She couldn't stop marveling at it, at how she was only feet away from where she had been captured, briefly imprisoned and threatened with a lynch mob only to escape to hell itself.
She glanced over towards the energy fields. They were still here, albeit repaired and offering more protection than denial.
Nothing could survive on the other side now, with or without the Force.
"Welcome to Telos, Master Jedi." The voice that greeted them was soft and inviting.
"I've been instructed to take you and your companions to more comfortable quarters." The Force flowed freely here, through both the young woman in front of her and the rejuvenated planet around her.
"Waverly?" Bastila called out. The young woman turned back around.
"It is kind of you to remember me, Master Jedi."
The young woman had survived the rebuilding then. She had always wondered all those months how the planet had fared, whether they had left it to civil war and annihilation by their own hands, or whether Carth had risen up and led them back to the peace she saw before her.
"It looks as though you and your people have been hard at work," Bastila said. The young woman's soft, sad smile came again.
"The Jedi have been a great help to us, as well as the leadership of Admiral Onasi. He is most eager to see you."
She felt butterflies in her stomach and chastised herself for acting like some lovesick adolescent.
"Your leader was successful then even though he chose a pretty inopportune moment to rejoin society," Canderous remarked.
Waverly's smile weakened for a moment, as if it were a thin piece of gauze barely hanging onto her face.
"Leman is no longer with us. He did not survive our initial efforts to bring peace back to Telos."
So it hadn't been so smooth. She wondered how many had died, how many of the soft-spoken Force-sensitives had been sacrificed before someone on the planet came to their senses. She wondered if it had been Carth to remind them of their sanity.
But the peace did not come without a price. Nothing ever did.
Yes, she thought, watching her Padawan's straight shoulders and upright head following the young woman into the building, nothing comes without a price.
Which one was which she couldn't guess off-hand.
Both were tall; clad in identical robes of black and gray, the only sign that both were human the cold stare of two pairs of eyes from behind their face coverings.
Their anonymity and nondescript features only made her grip her lightsaber more protectively. It was so much easier to kill them when they were faceless, when they were nameless.
She heard Haytham gasping for breath behind her, but neither Sith had a clenched fist raised, the dead giveaway for a proper Force choke.
What the hell are you waiting for? An invitation? Jedi do not stand staring in awe at Sith. Jedi do not waste precious seconds wondering what's going on.
Jedi act.
Katrina stepped forward, out of the half circle she and her companions had formed around both Sith. Slowly she began to step around both of them.
Neither seemed particularly concerned. They stood, lightsabers half raised, watching her as though she were an exotic looking bug.
Their indifference began to irritate her.
"If all you came here to do was to get a good look at us, you could have sent away for a holoprint just as easily."
She was in a panic, and the panic was making her spit out witty retorts that were more the fare for fresh recruits in the Republic rather than a former Sith Lord-reformed Jedi.
Katrina struggled to clear her head, biting her lower lip as if that would stop anything else from coming out of her mouth.
They would sense her confusion in a minute, they would-
She barely moved her lightsaber up in time to block the attack of the leaner one. Too late. They had discovered their advantage.
The rest of her companions exploded in a mass of whirling lightsabers and blaster fire. Neither Sith seemed to have much trouble deflecting the blaster shots, leaving HK and Canderous to busy themselves trying to find new ways to catch them off guard. She and Bastila concentrated on the one who had attacked her first while Juhani and Dustil rushed towards the other.
His less bulky frame was the only thing distinguishing him from his companion. Both reeked foul of frustration and rage.
Was it too soon to assume this one, the one that had attacked first, was the apprentice and the other the master? Did that hierarchy even exist?
Her mind was wandering. She felt her bond Bastila crawling around her brain, trying to take her by the hand and lead her back to the battle she was in the midst of.
"Abbas?" she tried calling out. The Sith only slashed at her again.
"Or maybe you're Sakh," Bastila added.
"Quite a way for a politician to act." It was poor bait; Abbas or Sakh, whichever the one in front of her might be, didn't bite.
He did, however, suddenly stretch out his arm and knock both of them off their feet.
Katrina exchanged a glance with Bastila as they hurriedly pushed themselves back up and headed back towards him.
Over the shoulder of the Sith she was battling she saw Dustil. His jaw seemed bolted shut, and he breathed angrily through his nostrils as he made calculated swings at the other Sith.
The other was more stocky, though not any shorter. He gripped his lightsaber and handled it as though it weighed far more than the few kilograms its base added up to.
Haytham's office was small and cramped, and she didn't like it. Haytham himself now lay crumpled behind the desk, his face somewhat blue.
Whatever information he might have had was now clenched in the fist of whatever Sith had been able to choke him without showing it.
She hadn't even been able to sense the action from either.
Something's wrong here.
From behind her Katrina heard the sound of short circuiting electrical components and turned just in time to see HK's joints freeze in a position of attack. A metallic groan escaped and then both the acerbic droid and his blaster fell silent.
Neither Sith had done that.
She and the other Jedi danced around them, trying to lure them out of the office and back out into the open room of fallen guards.
The force (it wasn't the living Force she knew; it wasn't the capitalized one) seemed stronger here, which made it both harder to fight and harder to locate. Regardless, whatever was systematically silencing them one by one was somewhere in this room.
She heard the low laughter of the Sith. She heard Juhani's nostrils flare in frustration. She watched Dustil Onasi slide across the floor and into the sparking frame of the door. Smoke curled up from the fabric of his uniform, but he rolled himself firmly into the floor to kill it and launched himself back towards the Sith.
She struggled to watch his face, take comfort in the familiar Onasi features. She tried not to look at his uniform, at his blazing red lightsaber-
Her sparring partner swung dangerously near her ear. Katrina forced herself to concentrate. Juhani was with Dustil; he was not her responsibility. He had made this decision, and she hadn't approved. It was for him to fight his battles.
Literally.
"We were mistaken in our estimation," the Sith before her remarked, cold and emotionless. She narrowed her eyes.
"Yes. A diversion, and little else," the other replied between breaths, and Katrina dimly realized they were discussing her. As they fought her.
She was fighting something else, the something else that was managing to slam them into walls, shut down their droid, pull their weapons out of their hands and choke Haytham to death without so much as an eyebrow raise from either of the Sith they were actually sparring against.
"Why try to kill the diversion then?" she panted, swinging furiously at him.
She saw the corners of the Sith's eyes wrinkle up, his cheekbones protruding through the open patch for his eyes and realized that he was smiling under the mask.
"He knows you well. You say exactly what is expected of you."
She saw Carth, decaying in a medical facility on Telos. She saw Dustil slashing wildly through the air. She saw Malak standing at the door of her mother's sickroom. She saw Phineas, smiling kindly at her and handing her the datapad that might stop this madness.
Who is he? Who knows me well?
Bastila whirled around her, knocking the Sith that was about to deal her a particularly nasty blow backwards. The Jedi raised her eyebrows at her desperately
The diversion. The Hawk-
As if by thinking it alone, a large tremor suddenly shook the building. Red dust floated down from the ceiling and they fought to keep their balance. The lighting coughed and sputtered until it was only a soft reflection off the crimson stone surrounding them.
Canderous came bounding into the room from wherever he had been.
"About time one of us used their head!" he snapped, motioning with his blaster between shots towards the door.
The building was constructed to withstand natural seismic activity, but an attack from a small ship was obviously an entirely different matter. The frames that helped hold the rock formations into the shape of a square room began to groan from the weight.
The leaner Sith tossed his lightsaber towards them between blocking blaster shots. The heavier set one stood, cautiously watching the bits of rock fall and scatter across the floor.
"Come on. Coppertop weighs a lot more than he looks." Katrina glanced at the Mandalorian and noticed he was dragging the fried HK behind him.
Another tremor, this one stronger than all the others, shook the room. She grasped the wall, trying to stay up.
"P-perhaps we m-might have t-taught Zaalbar and Mission the b-basics of weapons m-management on the s-ship," Bastila stuttered as the room vibrated around them.
A door at the far side of the room exploded loudly under the pressure. Katrina turned back just in time to watch a figure come leaping through it and skid to a stop near the two Sith.
She stopped dead in her tracks. That was him, whatever had killed Haytham and distracted them all during the battle, most of all her. This one looked hardly any different from the leaner one she had been fighting- only this one did not carry a lightsaber. She saw no weapon on him at all.
"Revan!" Juhani yelled. Katrina finally turned and fled towards the ship.
Three.
"Trying to blow up the whole place or what?" Canderous muttered, striding into the cockpit and leaving a trail of armor in his wake.
Mission turned around in the co-pilot's chair with an irritated look.
"Don't start lecturing me when I got myself out of bed to come save your sorry big-shot warrior butt. You're all in one piece."
From the center of the ship Katrina could hear the echo of T3's exclamations of droid worry over the dismantled HK.
Tell that to HK. He's likely to turn you into many pieces.
"We picked up a transmission from the police forces in Fornia. They're aware of our infiltration at the plant. The city may no longer be a safe haven," Zaalbar growled.
"Is there somewhere out of the way you can take us?" Bastila said tiredly, elbowing her way past Canderous and towards the controls.
Three.
Katrina reached into her pack, pulling out the datapad.
Sakh is a known Sith sympathizer. He was one of the first to vote for supporting Revan and Malak when they returned as Sith in the war against the Republic. He claims not to understand either Jedi or their dark counterparts, but for a politician his strongest suit was never his prevarication. He supports several anti-alien organizations and his prejudices only help to cement his image as a straight-laced iron-handed leader.
She wondered for a moment why she had been so stupid as to not read the information on all five of the suspects and instead start with the crazy droid manufacturer who had lost his daughter.
His only major known contact with Revan and Malak was when they came before the Committee as both Jedi and Sith. Sakh only voted for arming them as Sith. Private meetings may have taken place, but anything beyond that is speculation.
This one sounded impulsive and brash. She could only see the leaner one she had been battling, feel the strength behind his attacks like a wall of force threatening to push right through her lightsaber as if it were only made of...well, light. He was Sakh.
Katrina scanned down the datapad.
Little is known on Abbas, as he is one of the senior members of the Committee and is well versed in hiding his personal vices and beliefs. Perhaps one of the most interesting rumors surrounding him is that he was once a Jedi-in-training, but his Master died somehow and Abbas abandoned the Force for the political arena. Whether this rumor holds any truth or not, in any case it did not help Abbas to be sympathetic when the Jedi came requesting Anelli's help in the Mandalorian War. Neither did he support arming Revan and Malak when they returned as Sith, but he was among the politicians personally courted by the duo during their campaign. These meetings made he and others the subject of public scrutiny for many years, but it eventually died down and Abbas has shown no evidence of leaning towards either side. The only reasons to suspect him of an attack are his frequent and sometimes heated clashes with myself-
"Myself" jumped out from amid all the third person references like a violent curse.
Phineas, the brother of the former Dark Lord Revan.
So the other, the one that had knocked Dustil aside so easily as if he were a training simulation rather than a flesh and blood person, the one that had called her "a diversion", the one that may have threatened her brother-
"Threatened her brother" seemed so much louder than the rest.
This one was Abbas. And he was the master; she didn't need the Force to tell her that. His experience, history, and the way he had fought was enough. He hadn't been the one to break their silence- that had been Sakh. Sakh was the apprentice.
Katrina turned and wandered back towards the center of the ship, rubbing her temples.
A hiss of pain echoed from the small sickbay, and she paused around the corner, watching as Juhani tended to Dustil's burned arm.
Must've been a close call, she thought, eying the blistering red scorch from a distance.
"You did well, Padawan," Juhani murmured softly to the younger Onasi. He nodded dumbly, staring at a vacant spot on the floor.
Juhani studied him for a moment, still half clad in the old Sith uniform. The jacket was flung in the corner as if Dustil had shed himself of it at the first opportunity.
"Your thoughts are troubled, Dustil," she added.
"I felt like...something kept telling me I was on the wrong side, and even when I wanted to turn back something else told me that was the wrong side too." His voice was low, and Katrina hung back in the shadows, aware that it was hard for him to admit this even to his master.
"Don't you remember what it was like to have that much power, Master? What it was like to be able to make everyone sorry for what they had done to you?"
She could feel Juhani's own struggles threatening to throw the calm and composed Cathar off balance.
"Did it ever really make them sorry, Padawan?"
Dustil shook his head slowly.
"Master..." Katrina heard his voice crack. "I saw them...and I saw myself."
She accepted for a moment the one and only benefit of having no memories beyond waking up on the Endar Spire: Dustil had no such convenient escape.
Sakh's private quarters within Fornia are rarely used. The members of the Committee have suspicions, but no real idea on where he spends his time off duty. Abbas has several private estates on the planet. His most frequently used one lies near the city of Delre to the north of Fornia. Delre was once a metropolis and a major hotspot for ore-bearing rock, but the mining ventures there have since dried up and it has become something of a ghost town.
Three...
The third one she could not explain. He was a Force user, but carried no weapon. She could only surmise that Abbas and Sakh were beginning a Sith base on Anelli, and it was one of their followers.
But there was only one way to know. And she was out of time and other options.
Katrina wandered back to the cockpit.
"There should be a relatively quiet settlement known as Delre to the north."
"All but abandoned except for one somewhat large estate," Bastila replied, looking up from the navigation system.
She could feel the Jedi's own exhaustion, but her mind was still doggedly probing Katrina's, looking for reasons and explanations that Katrina did not feel like discussing. She pushed her out of her thoughts so roughly that Bastila almost physically reacted.
"Delre it'll be then."