Author's Note: Ok, Chapter 6. My biggest so far. Thanks for the reviews everyone, they are all useful. Please tell me exactly what you think, and let me know if I've made a mistake. Hope you enjoy.
Chapter 6
The following morning, after breakfast and a quick discussion about our plans for the day, Revan set out towards the cantina. Carth, Mission and I gathered our two thousand credits and went to the droid shop, leaving Zaalbar to look after the apartment.
Along the way, we saw two young children kicking an Ithorian, all the way down the walkway. Nobody moved to stop them. Carth spoke under his breath. "I hate this planet. It's all prejudice and bullying."
Mission run up after one of the children and slapped him, hard, across the face. "Leave the guy alone, you little core slime!" The other child, a girl, shoved Mission. Then her face met the solid resistance of Twi'lek fist. She started screaming as blood trickled out of her nose.
"Ow! What did you do that for?" Both children started flailing their little limbs at Mission, until Carth picked up both of them by the collar, gave them a firm telling off and ordered them off home.
"Mission, I know that those kids were in the wrong, but you don't take the law into your own hands. I'm sure this entire matter could have been resolved without violence." I told her, perfectly reasonably.
She exploded. "Oh shut up! Just because you're a Jedi it doesn't mean that you know everything! You're not even that much older than me, so stop treating me like some helpless kid!"
I would have said something else, but Carth stepped in again. "Ok you two, stop this. Mission, do you want to go back to the apartment to cool off?"
"Why can't she go back? I haven't done anything wrong. I was trying to help that Ithorian. She just stood there doing nothing and then she started moaning at me. She should be made to go back home."
I snapped back, "At least I don't fly off the handle like a spoilt little brat acting half her age." Three days of each others company had hardly bred good moods. Her blue eyes challenged me, daring me to say anything else. I noticed her hand moving towards her vibroblade. Jeez, this kid had a short fuse.
"Right, I've had enough of this. Mission, go back and talk to Zaalbar or something. Bastila, stop winding her up, and come with me." Carth took my wrist and started walking me towards the droid shop.
The Twi'lek at the droid store, Janice Nall, readily sold us the droid when we told her that Canderous had sent us. T3-M4 beeped cheerily at us and angled its flat head at Carth, like a Gizka waiting to be petted.
"Ok. Lets go collect Kail, assuming he's still alive, and break into the Sith base." Instinctively, I felt myself reach through the force to see if Kail was still alive. I found him, almost too easily. He was injured and exhausted, but alive.
"He's hurt. Badly. We have to get to him quickly. I may be able to help him." Carth furrowed his eyebrows at me, but obeyed. The droid followed after us, making a sort 'rrrrrrr' sound as it moved.
There were crowds of people in the cantina, all cheering the 'Mysterious Stranger'. That was Revan's arena nickname. Pushing our way through the swarms of fans, we found Revan. He was surrounded by people waving data pads at him hoping for an autograph. They all seemed blissfuly ignorant of the fact that he was slowly bleeding to death.
He looked up and smiled when he saw me and Carth, then, like a felled tree, slowly toppled onto his side. Using force wave, I pushed all of the surrounding fans out of the way, whilst Carth shouted, "Give the man some space to breathe, you tossers!"
Revan's chest was riddled with blaster holes. I sensed him healing him self, very slowly. I prayed silently that he wasn't remembering how to use the force, and that it was merely his subconscious working.
"Quickly Carth, get him to the medical facility. He needs attention immediately." He nodded, soldier instincts kicking in, and hauled the wounded Revan over his shoulder. The crowd parted to let us through.
The owner of the medical facility, an aging man, readily agreed to help. He gave Revan a heavy dose of kolto, and bandaged up the wounds. With a little help from the Force, he was fully healed within the hour.
"So you actually beat Bendak?" Carth asked when Revan could talk again. Revan grinned and opened his backpack, revealing a small mountain of credits, and pulled out a blaster pistol with 'Starkiller' etched onto the side.
"Where's the new droid? I'd like to have those codes for the blockade by the end of the day." T3 rolled up and beeped merrily at Revan, lights flashing all over its silver frame. "Good. Let's go then."
--
It took the droid all of fifteen seconds to slice the security system on the Sith base. Its job done, it rumbled off back to the apartment. I had my lightsaber on my belt, its familiar weight comfortable against my hip. Carth readied his blasters and Revan drew his vibrosword.
The elevator stopped and opened, revealing a Twi'lek receptionist sitting at the main desk. "You have five seconds to tell me why you are here before I push this alarm button." She didn't speak Basic, but we all understood.
"If you push that button, I will personally feed you your own dismembered limbs. Leave now, and we'll let you live." Revan spoke calmly, as though he were commenting on the weather. The receptionist took one last look at the alarm switch before fleeing her desk and leaving via the elevator.
Revan immediately began slicing the security system. He overrode all of the electrical mains he had access to and managed to deactivate all of the droids in the building. After downloading all the area schematics to his data pad, he led us in the direction of a second elevator.
On the way, we passed several holding cells, though there was only one occupant; a skinny Duros. His eyes lit up with hope as he saw Revan and started talking about hidden sith bodies. He begged us to release him by using five control panels on the wall. All of the panels had to be set to the 'off' position for the cage to open. Three of them were already 'on'.
Carth and Revan looked at the puzzle for a while trying to figure it out. I worked it out in seconds. I flipped the middle switch, and then the two end ones. The force field deactivated, and the Duros left, shouting his eternal gratitude.
We passed dead Sith as we continued towards the elevator, some of them still twitching from being electrocuted. The smell of burnt flesh filled the corridor. The next door revealed an enormous Sith war droid, which merely beeped at us as we passed. "Wow. You really can slice a computer, huh?" Carth asked.
Revan grinned as we stepped into the elevator. "This is too easy. The only resistance we've encountered so far was that receptionist." Carth laughed, but as soon as the lift stopped, I thought he had spoken too soon. I could sense a dark presence on this floor. It wasn't strong, and I sensed that whoever was there was poorly trained.
The door opened to reveal a bald man, wearing the silver armour that some dark Jedi seem to like. He was only armed with a vibrosword. Revan was right – this was too easy.
He turned around as we approached. "You will pay for interrupting my… wait." He looked directly at Revan. "I sense the Force is strong within you. Very strong." Who would have thought a Force adept could be found on this insignificant planet?" Then he noticed me for the first time.
"This is unbelievable – The most wanted person in the galaxy has just walked into my grasp! Lord Malak will be greatly pleased. Prepare to die, Jedi!" He thrust out both his hands, and I felt the Force whistle past me and strike both Carth and Revan. They both froze, held in place by a stasis field. Then, pulling with the Force, he snatched my lightsaber from my belt and threw it into a footlocker which slammed shut and locked.
Great, I was completely unarmed. Without wasting a second, he began attacking. I dodged out of the way of his vibrosword, learning his combat style. He used a traditional fighting technique, with a predictable sequence of moves. He would be easy to defeat.
As soon as he went for another overhead attack, I grabbed his wrist and used his momentum to pull his arm forward and down, twisting it one hundred and eighty degrees at the same time. I danced out of the way of the spinning blade as it flew out of his hand. Still holding his wrist, I pulled him forward again and brought my left fist down on his bared elbow. I felt and heard the bones crack with the impact.
He pulled away and spun backwards aiming a kick at my mid section, but I'd been expecting that. I stepped back and twisted his foot as it reached the end of its kick. He flipped right over and landed on his bad arm.
He jumped up and threw Force lightning at me. I wasn't strong enough to deflect it back at him, but I managed to block it. Seeing that I outmatched him at Force tricks, he tried punching again with his left arm. I used an inside to outside left block with my left armand grabbed his wrist again.
I was on the outside of his arm. I danced underneath it so his arm was over my shoulder and my back was to him. Taking his arm with me, I twisted to the left until I was behind him and his elbow was next to his ear. Then, using his shoulder as a pivot I pulled his elbow backwards and dislocated his arm with a sharp crack.
I summoned the vibrosword from the floor with the Force and drove it into the back of his neck and through the base of his skull. He screamed as the blade burst through the front of his face, spraying blood. Seconds later, his life force drained away and he died, his body flopping forward onto the floor.
As he died, the stasis fields surrounding Carth and Revan fizzled and dissolved, giving them free movement. Revan stepped up next to me and looked at the corpse in front of us. "Ok. Note to self; Don't underestimate a Jedi. That was amazing, and you were completely unarmed!"
"Good work, Bastila. Now, let's get those codes and get out of here before someone realises what's happened." They sliced the security locks on the two footlockers at each side of the room. Inside we found the codes we needed, my lightsaber, one thousand credits and a weapon upgrade.
We left quickly, going back the same way we came in and not stopping until we reached the outside. The sun was low in the sky. "Shall we go back to the apartment, or go fetch a drink?" Revan asked.
"I'll take the codes back, and then meet you guys in the cantina." Carth offered.
It had been a long time since I'd been able to meditate properly, and I really needed to relax. "No. I'll take them back, and you two take Mission and Zaalbar for a drink. I need to meditate."
"Meditate? You Jedi actually do all that mind clearing stuff? I bet it doesn't even work." Revan sneered.
I took the codes from Carth and left without a word, ignoring the part of me that wanted to teach that ignoramus a lesson. As I walked away I heard Carth say to Revan, "I don't think she likes you very much." That had to be the understatement of the year.
--
Carth, Revan and Zaalbar left early the next morning to speak to Canderous leaving me, Mission and the droid. Mission scowled at me as I checked all of the droids functions, still angry at being made to go home yesterday. She had a hangover as well, which wasn't improving her mood.
Halfway through the day Carth contacted us, letting us know that they had infiltrated Davik's estate. They hoped to have the escape ship, the Ebon Hawk, within four hours. All of our equipment was packaged in the footlocker and ready to move out as soon as they had the ship.
Two hours after Carth had talked to us, my Force senses began prickling all over. It was the worst feeling I'd ever had. My hands were shaking, I was sweating and could barely breathe. I remembered other Jedi talking about similar experiences before huge disasters. I still wasn't prepared for what happened.
Twenty minutes after the shaking began we heard explosions from all directions. The entire apartment shook. T3 beeped in alarm and Mission started shrieking. Then, like a kick in the head, I felt hundreds of people die all at once. It kept happening, as each explosion sounded hundreds were joining the Force; their death screams tearing through my head like a lightsaber.
I doubled over onto my hands and knees and almost puked. As I crouched in the floor, I heard the communicator beep. I could barely see anything, but my hearing seemed unaffected. I heard Mission screaming through the communicator, "Kail? What's happening?" A pause. "Bastila's collapsed. What should I do?" Another pause.
I felt her shake me by the shoulders as my head felt like it was going through a cheese grater. "Come on, get up! They've got the ship and we have to leave now!" The droid beeped, and Mission kept on screaming at me. "Get up! Come on!" I felt her hands grab my collar, and hauled me onto the droids head. "Walk!"
Using the droid as some kind of enormous mechanical walking stick, I managed to stumble to the door as Mission dragged the footlocker along behind her. It felt like miles from the door to the elevator. Halfway there I emptied my stomach, and again when we were in the lift.
"Come on Bastila, we're nearly there. They should be waiting with the ship." My vision swam, my head pounded and I could feel the bile rising in my throat again. The elevator lurched to a halt causing me to vomit again. On the surface it was chaos. Buildings were in ruins, and there was fire everywhere. Some idiot had parked a star ship in the middle of the walkway.
Everything blurred again as we got nearer the ship, and I felt myself fall again. It was hard enough staying conscious – I couldn't possibly be expected to walk any further. I felt strong arms pick me up and carry me in a jerky run. I retched again.
The someone put me down again, this time on a cold metal floor. Worried voices talked around me, but there were no words any more. Just agony and the screams of the dieing.
--
Some time later I woke up. I was still on the floor and I stank of vomit. Not surprising, as it was all the way down my front and in my hair. The earthquake which had been going on in my head previously had reduced itself to a low rumble.
Carth was standing next to me. "Where are we going?" I asked, my raw throat rasping at the words.
"We're not sure yet. We are just fleeing Taris at the moment, but we're been chased by Sith snub fighters."
"Plot a course for Dantooine. There's a Jedi enclave there where we can find refuge."
He nodded and walked away. Utterly exhausted, I dropped my head back to the metal floor and all was black.