Shattered Knight

by Tim Radley

KoTOR: Eight months on from the fall of the Star Forge the expected peace has not come to the Republic. The news of Revan's return has become a source of schism and conflict within the galaxy, and Revan himself has his own demons to face.

2. A Crown For A Sith Lord

2. A Crown for a Sith Lord

The Senate complex on Coruscant was, to all intents of purposes, a city in its own right. Covering over a hundred square miles of ground and home to an average of twelve million people – though that number could rise as high as thirty million around the time of key debates – a person could theoretically spend a lifetime walking its endless corridors, hallways and annexes, and still not have seen half of what it contained.

Located in an airy rotunda situated atop a spire that soared nearly 5,000ft above Coruscant's surface, and currently surrounded by a veil of grey cloud, the senate archives surpassed even those maintained by the Jedi – in size at least. In terms of content, unless you were particularly interested in pouring over the minutiae of every political treatise agreed for the past 10,000 years, the Jedi libraries were generally considered a superior resource, but there was still very little in it.

Hundreds of people – senate aides, petitioners, academics, their droid helpers, librarians and assistants – moved between the vast shelves of datacards and computer terminals creating the kind of quietly restrained background noise that you only ever found in a library. Amidst all of this two more droids, accessing a very particular terminal set against a wall, weren't worthy of a second glance.

"Observation: if you take much longer over this the master will likely have expired from old age," HK-47 commented acerbically to his smaller companion – a highly modified T3-M4 utility droid.

"Bee-wop-woo-beep!" T3 retorted shrilly, its probe arm whirring as it twisted back and forth in the computer terminal's interface socket.

"You exaggerate the difficulty, I am certain. Do not think your attention seeking tendencies have gone unnoticed in this quarter."

"Beep-woo-bop-beep."

The amber lenses covering HK-47's optical sensors flickered as its head turned slowly, surveying the other users of the archive. "Sigh: so many meatbags. All that incessant and unseemly sloshing about. It is even worse when they are trying not to make noise. Surely if I exterminated one of them it would not be missed?"

"Beep!" The negative in T3's response was absolutely clear.

"Just a little one. I would snap its neck most quickly."

"Beep-beep!"

HK-47 looked down at the utility droid. "Objection: that strikes me as a fundamentally selfish attitude, especially when there are so many going spare. Nevertheless, I shall restrain my urges." A pause, before it added darkly. "For the moment."

"Er, excuse me, might I have a word?" A hand tapped HK-47's metal shoulder, the assassin droid's head swivelling round with deliberate and contemptuous slowness to face its accoster.

"You are addressing me, organic . . ."

"Woooo," T3 interrupted with a low warning note.

HK-47 gave the utility droid a surreptitious kick. ". . . human?" it finished, conveying the very definite sense that a word had been edited.

"Yes, yes. Indeed." The speaker was a neat, elderly looking gentleman dressed in the robes of a member of the senate advisory staff. "I have something of a fascination with droid design. You might call it a hobby of mine. Rather more than a hobby, perhaps. When I was a child, I was certain that I was going to grow up to be a droid mechanic. I could scarcely have envisaged . . ."

"Is there a point you are attempting to locate?"

"Um . . . ah. I was just curious. I believe I'm familiar with most current droid designations, but I can't place you at all. I thought from the back view you might be a new Aratech model, but up close I can see quite clearly that you're not."

HK simply looked at him fixedly.

The old man became flustered as the silence dragged and no response was forthcoming, stammering. "Um, ah. Aren't you going to answer me?"

"You made a statement. No question was posited."

"Ah, yes. Of course. Um. Might I ask your designation and role?"

HK's amber eyes flared with light. "Answer: I am HK-47. Skilled in protocol, translation, cultural analysis and . . . other duties."

"Other duties?"

"Yes. Other duties. I particularly enjoy my . . . other duties."

The old man looked rather bemused by that. "Well, you certainly are a most handsome machine. Rather an unusual colour, mind. I don't think I've ever seen a protocol droid that particular shade before."

"I find it to be most practical. It helps to hide the bloodstains from all the eviscerations and exsanguinations."

The old man gaped. "Did you just say . . .?"

"Beep-woop-bop!" T3 interjected warningly.

"Ha ha. Just my little attempt at humour. Ha ha," HK-47 deadpanned unconvincingly.

"Oh, how fascinating." The man's face lit up. "You have humour circuitry. Does that mean you're partially autonomous? What kind of processing capabilities and memory capacity do you possess?"

HK fixed him with a withering look, but the man refused to be withered. "Query: Are you familiar with the saying, curiosity killed the cat?"

"Hmm?" The man appeared to be somewhat puzzled by the question. "Yes, I believe I have heard that expression. Why do you ask?"

"I have determined, via means of careful and scientific practical experimentation, that curiosity also killed the Twi'lek, the Bith, the Rodian, the Gran, the Zabrak, the Ithorian, the Quarren, the Weequay, the Whipid, and by extrapolation, any other species of organic meatbag that persists in asking me unwanted questions."

The man blanched, taking an involuntary step back. "I have to say whoever programmed your humour module certainly had a distinctly twisted outlook."

"I was not trying to be amusing."

From beside the computer console T3 made a satisfied noise, withdrawing its probe arm.

-s-s-

Tamar sat cross-legged on the floor of the plain eight-by-eight cell, trying to clear his thoughts of all turmoil and think calmly and rationally about his situation.

It was surprisingly difficult, especially considering that up until a few days ago he'd almost wanted to put himself in this position: locked away and no longer even a notional threat to anyone. Funny how the sudden murder of twelve of the most senior and respected members of the Jedi Council, and the emergence of a new Dark Lord of the Sith, tended to alter one's perspective.

Or more precisely, not remotely funny at all.

He couldn't stop thinking about her.

Her face. Her lack of face. You burnt it off with such compassion . . .

His hand brushed against the neural disrupter collar around his neck. It was switched off at the moment. It was only switched on – disconnecting body from brain, and turning thought into a slow, incoherent delirium – when his guards came to take him to the interrogation chamber. That seemed to happen every few hours at irregular intervals, whereupon he would meticulously repeat what he'd gone through at least a dozen times before.

He wondered briefly if he should inform his jailors that they shouldn't rely on the collar to hold him. It hadn't managed to hold Bastila on Taris, after all. That memory drew a tiny smile. 'Rescued me? . . . It would be more accurate to say that I rescued you'.

The smile faded away quickly. Hindsight painted the past in different, less comfortable textures. What had seemed at the time to be arrogant haughtiness – though he had found it more amusing than annoying; almost endearing – now looked like what it really was: a hastily constructed facade to cover shock and borderline panic, buying time to think and regain composure.

He grimaced. Coming face to face with the amnesiac Dark Lord Revan, wandering around in Taris's lower city with no minder. Who wouldn't have been shocked? He wondered briefly if he would have coped so well had their situations been reversed.

Footsteps approached the cell – three sets of them, moving with military precision. Odd. Normally there were at least six escorts whenever he was moved, and his meals were brought by droids.

"Thank you. You may go." The female voice was clipped and precise.

"But ma'am . . ."

"I scarcely think that he is a threat, trapped behind a force field and wearing a disruptor collar. Now leave us. That is a direct order."

"Ma'am." The guard's reply sounded unhappy, but shortly afterwards Tamar heard two sets of footsteps retreating.

He rose politely to his feet, looking carefully at the woman standing less than six feet away, separated from him by a layer of glowing force field. "Admiral Dodonna. I am honoured."

She looked at his face intently, not speaking.

"Forgive my surprise, but I would have thought that the commander in chief of the republic fleet might have more important duties than the interrogation of prisoners. And the guard was correct. Even a neural disrupter is not an absolute safeguard against a captive Jedi of sufficient strength."

"Just tell me one thing, Revan." Her voice held the same tightly upright, military efficiency as her bearing. "Did you kill them?"

"No."

She smiled tightly. "Good. Although it's going to take a lot of convincing to persuade certain others of that fact – even without the copious amounts of evidence stacked against you."

"So you believe me then?" He tried not to sound surprised. "Just like that."

"If you were the Dark Lord again you would have betrayed us on the Star Forge and annihilated the bulk of the republic's fleet in the process. You would not have destroyed your most powerful weapon and let such a compelling strategic opportunity pass just to lull us into a false sense of security."

"The dark side is not built on rationality," he said softly.

"But you always were. Coldly rational to the point of it being a form of insanity. That was why you were so dangerous."

"That's not a version of me I even remember now."

She inclined her head a fraction. "No. And I should call you Tamar, shouldn't I. Jedi Knight Tamar De'Nolo. How are your injuries healing? I hear that you were quite badly hurt."

Three broken ribs, a punctured lung and ruptured spleen; badly torn shoulder muscles and severed tendons; a severe concussion, and a ruptured eardrum he hadn't even noticed at the time. Thanks to kolto treatment and the wonders of a Jedi healing trance, all he felt was slightly sore, though he wasn't sure how much exertion he was up to. "I am well enough."

Another fractional nod. "Good."

"You're taking quite a risk coming here, Admiral, even if not in the manner the guards were worried about. If word gets out that you visited me . . .. In the current climate it is going to taint you."

She didn't seem in the least perturbed. "I am not playing politics. Master Vandar was a close personal friend of many years. Fleet admirals don't have the luxury of many close friends. I want the person who killed him found, and I want them to pay for what they've done. The knowledge you have is currently the only means available to me to ensure that happens."

Tamar stifled a sigh as he assessed her flinty expression. "That's the problem, isn't it? We always want someone else to pay."

"I am not interested in trite Jedi wisdom," she snapped. "I want you to tell me about this woman you have mentioned repeatedly in your interrogation transcripts. This Sith."

He hesitated before answering, able to sense her tightly contained anger clearly. "If you've read the interrogation transcripts then you know as much about her as I do. I honestly have not held anything back."

"No?" He got the distinct impression that she didn't quite believe him.

"Nothing factual, no. What can I add? That I think she is the new Dark Lord?"

Admiral Dodonna made a sound that was half humourless laugh and half snort. "We seem to have a plague of Dark Lords of the Sith just now."

"Oh?" He looked at her.

"Two that have publicly claimed the title so far. I'm surprised you haven't heard. It's not exactly classified information. In this case though, it seems that two Sith Lords are better than one – from the Republic's point of view at least. They're too busy trying to stomp each other flat instead of regrouping and rallying the Sith empire. One small mercy to be thankful for, I suppose."

"I've been distracted by problems closer to home," he said. "Who are they?"

"One calls himself Darth Malefic."

"Darth Malefic?" Tamar stifled ill-humoured laughter.

"Something funny?"

"Not really. Sounds like a two-bit cantina duellist, is all." A profession that Tamar knew all about. As two-bit cantina duellists went, he'd been one of the best, for a brief while at least.

"Accurate enough, in its way. Our current intelligence suggests he's a Dark Jedi who headed Malak's elite special forces. A violent psychopath possessed of a hair-trigger temper and even less subtlety than his former master."

"And the other?"

"Darth Auza. We don't know much about him, although there are suggestions that he is an old Sith politician who's been around for a long while in the background, stirring up trouble. He finally saw a chance at being number one and took it, I suppose. Of the two I'd rate him as the more dangerous in the long term, though others disagree."

Tamar mulled this information over, then said: "She's the real one. These others – Auza and Malefic – may both be utterly certain that they're the rightful Dark Lord. But they're not. She is."

"And you base this on?"

"A hunch." He grimaced, spreading his hands before smiling self-mockingly. "On simple pride, if I'm honest. I stood in front of her and felt her measure, and got my backside handed to me on a plate. For all that I don't have any of his memories left there's enough of Revan in me that I'm not about to admit to being beaten by a simple minion." Then, simply. "It is her."

Dodonna nodded. "Oh, I'm not arguing."

Tamar hesitated for a long moment before his next words. "I have been thinking a lot on the Council's assassination – I don't have much else to do but think – and one thing about it has been bothering me. Well, everything about it has been bothering me, but this one thing in particular."

There was sudden wariness in Dodonna's eyes. She didn't trust him, he saw. Not really, for all her words to the contrary. She had probably known this face when Revan had sat behind it – maybe even across from her in councils of war – so he didn't suppose he could blame her for what amounted to simple common sense. "Go on," was all she said.

"They were killed by the release of some kind of bio-toxin. Correct?"

"Correct," she agreed. Her wariness had notched up a level. Her face looked tight.

"But a Jedi Master – in particular Jedi Sentinels like Masters Korel and Starrunner – should be all but immune to poison, able to neutralise, or at least counteract, ill effects almost instantaneously through the Force. Even the most virulent nerve-toxins are not fatal more than a small percentage of the time, and then only when the afflicted Jedi Master is otherwise distracted or weakened."

"The explosion was not sufficient distraction?"

"For a Jedi who has advanced to Council level? I would say not."

She was mulling something over, he could tell. Eventually she appeared to reach the decision that telling him what she knew couldn't hurt. "The poison seems to have been . . . specifically engineered to kill the Force sensitive. The first thing it does is contaminate the midichlorians that live within a living being's cells, effectively cutting them off from the Force."

The answer left him numb with shock.

In his minds eye he saw Master Quillar, pawing feebly at the environment barrier as his skin dissolved, leaving bloody handprints behind. Suddenly his heart was thudding at the implications. "Have you sourced the poison?"

"Not yet."

"Do it. Do it as a matter of urgency."

"It will lead us to her?" Dodonna sounded sceptical.

"It had to have been manufactured especially for the purpose, and it surely wasn't a simple thing to do. As far as I know, it's not the kind of substance you can just pick up off the shelf of your local Czerka store. At the least it will lead you somewhere, and unless I'm mistaken somewhere is a damn sight better than where we all are now."

She nodded grimly. "They found trace levels of the poison's constituents in your quarters. As far as the investigators are concerned the poison was something of your invention – a further indictment of your guilt."

He grunted. It figured.

"That could have been planted easily enough. The comm. logs are far harder to explain away; Sith encrypted tightbeams, both sent and received in your name. Perceived wisdom says those logs cannot be faked."

Whoever the perceived wisdom belonged to, they'd obviously never encountered T3, he thought wryly. "Yet you're talking to me now, so you obviously don't believe them."

"My hunch," she said softly. Then: "I'll see what I can do for you."

He got the sense that the conversation had come to an end. "Thank you Admiral, but don't waste time on my account. There are more important matters at stake."

Dodonna's steely eyes seemed to almost contain pity. "The senate are pressing for a speedy resolution. You're in trouble, Tamar. The investigation isn't looking beyond the obvious answers, and a political consensus is forming against you. You need all the help you can get."

That news was hardly a surprise, no more or less than he had expected.

He wanted to ask about Yuthura, and what had happened to her – whether she had gotten away or not. It had been nagging at him almost as much as the other her; as Bastila too. Three women, who between them – albeit for very different reasons – left him in a state of torment that all the calming techniques and meditation in the galaxy could not abate.

But their words were no doubt being recorded, admiral of the fleet or no, so he simply offered a salute. She returned it smartly.

He kept silent as she started to walk away.

Abruptly everything went dark. He sensed Dodonna's shock, and felt a measure of his own in turn. The force field closing off his cell flickered and cut out. Then his control collar made a soft clicking noise and fell off.

Alarms blared out stridently.

-s-s-

"Observation: if that does not persuade them that their security has been breached, then I do not know what will."

T3 simply trilled and whistled in satisfaction by way of response.

-s-s-

A barren system on the outer rim, so isolated and insignificant that it was still known by its galactic designation number – M4107 – rather than a name. For once, perhaps for the first time in its oh so mundane history, it was the scene of significant events.

The space battle slowly petered out.

A sleek Sith capital ship – one of the Rakatan designed vessels created by the Star Forge – broke off from the edge of the asteroid field amid blazing bursts of turbolasers, assaulted by a wave of republic fighters that swarmed about it like gnats.

Shields flaring under constant assault, the Sith ship spewed photon mines in its wake, its engines blazing white-hot as it accelerated smoothly. The republic fighters broke off their attack as it made the leap to hyperspace and vanished.

It was over. Stillness replaced the fury.

Bastila didn't withdraw her concentration straight away, for all her weariness. Instead, she forced herself to linger over the battlefield: the asteroids with their shattered gun emplacements and missile nests – the wreckage of fighters and pirate gunboats.

The floating hulk of a light transport had been sliced open by turbolaser fire, then crumpled by a crunching impact with an asteroid, its hull ruptured and buckled. Now, as she silently observed through her minds eye, its reactors went critical, the transport exploding, killing the small number of pirate crew who were still alive on board.

She forced herself to experience every single death – bright, flaring pain that seared through her entire being before fading almost instantaneously to nothing – as if she was there on the ship, dying with them.

Eight republic capital ships with an average complement of 5000; seventeen gunships and 72 one and two man fighters. 40,276 lives. The toll of those extinguished when she had turned her battle meditation against the republic fleet on the Star Forge.

40,276. The number that was indelibly burnt through every fibre of her being. The number she would never allow herself to forget.

A Sith pilot, ejected from his destroyed fighter and floating helplessly, his oxygen tanks holed by micro-debris impact, died slowly and alone, starved of oxygen. She gasped as his life faded and she suffocated in sympathy, her lungs imploding along with his . . .

"Don't think I can't see what you're doing, princess."

Her startlingly blue eyes snapped open as the gruff voice intruded, her battle meditation cutting off as her consciousness snapped back into her body. A moment later, she flinched back, Canderous's grizzled granite visage looming large in front of her.

She blinked at him in surprise before her expression hardened abruptly. "I understand that you're part of this mission as an observer and advisor, Canderous. I think, however, that they intended you to observe our battles and tactics. Not me. In my quarters."

The Mandalorian shrugged his massive shoulders, entirely unperturbed by the icy glare she was directing his way. "The way I figure it, if you've seen a hundred and one asteroid field skirmishes you've pretty much seen the hundred and second too. There's only so much it can teach you. You on the other hand . . . watching you is a real education."

Her brows knitted together. "Quite frankly you disgust me."

He laughed harshly. "Oh, get a load of yourself. When you get to my age, you've seen enough in the way of beautiful women that one more or less doesn't make a blind bit of difference. You don't interest me at all. Not that way, anyway."

Bastila's jaw snapped shut, and she forced herself to be calmer; to be more like the Jedi Knight she was laughingly supposed to be, and not rise to the obvious provocation. She simply continued to glare at him coolly.

"Do you really think the dead care?" he asked after the silence had dragged on for several seconds.

"W-What?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, princess. I see it in your eyes. Does any part of you honestly believe that the dead care a damn whether you make yourself suffer on their behalf?"

She looked away from him, inwardly stunned. "If I'd wanted to talk about it with you I'd have brought the subject up myself."

Suddenly he made a frustrated noise, sitting back. "Look Bastila, hard as you may find this to believe, I'm not trying to get at you here. Honestly."

"Right. You just want to help."

"I thought that – after what we've gone through together – there might be at least a little trust between us. I guess I was wrong, and yeah, that's probably my fault." Canderous seemed suddenly uncomfortable, groping for the sort of words that were totally alien to a veteran Mandalorian whose entire life had be war of one kind or another. "What I'm trying to say: you made a mistake – congratulations, welcome to the galaxy with all the rest of us poor, fallible idiots. You want to make up for it, right? Well you don't do that by reliving it and trying to make yourself suffer. You learn your lessons, and you up and move on."

Her lips twisted. "Well aren't you the font of all wisdom all of a sudden. Did you hit your head during the battle or something?"

He laughed again, a bass rumble like rolling thunder. "I'm wasting my breath here, aren't I? You're not going to take a blind bit of notice of me. Just one more question though. If that's alright with you."

"Spit it out then."

"What happens when you start to enjoy it?"

Bastila started to speak several times, but each time trailed off almost immediately with nothing said. Her jaw tightened. "Go away Canderous. You might mean well, but I'm not in the mood."

He nodded – took aim with one particularly barbed parting shot. "No wonder Revan felt he had to run away; that being tried and executed by those morons on the Republic Senate was preferable to living in the same galaxy as you."

"You're saying that's my fault?"

"I don't know. Is it?"

She said nothing, not even looking at him anymore.

"You've got that bond between the two of you," Canderous went on. "I don't pretend to understand it. Hell, I don't think I want to understand it. But when you make yourself feel the pains of the dying, do you think he feels it too?"

Before she could make any response – before she could even come up with anything remotely like a response in her head – the ship's intercom warbled. "Jedi Knight Bastila, this is Captain Organa. Might I request your presence on the bridge?"

-s-s-

A cover was drawn over Tamar's head, cutting off his vision.

It didn't cut off his sense of those around him though. In a way, it simply made it all the more acute. There were twenty-four Republic soldiers arranged in twin files, all of them armed and armoured as if prepared for battle. They were scared to a one; scared of him – Dark Lord of the Sith and the man who had single-handedly slain the Jedi Council.

Mixed in with the fear he could sense hate and anger, and from some a degree of curiosity.

Not as impressive as the stories, am I, he thought somewhat sourly. I mean, I look almost like an ordinary man.

It was the fear that was dominant however.

The guard captain in charge of transporting him guided Tamar firmly back into to the transit chair. Even he was scared, Tamar sensed as he quiescently allowed himself to be manhandled, for all the iron hard surface he was trying to project. Restraints snapped tight about his wrists, his waist and his ankles, locking him tightly in place.

A moment later, there was a soft humming noise as a security field snapped on around him. Latent static in the air made his skin prickle. The chair wobbled slightly as it rose a couple of feet into the air on repulsors.

The disruption to his prison's security systems had frightened people badly. Tamar hadn't needed to be a Jedi to pick up on that one. So now, as a precaution, he was being transported to a new and theoretically more secure location.

He wondered, not for the first time, if he should mention that this was the perfect set-up for either an ambush or a rescue attempt. Like all the other times he kept silent however. No doubt they'd only assume he was trying to pull some kind of manipulation, however little logic said he had to gain from it.

The disruptor collar around his neck switched on. For a moment, he struggled against its effects instinctively, and saw that, yes he could indeed overcome its hold if he were willing to try hard enough. Body juddering, pain spiking through his skull as payment for his resistance, he forced himself to relax and surrender his will instead.

Everything around him was lost in a wave of buzzing delirium. He was just about aware enough to notice as they started moving.

-s-s-

"You sense it too, Bastila? A great disturbance in the Force?"

She nodded. It was impossible to miss now that she focused upon it; an angry, incoherent roaring that made her temples prickle and set her teeth on edge. It was almost surprising to her that no one else on the bridge could feel it, Force sensitive or not. "Yes Zikl, I sense it too."

Zikl was a Nautolan, a tall and rather imposing figure in his Jedi robes. He had pale green skin and big, glassy looking black eyes that gave him the appearance of a slightly startled warrior frog. His mass of sensory head tails were pulled back in a thick, intricate braiding that fell halfway down his back.

His sense of pleasure at her agreement managed to set her teeth on edge almost as much as the Force disturbance. In fact, his general air of deference to her had set her teeth on edge right throughout this damnable mission. He had been a Jedi Knight for over five years, and was generally well regarded in the Order, but still he insisted on deferring to her in almost every question or judgement. Indeed, he almost seemed to be awed by her – fabled possessor of Battle Meditation, and one of the saviours of the republic.

When the reality was she shouldn't be a Jedi Knight at all. Part of her doubted whether she should even be a Padawan.

After the Star Forge Bastila had expected punishment; rebuke and penance; opprobrium and revulsion. Instead, she'd been treated as just as much a hero as all of her companions – cheered, applauded and congratulated for a job well done. She had stood before the Council, head bowed in shame, awaiting judgment. And they had promoted her to Jedi Knight.

No mention at all of the 40,276.

And all the while that she was notionally a hero, Tamar De'Nolo had been caught in the centre of a storm of ever intensifying recrimination, target for the hate that should rightfully have been hers. It was difficult to blame him for wanting shot of her.

Trust in the Council's wisdom, she told herself silently. For the several hundredth time. It felt like an empty mantra, particularly now that so many of the Council were dead.

When she'd first felt the distant, apocalyptic ripples in the Force and heard the newscasts she'd wanted to order their taskforce turned around that instant. When later news spoke of Tamar's arrest – Darth Revan's arrest – in connection to the atrocity that urge had increased a hundredfold. But running blindly back to Coruscant and abandoning her posting was not going to make things better. There was no magic wand she could wave and make things right when she got there.

In fact, given her record as far as Tamar was concerned, she would probably just make things worse.

Despite that the urge to open up the link again, and let down her guard, remained insistent – especially in the quiet times when she was alone. But no, that way was weakness, and she must remain strong for both their sakes. Eventually, if they resisted it for long enough, the link would fade and die. They would finally be free of each other and able to get on with their respective lives again.

She gritted her teeth and forced her attention to the here and now. Her duties.

An asteroid loomed large in the Starlight Phoenix's main viewport, just under a kilometre in diameter. Gun and missile blisters sprouted from the iron grey rock, all of them scorched and battered by Sith turbolaser fire, disabled or entirely destroyed. A landing bay stood open to hard vacuum in front of them.

And somewhere inside was the source of this strange Force disturbance.

"It's the same location that the distress call we received originated from," Captain Rafe Organa said from beside her. A hard, authoritative looking Alderanian in his late forties, his close-cropped dark hair was starting to show signs of grey. "It cut off about fifteen minutes ago."

"A pirate base," Canderous put in. "Pathetic scum. You're well rid of them."

"Some might say the same about Mandalorians," Captain Organa commented dryly. "Not me of course."

Canderous favoured the captain with a long, steady look. "Of course."

Bastila stifled a sigh. Not again. "Whatever the Sith were looking for, they were obviously looking for it in there. And I very much doubt they were so far from their own territories just to squash a few pirates. I want a boarding party put together as soon as possible, Captain."

"Right away, Jedi Bastila."

She nodded. "Good. I will be leading it."

"Um, are you sure that's wise?" From Captain Organa's slight delay in replying, she got the distinct impression that she was receiving the politeness-edited version of his preferred response.

"There is an obvious disruption to the Force present here, Captain. A Jedi has to be part of any landing party. Jedi Zikl holds seniority on this mission, so will remain behind to perform any requisite command duties. Therefore, by process of elimination, I must accompany the landing party." If the Nautolan was going to persist in being deferential then she was damn well going to take advantage of it. Never again was she going to let herself become the republic's walking Battle Meditation in a can: taken out and used as necessary, then carefully wrapped up in cotton wool and put away until she was needed once more.

"As you say, Jedi Bastila." There was a tiny flicker of amused acknowledgement in the captain's eyes.

"So that's settled," Canderous butted in. "Good. I could do with stretching my legs."

Both Bastila and Captain Organa snapped their attention back to the Mandalorian.

"You are on this ship as observer and advisor, given your extensive knowledge of this particular region of space . . ." Captain Organa hesitated in obvious distaste, before finally bringing himself to pronounce the honorary title Canderous had received after the Star Forge battle. " . . . General. Observers do not, as a rule, accompany away missions."

Canderous sneered. "I'm not going to be doing much observing through a hundred feet of solid rock, am I? This is what I do, Captain. Maybe you Republic boys can watch and learn something."

Bastila started to say something, but the look in Canderous's eyes said that they could have a discussion she definitely didn't want to have in front of Zikl if she pushed matters.

"He comes," she stated simply instead.

-s-s-

Senator Oris Gallavon had a headache.

He winced at the stabbing sensation driving through his brow, and almost fumbled the key card to his apartment. Leaning against the doorframe to support himself, his breath came in shallow gasps. Little tremors passed constantly through his flesh and his face looked grey and greasy beneath a sheen of sweat.

He always seemed to have a headache these days. Stress, he supposed. He was under a lot of stress. But he'd never used to get them before . . . before . . .. The headache abruptly got worse, so intense that it blotted out all thought.

When it subsided, he found that he was standing in the middle of the apartment, the door closed behind him. He had no memory at all of any intervening steps.

She was there, waiting for him.

His wife.

They'd said that she was dead, killed nearly five years ago in Darth Malak's brutal scorching of Telos. He'd never believed that though. No one had ever found a body, so he'd never allowed himself to give up hope. His friends had all been so worried about him, so he'd pretended to move on and accept her death, but in his heart, he'd always known that she would come back to him one day.

His Maura. So full of life . . .

And in the end, he'd been proven right. Just sixth months ago, he'd woken up and found her, standing in the middle of his apartment, like she'd never been away. Like she was now.

She was so beautiful. To his eyes, she seemed almost to glow, bathed by gentle golden light. The smile she favoured him with filled his heart with contented joy, making the stress seem bearable – worth it even.

She had a drink poured, waiting for him. He took it from her hand with a smile as he half-collapsed into his favourite chair.

"How is the bill coming along, my dearest?" Her voice was gently bubbling music, and it made the pain in his skull melt far, far away. How he loved just to sit back and listen to that voice, letting its tones and timbres wash over him, soothing and guiding his thoughts . . .

"It is drafted." He took a pull from the glass, savouring the burn of it in his throat. "We present it tomorrow. Initial soundings suggest we'll only get a bare majority on first reading, but on a second reading it will pass."

"That is wonderful darling." Her fingertips trailed across his shoulder.

"Yes . . . yes . . ."

"I sense doubt." There was concern in her voice. The concern made him hurt again, his skull throbbing.

"I . . ." He frowned. "I don't know. I have been working on it so long, and I know it is for the best. You told me it was for the best. But . . .."

"How can you question, darling?" Her voice became slightly sterner than its usual gentle aural caress. It made him want to weep and beg forgiveness. "The Jedi order has pulled the Republic's strings for far too long now, and all they have ever guided us to is disaster and death. Telos would still be intact if it wasn't for their lack of judgement. We would never have had to go through all that we did, but for them. They hold themselves aloof from the tenets of democracy and pay only lip service to our laws, even sheltering the Dark Lord Revan from deserved justice. And if they are too enfeebled to protect their own Council, how can they claim to guide and advise us wisely?"

He nodded slowly. It made sense. She always made sense.

"It is for the galactic good that they must be removed from their lofty position of influence, and made publicly accountable to us – the people who they claim to serve."

"If you say so, my love."

"I do say so. History will celebrate what you do this day."

He took another swig from his drink. To be honest history could go hang. As long as he still had her smile and her heart, nothing else truly mattered.

He looked at her yearningly. "When can I tell people about you, my love? When can I stop keeping your return a secret? I don't know how long I can keep up this pretence."

"Soon, Oris." She smiled, and he felt the pain in his head fade again to a blissful golden daze. "Very soon now."

-s-s-

Bastila eased the helmet of her space suit off, and tentatively breathed in. The air tasted stale, but as the sensors had indicated, it was breathable.

She looked around the cargo hold carefully. The main generators had failed at some point during the Sith's assault on the asteroid base, and the back-up lighting bathed everything in dim and bloody shades of red. It left deep and ominous pools of shadow behind, giving the impression that almost anything could be lurking, just out of view.

Everything was a shambles, showing obvious signs of an intense firefight having taken place as a Sith boarding party passed through. Transport crates had been tipped over and smashed open, their contents – rations; spare parts; medical supplies; what looked like packets of spice – scattered hither and thither across the deck.

She tried to probe deeper into the station with the Force, to see if there was anyone still alive on board, but the Force disturbance made that impossible. Up close, it was even worse than she'd felt from the Starlight Phoenix's bridge – a maddening buzzing distortion that made her skin crawl. It was like nothing she'd experienced before, and whispered to her quietly of delirium and blood lust – pure insanity.

She gripped the hilt of her double-bladed lightsaber more tightly.

Canderous and the four Republic soldiers that made up the remainder of their squad had fanned out to create a perimeter. Canderous's voice came to her over her earpiece. He was all business now, titanium hard and professional. "Over here. You'll want to take a look at this."

He'd found a pair of bodies amid the scattered crates. From the shabby, patchwork nature of their flightsuits they were pirates. Both bore telltale wounds.

The first – a Rodian – had been cleft from right shoulder through to left hip, both halves neatly cauterised. The second body's right arm had been neatly severed from the shoulder, his skull bearing a misshapen look, as though staved in by a heavy boot.

"Dark Jedi," she stated grimly, pulling her gaze away from the gruesome sight.

"Looks like it. They the cause of this disturbance you're feeling?"

"It would appear so, wouldn't it?" Bastila frowned as she spoke though. What she could feel wasn't the darkside in any traditional sense.

"Can you tell if there're any of them left behind?"

"No," she answered succinctly. The Force disturbance left her unable to determine anything much at all beyond what her eyes and ears were already telling her.

"Good to know," was Canderous's sour response.

"I doubt the Sith would abandon Dark Jedi. Normal troops maybe, but it was an orderly withdrawal and not a cut and run."

Canderous grunted, then radioed back to the Starlight Phoenix. "Captain, I want a full spectrum sweep of this entire asteroid field. The Sith might have left us some kind of surprise."

"Will do. Captain Organa out." The normal animosity that existed between the two men was, for the moment, put on hold. Both were career soldiers, and knew exactly how it went.

Aside from the bodies, the hold contained nothing else amid all the wreckage and junk to indicate what the Sith might have been after. They advanced cautiously deeper into the complex.

As they walked, Bastila could feel her stomach lurching as though with nausea. It seemed that the artificial gravity generators weren't operating at full efficiency, leaving strange and disorienting patches of variance. Along with the red light, and the humming madness tainting the Force, it combined to give a bizarre sense of walking through a demented fever dream.

The Force gave her only the briefest flash of warnings, and she yelled out to the others.

A pair of doors whirred open in front of them. Behind the doors, waiting, were a pair of Sith heavy assault droids, clothed in translucent red energy shields. Immediately they attacked with a hail of blaster fire.

Bastila's lightsaber was already ignited, twin yellow blades whirling, catching and deflecting the blaster bolts as the Force flowed through her. She had to scramble backwards as the volume of incoming fire intensified, growing beyond her ability to hold off, and she dove for the cover of a pile of relatively intact transport crates.

Intelligent enough to recognise a Jedi as the most serious threat, the droids both came after her to the exclusion of the others. They moved rapidly forwards in an effort to take her cover out of the equation and catch her in a deadly crossfire.

She heard the whining cough of Canderous's heavy repeater, returning fire, but the droids' shields held firm against it. The Republic soldiers' lighter carbines proved even less effective. Cursing beneath her breath, she ducked further back. A blaster shot cracked through the space her head had been occupying a scant instant before.

Using the Force, she picked up one of the nearby crates and hurled it at the closest droid, more as a distraction than a serious attempt to do damage. Its blasters snapped round instantly, ripping the crate to shreds before it could hit home.

Canderous used the brief distraction to roll an ion grenade right up beneath it, the flashing detonation wiping out its shields and interfering with its circuitry to leave it reeling like a drunk at closing time. Bastila reacted quickest, hurling her lightsaber and carefully guiding its spinning blades to slice through the assault droid's armour, severing the reinforced cables that connected to its main power supply.

It collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, giving off a rather pathetic shower of sparks and a puff of greasy smoke.

The second droid, deprived of its partner, didn't last long. As Bastila hurled crate after crate at it to keep its attention, its shields slowly withered and died beneath a sustained crossfire from Canderous and the Republic troops. When they'd gone entirely she stepped up to finish it off with deft close-in saber work whilst it was struggling to decide upon a target.

"Almost like old times," Canderous said quietly as he passed her.

She almost smiled at that, but the urge died very quickly. Old times meant Tamar would have been here with them, fighting at their sides instead of languishing in a prison cell on Coruscant.

-s-s-

The violent shudder that passed through the armoured transport shuttle was enough to penetrate even through a neural-disrupter induced daze. Dimly Tamar was aware of someone shouting panicked orders from somewhere close by, though his brain was unable to process anything as intricate as actual words.

He tried to concentrate – to focus, and send orders to his body – but it was so much easier and more comfortable just to keep on drifting . . .

There was another shudder, accompanied by a grinding sound. A short time later, there was a sensation of cool air flowing around him. It didn't do much to shake the lethargy, even though he knew deep down that he had to act.

More shouting followed from somewhere close by. It trailed off abruptly. There were a number of muffled thuds. Suddenly Tamar tilted at an odd angle to the vertical. His vision swirled in strange patterns, his brain unable to process what he was seeing. The small part of him still capable of coherent thought cried out that he had to bloody well do something right now.

Screaming inwardly from the effort – though no external change occurred – he Forced himself to focus and struggled to make his body react to his commands. His fingertips twitched and curled spasmodically and sweat trickled down his face. The effort filled his skull with a wall of buzzing pain that wiped out everything else.

There was a flicker of Force somewhere close by. He seized upon it desperately, gripping it tight – a drowning man grasping at floating wreckage – and drew it greedily into himself.

It was like a dam bursting. As soon as the first trickle of Force filtered into him, a whole flood followed in its wake. Suddenly the pain and delirium were pushed into the background, and he could feel his body again. His thoughts were still tainted by a buzzing sensation like bad tinnitus, but they were at least approximately functional.

Wind was howling all around him. He tried to move – to stand up – but his restraints made that impossible.

He jolted as a pale face swam into focus above him, gleaming yellow eyes inches away from his. "Yuthura . . ." his voice came out as a dry rasp.

"Steady," she told him, leaning very close indeed as she reached around behind him. There was a quiet snapping sound and abruptly the restraints retracted. Then the collar itself came off. "There."

Tamar lurched to his feet, stumbling as the deck shifted. Yuthura caught his arm to steady him. He bit back the flood of questions that rose up, knowing that it was neither the time nor place.

The back of the shuttle had been opened and the boarding ramp lowered, which was the cause of the wildly rushing air. They were obviously still in mid-flight. Looking around he could see the soldiers that had formed his escort lying in crumbled heaps. Strangely, the feeling he got from their minds indicated that they were all sleeping peacefully, uninjured.

Jolee Bindo was standing in the middle of them, an odd-looking metal circlet at his brow, arms spread in a stance that resembled a halfway comical parody of a martial arts master about to pounce.

Jolee became aware of the scrutiny. "Don't just stand there gawping. This is a jailbreak. Not a friendly visit for tea and cakes. The pilot might be thinking happy thoughts right now, but I've no idea how long that's going to last."

Wind buffeted him hard in the face as he walked out along the shuttle's tail ramp with Yuthura. Below them he could see a thick carpet of white and grey cloud rushing by, the tips of Coruscant's tallest skyscrapers protruding, resembling floating islands. A bulky freighter – certainly not the Ebon Hawk he'd been halfway expecting to see – had latched onto the shuttle with boarding cables and was flying about twenty feet behind, its own front cargo bay doors gaping wide.

Measuring the gap and taking a deep breath, Tamar Force-jumped, rolling as he landed. Yuthura and Jolee followed close behind.

"Okay, we're clear," Yuthura was saying as she hit the controls to withdraw the boarding cables and close the cargo-bay doors.

To Tamar's surprise, it was Carth Onasi's voice that answered over the intercom. "Then I suggest you hold on tight, boys and girls. Things may be about to get a little rough."

-s-s-

The attack came almost without warning.

One moment Bastila was advancing slowly and carefully along the blood-hued corridor; extending little feelers and tendrils of the Force ahead of her in an effort to detect any further ambushes or booby traps that the Sith might have left behind. The next she had the sense of the ever-present Force disturbance rushing towards them like a vast tidal wave.

She barely managed to utter a warning before they were beset. They came at them on all fours, snarling and slavering as they rushed at them down the corridor, pouring from open doors and even from the ventilation shafts.

In front of her Canderous opened fire, the incandescent energy that his heavy repeater spat making flesh char and sizzle, but scarcely seeming to slow their attackers' advance. Bastila tried to use the Force to grasp and hold them in their tracks, but it was like trying to grab a bar of wet soap with a slippery hand. One of the republic soldiers cried out in alarm as something dropped on top of him from the ceiling, tearing at him with snarling teeth.

Bastila's lightsaber moved in fast diagonal slashes.

A head was severed. Another one of the attackers fell back, half-growling, half-whimpering, an arm lopped off near the shoulder. The third she impaled through the chest, though its weight and momentum barrelled on through her guard, sending her sprawling backwards and pinning her to the deck beneath its dead weight.

As she struggled to free herself, she was dimly aware that Canderous had switched from his blaster to the Baragwin assault blade he carried for close quarters work, laying about himself with controlled fury, flesh and bone crunching as he sliced his way through it. The republic troops continued to lay down a heavy barrage of blaster fire from behind.

Finally everything was still and quiet again. The howls and snarls and low, slavering growls had ceased.

Less than ten seconds, all told. Bastila was gulping air, as much from shock as exertion, as she regained her feet.

For the first time, she managed to get a proper look at their assailants. There were eight corpses – it had seemed much more whilst they were under attack – strewn along the corridor, hacked and scorched. She was stunned to see that some of them were human. Amongst the others, she picked out a trio of Weequays and a Rodian.

A moment ago, they had seemed more like a pack of ravenous kath hounds or firaxa sharks in a feeding frenzy.

The one whose arm she'd severed was still alive, cowering back against the wall, growling deep inside its chest. Her chest; she was a human, stocky and crew-cut, her face smeared in sweat and engine grease. Her expression was purely bestial, no hint of humanity remaining.

Bastila held up a hand to stay Canderous from using his blood-splattered blade to finish her off, taking a cautious step forward. The woman snarled, baring her teeth. Bloody saliva drooled in a long string from the corner of her mouth.

The Force distortion that she and Zikl had sensed earlier on hung around the woman like a miasma.

Tentatively, Bastila used the Force to gently probe at her, trying to both calm and sooth mentally, easing any physical pain. Abruptly her eyes widened, a tiny shocked note merging from her throat.

The Force disturbance wasn't just clinging to the woman; it was originating from her too. Her conscious mind had been torn apart by some kind of shatteringly brutal Force assault, leaving only the id intact. The after effects of that assault lingered, the roaring rage and madness – which was all that was left of the woman's consciousness – spilling over to taint everything around her like a disease in the Force itself.

Up close, the absolute hideousness of what had been done to her was near overwhelming. For a moment or two, Bastila had to struggle to prevent herself wretching.

She was still off guard when the woman stopped growling and flung herself at her, teeth snapping.

Canderous's blade flashed in front of her and the woman fell back, very nearly sundered in two. Blood spread out in a miniature red lake around her.

Their eyes met briefly. Bastila waited in anticipation of some scathingly sarcastic rebuke from the veteran Mandalorian. None was forthcoming though. Instead, he simply looked down at the woman's corpse, and she wondered briefly if she imagined the slight shudder that passed through his heavily armoured shoulders. "What the hell happened to them?" he asked.

Something the Sith had done, obviously. She knew only too well that the dark side of the Force could be used to do terrible things to a person's mind, but this – this utter destruction and raving insanity – was something beyond her experience. "I . . . I don't know."

She could still feel the Force disturbance up ahead, deeper inside the asteroid, diminished only slightly in its intensity. "But whatever it was there are more of them up ahead. And there are a lot."

-s-s-

Tamar slid into the co-pilot seat beside Carth, strapping himself in.

"Nice of you to join us. Didn't feel right without you along, somehow," Carth said dryly.

Tamar looked at the pilot sidelong: still the same rugged good looks and untamed three-day stubble growth, but even in this situation there was an air about him that suggested he was much more at peace with himself than when they'd last parted. A part of him wanted to ask if he had any idea what they'd just done, but as their eyes met briefly he saw that Carth already knew exactly.

Instead, he said lightly. "Yuthura and Jolee made me an invitation. It would have been impolite to refuse."

"Yeah, I can see how you wouldn't want to be impolite." Carth's attention snapped back to the controls and the view of Coruscant's ionosphere as they continued their rapid ascent out of the Republic Capital's atmosphere.

"Thanks," Tamar said after a second or so.

Carth just grunted. "You're bloody furious, aren't you? I can tell."

Tamar weighed up his answer carefully. "Well, I have been wondering what the hell you were all thinking. But overall, I think I'm pretty calm right now. Bloody furious will probably come later."

Carth glanced down at some of the readouts and muttered something barely audible that contained the words '. . . heap of junk.' Then his gaze flicked back to Tamar. "We all talked it through very carefully, and we all understand the implications and the likely consequences of what we're doing. Sometimes though you just can't sit back and do nothing while someone you love makes a terrible, terrible mistake.

"I'm talking about the Republic by the way. Just in case those big manly feelings of yours were, y'know, getting embarrassed."

Tamar managed a slightly strained chuckle.

"Like the outfit by the way. Suits you."

"Yeah, prison's liberating somehow. I never thought I could pull off fluorescent orange and aqua before, but now I see how wrong I was."

The radar display was showing six small arrows closing in on them fast – republic fighters. "Company," Tamar warned.

Carth had already noticed. "I'd been expecting them before now to be honest. T3's diversion worked better than I'd thought."

The comm. crackled. "Freighter Kessell Run, this is red wing Captain Terlov. In accordance with Republic flight regulation . . ."

Expression tight, Carth flicked the comm. off. "I don't know about you, but I'm getting bored by that guy already." Despite the flippant tone, Tamar could feel the turmoil within Carth as he fought against his every ingrained instinct as a loyal Republic officer.

A warning shot blazed across their bows.

"Useless pile of . . .. This would have been so much easier in the Hawk," Carth muttered beneath his breath. "I'm starting to wish I'd never given it to Mission."

Tamar wondered briefly if he'd misheard. "You gave the Hawk to Mission?"

"Yeah, she's a good pilot. Learnt all I had to teach her real fast. D'you think we could not have this conversation right now?"

A jolt passed through the freighter as a turbolaser blast hit their shields and scattered harmlessly. Several more shots missed narrowly, making the hull vibrate as shockwaves passed through the thin air.

"I just hope that, when she's running the biggest smuggling operation in the galaxy, you'll look back at that decision and reflect upon it carefully."

Carth's attempted evasive manoeuvres didn't seem to have much effect, the freighter having all the agility of a drunken Hutt. The Run part of its name certainly seemed to have been inspired by wishful thinking rather than reality. Two more turbolaser blasts juddered through their shields and there were several more close misses.

"Shields at seventy percent and falling," Tamar read off.

"Blast it!" Expression grimly fixed, Carth flicked a series of switches. "Okay, I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this, but time for the bomb." His finger stabbed at a red button.

A few seconds later the radar display blotted out in a haze of static, and the instruments in front of them went haywire, readings spinning wildly. The entire freighter shuddered and lurched violently, throwing Tamar around in his seat.

The radar screen flickered, then came on again. There was no sign of the fighter formation on the display, and no more turbolaser blasts came after them. The rest of the instruments normalised slightly and their flight levelled out.

They'd cleared Coruscant's atmosphere.

"Ion pulse mine." Carth explained. "They . . . they should have plenty of time to either regain control or eject." By his expression, Tamar could see Carth knew that he'd just crossed a line that he'd hoped fervently never to have to come within touching distance of.

"They'll be more of them."

"In five minutes it won't matter. We'll be far enough out of Coruscant's gravity well that we can make the leap to hyperspace."

They settled back.

"Sorry to get you involved in this," Tamar said after a while.

"Don't mention it. This was my choice, not yours." Carth smiled crookedly, though Tamar knew him well enough to be able to tell it was more than slightly forced. "Besides, it was all getting a bit dull. I don't think anyone has tried to kill me for at least six months."

"Six months?" There was a slightly puzzled note in Tamar's response. "But it's been eight since . . ."

"Don't ask. Really, don't ask."

Tamar's belated answering smile was equally as forced as Carth's. "Well, anyway. Welcome back into the disaster area that is my life."

"Glad to be . . ."

Carth trailed off abruptly. Directly in front of them a Republic heavy battle frigate had just cut out of hyperspace, looming massively. "Damn it, they must want us real bad to try a manoeuvre like that." He wrestled with the controls. "Bloody hotshot starship captains. In my day you'd have been court-martialled for pulling anything like that so close to a populated world."

He tried to take evasive action, but a violent judder passed through the Kessell Run's hull – a tractor beam locking onto them.

Carth attempted to break the lock for a few seconds longer, engines straining, gages going far into the red zones, but it was no use. They were well and truly caught. After a moment or two more, Carth released the controls and sat back in his seat with a deep exhalation.

Surprisingly Tamar didn't detect any huge amount of concern from him. "I've learned a few tricks since the Leviathan," was all he said cryptically when he noticed the look Tamar was directing his way.

Abruptly he leaned forward again, hitting the control to the internal intercom. "Okay everyone, let's make our way to the aft cargo hold like we discussed." Then to Tamar: "Trust me. This'll work. There's no time for long explanations. Or even short ones, come to that."

Tamar just nodded.

"I'll need you help on this part." Carth was reaching down between his legs, pulling up a panel from the floor. "There's a matching panel beneath you. Yep, that's the one. Open it. Good." He yanked a lever up, grunting at the effort it required, and indicated that Tamar should do the same.

"I'm going to set the counter to three minutes. Flip that cover up like so, and on a count of three push that big button there. That'll initiate the self-destruct sequence."

The self-destruct . . .?" Tamar started, but cut himself off and simply nodded instead.

"One . . . Two . . . Three . . ." They pushed their respective buttons simultaneously. Immediately alarms started to blare, lights flashing in epilepsy inducing patterns for anyone who didn't get the message.

"One eighty," a coolly artificial female voice started to count down. "One seventy-nine."

Together they ran through the Kessell Run's corridors as the alarms continued to blare out. The freighter managed to seem much bigger to Tamar on the outward journey than it had on the way in.

"Eighty-three," the voice was saying as they skidded together rounded the corner into the aft cargo hold.

A sleekly gleaming yacht was there waiting, taking up almost all the available space. Tamar stopped and gaped at it. On its brilliantly polished hull was a single name, Morgana.

"It's just a toy really. Something me and Dustil started renovating together. There's still a bit of work to do, but its hyperspace capable and goes like stink. Now get a move on."

As they sprinted up the entrance ramp, the others – Yuthura, Jolee and the two droids – were already waiting and strapped in. Carth slid into the pilot's seat and began to hurry through the launch sequence. "Sixty-seven . . ."

The cargo bay doors retracted painfully slowly, opening the hold to vacuum as the yacht's engines fired up.

"Thirty-six . . ." Tamar felt himself holding his breath.

"C'mon, c'mon," Carth muttered. The yacht rose up on the its repulsors and started to glide smoothly forwards.

"Twenty-two . . ."

Sweat trickled down the side of Carth's brow. "Should've allowed for an extra twenty seconds." He gritted his teeth, fingers drumming impatiently.

"Ten . . . Nine . . ."

Then they were free of the hold, and Carth brought the thrusters smoothly to max. Tamar felt like he'd been kicked in the back by an angry ronto, slamming back hard into his seat, the skin of his face pulled tight. Over his shoulder, he could hear Jolee muttering distinctly unflattering suggestions about Carth's parentage . . .

The Kessell Run exploded behind them in a brilliant flash, the debris cloud blocking off any attempt by the Republic frigate to get another tractor-beam lock on them. Fighters were being scrambled from its launch bays, but it was far, far too late to make a difference.

The backdrop of stars became blazing lines as they made it to hyperspace and away.

-s-s-

Canderous activated the thermal detonator, rolled it through the door, and slammed it shut. One of the chasing horde of the mind-burnt crashed into the door hard enough to make it shake, snarling and growling with berserker insanity.

A three count later, the thermal detonator went off.

The sound it made was a surprisingly restrained low crump. There was an ear-popping change in air pressure, and the metal door buckled outwards but just about held. It looked as if a gigantic fist had tried to punch its way through, the imprint of it making the metal bulge permanently outwards.

Afterwards everything was quiet, the only sounds their own breathing and the ambient background hum of the air scrubbers. Finally, after the frantic running battle of the past ten minutes, they were able to pause for a moment.

Breath coming in shallow, thready gasps, one of the Republic soldiers staggered and slumped against the wall. He left a smearing trail of blood behind as he slid to the deck.

Bastila crossed quickly to him, probing carefully at the half-detached shoulder plate of his armour. There were a series of rather gruesome bite marks at the juncture of his neck and left shoulder, and they were bleeding copiously. She judged that they probably came from a Weequay, though from the savagery with which his flesh had been torn it more resembled a mauling from an attack dog.

"Am I . . . am I . . . infected?"

"What?" Bastila began to channel Force into the wounds, trying to staunch the bleeding and start the flesh knitting back together. She judged that the man was sliding into shock as the adrenaline that had kept him going up to this point slowly faded. "No. This isn't any kind of disease or infection. Someone used the Force to do this to these poor people."

Although, come to think of it, the victims did bear a remarkable resemblance to Tarisian Rakghouls – in behaviour if not looks.

Slowly the man's breathing deepened and steadied, the bleeding slowing and finally stopping. His eyes looked a lot clearer as they blinked and focussed on her face. "You should be okay for now, but report to the infirmary as soon as we get back to the Phoenix," she told him.

"Do you sense any more of those blasted things?" Canderous's voice interrupted.

"Not . . . close." The sense of the Force disturbance was greatly diminished from its initial levels, although it was still present, nagging on the peripheries of her awareness. "But there are some still left."

Canderous just grunted. "We made it to the control centre. For what it's worth." His voice came from about ten yards away now, outside of her range of vision. She heard him kick something. "Looks like there was some kind of a stand-off. The pirates took out a couple of Sith-troopers. And what do we have here? Ah yes . . . a Dark Jedi. Back of her skull's missing. Lot of good the Force did her."

Bastila stood up and moved to join him.

The control room was an absolute shambles. Every single control terminal and computer console had been systematically destroyed by a combination of blaster fire and explosives. The resultant destruction was so thorough that it couldn't have been the purely random result of a heavy firefight. Some of the terminals still sparked every now and again.

Among the wreckage, she could see the bodies that Canderous had mentioned. Mixed in with the Sith she counted six dead pirates.

"What do you think the Sith were looking for?" Canderous asked as he glanced back at her. "On the face of it this is hardly a productive use of their resources."

She picked her way carefully through the debris. "Perhaps the pirates chose to hijack the wrong shipment. Something too valuable to simply blast from space."

"Maybe." The Mandalorian was sorting through some debris stacked against the control room's back wall. He picked up a heavy plate of badly scorched metal, brushing it off. "You heard of a ship called the Flying Kuat?"

"There must be billions of ships in the galaxy, Canderous. How many of them do you think I know personally? I'm not a bloody spaceport mechanic."

"No need to bite my head of, girl. I was just wondering, seeing how this here seems to indicate that its home port was Ossus."

"What?" She hurried quickly to his side. "Let me take a look at that."

Ossus had once been the home of the main Jedi libraries and archives, before the planet's surface was incinerated by the shockwave from the Cron Drift supernova during the Great Sith War. The Jedi had returned and rebuilt to an extent, but nothing approaching the former glory.

"So, have you heard of the Flying Kuat now?"

"I . . . I think it might be familiar somehow. I'm not . . . entirely sure."

"You think? You're not entirely sure? This is the fabled Jedi wisdom and decisiveness, is it? Well I have to say it's truly a privilege to witness." Sarcasm dripped.

"Oh, stop your yapping. You're hardly helping matters." Abruptly she touched her earpiece, opening a comm. channel to the Starlight Phoenix's bridge. "Jedi Zikl," she said with calm authority. "I believe your master originally came from Ossus, did he not?"

There was a crackle of static before the Nautolan's voice answered her, deferentially polite as always. "Yes indeed, Jedi Bastila. Master Voth Ban-Jeric. A truly wise and great man . . ."

She cut him off, not having much the inclination right then to listen to another eulogy to Zikl's beloved and sadly departed master. "General Ordo has discovered hull fragments from a ship that seems to have originated from Ossus. Its name is the Flying Kuat. That seems familiar to me somehow, but I can't quite place it. I was wondering if you might know anything more?"

"Er . . . You said, the Flying Kuat?"

"Yes, I did."

"I just wanted to be sure that I hadn't misheard you," he ummed.

Out with it then, she was half-inclined to snap, but managed to get a hold on her impatience and wait for him to go on.

"As I recollect the Flying Kuat was one of the ships used to evacuate important Jedi artefacts from the Great Libraries prior to Ossus's tragic loss. If I remember the story correctly though, the Flying Kuat never reached its destination on Coruscant, and all the artefacts that it carried were assumed to be lost in space."

Bastila developed an ominous sinking feeling deep inside as she listened.

"I believe there was quite some consternation among the ranks of Jedi Order for a time after that. They feared greatly that some of the artefacts the Flying Kuat carried might have fallen into Sith hands, where they might have been used to do great damage. Thankfully that proved not be case. There was never, to my knowledge, any indication of the missing artefacts ever turning up, or being used for malevolent purposes.

"Ah yes . . . Oh." Realisation dawned in the Jedi Knight's voice. Bastila heard a gulping noise as Zikl trailed off to silence.

Ah yes, indeed.

-s-s-

The pleasure yacht Morgana made the next in its series of pre-programmed hyperspace leaps, designed to evade anyone trying to read and follow their hyperspace vectors.

Tamar eased himself into a seat around the table in the yacht's cramped leisure area. The ship had been designed to accommodate up to a maximum of four people on short intersystem jaunts, so with himself, Carth, Jolee, Yuthura, HK-47 and T3 it was something of a tight fit.

His gaze travelled around at the others.

Opposite him, Yuthura looked pensive and uncomfortable. Her headtails shifted and rearranged themselves on her shoulders every now and then, while one arm bore a lightweight translucent cast, servomotors built into it to allow normal use of the limb as it healed. He winced slightly as he looked at it.

She obviously noticed his scrutiny. "It should be fully regenerated in a few days," she said simply. "Thank you for saving my life. A broken arm is a small price to pay."

Beside her Jolee – still wearing that odd-looking circlet – for the first time that Tamar could remember really did look his age, weary and drained. His eyes looked to be miles away, not seeing either the room or the people around him.

Carth just looked plain uncomfortable. Every now and then, his gaze flicked across to Yuthura and his mouth tightened. Tamar held back a sigh. Yes, there would be a certain amount of tension in that direction, wouldn't there?

He cleared his throat – no sense in stalling or drawing this out unnecessarily. "I thought we should use this time to discuss our plan of action."

"Really? Wow, I can see now why we need you as leader. I'm sure none of the rest of us would ever have been able to come up with such an ingenious idea."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence Jolee." Tamar smiled. He chose to deliberately ignore the sarcasm in the old man's words and take them purely at face value. Mainly because he knew that Jolee found it intensely annoying.

"My pleasure."

Tamar looked at Carth. "What's our eventual destination?"

"The outer edges of the Ando system."

He struggled to hide his surprise. The Ando system was the home of the Aqualish, who didn't have the reputation for being the most welcoming sorts. It seemed an unusual choice. In fact, short of somewhere like Korriban or Ziost, it was one of the last places he would have expected

"Our old friend Suvam Tan has set up shop in a derelict spacestation orbiting the outermost planet in the system," Carth stated. "He doesn't have any particular ties to either the Republic or the Sith, and we figured he might still think he owes us something for saving his ass from those Trandoshans out at Yavin. Besides, we need somewhere where we can get properly equipped."

"And as another plus none of us has any connection to the system, so it shouldn't be an obvious place to start a search," Jolee added.

Tamar nodded. "I should say thank you to all of you for what you've just done."

HK-47 spoke up. "Statement: I preferred my version of the rescue plan, master. A great many meatbags would have died. It would have been a thing of great beauty. But nevertheless, it is good to have you back, whatever the means."

Tamar managed a tight smile at that. "It's good to be back, HK."

"Does this mean you're over your idiotic wish to be a martyr then?" Jolee asked pointedly.

"Circumstances change, don't they?" he said quietly. And a line that he couldn't go back from had been crossed. He looked at Carth again. "I know how difficult a decision that must have been, for some of you in particular."

"Hey, they were hanging you out to dry. The newscasts were calling you Darth Revan, and had judged your guilt and strung you up already. You're my friend, right? I wasn't about to sit by and let that happen, especially not when there's this new Sith Lord out there manipulating everything. I've sat back and just let things happen before, to my cost. Never again." Despite the words, Tamar could still see an echo of the torment in his eyes though.

"You can still back out of this Carth. No one else knows you were involved. Hell, you should back out."

"I don't back out of things. I don't just run away. You should know that well enough by now." There was a challenging look in his eyes.

"It's not just going to be the Sith after us this time. It's going to be the Republic too. The Republic's been your whole life."

Carth was looking down at the back of his hands. "And that hasn't changed. I'm still doing my duty in the best interests of the Republic. Even if they might not see it that way right now."

"And what about Dustil?" Tamar asked him quietly.

Carth snorted, his gaze flicking briefly to Yuthura then back to Tamar. "He's a man now, whether I like that or not. He's not going to let me just go back to being his father. At least we can talk to each other without biting each other's heads off now." A forced laugh. "About one time in four, anyway. My decision is made, Tamar. Respect it."

"Thank you. I don't know if I'll ever be able to repay you, but thank you."

Carth looked up at him again. "What are friends for? Right?"

"What about you, Jolee? You've still got the option of backing out too."

"Trying to pension the old man off, eh? Saying that I can't cut it anymore. That I'm only fit for a nursing home."

"Well I hear some of those nurses are pretty damn hot," Tamar shrugged.

"Knowing my luck I'd get an Ithorian. Not that Ithorians can't be attractive, I'm sure. But they don't quite do it for me somehow." Jolee shook his head emphatically. "You don't get away from me that easily, boy. Besides, I pretty much burnt my bridges when I, er . . . borrowed this from the Jedi." He reached up and slipped the circlet off, wincing as he did so. "I can see why they forbade its use. Worse than wading through the swamps of Dagobah. You ever been to Dagobah? No? Well my advice is to stay well clear. You'd have to be the biggest fool in the galaxy to voluntarily spend more than five minutes there. Now what was I saying . . .?"

Yuthura spoke up before he'd even looked at her. "I'm in this just as deeply as you are, Tamar. There's no going back. There's only forward now. I chose my path, and this is they way it leads."

After a moment's pause, he nodded. "What answer did the council give you?" he asked her gently.

She didn't need to ask what he meant. "They told me that they would consider my request. That they would let me know their final decision within the day."

Only of course, now there would never be an answer. They shared a brief look and he could see the self-doubt in her eyes. He wanted to reassure her, but didn't know what he could say – didn't know if she'd welcome it anyway, particularly in front of all the others.

He glanced across at HK.

"I am ashamed that you would feel the need to even ask, master."

"T3?"

"Beep-beep-beep-oop."

So, everyone was with him. Part of him wished that they'd all done the sensible thing and told him to get lost. He rubbed at the bridge of his nose, feeling momentarily overwhelmed.

Eventually he cleared his throat. "Have any of you discovered anything about our new Sith Lord?" he asked, all business on the outside at least. "Something that might give us a start on where to look at least."

"In case you hadn't noticed we were busy planning a rescue for some cretin who managed to go and get himself arrested," Jolee answered tartly.

"We were hoping that you might be able to tell us something," Carth added.

Tamar nodded slowly. Nothing beyond his one vision of the woman, standing on the balcony of their bedchamber beneath the light of three moons, had come to him despite all his efforts to tease something out. He looked at HK, recalling the one thing Yuthura had mentioned about the possible identity of the Sith. "Do you remember my head of intelligence operations when you where serving me in my Revan identity, HK? A human female I believe."

Light flashed in HK's eyes. "Answer: that would be the Lady Fel, master. Morrigance Fel. A most ingenious and creative organic meatbag. I liked her. Although I would of course happily crush her neck for you master, should the opportunity arise."

Morrigance Fel, he mused, though the name awakened nothing. Darth Morrigance. Darth Fel. Both sounded appropriate enough, though that of course meant nothing. "Could you describe her for me HK? Physically I mean"

"Apology: sorry, master. I prefer not to linger over the appearance of organic meatbags who I am not permitted to assassinate.

"Clarification: not of course that I wish to imply that I find your physical appearances disgustingly wet and squelchy, or in any other way distressing. Oh no."

Tamar thought back to the woman in his vision, and the woman who had shown him her burned, skull-like face. "Between five eleven and six one tall. Weighs one-hundred and thirty to one-hundred and fifty pounds. Pale skin. Brown eyes. Black or near-black hair."

"She would possibly fit within those parameters, master. Although her appearance was not a constant thing. She was, after all, a spy."

"And a Dark Jedi?"

"Again, possibly master, although I never saw her wield a lightsaber. A believe she was at least Force sensitive, however. Regret: I feel I have failed you somehow master."

"Never mind HK. At least we have a name to work with now."

"This was only a speculative guess on my part, Tamar." Yuthura said warningly. "I would not get too hung up on the idea."

"Speculative guesses are better than the rest of what I've got right now. It's a possible lead at least." His fingertips traced patterns on the tabletop. "In the vision I had of her I was on a planet with three moons. Two larger and white, the third smaller and red. The red one probably has an atmosphere – that would explain the colour – so is in reality likely to be the largest of the three, and the furthest out. In fact, scratch that. It might not have been a moon at all, just a big gas giant in an adjacent orbit." He tried to tease out every last detail from the vision. "Warm, temperate climate. Mountainous." At least, there had been mountains visible along the horizon line. "Heavy vegetation." Simply from the way the air had smelt.

"Could be almost anywhere," Carth commented. "There are more than 10,000 registered systems in the republic alone. We don't have the Hawk's extensive astronavigation charts. Maybe Suvam Tan will, although from your description it's going to be a needle in a haystack job."

"I'm guessing it was more likely part of the Sith Empire."

Yuthura frowned, headtails adjusting themselves in a way that he knew indicated uncertainty. "From the description it is not anywhere that I am familiar with. Certainly not any of the core Sith worlds. Although if it was a lover's retreat it would likely have been somewhere very private where you were confidant you would not be vulnerable."

"W-wait a minute," Carth interrupted. "Let me get this straight, Tamar. You and this Sith Lord we're looking for were lovers!"

Tamar stifled a sigh. "Our conversation, and the vision I had, indicated so." He wondered briefly if the vision was a fake somehow, sent to disorientate and distract. "I can't actually remember any of it, so I can't honestly say that I'm a hundred percent sure."

Carth had his head in his hands. "This just gets better and better. You really are a walking disaster area aren't you? You weren't joking when you said that. Not just a Sith Lord, but a scorned female Sith Lord ex-lover." A mock shudder. "You really do know how to pick them."

"It still isn't too late to change your mind Carth."

"No, no. That isn't what I meant, and you know it."

Tamar looked to Yuthura again as another possible idea occurred. "Do you know where the Sith might have their major military production facilities and research labs? I'm thinking biotech in particular."

"The Dantalus and Khar Zaran systems are possibly the largest ones. That I know of anyway. But there are smaller facilities of one kind or another right throughout Sith space, and we also bought in a lot of military equipment from both Czerka and the Hutts. The idea is not to present any single target that the Republic could strike at to cripple the Sith war effort. Why?"

"While I was a prisoner I spoke briefly with Admiral Dodonna. She mentioned that the bio-toxin used to kill the Jedi Council had . . . rather unusual properties. If trying to track down the Sith herself proves a dead-end, then finding the source of the poison might lead us to her more indirectly."

"Beep-wop-bop-beep-beep-woo-beep!" All eyes turned on T3 as he chimed in emphatically.

"Master, the bucket of bolts claims to have downloaded the chemical structure of the poison you are referring to whilst he was accessing Republic security computer systems during our efforts to secure your release. He is likely just showing off."

"Good work T3," For the first time Tamar started to feel like he wasn't just scrabbling around blindly in the dark. "One more thing. Admiral Dodonna also brought up the fact that there are two new individuals who are both staking a claim to the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith. Darth Malefic and Darth Auza . . ."

"Auza?" Yuthura sounded startled. "As in Auza the Hutt?"

"You know him?" Then, in surprise. "A Hutt? I know Hutts tend to be resistant to the Force, but I've never heard of one that was even a Jedi, let alone a Sith Lord."

"He's human," she said quietly. "'The Hutt' is simply what everyone calls him – behind his back at least. He was one of Uthar's peers. Not a friend of his exactly, but as close to it as most Sith get. As Uthar's favoured pupil I met him on several occasions." Yuthura expression twisted into a grimace of distaste. "A truly vile man, and considering what I was, and some of the people I knew . . . that is not something I say lightly. He's old for a Sith: at least seventy, and possibly substantially older than that. I'm surprised he would make a bid to be Dark Lord though. He always prided himself on his cleverness and skill at pulling strings from the background; better to be the power behind the throne than the power, he was fond of saying." She hesitated. "His base of operation is – or used to be, last I heard – in the Dantalus system. A floating villa in the atmosphere of the Dantalus VI gas giant."

"Then I think," Tamar said softly, "that we should probably pay a visit to Dantalus and the Hutt."

-s-s-

The Excelsior – flagship of the self-proclaimed Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Malefic – hung at full stop amid what resembled a graveyard for old starships.

The vast horde of wrecked ships floating in that area of space were the remnants of a brutal battle against Mandalorian invaders nearly twenty years past, and encompassed everything from single-seat hyperdrive-less fighters to hulking capital ships almost as large as the Excelsior. All of them orbited the system's ordinary red-orange star in a stately silence – an eternal monument to the follies of war.

A few million kilometres inwards towards the sun, the system's one previously life-bearing planet span wobblingly on its axis – charred black, its atmosphere choked with smoke and ash intershot with bright orange threads of lava from its still semi-molten surface.

A fast hyperspace shuttle had just docked in one of the Excelsior's main hangars, an honour guard of elite crimson armoured Sith troopers flanking either side of its boarding ramp. There was a soft hydraulic hiss and the ramp descended.

First out, walking at strict attention, was a squad of six more crimson clad elite troopers, heavily armed and armoured. Behind them, clothed in robes of grey, black cowls covering their heads, strode a pair of Dark Jedi, arrogance personified, lightsabers displayed prominently at their hips.

Then came Darth Malefic himself. Even though it was already utterly quiet, it still seemed as if a hush descended, tension palpable in the air with his arrival.

He was a hugely imposing figure, toweringly tall and powerfully built, dressed in heavy armour of dark imperial purple hue. Helmet and massively broad, baroque shoulder plates were fused into a single piece, the helmet's single narrow eye-slit glowing with silver light. A heavy black cloak, patterned with strange and intricate purple designs, flared out behind him as he walked, the ribbed skirts of a long black war kilt whispering around his ankles with each step. Underneath all that, Malefic could have been any one of a dozen different humanoid species.

A second squad of Sith troopers brought up the rear.

Waiting at the head of the honour guard, Sith Captain Vosk Bortha dropped down to one knee and bowed his head. Fear thrummed through the man. "My Lord, your flagship awaits your command."

There was an agonisingly drawn out pause.

"Rise Captain." Darth Malefic's voice was surprisingly soft, belying his fearsomely warlike appearance. There was a slightly odd undertone of lisping sibilance to it. "You have the shipment in your possession?"

"Yes my lord."

"Then lead me to it without delay. I am most eager to view my new prize."

Captain Bortha inclined his head, trying not to scurry, or sweat too conspicuously as he lead the Sith Lord to the Excelsior's bridge.

There, waiting for them, was a battered looking transport crate. Markings on the side indicated that it had once been part of the manifest of a ship called the Flying Kuat, travelling out of Ossus.

"You have opened it captain?" Darth Malefic asked as he stood before it, looking down.

"No my lord," Bortha replied. "I believe the pirates we recovered it from tried to make use of its powers, but were unsuccessful. All proper scans have been made to ensure that the crate is safe, and that it contains the artefact you seek, but I thought the honour of being the first among us to lay eyes on it should be yours alone."

"Very good, Captain." Malefic gestured with an armoured purple glove at one of the Dark Jedi flanking him. Immediately she stepped forward, opening the crate's lid, before stepping aside again so that the Dark Lord could see what was inside unimpeded.

Bortha actually thought that he heard Malefic's breath catch.

At that moment, there was a warbling note from one of the Excelsior's communication posts. "M-My Lord," the duty ensign spoke up tentatively. "We have just received a communication for you. From your apprentice."

Darth Malefic turned around slowly. Another tensely expectant hush fell.

"Open a line then, ensign."

"My Lord."

Abruptly the hologram of a figure, clothed and cowled entirely in black, appeared. The figure swept a low bow, light penetrating their cowl just enough to give a hint of a mirror-finished mask. A female voice, calmly emotionless to the point of sounding computerised, spoke up. "My lord and master, I trust that the intelligence I provided has proven satisfactory, and you are now in possession of the artefact. I simply wished to report that phase one of your plan has been concluded successfully, and be the first to extended my congratulations to the new Supreme Lord of the Sith – soon to be master of all the galaxy." The message concluded with another sweeping bow.

After a slight pause, Darth Malefic gestured to the comm. officer and the hologram vanished. He stepped forward and reached inside the crate.

The object that he pulled out was clearly meant to be a crown. It was a ring of plain and heavy bronze-hued metal, eight inches deep and open at the front. On either side of that front opening was a long spike made of either glass or crystal.

Despite the plainness of its design, and the lack of ostentatious decoration, it managed to convey a sense of deep majesty and power. For a long moment, Darth Malefic simply stared at it, seemingly captivated.

As he looked on, Captain Bortha felt an ominous sense of dread – a deathly cold skeletal grip around his heart.

Malefic lifted the crown and placed it upon his helmeted brow. It seemed to adjust itself somehow as he lowered it so that it fit him perfectly, even over his helm. The twin crystal spikes caught the light, and suddenly they appeared to shine.

"Let this day be written into history." The Dark Lord's voice echoed as he spoke. "Let the entire galaxy know my name and tremble."

A cheer went up, resounding round the Excelsior's bridge. It held as much fear as it did enthusiasm.