A Perilous Escape

The fuel pipe was dark. Ahead of us I could discern a small silver bucket. As we came closer I could tell that it was a astromech-droid. It was slightly damaged so I set to work repairing it.

"What are you doing?" Atton asked incredulously.

"I think this may be the droid that opened the emergency hatch for us." I explained.

"So?"

"So it would be very ungrateful to leave him here to get destroyed." I glared at him.

"Your talking about the droid like it's a person." he retorted.

I breathed in heavily. "It bloody well saved our skins. And besides it will be useful to repair damage on the ship… if we reach it."

The lights on the droid suddenly turned on. The beeps and chirps of the droid echoed through the fuel line.

"Yeah, you did well in opening the emergency hatch. What happened to you?" I answered him. The droid beeped back.

"What's he saying?" Atton asked.

"He said he was attacked by a strange looking "protocol" droid." I turned back to T3. "We were too. Its scrap now. Thanks for getting us off the administration level by the way."

Atton grumbled something about 'it's his job' but kept it to himself. The droid seemed to be susceptible to praise for it chirped happily.

"Let's get going." I exclaimed.

Just in front of the droid I found a small device. I picked it up and stuffed it in my bag. We exited the fuel pipe and just as I had thought, we were on the opposite side of the containment field. After exiting the fuel pipe we encountered droids but they were quickly turned to scrap. We soon made it to a ramp. Halfway up the ramp was a console. I turned of the energy field blocking us from the hangar. Running with force enhanced speed up the ramp I jumped at the nearest excavator droid, beheading it. T3-M4 and Atton blasted at everything that moved, except me. We ran to the lift and I was excited to find a button labeled: "Hangar".

"You don't suppose…" Atton began.

I smiled. "I don't, but we can hope that we can finally get off this rock. We quickly made it to the Hangar computers after destroying 3 more droids. Atton ran to the door. "I don't believe this. The door is locked and sealed." T3 bleeped.

"What? What did he say?"

"He said he can unlock the Hangar door with the device I found in the fuel line." I triumphantly pulled the device from my bag.

Atton looked ecstatic. "By the way, how do you even understand that noise the droid makes?"

"I served with a lot of utility druids in the… well a long time ago."

T3 unlocked the Hangar door and a few minutes of carnage later we stood on the landing platform. The Ebon Hawk was in working order and must have been repaired since numerous logs had said it was damaged. As we ran up the boarding ramp I spotted Sith soldiers.

"Quick! I need some time to get the engines and the ship running. Let's give the laser turret a workout." Atton exclaimed.

I manned the turret massacring the Sith soldiers trying to reach the boarding ramp. After a few minutes of slaughter Atton exclaimed that we were ready for takeoff. I turned and ran back to the cockpit but was surprised to find Kreia standing by the closed boarding ramp clutching her hand or what was left of it.

"Kreia?" I asked.

"Quickly. There is no time. We must leave at once." I felt the ship taking off smoothly. Atton swung it around and we left Peragus behind us. Suddenly blasts streamed past us. "The Harbinger!" Atton exclaimed. Atton twisted and turned through the Asteroid field. "If they hit us were dead but if they keep missing us we'll be dead too! Those are great odds." The asteroids were filled with fuel so one of the rocks exploding to close to us would kill us instantly.

"You said the Asteroids are filled with fuel. Shoot them and let them take care of the Sith."

"That will take out the colony, the system, and maybe us." Atton replied.

"Then we die here. Choose now." Kreia said.

Another blast rocked the ship. The energy shield was slowly weakening. "Do it Atton!" Atton just shook his head. Another blast hit us and the shield was down to 5. I pulled my sword and swung it stopping inches before Atton's neck. "Do it now!" I yelled.

"Alright!" Atton yelled back. "If we die don't blame it on me." He began pummeling the nearest Asteroid with the quad laser turret. "Hold on this will get a little rocky." Seconds later we heard a huge explosion. One of the asteroids to our right exploded and the blast wave pushed us further out of the Asteroid belt. Atton made a cry for joy, pushing the throttle forward, the stars streamed past us and we entered hyperspace.

"I can't believe it…" was all I said.

"Neither can I." Atton added. " Well now that we just killed a planet maybe you will explain what's going on. Because between assassin druids, assassins, a Sith Lord that looks like he sleeps with vibro-blades, and being target practice for a Republic warship I was better off in my cell."

Before I could rebuke him Kreia replied. "That Republic warship was the Harbinger. It was on it's way to Telos when it was seized by the Sith." She turned towards me. "They sought you, Jedi."

"I am not part of the order anymore." I retorted.

"That does not make a difference. The Sith believe you to be a Jedi Knight."

"Great! So what do we do?" I asked.

Atton interrupted. "Enough with the "we" already."

"For now we go to Telos." Kreia said.

"Like we have a choice the Peragus charts being what they are." Atton chimed in.

"Well how do we fight the Sith?" I asked. "I want to take the fight to them on my own terms not have some assassin stab me in the back."

"What the hell? Why do you keep saying "we"? I have no part in this." Atton interrupted.

"For now you do… unless you want to float in space." I grinned wickedly.

Atton smirked. "Alright, I guess your right. For now I'm stuck with you."

I turned back towards Kreia. "So, how should we fight the Sith?"

A few Jedi like lectures later she had told me everything and nothing and had left the room calling Atton a "imbecile and fool". I stood there in utter confusion. She had told me about this being unlike any battle I had ever fought but never told me how to fight it. All she said is that I would need weapons, allies, and a "teacher". I had hoped she knew more about these Sith than that. Atton cleared his throat behind me.

"Maybe you should go check on her." he said.

"Why is that?" I asked.

"Was he actually getting sensitive?" I thought.

"You saw her hand…"

I thought back on our conversation. "She seemed fine to me."

"Are you kidding? If I was her I'd be screaming like a mynock. Well a strong, manly mynock."

"Well ok I'll go check on her."

I made my way out of the cockpit. T3 rolled up in front of me making his way to the main hold. The main hold was semi circular in shape shaped and in the center was a huge round computer with all kinds of instruments monitoring a planet's statistics. I stopped T3.

"You seem to know the ship rather well." I told him. He beeped an affirmative.

"You told us earlier that you repaired this ship and flew us to Peragus…"

He bleeped a yes. "Thanks T3. You're a good little droid. By the way, you look like you have taken a lot of damage over the years."

"Beep!"

"I could try and repair you…"

After opening him I managed to repair a few of his parts resulting in his response package being improved. I watched as he rolled down the corridors towards the engine room. I stretched out my senses in an attempt to find Kreia. I realized that she was in the Port dormitory. Before going to her I decided to make myself familiar with the ship. From the central room, the mainhold, four corridors went to opposite areas of the ship. Behind me one path led to the cokcpit. Ahead of me, through which T3 was rolling, was the corridor that led to the Engine room. The hallway to my left led to the starboard dormitory and the garage. The corridor to my right led to the port dormitory, in which Kreia was meditating. I walked to the Port dormitory and sure enough, I found Kreia meditating.

"Have you come with questions?" she asked her back turned to me.

"Yes." she turned around and looked, or whatever she did, at me. "When you lost your hand, I felt it too."

"Indeed. We may have developed a very strong bond. That is one of the reasons why we can communicate without speaking." she explained.

I looked at her hood where I expected her eyes to be. "What if you had died?"

"The consequences may have been less painful but much quicker…"

"That's what I thought." I replied.

"You should see to that fool in the cockpit-"

"He is no fool! He has a name… use it." I commanded as I walked out of the door. Making my way back to the cockpit I inspected the large round sealing of an area in the main hold. After some tinkering with the mechanism it opened. Inside was a rusty droid missing key parts. It looked identical to the HK Protocol droid on Peragus. Looking it over I realized that it was missing four key parts. One of them, a vocabulator. I went to the cargo hold ,where I had deposited all our weapons and items, and retrieved the HK vocabulator. After an hour of fiddling with the droids skull I finally managed to insert the vocabulator. I decided to check on Atton after the exasperating work. Entering the cockpit I found him swinging about with one of my vibroswords.

"What are you doing?" I asked him, amused. He stumbled and shoved the sword cleanly into the control panel monitoring our fuel level. "You fool!" I exclaimed. Atton began desperately pulling at the sword while sparks flew around in the cockpit. "T3?" I yelled.

"No need to call the cargo cylinder." Atton exclaimed. "I got everything under control." I rolled my eyes as he yanked the sword out of the control panel smiling triumphantly.

"You killed it." I pointed at the sparking fuel monitor. Just then T3 rolled in. "See if you can't repair that." I said pointing at the broken monitor. T3 rolled past Atton beeping at him exasperatedly.

"What did he say?" Atton asked.

"He said that your 'a foolish organic'." I said smirking.