In the moments that followed, Katrina and Bastila could only exchange looks of frustration.
"Any more bright ideas?"
"At the very least we now know the extent of Telosian fear and paranoia." The guard turned his head at the word 'paranoia' and Bastila instantly lowered her voice.
"Besides, you were the one who requested to speak with someone of authority." Katrina smirked ruefully.
"I don't think I want to meet anything else with authority around here." She inclined her head towards their lightsabers, lying atop a pile of long-confiscated weapons in a storage bin.
They might as well have been at the end of the hallway for as likely as they were to reach them.
"No," Bastila said quietly, shaking her head.Katrina narrowed her eyes.
"I'm not about to wait around for the lynch mob," she hissed back.
Bastila grabbed her arm, pulling her into the back of the cell.
"Breaking out of here forcefully will only cement their opinions about the Jedi- and you."
She ran her fingertips over the light creases her nails had made in her palms only a few moments before.
"We can't possibly make them hate us more."
"The crew on the Ebon Hawk will doubtless worry over our absence-"
"We can't just wait around and expect them to rescue us!" Bastila seemed torn between indecision and regret over whatever her eventual choice would be.
There was only one guard, and their cell was crumbling at the base. Escape looked easy but, as it had so many times in the last few months, would probably prove to be harder.
"Quietly," Bastila finally whispered.
Quietly. Right.
There were a number of options. They could extend and retrieve their lightsabers through the Force, the energy beam enough to knock out the pathetically weak one keeping them in the cell.
That would mean fighting, and it definitely wouldn't be quiet. That would mean striking down the guard outside the cell and any others who came running after them, and probably Knowl too if it came to that.
That would mean more killing. The thought had never seemed to bother her in battle before. Now it left her with that same cold, empty feeling.
No. Another way.
They could attempt to distract the guard or 'persuade' him into letting them out.
She eyed the look of him. He was unkempt and unshaven, but he didn't look tired, discouraged or mutinous in the least. She doubted she could persuade him to let them out, and doubted more he could be distracted. He was now glancing back at them suspiciously every ten minutes or so after having overheard Bastila. Clearly, there was no method of escape that would get them past the energy shield, however weak, acting as the door of the cell.
Katrina glanced around them, as if the cell itself could offer an alternate solution. It was solid steel around them, however decaying and rusted.
Until she noticed the small hatch above her head, barely big enough to squeeze her shoulders through. Probably an air shaft. It was probably sealed or held by a security system long ago, but now it looked dead and harmless. Probably when the compound had been whole and standing, there had been a whole block of holding cells. There had probably been more than one guard then too. It was one of the few instances in which Telos' dilapidation might be their advantage.
She followed the ceiling's maze of wires and bulkheads, looking to see if it led anywhere. A similar looking hatch was in the ceiling outside the cell. Where both led or if they even connected she couldn't tell.
Well, she thought, At least they'll never be able to say this beat up cell could hold us.
She caught Bastila's attention and looked dramatically up. Bastila nodded.
They waited until the guard turned his back.
Quickly Katrina boosted Bastila up and waited as she unlocked the hatch. She scurried up inside it just as the guard turned around.
The sudden absence of Bastila seemed to startle the guard so much he visibly jumped.
"What is this, one of your Jedi tricks?" he snarled. "Where's the other one?" He hadn't noticed the open hatch above her head.
Behind him Katrina watched the other hatch in the ceiling open up.
"You might want to come over and look for yourself. Maybe I made her disappear." The guard held his blaster alarmingly close to him as he stepped towards the cell, cradling it like it was the last thing he had.
A fleeting thought crossed her mind that for a lot of these people, it was.
She watched out of the corner of her eye as Bastila's hands appeared and both lightsabers flew into them. The movement caused a few of the other weapons in the storage bin to jostle. She tensed her muscles, ready to spring for the open hatch above her.
The guard whirled around. There was no one behind him. Panicked now, he made a complete circle and faced the cell again.
"Commander!" he screamed, running down the endless hallway. "The Jedi have escaped!"
"It should be this next bend," Katrina murmured, despite the fact that she had been ready to say that five more bends in the air shaft ago.
They wouldn't have much more time to wander around in the ruined ducts of the complex. Any moment Knowl would be notified of their escape, and someone would discover how they had gotten out. Every second she was waiting for blaster fire to begin shooting up at her through the bottom of it.
Finally she noticed another hatch at the end of the way they were crawling. She moved quickly, trying to ignore the various creaks and groans the old metal was giving under their weight.
We're pretty lucky this whole thing hasn't collapsed on us. But then again we're pretty lucky that half the people on this planet haven't shot us yet.
Katrina stopped abruptly at the hatch, so abruptly that Bastila bumped into her, unaware that they had stopped.
"What are you waiting for? Open it." She eyed Bastila's exasperated face and decided that it was probably a slight strain of claustrophobia making the Jedi forget about checking for what might be beyond the hatch.
She strained on the release lever. It creaked for a moment, reluctant to let go, and finally opened.
It had led to the surface again.
It still looks like a wasteland but it's definitely better than that cell. Both of them tumbled out onto the surface a few meters below.
"I fail to see how any air was passed through that," Bastila said, brushing ageless soot and dust off her clothing.
The complex of Commander Knowl and his ragged militia wasn't very large- sort of a miniaturized version of the base at the other end of the city.
They were either at the edge of the region or near the beginning of another. Large energy fields were erected around them about a hundred meters off. They were beginning to die in some areas, either an effect of the harsh conditions or unknown forces on the other side. What they hid behind them was black and faceless. They now fizzled and sparked every few seconds.
"Do you suppose those fields are just for show?" Katrina murmured, trying to catch her breath.
"Probably separating the uninhabitable parts of Telos from...these parts." 'Habitable' was not exactly a word to describe the part of Telos they were in.
"What makes them any less uninhabitable?"
"They've been bombed beyond recognition. The earth is unstable and no new structures can be built upon them. Probably the once major cities lie in those directions."
Energy fields separating the people from what they didn't want to face, every man for himself and his blaster, barely tangible relations with the Republic and none at all with the Jedi.
For a moment she was glad Carth wasn't here to see what a world that must have once inspired the great honor and courage in him had degenerated into.
The Force interrupted her thoughts as quickly as a sudden tap on the shoulder.
"That didn't last very long," Bastila said, resignedly pulling out her lightsaber.
Two rag-tag groups of guards were advancing on them; One from their right, another from their left. Knowl led one of them.
From where they were standing she could tell it was all the man could do to keep from grabbing a blaster and running towards them.
Without even seeing his face from less than fifty meters away, she could tell it held nothing but hatred.
There is no humiliation, there is no fear.
His hatred made her defensive, and her defense was to get angry. Her anger made her tighten her grip on her lightsaber, eager to show all of them that their weakened defenses were no match for two Jedi.
"This isn't going to help anything," Bastilaadded to no one in particular.
"Whether it will or not, we've been more than fair." She didn't like the words that chose to come out of her mouth but at times it seemed as though it was a separate entity from her.
"Look," Bastila nodded towards the holes in the energy fields. "I'm more than willing to bet those fields are weakened enough to allow us to go right through them."
"And it'll probably hurt." That was an understatement. Going through would mean breaking the field, however weakened, and the field would attempt to cover the hole by focusing itself on whatever was in the way.
"We can defeat them easily, Bastila."
She found somewhat surprisingly that she was eager to defeat them, to slice through all of their cowardly, paranoid little bodies.
Her eagerness to do so made her hate herself, and it wasn't a reaction at all as much as sharing Knowl's own opinion of her.
"This is the wiser choice, Revan."
She visibly cringed.
"Don't call me that."
"Ready?" Katrina nodded. They both bolted for the field. Instantly the guards began firing, and they did their best to deflect all of the closest ones.
The field was not far off, but it was hard to run while fighting off blaster shots from people who had probably spent their years since the war doing nothing but learning how to use them. Katrina and Bastila moved as quickly as they could, running sideways and backwards, trying to keep their eyes on both their attackers and their primary goal.
Bastila reached it first. Katrina watched her take a running leap through the field. She passed through it though not without a yelp of pain. The field surged and angrily sputtered around her body until she was through.
I'd rather burn in an energy field than be shot down before getting to it. She inhaled and took her own running leap.
Knowl held up his hand, stopping the soldier's assault.
"Do you...do you want us to go after them sir?" the guard asked haltingly, obviously not thrilled with the prospect.
"No. They'll never survive out there."