone. Not far away, two others were stumbling toward them. They were carrying another wounded, this one clutching his own severed right arm to his chest. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he was murmuring and babbling to himself.
A handful of other troopers were combing through the devastation, searching the sea of corpses for more survivors. They all went in pairs except for one, who had his rifle out and trained on the floor. Every time he saw a black-clad body, he shot it four or five times.
Atton took inventory of himself. A few spots on his jacket were smoking. More bruises. A rib or two felt cracked—or close enough. Down by his ankle there was a rip in his pantleg and a lot of dried blood beneath. His backpack, and its important contents—the Remote and his datapad—were intact.
He seemed to himself to be both incredibly alive and practically dead at the same time. Yes, in a way he did feel like letting his limbs go, feel like falling to the floor right then and there and crashing into a sleep that could last for a decade. But the greater part of him felt like he could keep going, keep fighting for just as long. It hadn't been like this on Daluuj. What had changed? Was it the place that mattered? Malachor was full of power, and like Atton himself, it was full of war.
Shouldering his rifle, he joined the soldiers as they gathered survivors. While helping them search, he kept an eye out for useful gear. He never found his sonic blaster and had to settle for an extra pistol. In case something happened to his lightsaber, he picked up somebody's vibroblade, making sure it was the kind with the cortosis weave. A bandolier of assorted grenades wouldn't hurt. And someone had dropped a few sticky mines—looked like the trip-laser type. Those went in his backpack.
The search went on and ended with little talk. When it was done, they found that twenty-four of Captain Hart's men were still alive. Twelve were wounded, and of those twelve, most were missing limbs and unable to walk by themselves or at all. No squad medics were among the survivors, but with the contents of a few strewn medpacks, they were able to get the wounded stabilized for the time being. Nobody knew where the captain's body was.
The men who were able stood clustered around the wounded they had laid out, staring at the mess of a room, their blasters dangling from their hands. One of them was fiddling with a comlink, cursing at the device as it spat distorted, electrical noises at him. He glanced up as Atton approached, running a hand through his mussed blond hair. "We're being jammed," he explained. "I'm trying to reach the major."
"Don't need his permission to retreat, do we?" asked someone else. Nobody bothered to reply.
Atton looked from one bloodied, grizzled, miserable face to the next. As any level-headed commander would view it, there was no other option. This battered collection of half-dead survivors couldn't be expected to continue on. Even if there hadn't been any wounded in need of evac, there was likely to be one more pocket of defenders in MSG Control itself.
He set his immediate surroundings aside for a brief moment, turning his mind's eye away toward the end goal… and yes, there was a gaggle of dark-siders hanging around in there. One of the presences was noticeably the strongest, practically oozing the high opinions he had of himself… It was familiar.
Figures it's that fracking guy, Atton thought. Reaching behind himself, he opened his backpack and jostled it a little. "Hey, wake up," he said over his shoulder.
The Remote floated out and bobbed inquisitively in the air beside him, beeping that he was ready and asking for a command. Business only.
Atton looked pointedly from the droid to the blast door and nodded once. As it extended its data port and floated off, a nearby trooper noticed and began to say something. Just then, however, the one guy's comlink made a high-pitched squeal, and its distortion gave way to the static-tinged voice of Major Hawkins. "—aptain Hart… Rand… Do you copy?"
Atton spun around and grabbed the comlink.
Minutes dragged by in the hangar, and Kaevee's anxiety was soon tempered by a deceptively ordinary sense of boredom as she went about, more or less beneath everyone's notice.
The men at the transport successfully bypassed its hatch lock. Whether Cole's help had made a difference or not wasn't certain, but he went inside with them. While killing time loitering in the control room where the major and the officers were, Kaevee observed as one of the soldiers-turned-mechanics repeatedly jogged in to report on their progress.
"She's got power, sir, but the main controls are locked."
Later, "She's got fuel, sir, but there seems to be some corrosion on the cycler."
And then a little later, "New problem, sir—the coupler for her inertial dampener's broken. We found a spare one in her cargo hold, but we're gonna need a plasma torch to get the old one out."
Every few minutes it was a new problem, or a new step to solve an older problem. Remembering Atton's lessons about the Ebon Hawk, Kaevee tried to follow along. Though she recognized some of the components that were mentioned, she soon lost track and instead started wondering why people called starships she or it, but never he.
The sound of Atton's voice, slightly distorted, jolted her out of her thoughts. Turning around, she found the major and his officers gathered around a comlink that sat on one of the control panels before the window. "…before the Sith jam us again," the pilot was saying. "What's the situation?"
"The landing zone is compromised," Major Hawkins explained brusquely. "We're inside the base in hangar bay two, trying to get a transport ready for evac. What's your status?"
Kaevee thought at first that Atton was sighing into the comlink, but that turned out to be an undulating wave of static. "Attacked by Sith," he said, "from ahead and behind. They're all dead now…" The distortion came back, thicker than before, in bursts that cut his sentences to pieces. "…ty-four left, half of them wounded… take corridor D-27 to the hangar… going to need escort, if you can spare any—" The rest of his words were drowned out as the electric noise spiked to a fever pitch and stayed there, forming a single grating, meaningless note.
The major studied the comlink's readout, then shut it off. "That's twice as strong as before. Jammer must be completely online now." He hesitated, then handed it to an attendant. "Keep trying to reach him anyway."
There was a brooding silence, and Kaevee reminded herself to breathe.
"They can't have many bodies left to throw at us inside MSG Control," hazarded one of the officers. "We could send twenty, maybe thirty of our men—"
"And leave our means of escape even more vulnerable than it already is," fumed the major, "when it's not even ready yet. What if the enemy has more troops regrouping elsewhere? Or Sith?"
He regarded Kaevee, who didn't wait for the question. As she stretched out again, she spoke faintly. "There's still some out there… Farther in, probably in the control area… A group."
"How many?"
She winced, trying to zero in on the presences she felt. There were definitely fewer than she had sensed before, but… "I'm sorry, I can't tell."
"But they're staying put?"
Coming out of it, she nodded.
The major stared down at the control panel, his jaw set. "We're not equipped to finish this battle," he said at last, "and despite Rand's intel, we've lost too many lives already." He swept them all with his gaze. "Put together a squad and send them to collect the survivors. Once they're all back here, if we can get that damn transport ready, we're pulling out. Kaevee, you're going with them. They may need your help if those Sith decide to chase after them."
Kaevee was somewhat taken aback, but could only say, "Yes, sir," as she followed the major out of the control room.
They were met by the same soldier-mechanic-messenger from before. "She'll be ready to fly before too long, sir. Soon as we get the power coupling—"
Hawkins cut him off. "That's good. Get Terrick out here right now. We need him."
With his rifle at the ready, Atton watched as the blast door hissed its way open. Beyond lay a narrow, round-walled hallway of dark steel. If the door was MSG Control's teeth, then that hallway was its throat.
As she jogged along at the rear of the squad of soldiers, Kaevee repeatedly checked their progress on the little automap that the major had given her. They only needed to take a few turns to get to the corridor where Atton and the other survivors were supposed to meet them. But even though the facility seemed just as deserted as before, she was afraid of getting lost if something bad were to happen that separated her from the others.
Well, that's a surprise—mission failed, Cole had said as they left the hangar. Kaevee couldn't help but suspect that the spacer was relieved at the news that Hawkins intended to retreat. He had showed some reluctance to leave off helping with the transport, which was odd, considering he'd also shown reluctance to start helping with it. Setting aside her annoyance with having him to watch her, Kaevee found herself doubting, once again, that he really had a future aboard the Ebon Hawk.
They met no resistance except for two locked doors which were quickly bypassed. The halls they passed through progressively showed more and more signs of battle—blasted corpses, wrecked droids, drifting wisps of smoke.
Soon enough they reached corridor D-27. At first sight of the survivors, an inexplicable sense of alarm lanced its way into Kaevee's mind. Yet she forgot about it when they drew near and she got a good look at the wounded. Most of them were being carried, a few on semi-flat durasteel sheets—destroyed doors, apparently—that served as makeshift stretchers. There were charred stumps where limbs should have been, or long, horrible burns that had barely missed vital organs.
Kaevee and Cole hung back as the two groups mingled. Some of the fresher soldiers went to help with those who needed carrying. One of the walking survivors had no weapon. He was missing a hand and moving his lips, but saying nothing. He turned from side to side, holding up his wounded member as though to display it. Kaevee blanched as his gaze passed over her, but his eyes were faraway, and he seemed not to notice her at all. One of his fellows was hovering close by, reassuring him, "You're okay, man, you're okay. We'll all be okay now…"
The Padawan's sense of alarm returned as soon as she took her eyes off of the wounded. Beside her, Cole was leaning one way, then another, scanning the group with a furrowed brow.
"What the hell do you mean, he went on ahead?!"
Their attention immediately went to the squad sergeant. His outburst was endured by one of the survivors, a blond-haired private who shrugged helplessly in response. "Said he wanted to complete the mission. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't listen."
"Atton…," Kaevee breathed as something like ice started rushing through her veins. Her eyes darted frantically from one man to the next, though she knew she wouldn't find him.
"We're trying to evacuate here!" continued the sergeant. "What's he thinking?"
"Couldn't tell you, sir," the private answered wearily. "He said to tell Major Hawkins that if we end up having to leave without him, he's fine with it."
The sergeant huffed. "I'm not sure how well the major will take that, considering the trouble the Republic went through to find this guy…"
"I wish you'd been here to tell him that, sir…"
"I'll be damned," Cole said under his breath. "I was right about him."
"All the Sith are inside there!" Kaevee blurted. "They'll kill him!"
"I'm not so sure about that," the private remarked, studying her. He motioned back up the hallway. "He fragged a good number of 'em back there…"
Memories of some of the pilot's exploits flashed through Kaevee's mind—his duel with the Sith woman on Dantooine, the firefight on Daluuj. Atton hadn't won either of those fights. However skilled or resourceful he was, he definitely had limits. "Not by himself," said the Padawan, shaking her head. "We've got to help him. Or go catch up to him, get him to come back."
The sergeant regarded her with a face made of granite. "That is not an option, Jedi. We need to get these men back to the hangar right now."
She didn't fault him for saying that. They did need to get the wounded to safety. But the soldiers could do that, and in any case they had to, because they followed orders.
Kaevee was not a soldier. "Then you get them back. We're going to get Atton." She glanced at Cole. "Come on."
As soon as she said it, the ice running through her blood changed to electricity. She left a kind of stunned silence as she strode around the soldiers and up the hall where the survivors had come from. Several voices followed her simultaneously and drowned each other out—but then two more came clearly:
"I said, stop! STOP—"
"Just hang on, sergeant, she's not gonna listen to you—but she might listen to me."
Kaevee stopped and whirled around, startled. Cole was right there with her, but he hadn't been following her in the way she had supposed. He kept half-raising his arms, as though debating whether or not to grab her. "Kaevee, we are not doing this. We can't help him."
"We have to try. We owe it to him—"
"No we don't. What did he tell you before? No stupid, suicidal heroics. You say there's Sith in there—if he can't handle 'em, then you're as good as dead."
"He's the one being suicidal! We can't let him—"
Cole made a fierce, sweeping gesture with one hand. "Let him do what he wants! If somebody's really bent on getting himself killed, you can't stop him."
"Maybe I can't, but we can."
"We can charge into a room full of Sith and die horribly? Frack no. Not if you promised me the Queen of Ranroon." He sighed, and all the intensity seemed to go out of him that moment, giving way to frank weariness. "You've lost your mind, kid."
Kaevee stared, trying to get a sense of what was behind his tone. The thought that it might be pity stoked her anger. "Then go back, if that's what you'll do," she snapped. "But I have to be there—I'm a Jedi. And you're not going to stop me."
"You're right. I'm not."
It was four simple words—just four, and they weren't exactly unforeseeable—but he said them with such a sudden, palpable indifference that they felt like a slap to the face. "…What?"
"You're no better than Atton," Cole went on quietly, almost robotically. "I can't help you."
Kaevee faltered, bewildered that he was suddenly giving up. But she pressed on, struggling to find the words that were urgent enough. What would it take? Why wouldn't he listen? "Yes, you can!" she cried. "You can help me. But we're wasting time—"
The spacer looked down at her and suddenly his expression hardened, his passion returning. "Kid, I've got limits. I'll help you out in a scrape. Bounty hunters, soldiers, even flying monsters—wouldn't've guessed that one before today… But Sith? I know what they can do—slice you up like nerf, snap your spine like a twig, rip your memories out of you and turn you into a basket case. I'm not going near one of them for anything, sure as hell not to try and save someone who wants to die—whether it's Atton or you."
Kaevee's chest tightened as it finally began to sink in and her hope left her. "But I saved your life…" In her mind she went back to Daluuj, back to watching the bounty hunter's knife drift toward Cole's face, and the Force refusing her even as her desire to save him turned her spirit black.
Cole started shaking his head bitterly, almost painfully. "Don't pull that shit with me. Just get out of here—"
"After everything we've been through…"
"—and stop holding these people up. Go on, play hero! What are you waiting for?"
"You scum. Atton needs us, and you want to let him die…" It hurt to speak—with every word it felt like she was expelling something poisonous from her throat. "…and you'd do the same to me, you— You selfish, miserable coward! That's all you are, a coward!"
"YES! You're exactly right!" Cole erupted, his fists shaking, and Kaevee began to see something else from the recent past. His face had warped into the same blazing, almost superhuman rage that she had seen aboard the Sharp Turn, when he had tried to re-board the exploding ship in pursuit of his credits. Furious as Kaevee was herself, she backed away a step, thinking for a split second that he was going to hit her.
But all he did was snarl, "I am a coward, and you're a damn fool who wants to throw our lives away for NOTHING! I'd rather be alive, but you can do what you want!" And again, just as startlingly quickly as it had flared up, the rage seemed to burn out, leaving only an ember of itself behind. His mouth twisted, forming something like the desiccated remnant of a smile. "If you're gonna go, then go… And may the Force be with you."
It had been eleven lonely years since Kaevee had last heard anyone say those words to her. Loathing Cole so deeply that she was afraid to find out what she might say or do if she wasted another moment on him, she turned and ran into the depths of Singularity Base.