Chapter 14: Crash Course

Revan

She could not get their words out of her head.

We'll come for you, they had said. And for her. For all the ones you care about.

Revan recited the Jedi Code under her breath as she walked towards the dormitory, trying futilely to banish the voices.

"There is no emotion..."

Little Jedi, how naïve you still are.

"There is peace..."

Suffer. Everyone will suffer.

The voices were beginning to overpower her. She blocked them out and shut her mouth, reminding herself that there were no voices here. It was all in her head... for now.

Bastila was sitting on her bed, twisting strands of her hair between her slender fingers.

"I... I'm sorry for running out like that," she mumbled, staring at the ground. "I haven't heard that... language for so long..."

Revan sat down opposite Bastila, staring at the same spot on the floor as the other Jedi.

"I know. You don't really need to be sorry."

Bastila shrugged. Cold filled the air around them, setting into their bones like a disease. There was an eerie silence before Revan spoke again.

"Did you understand it?"

Bastila sighed. "Yes. Some of it."

Revan nodded somberly and sighed shakily.

Canderous walked into the dormitory. He looked from one Jedi to the other and said dryly, "So this is how Jedi party. Makes me proud to be a Mandalorian."

No one moved.

"Anyway," Canderous continued, regardless, "Onasi's pacing out here like a mother kinrath, and the assassin droid wants to know why I didn't come and wake it up."

"Thought you did," muttered Revan.

"Nah, Bastila shoved me past the droids after I... woke her."

Bastila rubbed her arm where the injections had been, but made no other movement.

"So what do you want me to do for you, Canderous?" asked Revan. Bastila crossed and uncrossed her legs, looking uncomfortable in every position.

"Quiet down your wife out there or I'll make you a widow. Kind of."

Revan fingered the chain around her neck. Kind of. She sighed. Maybe it would be 'kind of' for even longer than she had imagined. Standing, she thought painfully of how much she was keeping from Carth.

"Hey," said Canderous as she passed him to leave, "don't get all melodramatic on me. Show Onasi who wears the robes in your relationship before he really starts getting on my nerves."

Revan made a minor attempt to smile. Leaving the dormitory, she absent-mindedly passed HK, who said, "Protest: Master! You did not activate me to fight this unknown ship, and now I've had to listen to that meatbag drone on in a whining monotone for what seems like hours just to be able to piece together the entire encounter! I object to this utter dismissal of my urges... and my needs!"

"Sorry," said Revan, "I thought Canderous got you up. I told him to... but there were complications. He kind of dropped about five stims straight into Bastila's arms and she chased him away pretty quickly."

"Begrudging Acceptance: All right, master. I'm sure I understand."

HK's ruby-red photoreceptors seemed to glow with irritation. Revan could tell from the stiffness of HK's bronze body that it was quite bent out of shape over this matter. Revan thought she heard it make a sighing noise as she left the room, but she decided to leave the droid to its sulking.

Carth was already walking briskly down the corridor between cockpit and hold when Revan got there, and he gripped her firmly by the shoulders, practically shaking her with the intensity of his grip. This, however, did not compare to the intensity of Carth's molten eyes as they poured down into Revan's.

"What's going on?" he asked. "I need answers. I need to know what it is we're dealing with."

Revan softly pried his hands off of her arms, gently holding his strong fingers. "I don't know yet, Carth," she whispered. His melancholy eyes softened slightly, but they were still fiery and restless. Carth pulled Revan to him tightly, with one hand on her head and the other on her back.

Revan put her arms around Carth's neck. "I know this is hard," she said against his chest. "I took you away from everything, and you don't even know why. And I don't, really, either."

"Don't apologize. I was the one who begged to come, remember? And if I hadn't been here, who would've carried you to the hospital, huh?" Carth grinned, closing his eyes. "I just wish you didn't have to deal with these Sith anymore. I really thought we were done with that."

Revan sighed, thinking, Oh, Carth, we never even began.

Bastila

"So that's Bakura?" chided Canderous incredulously from behind Bastila. "About as backwater a planet as any, looks like. Which is pretty much what I'd expect from a new colony like Bakura. You know, during the wars-"

"Save it," snapped Bastila. "I'm not Revan. I do actually have better things to do than to indulge you and your war stories."

Canderous walked away. Bastila looked down at the swampy planet before her, shaking her head, and attempted once more to contact the planet below.

The base signaled back. Finally, thought Bastila.

"Bakuran base, this is the Ebon Hawk requesting landing permission for resupply. Do you read me?"

A static-laced transmission came back from the planet below. "Hawk... you... cleared for..."

"I hope that meant we can land without them shooting us down," Bastila muttered to herself. "And I hope I can actually land this thing alone. Why those two have to disappear now, of all times, is beyond me."

Slowly, Bastila reached out at levers and buttons, trusting her Force-guided intuition to land the Hawk safely. She closed her eyes, concentrating so much on the landing that when Canderous, now standing behind her, scoffed at this technique, it startled Bastila. Her thought process snapped, and the ship began to accelerate.

"Great job," she yelled at Canderous. "If you want me dead this badly, you could just come out and say so!"

"Judging by your landing tactics,"retorted Canderous, "I'd say you'd be more than willing to do the job for me!"

Desperately, Canderous and Bastila tried to figure out how to land. Bastila pulled the Hawk away from Bakura's colony, leading it instead to the forested marches.

"You might want to sit down now," she said calmly to Canderous, who was still feverishly working to save their landing. "Or else you can go flying into the window. Your choice."

Canderous sat, gripping the sides of his seat with tense fists. Bakura grew closer. Bastila still clung to the steering in a frantic attempt to avoid a calamity. She closed her eyes and pulled instinctively at the levers before her until they were parallel to the planet's surface.

As the Hawk landed, both Bastila and Canderous let out sighs of relief to still be in one piece. Too drained to even argue about whose fault it was, they glared at each other. Canderous shrugged, got up, and walked away. Bastila closed her eyes, looked upwards, and laughed.

Revan

"Honestly, you two," Carth said sternly to Canderous and Bastila as Revan finished slipping on an energy shield, "can't I trust you for even half an hour unsupervised?"

Bastila glared at Canderous, who looked up contemptuously at Carth. Revan came up behind Carth and slid her arms around his neck. "Come on, Carth," she purred, "I think they get it."

"Yeah, well, that doesn't exactly help the fact that I have some minor repairs to make. If you explore Bakura anytime soon, you do it with these two, because I'm gonna need those droids.

Revan conceded. "Well, you two, it'll be just like old times."

"Not really. You always had Onasi along in 'old times,'" pointed out Canderous.

"Whatever," sighed Revan, pushing the energy shields their way. "Rest of the equipment's in the cargo hold."

Thankfully, Bastila and Canderous had little to dispute over in the way of armor, and the three left for the forests of Bakura.

"Never in a thousand years will they make these swamps habitable," muttered Canderous, lifting his boot out of a particularly muddy piece of land.

"Stranger things have happened," shot Bastila.

"Yeah, like the Republic winning the Wars."

"You've got to be-"

"Hey!" shouted Revan. "That's enough back there! Bastila, you're on my left, Canderous on my right. And I don't want a single word out of either of you unless it's a useful one."

They walked along in a heavy, stagnant silence, through the rustling leaves of thick jungle flora, avoiding the large avians dotting the tree, which seemed much too menacing to be entirely harmless.

Bastila hesitantly began to speak. "Does... does anyone know where we're going?"

Revan shrugged. "Hopefully, to the base. If you think you know, feel free to say something."

Canderous stopped suddenly. Noticing this, the Jedi followed suit, looking around apprehensively. They heard, as Canderous had before them, a rustling nearby that sounded like some kind of animal. As Revan tried to pinpoint the location of the sound, she realized suddenly that they were completely surrounded.

Out of the dense foliage crawled a circle of four-legged beasts with sharp-looking claws and sleek emerald fur. Their eyes gleamed, as though these three were their sport, as if hunting them was very entertaining.

Bastila and Revan drew out their respective lightsabers. Bastila's golden double blades whirred through the air, but the creatures were too agile, too limber to be caught by a blow from the weapon. Revan swung her own violet sabers, but her luck was the same.

The creatures attacked, and Revan and her companions retaliated. The creatures seemed, however, to be primarily attacking Revan, who was gradually being bloodied around the waist. Canderous saw how weak she was as she staggered clumsily, and he grabbed her around the waist, pressing the wound tightly to him.

"Hold on, Rev," he yelled above the shots of his heavy repeater and Bastila's double-sided lightsaber. "We're almost through!"

Revan began to see only darkness. She had to stay awake, to help fend off these monsters. Weakly, she tried to break free from Canderous, but his protective grasp was immovable.

"Don't try to fight," he advised. "We'll handle this."

Revan was unaware of the battle's end, seeing only swirls of the blurred background around her. Canderous' "Can you walk?" held little meaning for Revan as it echoed distantly. She could still feel that he was holding her barely-conscious body in one strong arm, but she began to feel detached from the safety of that body.

Then, she felt nothing.