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.

13. Red Knight's Gambit

Big thanks to Jedi Boadicea for beta reading this chapter for me.

Thanks for the kind comments, Kosiah. Kreed is my own creation. I'm not aware of any one source I've taken him from, but I'm sure he amalgamates traits from any number of sci-fi characters I've read and watched over the years. I was just trying to come up with a Mandalorian character who wasn't a complete Canderous clone.

Also, thanks to everyone else for their continued reviews. It's wonderful to get such consistently detailed feedback, and I'm sure its one of the factors that has kept my enthusiasm for writing this story so high.

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13. Red Knight's Gambit

"You know, of course, that this doesn't make a blind bit of sense," Canderous pointed out.

Bastila looked up from the holographic star charts she was poring over. "Excuse me? Which part of it, exactly, are you struggling with?"

"All of it."

An acerbic retort about old Mandalorian warriors and the debilitating affects of a few too many head injuries remained unspoken. Instead, she reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose. She'd been staring at the star charts and various data pads so intently that, now her eyes had refocused, everything looked strange and blurred. Blinking a few times in rapid succession helped slightly. "Care to be more specific? Or are you content with uttering vague and unhelpful prophecies of doom?"

Canderous snorted. "Well, according to your vision, all of this is about ships, right?"

A tiny shiver passed through her at the reminder. It lurked constantly, just beneath the surface.

At first there appeared to be nothing but blackness, so total that, for a moment – especially after the previous, dizzying, disorientating, emotionally devastating rush of images and colour and feelings – it felt like she'd been struck blind. Then, after a short time, a sliver of light intruded. It reflected in a raven glimmer upon the flank of something utterly vast before her.

She became aware of slowly pulling back – a sense of gathering momentum – and the gleaming black vastness gradually resolved into a recognisable shape. A starship: sleek, streamlined, and shark-like. A Rakatan starship. It was similar enough in character to those vessels she'd seen the Sith using that the derivation was unmistakeable, but it was different too. Its profile looked flatter, though it was impossible, without any form of visual reference around it, to tell whether this was because it was a more compact form of vessel, or because it had been stretched out breadthways. There were also strange, sleek bulges along its flanks that gave its appearance an extra muscularity – a sense of barely contained, predatory power that was somehow profoundly disquieting.

The rate at which she was pulling back increased exponentially, becoming so fast that she seemed almost in danger of leaving her stomach and other internal organs behind. She could see there were more ships around this first one. Two, four, sixteen . . . more than she could possibly hope to count, stretching as far as the eye could see in this strange, inky void, all gleaming . . . all waiting with expectancy.

Almost seeming alive somehow.

"A vast fleet of ships," she emphasised. "I couldn't count them all, but there were hundreds of them." Like someone had turned the Star Forge on to full capacity for a year, and simply stored everything that it produced . . . somewhere, waiting to be used. She frowned. "If Darth Malefic gets hold of that many warships at once, he'll be able to take total control of the Sith Empire within a matter of weeks. By the time he's finished he'll have a fleet as big as Darth Malak ever controlled at his disposal, the artefact he took from the Flying Kuat, and a Republic that's too busy chasing round after its own internal problems to put up a proper defence."

"Yeah," Canderous started to nod. "But no."

"Excuse me?"

Canderous glowered at her. He looked ragged, unshaven and even harder than normal. Bastila realised it must have been getting on for 72 hours since he'd had any hint of sleep. "The Sith don't have a problem with the number of ships they can field. You looked at the intelligence reports lately?"

She hadn't. Not the ones he meant, anyway. She'd been too busy with other matters.

A hand came up, very briefly to rub his eyes – a rare half-hint of weakness. "If you do the maths, a unified Sith could, even now, put out a force that's a third again as large as the one Revan had at his disposal, and more than three times the size of what the Mandalore could field, even at the start of the war with the Republic. Malak, for all his tactical limitations, was one single-minded son-of-a-bitch, and boy, did he build ships. The Battle of the Star Forge put the brakes on that, of course, but it didn't do a whole lot about the fleet he'd already assembled. The majority of that's still out there." A grimace. "If the succession of a new Dark Lord had been smooth. If Saul Karath had survived and been allowed to do his job . . .. We'd be having a very different conversation than the one we are right now."

He gave a weary headshake. "No, Malefic's limiting factor is men. Give him a couple of hundred new capital ships and what's he going to do with them? They don't fly themselves, last I heard. Rakatan ships may be personnel efficient compared with the equivalent Republic vessels, but you're still going to have to come up with a couple of hundred thousand trained crew members to get them up to even minimum operational capacity. And the fact is, the Sith are struggling to properly crew all the ships they've already got."

Bastila stared at him. Put like that his assessment sounded entirely reasonable, except . . . it was wrong. She couldn't say how, but she knew it had to be. "We still can't let him waltz off with them."

"Did you hear me suggesting that?" He held her gaze with his, almost ferocious. "But that's just the first in a whole list of things that completely reek about this."

"Like?" she prompted.

He grimaced and stood up, beginning to pace like a large and particularly grizzled predator restlessly staking out its territory. "For starters, look at what we know about the whole why of this. Some woman – maybe or maybe not another in the line of wannabe Dark Lords – came to Daragba ahead of us, and altered something about this damned Vision Well. We're operating under the assumption that what she altered was this vision you received, about a hidden Rakatan fleet. There's also evidence she had something to do with Horvath on Drumond Kaas. Hell, she may have been manipulating this whole sorry run around the Outer Rim from the beginning. We agreed on this much?"

Bastila's response was cautious. She watched him prowl. "A lot of that is guesswork based on what, at best, is circumstantial evidence."

A forceful nod. "But on the basis of what we know, it's our current best guess. Right?"

After a moment, she nodded in turn. "Right."

"Then why the frak, if she knows about this fleet, hasn't she claimed it for herself? Why deliver it into the hands of a rival?"

Bastila didn't blink – had already gone through this in her own head. "Because she can't crew the fleet. She doesn't appear in Republic intelligence files like Malefic and Auza, because she doesn't have a military powerbase the same way they do. Instead, she's a manipulator who stays in the background. She gives the fleet to Darth Malefic, because she believes that she can control the fleet through him."

"Yeah, okay." Another nod. "I could pick holes, but okay. Go with that for now. So that leads to why doesn't she just tell him where this fleet is? Why this performance? Lah-di-fraking-dah . . . let's all run around the Outer Rim like clipped mynocks, chasing phantoms and following in Revan's footsteps as if it's all some ridiculous fraking adventure tourism trail."

Bastila folded her arms and sat back, watching him with narrowed eyes and wondering what his real problem was. "Because they're rivals. Enemies. Malefic wouldn't trust anything a rival told him directly, so she has to make him think that he's discovering all this for himself – leapt through a few hoops and earned it by his own cleverness."

His expression said he didn't buy it. "I can think of a dozen different ways of accomplishing the same result right off the top of my head that are far easier and quicker than this one."

"Then maybe having him occupied, 'running around the Outer Rim like a clipped mynock', is the whole point. Keep him distracted, his attention focussed away from Sith space. There's no saying there even is a fleet out there. The vision could just be bait for a trap – something she knew Malefic wouldn't be able to resist." Inwardly that didn't ring true. Inwardly, it was almost impossible to doubt the veracity of the vision . . . the realness.

Which was undoubtedly all part of what she was supposed to feel.

Canderous was looking at her intently, a sour grimace twisting his mouth. "It still reeks."

"Who was it that said the Jedi have a problem with thinking too much," Bastila murmured. "I forget."

The look he shot her was withering.

She ignored it. "I don't know what you're worried about anyway. You're under no obligation to see this through. You don't like it? You have the choice of walking away, any time you like."

The expression on his face seemed to freeze over, and he stopped pacing. She realised, uncomfortably, that she'd managed to strike a nerve she hadn't even suspected was present. "What are you implying, exactly?"

She let out a breath – tried to defuse matters. "I'm not implying anything."

"If you think I'm going to walk away from this, then you obviously know nothing at all about Mandalorians." He seemed close to genuinely angry. "We see things through. All the way to the bitter and bloody end. No matter what."

"If I know nothing about Mandalorians," she state with stiff precision, "It's because you're hardly voluble on the subject, are you? If I offended you, you have my apologies."

He snorted.

She tried to turn her attention back to the maps and datapads, but found she couldn't concentrate. It felt like Canderous's eyes were boring into the back of her skull, although every time she looked round he wasn't even looking in her direction.

Finally, she gave up. "What?"

"Didn't say a word, Princess." He smirked, any anger long gone. "Although there is one thing, given as how we've both agreed on a new spirit of openness and sharing."

She frowned at him – folded her arms.

He either didn't, or chose not to, notice. "Just something that's been on my mind a bit of late. How does a non-force user go about keeping a force-adept out of their head? Anything more to it than plain old strength of will?"

The question took her by surprise. "Why?"

Canderous grunted. "Look, it's not too difficult for you, surely? We're both figuring to go up against Darth Malefic very soon now. That's the plan, or am I wrong? I was there at Tylace, like all the rest of us. I felt what we all did, and when it comes to it, I'd sooner not end up one of the mind burnt if I can avoid it. Dying in battle is one thing, but that . . ." He shook his head. "So. My question."

There was something else too. Another motive, other than the stated one – he'd never bothered to raise the matter before now. Trying to discern it, though, was somewhat akin to trying to smash her way through a starship hull with her forehead.

"If there's anyone in the galaxy that doesn't have to worry about that, then believe me, it's you. You've got a head like solid rock and pretty much nothing gets in or out."

"Tried then, have you, Princess?" By his standards, his voice was light, almost within the bounds of teasing. "Yeah, I guess I must be pretty damn fascinating."

Immediately she felt her cheeks heating, which was absolutely the worst response possible. Her efforts to stop her face going pink inevitably just accelerated the process. "That wasn't what I meant at all."

"Uh-huh."

She forced herself to concentrate on the purely factual, but the heat was slow to fade. "Erm . . ." She struggled to find a place to start. "Some species – Hutts, Toydarians and Dashade for instance – have a different neural physiology that gives them a very effective in built resistance to influence by the force . . ."

"Assume here, for sake of argument, that a brain transplant with a Hutt isn't a viable option right now."

She glared at him. "Do you want to hear this, or are you just looking for something to help hone your sarcasm?"

He waved for her to continue.

"The point being, that something that alters the brain chemistry of a person even just slightly – for example, certain types of battle stims – can act as a reasonably effective shield."

"Okay, check. Stims. Go on."

"Other than that, like you say, it's mental discipline. If a person focuses intently enough on something, it's much more difficult to sway them from that, and much less likely they'll fall prey to force induced fear, confusion, insanity or any other effect. Iridorians are known to use various battle hymns and ritual chants as a focussing method. Echani firedancers use ceremonial drugs and meditation techniques. Presumably Mandalorians are just a bunch of stubborn, infuriating, contrary bastards."

That actually drew an appreciative laugh, though it faded quickly. His eyes were like iron filings. "And that's all there is to it? Keep your concentration, and Malefic won't find his way in."

"No." Her voice was very soft then. "What we felt at Tylace. That kind of power . . . if that power focuses directly on you for long enough . . . you won't keep it out." A shudder passed through her at the memory. "I don't think anything will keep that out." And this time round Jedi Zikl wasn't there to save her.

He didn't seem perturbed. "So that makes attack the best form of defence. Hit hard. Hit fast. Don't give him time to focus on you." He smiled grimly. "Always my preferred tactic."

She sat back, rubbing her eyes, suddenly massively tired herself. "So, does that cover what you wanted to know?"

He made a noncommittal sound. "Jedi, and by inference, Sith can pick-up on a person's emotions and intent, right? Whether someone's lying, or intent on aggression, or whatever. Maybe get advance warning on their actions."

She wondered what he was really getting at. "It's not like the mind's a book or anything. You can't just reach in, turn a page over, and read it. The best you can generally do is flashes and general impressions – sometimes even an isolated image. If someone is lying, generally it occupies a large portion of their conscious thoughts, and has various associated physiological reactions too. Likewise with anger or fear, or other very strong emotions. Those we can generally pick up on, but it's a long way from foolproof. Trained field agents, for instance, are often taught to compartmentalise thoughts and inhibit physical responses. The very skilled can lie to most Jedi just as easily as they can to anyone else."

Canderous nodded. "Yeah, that about covers what I wanted to know." He stood up abruptly. "I'm going to check on progress with Organa. See when we're likely to be ready to depart, then maybe grab a bite to eat. You want me to get you anything?"

She shook her head. "No thanks. I'm fine."

"Suit yourself." He turned around and walked out, the door whispering shut at his back.

Bastila stared after him, very, very suspicious – though about what, she couldn't pinpoint. Something about that whole conversation just hadn't rung true.

- - -

Captain Vorsk Bortha hesitated outside the doors of Darth Malefic's quarters and attempted to gather himself. Fear crawled inside his gut – a trapped rodent struggling to free itself by gnawing through his intestines.

He reminded himself that he was a captain of the Sith Fleet, and had seen action in over thirty major engagements. That he had served under both Darth Revan and Malak, and had been decorated several times over for exemplary service and valour under enemy fire.

It didn't help, particularly. The enemy was far less frightening than his own side.

Able to feel himself sweating, the collar of his previously immaculately fitting uniform suddenly uncomfortably tight, he reached out and activated the intercom. "Sir, this is . . ."

The doors slid open in front of him, utterly silent. He choked to a halt.

What lay beyond the doors initially seemed to be total blackness. After a second or so, his eyes adjusted slightly, and he realised that there was a very small amount of light. He could also hear something that sounded like running water.

Swallowing, he forced himself to break the paralysis and step over the threshold. Immediately the doors slid shut behind him.

His heart was racing then, taking him to the precipitous edge of a full-blown panic attack. The sooner you do this, the sooner it's over, he reminded himself. And you've never, ever been afraid of the dark.

Gradually composure reasserted itself – a surface layer, at least.

The dim light came from an open doorway, beyond the chamber's main entrance hall. So did the sound of running water. He forced himself to walk towards it, body assuming the stiff 'at attention' posture that was second nature to it. At the threshold, he stopped hard.

Darth Malefic sat motionless, with his back to the doorway in a bizarre looking chair. The dim light came from a semi-circle of candles arranged in front of him – perhaps as some kind of meditation aid. Captain Bortha didn't really notice any of that on more than a peripheral level, though.

What he did notice was that Malefic was out of his armour.

Bortha had never seen what lay beneath that armour. In fact, he wasn't aware – even in rumour – of a single person who had. He stared. He couldn't stop himself.

Malefic wasn't human. The back of his skull was visible over the top of the chair's back, bald save for a single glossy black topknot. Fine scales covered his scalp, and through some kind of trick of the meagre, flickering light, he couldn't tell if they were pale green or a shade of rusty red close to the colour of dried blood. Every time Bortha tried to focus his eyes, his brain received a different answer.

A Falleen, the rational part of his brain supplied.

It wasn't a surprise, he told himself. The unsettling softness and ever so slight undertone of sibilance of his voice had always made Bortha suspect Malefic was a non-human, though he had never thought too hard about it. Even thinking too hard about a Sith Lord could potentially be dangerous.

He realised that he'd been standing there, unspeaking, for far too long, and cleared his throat uncomfortably. "My Lord, you asked to be informed in person of our arrival."

"Very good, Captain."

"We have also received word from your apprentice, my Lord. She is on the last leg of her journey, and will be rendezvousing with us within the next 60 hours, as ordered."

"Excellent."

The timbre of that voice made Bortha shiver. He swallowed. "I should inform you, my Lord, that our sensors have not picked up anything at all within a hundred-million cubic kilometres of this position." Even down to grains of interstellar dust.

There was no answer right away. Instead, Malefic's seat made a soft humming noise and began to smoothly rotate. Bortha managed to keep his jaw from dropping, but couldn't prevent himself staring.

Darth Malefic was stripped, at least to the waist – the chair enclosed his body below that, hiding it from view – and clear liquid, presumably water, flowed constantly over his fine-scaled skin. Somehow, paradoxically, he managed to look even bigger and more powerful without the usual covering of bulky armour – a monstrously huge mass of hard and knotted muscle, drawn with fine lines of scar tissue.

Now, Bortha could see beyond a doubt that the effect he'd witnessed before – the strangely shifting colouring from green to dull, rusty red – was not the optical illusion he'd first taken it to be. The slow but constant shifting, from one colour to the other and back again in blotchy, mottled patterns, made it look almost like the Sith Lord's skin was trying to crawl away and escape from his flesh.

A Falleen's skin could, Bortha recalled, change colour in response to its owner's emotional state. White indicated fear, green being the natural, neutral state, and red representing anger.

Did the shifting indicate some titanic rage, lurking just beneath the surface and warring constantly for control It was a disquieting thought.

His gaze lifted to Malefic's face. And stopped. There was a long, narrow diagonal scar running across it that separated it into two distinct halves. These halves no longer quite lined up. The scar itself was hard and pale, the only thing that was constant about that face, which crawled and shifted like the rest of him.

"Of course the ship's sensors will not have found anything, Captain." The voice was mild, belying Bortha's thoughts of barely restrained fury. "If what we seek was so easy to find, would we have had to search so hard? And would others have not found it already?"

Bortha inclined his head respectfully. "My Lord."

"You are curious about my scar, Captain." It was statement rather than a question, as mild as before. Malefic's gaze fixed upon Bortha's face, his eyes disturbing in their sheer ordinariness. That face should not have had eyes that were so blandly unremarkable. They almost seemed to have been stolen from somebody else.

Bortha almost choked. "My Lord, that is none of my concern . . ."

"I feel your curiosity. And your fear. I scare you, don't I, Captain. I scare you more now than I do even in my armour."

"Yes, my Lord."

"Good." The smile was neither cruel nor unpleasant, and all the worse for that. "I received the scar at the hands of Darth Malak." His tone became contemplative. "It was after he lost his jaw at Revan's hands. As part of his recuperation, we sparred together regularly. On one occasion, after Revan had been to visit him, Malak smashed my blunted practise blade to fragments with his own, and then did similar to my skull and face. The rage in him then – the sheer power it gave him . . . I have never seen the like before or since. Afterwards I lay in a coma for nearly three weeks but, once I had recovered, I took my new name and pledged my blade to his cause, above all others. I knew then and there that a changing of the guard was coming, and I was glad."

Captain Bortha didn't say anything. Privately, he believed that the day that Darth Revan had been overthrown was one of the most disastrous in Sith history; the day when everything had started to fall irrevocably apart and ultimate victory had been lost. He strangled that thought way down, beneath the surface where he hoped it couldn't be glimpsed.

"You are also curious about my skin, and wonder what the shifting pigmentation signifies."

Bortha jolted at the words.

"An uncontrollable anger perhaps, struggling continuously to burst to the surface in a vast, volcanic eruption."

Bortha didn't say anything, thinking it far better not to interrupt.

A fractional smile. "Alas, it is nothing quite so melodramatic – although that interpretation is so much better than mundane reality. I suffer from a genetic disorder – quite rare, but not unheard of in my species. It prevents me from controlling the shifting of my skin's pigmentation, and – more importantly – stops me from producing the pheromones that are so important a part of Falleen social interaction. Among my kind I am considered a pitiable cripple, incapable of partaking properly in normal life."

Abruptly, Darth Malefic turned the flow of water off. The silence it left behind was echoing. A moment later, the front of the chair swung open and he started to rise. He wasn't wearing anything below the waist either, but didn't seem the least bit troubled by his nakedness.

Then he winced, a hand coming up to press against his brow, eyes screwing shut as he leant forward, halfway to doubling over. A low, thrumming groan escaped from somewhere deep inside the Sith Lord's chest.

Suddenly Bortha's heart was hammering again, trying to batter its way through his sternum. He hung back, unsure what to do. Memories of the fate of Mek Valloon played through his head. He worried that even witnessing this momentary show of weakness had a fair chance of proving fatal.

The momentary seizure passed quickly, and Malefic straightened again. "I feel the weight of the crown, even now when I do not wear it," he murmured. Bortha wasn't at all sure that he was meant to be hearing this. He certainly didn't want to hear it. "It is a heavy burden. So very heavy."

Involuntarily, Bortha's gaze moved beyond Darth Malefic. He saw then that the crown lay on the floor in the centre of the semi-circle of candles, the twin crystal spikes at the front of it glittering in the shifting light.

"But sometimes victory requires certain discomfort be born and sacrifices be made. Wouldn't you agree, Captain?"

Bortha hesitated. "I suppose that would depend on the nature of the sacrifices, my Lord."

Malefic chuckled. "Neatly evaded. An answer that cleverly avoids contradicting either the Sith Code, or me."

Abruptly, he gestured towards something behind Bortha's left shoulder. Bortha found himself turning to follow the gesture without making any conscious decision to do so. He jolted when three giant metal figures seemed to loom out of the shadows at him.

Darth Malefic's armour, he realised belatedly as his brain struggled to catch up with his senses. He barely choked back an embarrassing yelp.

First there was the purple, martial and baroque. That was the armour Malefic wore on formal and ceremonial occasions. The dress armour. The armour of command. Next to it came the red, similar in design but sleeker and less ornate, its lines redolent of violence and savage vitality. Malefic's combat armour, worn when the Sith Lord went personally into battle. Finally there was the black. Bortha had never seen the black before, and he wasn't sure he wanted to speculate on what set of circumstances would call for that.

"Since you are here, Captain, you might as well make yourself useful and help me dress."

Bortha swallowed. "Which one, my Lord?"

The response was immediate. "The red."

- - -

"Where is Jedi Bastila?"

Canderous grunted. Wind gusted across the shuttle landing-pad, carrying the promise of imminent rain. So much for pleasantries and the famed Jedi diplomacy and politeness. Not that in normal circumstances he would have given a damn about such inanities, but right now – for perhaps one time only in recorded history – they might have come in handy, as time-waster and distraction both.

He looked the speaker up and down. The battle stims coursing through his veins gave everything a weird, jittery edge and the world around him seemed to be crawling by in slow motion. He had to concentrate hard on each and every action just to keep himself operating in the right timeframe.

Jedi Knight Tobin Gracey, the man's name was. A big human Guardian, several centimetres taller than him, and equally as broad. Blonde, square-jawed and wholesome-looking to an improbable degree, he was at least twenty years his junior, but not by the look of it, particularly seasoned. Almost certainly a Hapan, Canderous decided at length, and on initial impression, full of a sanctimonious piety that he was in dire need of having beaten out of him before very much longer.

It was, he decided, going to be a sincere pleasure.

"Jedi Bastila is commanding officer of this expeditionary force. She doesn't have time for meet and greet duties. As a mere observer out here, that job gets left to me." He favoured Jedi Tobin with a slanted smile. His voice seemed to be coming from a third person, entirely removed from him.

"General Ordo, it was made perfectly clear that our mission has the full authority of the Council behind it, and that Jedi Bastila was to cooperate with us fully. This is a matter of overriding urgency." The words came from Jedi Tobin's companion.

Canderous looked round at her with deliberate slowness, letting his gaze drop until it touched the top of her head, more than half a metre below Tobin's. He half-wondered if whoever had paired these two up had done it for a joke, but considering that person would have been Jedi too, it seemed unlikely.

"Well now, Jedi Zaerne." Dark haired, and with the kind of pristine prettiness that made Canderous think of a china doll, Zaerne reminded him ever so slightly of Bastila when he'd first met her back on Taris. She had the same armour of prissy perfection; the same uptight brittleness that suggested it masked deeper doubts and insecurities. "Did it occur to you that the rest of the galaxy might have its own matters of overriding urgency to deal with, and unfortunately they might not fall perfectly into line with yours?"

It obviously hadn't, he saw from her reaction. He wondered briefly if this was the inevitable end product of the current Jedi training, before shoving the thought away as a heap of useless Bantha crap.

"Jedi Bastila will be informed of your arrival," he continued. His voice still didn't feel entirely like it belonged to him. It was difficult to be sure he was talking at the right pace. "And I'm sure she'll be eager to cooperate with you, just as soon as her schedule allows. In the mean time, I'll show you to your quarters. They should have cleaned the blood and blaster burns up by now, and if not . . . well adds character, doesn't it?"

As he turned, Jedi Zaerne made no move to follow, standing there with hands on hips as the wind stirred her robes around her. "I'm afraid that's not acceptable, General Ordo."

He squinted at her. "I wasn't being serious about the bloodstains."

"It is imperative that we see Jedi Bastila now," Jedi Tobin put in.

Canderous folded massively muscled arms across his chest. He let the surface of politeness fracture. "Now, I understood that patience was a virtue that the Jedi espouse. Did I mishear? Or has the Jedi Council taken to sending fidgety children with no interpersonal skills to do their dirty work?"

Neither of them rose to it. "Our orders are quite clear," Zaerne emphasised.

Canderous stifled a sigh. Pair of fraking robots . . .. And much, much worse than Bastila had ever been, by the look of things. He touched his communicator. "Lieutenant Jansa. Bastila still with you?"

He made a show of listening to the pre-rehearsed response, keeping his thoughts carefully neutral. "Thank you Lieutenant. No, don't worry about it. It's not important." Then he turned his attention back to the pair of waiting Jedi Knights. "Sorry, you're out of luck. She's out somewhere in the woods right now. Isn't likely to be back for several hours."

"Can you contact her?"

"Got the impression she didn't want to be disturbed." He kept his tone flat. "Jansa says her communicator's switched off. Which means she's probably out at the Well, double checking something."

"Then perhaps you could have someone take us out to her?" Jedi Tobin suggested, frowning. He wasn't apparently one to let go of something easily. "Or at the least provide us with directions."

"No."

"General Ordo . . ." Jedi Zaerne started.

He cut her off. "Look, I've been patient up till now. Reasonable even. And you can ask anyone. They'll tell you I'm not remotely a reasonable man. You can fraking wait. The entire universe doesn't arrange itself for the Jedi Council's convenience. What's the urgency anyway? You here to arrest her or something? You think she's going to try and run away from you?"

Neither of them responded.

"So you can follow me to your quarters: settle in, relax. Extract those rods from up your arses. They can't be comfortable up there, surely? Beats a trip of several hours, by which time Bastila will have undoubtedly finished what she's doing and turned back, meaning we end up missing her anyway, and you end up taking twice as long before you get to see her, all for want of a bit of patience. Deal?"

Finally, though with evident reluctance, Zaerne nodded. They started walking, Canderous guiding them through the base's battle-damaged corridors.

"General Ordo," Tobin began stiltedly as they walked, breaking the silence. "You were one of those who accompanied Revan on the final assault against the Star Forge, were you not?"

"Yeah, that's right." Canderous wondered where this was going. "Funny. They say I'm a hero because of that. Gave me a medal; this pathetic honorary title; even built me a statue on Coruscant. Not a good likeness – I know I'm much more handsome than that – but hey, it's the thought that counts. I guess being a barbaric, murdering bastard is okay after all, just as long as it's your lot I'm being a barbaric, murdering bastard for. Sweet deal, eh?"

Jedi Tobin had gone a rather interesting shade of pale. "Erm, I just wanted to ask. What's Revan really like? I mean, you do know him?"

Canderous grunted. The same question he was always asked. "So you want to know what the man who slew your Jedi Council is like? The former Dark Lord of the Sith who saved, then nearly destroyed the Republic, then saved it all over again?"

"Whether he . . ." A small frown, before Tobin repeated Canderous's word, "Slew the Jedi Council or not has yet to be determined. At the moment it is merely an allegation."

The response surprised Canderous slightly. It was the first hint he'd had that, inside Jedi Tobin, there lurked someone who might be capable of entertaining original thought and perhaps even open-mindedness. Finally he said, "He's a man. Like you. Like me. If the implication of you and me having something in common doesn't offend your sensibilities too much, Jedi. What other answer can I give? He's just a man."

Canderous half-expected to be pressed further 'no, but what's he really like'. Instead, Jedi Tobin nodded, his expression pondering, as if he'd just been given some kind of profound puzzle to think on by one of his Masters.

They arrived at the quarters Canderous had carefully arranged for them, far out of the way of the rest of the complex. "There you go. Make yourselves at home. Need anything, call on the intercom. I'd advise against wandering around at random, because sections of the base still haven't been made safe yet. But hell, your choice. As soon as Bastila returns, you'll be notified."

"Thank you, General Ordo." Jedi Zaerne sounded frosty, still apparently put out. She took the room on the left, the doors sliding shut behind her.

Canderous followed Jedi Tobin through into the room on the right. Tobin looked round at him in surprise.

"General Ordo?" He looked puzzled. "Is something the matter?"

Canderous didn't answer. Instead he hit him, hard and fast, before he had chance to react.

As Tobin's legs crumpled, Canderous pulled a disrupter collar from his pocket and clamped it shut around the Jedi's neck, switching it on. To be on the safe side, he then thumped him again, before proceeding to tie the man up with swift and brutal efficiency, wrenching legs and arms back behind him and securing them tightly together. For good measure, he taped up Tobin's mouth, then shoved the resulting package into a closet, out of sight.

The door whispered opened behind him.

It was Zaerne. "Is something wrong, Tobin? I thought I sensed something. It's so difficult with all this blasted interference . . ."

She trailed off as her eyes fixed on Canderous.

"Through in the bathroom," Canderous indicated with a jab of his thumb. "Had some more questions about Revan." A gruff headshake. "I sometimes wonder what the fascination is."

She nodded distractedly, clearly no more than humouring him. As she started to step past him, he saw her eyes widen and she started to whirl, reaching for the lightsaber hilt at her waist . . .

Too late.

There was a meaty thud as fist connected with jaw, and a short time later, there were two unconscious Jedi, trussed up like turkeys, wearing disruptor collars, and occupying closets.

As he walked out of there, Canderous used his comm. to put a call through to the current duty officer. "This is Ordo. I've settled our new Jedi guests in. Frak, they're a pair of cheery bastards, aren't they?"

The duty officer gave a wry answering chuckle. "Tell me something I don't know."

"Anyway, they've left strict instructions that they're not to be disturbed. Crap knows why. Maybe they're special friends, if you take my meaning, and need to get reacquainted." That drew another chuckle. "To be honest I don't give a damn, but I thought you'd appreciate the heads up."

He severed the connection before any answer came, and quickened his pace.

- - -

Yuthura finally looked round from the viewscreen at the sound of the doors opening behind her.

A few minutes ago, she'd watched them at long last draw clear of the Maw Cluster. It had taken more than twenty hours of painstaking sub-light flight through the turbulent, ever-shifting gravity tides – even slower than on the way in. Almost immediately, they'd made the leap to hyperspace, the stars and the black holes, with their gaudy Roche lobes of glowing, superheated gas, vanishing into dazzling lines. Eventually even that faded away to absolute blackness.

She'd been staring at that empty void ever since. Thinking.

Brooding, a wry inner voice corrected.

They were heading for Bothan space.

It was not a universally popular choice, given the Bothans' well-deserved reputation for never making do with one convoluted intrigue when they could have several dozen running concurrently.

In the end though, it had seemed the best of a bad lot. They needed to find somewhere relatively close by where they could dump the Rancorous's crew – preferably somewhere the crew were reasonably happy at being dumped, so as not to unnecessarily risk provoking mutiny. That place also needed to be somewhere that was willing to welcome – or at least turn a blind eye to – the presence of a Hutt battlecruiser registered to an infamous crime lord, while still having enough in the way of anti-slaving regulations to allow them to make adequate provision for those that had been freed, without running the risk of them simply being recaptured and immediately resold. Taking all those contradictory concerns into account, the options dwindled rapidly.

And all that was forgetting their other, rather notable problems for the moment. It was difficult to shake off a feeling of profound pessimism about the whole business.

"Hello, Mission. Can I help you?" She tried to make her voice sound bright and friendly for the girl's benefit. To her own ears it came out closer to brittle and forced – quite the opposite of reassuring.

The girl's head tails twirled in manner that was probably supposed to look casual, but didn't quite manage to pull it off. Yuthura could sense her underlying nervousness. "Well, um, I was just passing, and well, I hadn't seen you around for a while, and, um, thought I'd stop by to see how you were. If you wanted anything. That sort of thing."

"I'm fine, Mission. Thank you for asking." She attempted a reassuring smile. It wasn't something that came naturally. "You can come in if you want to, you know. You don't have to keep hovering by the door."

"Um, yeah." The girl stepped inside tentatively, looking even more uncomfortable.

Am I really that bad? That scary? The thought was a depressing one.

Mission walked across the room until she was standing next to her, in front of the view screen. Her posture was fractionally stiff, not quite at ease. "I also realised that I hadn't thanked you yet. And I should have done. So, thank you."

"Thank me?" That caught her completely unawares. It wasn't the sort of thing she knew how to respond to properly – no one thanked a slave, and the Sith didn't, in general, thank people.

"Well . . . you did just save all our lives, y'know."

Yuthura sighed softly. "Mission, I almost got you all killed. I was . . . stupid. I don't deserve your thanks for that."

Mission just shrugged. "The way I figure it, that's all just a matter of semantics, isn't it?"

Yuthura looked at the girl sidelong. "How do you mean?"

"Well you know. Like how 'almost lost' and 'won' are really just two different ways of saying the same thing." She shrugged. The edge of her nervousness seemed to fade as she spoke. "Almost got us killed. Saved us. It just depends whether you're a glass half-empty or glass half-full type of person. Me, I've always tried to see the glass half-full, 'cause . . . otherwise, well, I figure it might get pretty depressing." Her head tails flexed contemplatively. Abruptly, she looked up at Yuthura's face. "Anyway, how can you think any of what happened is your fault? We were the bunch of stupid nerfherders who blundered straight into Seboba's trap. All you did was rescue us."

Yuthura didn't answer right away.

"I mean, you took over an entire battlecruiser pretty much single-handedly. Even Cassus Fett could only manage a measly frigate, and he's like, this big-shot legend because of it. How damn cool is that?"

She couldn't help but smile slightly in response to Mission's enthusiasm, but it faded quickly. She shook her head. "No. I . . . lost sight of what was really important. I let myself feel hate and anger, and embraced those feelings; came very close to slipping back across a line into what I used to be. And after all I have done – all that I know – that, for me, is absolutely inexcusable."

Mission was peering up at her. "But you didn't though. I mean, it's what you do that matters, right? Not what you think. Like, there've been times – a lot of times – when I've wanted to slap my brother, Griff, so hard his head tails fly off. But I don't act on that. Well, except this one occasion, but he was really asking for it, and well . . . I guess this isn't turning into such a good analogy, huh?"

Yuthura's smile was slightly broader and more definite this time. "You have a brother then?"

Mission rolled her eyes. "Believe me, you do not want to hear about Griff." She sighed, her gaze dropping. One foot idly traced a line back and forth on the plasteel floor. "A person has to make their own choices and decisions, right? You can't do that for them."

Yuthura nodded, head tails flexing in agreement.

Another sigh. "Griff's just Griff, and I've accepted that. I've just got to let him get on with his own life." Abruptly she brightened. "Anyway, Tamar's kind of like a big brother, and he's . . ." She trailed off abruptly. "You're not going to tell him, I said any of this, are you?"

"I promise I won't repeat a single word that you don't want me to."

She nodded, accepting. "Well he's been great. Really cool. Really helped me a lot. I mean half the time, he's too damned serious and needs to lighten up, like, loads, but he's been all the big brother I could ask for . . ." Again, she trailed to a halt, looking rather embarrassed. "Sorry, didn't mean to start babbling like that."

Yuthura blinked slowly, feeling absurdly touched and grateful. "Thank you, Mission."

"Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to be doing the thanking here. And . . . not only for what you just did, but for helping rescue me from Rath and the others. I owe you an apology too . . . for behaving like such a jerk and not trusting you when you were trying to help me."

"You don't have to apologise to me, Mission," she murmured. Her gaze moved back to staring out at the blank view screen. "You were completely right not to trust me. You didn't know me, and all you knew about me was that I used to be a Sith. I hadn't done anything to earn your trust."

"But the point is, you hadn't done anything to earn my distrust either. And if we all have to go around distrusting everyone till they do something to earn our trust . . . Well I'm not sure I like that version of the universe so much."

Yuthura closed her eyes. She felt infuriatingly close to tears, unable to stop herself from imagining what she would once have done to take advantage of that attitude.

"Yuthura? You all right?"

She nodded. "Yes, I'm fine."

There was a pause that started to grow slightly awkward.

"Um, tell me to get lost if I'm being nosey," Mission said eventually, breaking the silence. "But I kind of heard that you Tamar are, well, um, er . . . y'know."

That drew a trace of a smile. 'Well, um, er . . . y'know' seemed a perfectly apt description of the state of their relationship. "And Tamar told you this, did he?"

"I . . . more sort of overheard it. Not that I was eavesdropping," she hastened. "But if people do insist on talking so loudly . . ."

"You can hardly be expected to avoid hearing," Yuthura agreed, solemn.

"That's right. Glad you see it my way. Anyway, something that Jolee said kind of implied . . . And, well, Tamar didn't exactly deny it."

"Does the idea bother you?"

Mission's head tails flicked an immediate and emphatic negative. "No! That wasn't what I meant at all." She stopped abruptly, as if trying to work out what she had meant. "I guess I was kind of sad when I heard that things between him and Bastila hadn't worked out. I mean, it wasn't like her and me were best friends or anything. We irritated the hell out of each other most of the time to be honest. But I kind of think everyone deserves the chance to be happy, don't you?"

"You don't need that kind of relationship to be happy, Mission. You can find happiness equally well on your own."

"Well, yeah. Of course . . . I mean, I guess."

It didn't fit with the ideals of the holo-vids though, Yuthura thought dryly. In those, happily ever after never consisted of someone riding off into the sunset on their own, and romantic love was always so much deeper and more important than any other kind of relationship.

Finally, she nodded. "Yes, we are."

A bright grin slipped briefly through to the surface. "Uh-huh. That's . . . that's cool."

Silence fell between them, and Yuthura began to wish that she wasn't quite so chronically inept at making small-talk when it came to someone she actually liked. When it came to putting on a mask and lying through her teeth, she was up there with the best of them, but this . . . it left her grasping at empty air.

"So, um, I should probably go then. Leave you to . . . whatever." She stopped, before adding suddenly. "Say, do you play pazaak at all?"

Yuthura shook her head. "I've never learnt." Slaves . . . well, slaves didn't have the time, and Sith . . . their games tend to be much less pleasant and innocent pastimes than pazaak.

"Oh." She looked slightly crestfallen at that.

"Perhaps you could teach me though?"

Mission grinned, threading her fingers together and pressing her palms down so that her knuckles cracked. "Yeah. Yeah, I could do that."

- - -

"Fire." Darth Malefic gave a short, chopping signal with one red-gauntleted hand.

On the Excelsior's main viewscreen, Captain Bortha watched a silent volley of turbo-lasers, ion beams and photon torpedoes. Their synchronous detonations created a strange afterimage on his vision, but it was quickly wiped out as a second, then a third painstakingly choreographed sequence fired in quick succession.

When it was over, he didn't know what he'd expected to see, but it was something more than this. The display remained completely unchanged from prior to the attack sequences – utterly blank space, save for a faint backdrop of distant stars.

Around the bridge there was a collective sense of breath being held – of stillness before the coming storm. To have come so far to only end up here, deep in the interstellar void on the borders of the unknown regions, with absolutely nothing to show for it.

No one expected Darth Malefic to take it well. No one wanted to inadvertently make themselves the scapegoat.

But Malefic was simply standing there, stock still, a towering red-enamelled statue. The stillness was not natural. It was a concentrated stillness; a focussed stillness. Bortha found himself waiting expectantly – knowing that something was about to happen. Not knowing what.

Then, in the middle of the viewscreen, a spot of light flared. Somebody gasped.

Something opened. For a moment, it resembled a gigantic, glowing flower – a strange rose, petals opening from tight bud to full bloom in a few fractions of a second. That faded quickly, leaving behind what looked like the mouth of a perfectly circular tunnel, hanging directly in front of them.

"See, Bortha. Your doubts are unfounded," Malefic's voice murmured, just loud enough to carry to his ears, and his ears alone.

Bortha suppressed a shudder, wishing fervently that he had not managed to make himself so prominent in Darth Malefic's notice.

Abruptly, Malefic gestured towards the officer occupying the sensor position. "Lieutenant?"

"Readings show a . . . a spatial anomaly. Possibly some kind of wormhole, my Lord."

Bortha was not an astrophysicist, but he did know that wormholes did not just appear out of nowhere. Most especially, they did not just appear out of space that, a few minutes earlier, their sensors had shown to be completely featureless and empty. He felt the hairs at the back of his neck prickling.

"My personal shuttle has been prepared?"

"It awaits your command, my Lord."

"Good." Malefic turned slowly, until his gaze alighted on Captain's Bortha's first officer, Griggs. "As soon as we are clear, you will take the Excelsior out to a distance of six light hours and power down to minimum levels. Am I clear?"

"Aye, my Lord."

Bortha was just starting to wonder why the order had been directed towards Griggs instead of him, when Malefic turned abruptly and started striding from the bridge. "Bortha, you are with me."

He hesitated.

If there was one regulation out of all regulations that it had been drummed into Bortha that you didn't break, it was this one. The captain – acting or actual – did not leave a starship's bridge when it was operating at full alert status, no matter what the circumstances. It was so far ingrained that even the order of a self-proclaimed Dark Lord of the Sith didn't automatically countermand it inside his head.

Malefic stopped – looked back. Bortha found himself staring at the silver glow spilling from the visor of his crimson helmet. "You have a problem with this, Admiral? You do not wish to take the opportunity to personally inspecting your new fleet?" The voice sounded more amused than angry.

"Admiral?" Captain Bortha wondered if he'd misheard.

"Did I not mention your promotion, Admiral Bortha? Careless of me."

- - -

Bastila watched the assembled fleet with a growing feeling of tightness inside her chest. At her side, her hands clenched, knuckles white. With a deep breath, she tried to find focus – calm and serenity.

And, almost to her surprise, managed it. The knowledge that this was absolutely necessary was small comfort, but in the end, for all her many doubts, it was comfort enough.

She was peripherally aware of Captain Organa moving to stand behind her left shoulder – of a second set of footsteps that stopped several metres further back. They were familiar enough that she didn't need any force sense to know who they belonged to. Canderous.

Strangely, another comfort, knowing that he had her back. Once she would never have thought that remotely possible.

She turned around, acknowledging the Captain with a nod. "We are ready then?"

"We are. The expeditionary force awaits only orders to depart." There was a grimness about him, although she got the sense that beneath that hardened surface, tightly contained, he held nerves and fears of his own. That too, in a strange way, was comforting – that it wasn't just her, and others were able to cope well enough. "Jedi Tobin and Zaerne are not accompanying us then? I had assumed that was why they had been sent."

"Excuse me?" She tried to work out if she could have misheard him.

Captain Organa's surprise at her reaction was apparent. "The two Jedi who arrived to see you yesterday afternoon. They were absolutely adamant that they speak with you at the earliest opportunity. They claimed to be on an urgent mission on behalf of the Jedi Council, although they refused – politely, but in no uncertain terms – to reveal its purpose to me. I sent a message ahead, then put them on a shuttle down to the surface." He paused for a couple of beats. "You mean to say, you didn't speak to them?"

"I didn't even know about them." Cold certainty filled her then. They hadn't been sent to aid her. They'd been sent to fetch her back – the naughty little girl who'd stayed out past her bedtime.

Abruptly she whirled on Canderous, connections sliding into place. Their conversation about force-adepts, and their ability to sense lies and intent, suddenly became blindingly clear. The bastard had intercepted Captain Organa's message.

Under her scrutiny, all he did was raise an eyebrow enquiringly.

"What, exactly, did you do to them?" She didn't bother trying to keep the acid edge from her voice. Inwardly, she was trying to put faces to names. For Tobin she had vague recollections of a very tall and serious looking man she'd seen around the halls of the Jedi temple on Coruscant. They'd never spoken. On Zaerne, she drew a complete blank.

"Let's see. Knocked 'em unconscious, fitted them with disrupter collars, tied them up and gagged them. Yeah, I think that pretty much covers it. I like to think I showed restraint." There was a sense of deep satisfaction about him as he said this.

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, not knowing what to say. She tried again a moment later, to no better effect. "Why?" was the best she could manage.

His gaze was steely – completely unapologetic. "I figure it's my job to deal with complications."

"Complications?" There was an incredulous note to her voice. She was vaguely aware of it rising to a strident pitch and she struggled to rein the volume in. "Complications? What do you think you've just done? How, in the name of the force, do you think I can go about explaining this?"

"You don't have to explain it," he responded mildly. "I'm perfectly willing to stand up in front of this Council of yours and tell them what I did to their precious Jedi Knights. About how you had no prior knowledge of my actions, and how utterly appalled you were when you found out. What are they going to do to me? Take away my medal? Strip me of my honorary rank?"

"You are just . . ." Bastila shook her head. "You are just utterly impossible." There was a whole lot more invective she wanted to heap on him, but she was all too aware of their surroundings and the Starlight Phoenix's bridge crew looking on. She struggled to recover something approaching equilibrium, but her composure had been shattered.

"What would you have preferred to have happened?" he asked, implacable.

"Just about anything but this."

Canderous didn't give an inch. "You'd made your decision, hadn't you? That this new Council were too blinded by political troubles on Coruscant, and too distracted by the idea of Revan. That, not for the first time in the Jedi's history, they didn't appreciate the magnitude of the threat out here on the Outer Rim. You weren't going to change your mind, were you?"

"No." It was gritted through her teeth.

"So what would you have done when confronted by two Jedi sent to fetch you back? What would you do when they refused to be swayed by your arguments, and insisted on fulfilling their assigned mission to the letter? Because make no mistake, that's what these two would have done – inexperienced, inflexible and dogmatic: sound familiar? Would you have stood up to them, even when they tried to take you into custody? Would you have fought them? Or would you have gone meekly with them, leaving Darth Malefic to get what he wants, and this taskforce to get slaughtered, followed by who knows what else."

"It wouldn't have come to that," she said quietly.

"No? Well, now it can't come to that. Now you don't have to make those choices. As soon as you give the order for us to depart, I'll send a message to the surface and tell ground control where I stashed the pair of them. And it'll be done."

She stared at him. The bastard was actually pleased with himself. "I'm going to be expelled from the order for this."

He shrugged. "Maybe. But are you going to turn around, go back to the surface, go back to Coruscant and go back to being the Jedi's pretty little pet – a toy Jedi Knight of no use to anyone? Are you going to take the knowledge that the Vision Well implanted in your head, and your Battle Meditation, and leave us all to face Darth Malefic alone?"

Bastila let out a breath – screwed her eyes shut. "This isn't over Canderous." She was almost quivering with rage, but on one thing he was right – there was no turning back now.

Abruptly she span on heel and walked rapidly across to the helm where Captain Organa had quietly drifted to escape the fallout from their 'conversation'. "You have our destination programmed in, Captain?"

"That I do. The absolute middle of nowhere, exactly as specified."

She sensed the unspoken probe in Organa's words, but pretended that she hadn't. There was nothing more she could say about their destination that would make it seem any more logical. "Then you have my permission to depart in your own time."

- - -

It was a sobering spectacle, Bortha – Admiral Bortha? Even the idea of that still bordered on the ridiculous, the unreal rantings of the purely deranged – thought as he looked out into the void.

And void it was.

It wasn't like the vast interstellar emptiness between stars. It was just . . . utter, unrelenting blackness entirely devoid of distant stars, or indeed anything else. The more rational parts of his brain were wondering if this was some kind of . . . hyperspace pocket perhaps? He wished briefly that his grasp of astrophysics was more solid, and he was more certain whether that was even a possibility. Underneath the brittle surface calm, his instincts prickled, filling him with a mounting disquiet – a sense of utter alien wrongness.

In this void, spreading out beneath the slow, sedate seeming flight-path of their shuttle, were the ships – the fleet that Darth Malefic had mentioned.

The fleet he was, notionally, now admiral of.

They seemed to be split between two different but familial designs. Those in the centre – the main body of the fleet – over which they now passed, were exceeding familiar to someone who had served as commanding officer of the Excelsior for slightly over two years now. Familiar but not quite the same, broader and flatter, the curves of their sleek black flanks noticeably more bulbous and pronounced. These small differences aside, they were obviously equivalent vessels to the Excelsior – top line battlecruisers of supreme deadliness.

A variant design that Revan had never had the chance to press into service, he wondered. Was this what it was all about? A weapon that Revan had been preparing to unleash upon the galaxy, lost when Malak sprung his ambush and struck his master down.

Somehow, though, that didn't quite ring true.

Surrounding these almost familiar vessels, were a design of ship that Bortha hadn't seen before. Around 40 smaller, flatter and significantly more streamlined, without the prominent bridge and command structures rising from the rear of their upper levels, they resembled nothing quite so much as black scalpel blades.

Destroyers, he decided at length, designed to run with a significantly lower complement, and far less in the way of fighters and planetary attack forces on board, but still maintaining similar levels of raw gunpower to their larger sisters. It was just a guess though. He had no way of knowing for sure.

It occurred to him to wonder – faint ticklish doubt – how he could actually see all this, given that there didn't appear to be any light sources in the surrounding black vastness.

"Well, Admiral? What are your thoughts?"

Darth Malefic's voice, originating from close behind him, made Bortha jolt to an embarrassing degree. For all his size and heavy armour, the Sith Lord was capable of moving astonishingly quietly when it suited him. Or perhaps it was simply that he could make a person forget they'd ever heard him.

He tried to choose his answer carefully, in the process of attempting to come up with a rough count of the number ships in his head. 225? Approximately that many, provided there weren't more of them beyond the range of his sight.

"Were we to have means of crewing them all, the impact of so many new capital ships would be immense. I'm not aware of any single fleet currently in Republic, Sith, or other hands that could match it." Bortha kept his voice – and hopefully his thoughts – neutral.

Malefic, chuckled, the sound dry and rasping, subtly distorted through his helmet. "I detect a rather large caveat in your words, Admiral Bortha."

"Even if we don't have means to crew them all, having that many Star Forge constructed vessels in reserve gives a significant tactical advantage," Bortha noted. "Although I am . . . curious as to why you had the battle group remain behind, my Lord. More men would certainly have expedited our laying claim to the ships and moving them." Presuming they were in working order at all. As it was, it was likely to take weeks – maybe longer still.

His enthusiasm levels for the task hovered around the zero level. Admiral to a useless fleet. He supposed that, from the outside, it might look like a good joke.

Another chuckle. "You think me an idiot, don't you?"

Bortha went abruptly cold. A bead of sweat slid down the side of his face and it was difficult, suddenly, to draw breath.

"You don't have to deny it, Bortha. You fear me. That much, I can feel. But you fear me as some kind of brute – an animal, who unaccountably holds your reins and guides you, though it has not the wit to do so."

It was, Bortha thought desperately, best to remain silent. There was nothing he could say that couldn't be used to condemn him.

"Do you really think, Admiral," Malefic continued, "that if I had wanted merely to acquire ships, I wouldn't simply have raided a shipyard somewhere? Do you really think I would have spent so much time and energy acquiring something that I couldn't hope to put to immediate effective use?"

To be honest, Bortha had been assuming more or less exactly that.

"Behold, the Living Fleet of the Rakatan. If you could only sense what I do, Admiral, you would not now be so sceptical."

Living fleet? "I'm not certain I understand, my Lord. You're saying that all these ships . . . they're alive somehow?"

"In the same manner that the Star Forge was alive." Malefic was wearing his crown once more, atop his crimson helm. The spikes glittered with far more light than was currently available to reflect. Bortha felt his flesh creeping as he looked at them sidelong. "As I look out of this viewport I see not a multitude of separate vessels, but a vast connecting web of force conjoined into a single greater entity."

"And this allows them to be . . . operated without crew, my Lord?" He couldn't mask the dubiousness in his voice.

"Not entirely without crew. One strong in the force must join with the fleet to activate and direct it, and a skeleton bridge crew, at the least, is required on board each ship for them to truly operate at their fullest capacity. But no more than five thousand men in total. Think on that, Admiral. A fleet of more than two-hundred capital ships being crewed by the same number of people normally required to operate but a single battlecruiser."

It sounded incredible. Too incredible. The shuttle seemed to be steering right for a particular ship at the dead centre of the surrounding fleet. It looked to be somewhat larger than the surrounding vessels, though not quite on the scale of either the Leviathan or the Firebrand – Malak and Revan's flagships, respectively. Bortha guessed that it served exactly the same purpose as those two vessels though. "What of matters like fighters and gunnery, my Lord?"

"Automated."

Bortha grimaced. Drone fighters were all very well for protecting an asteroid mining facility from pirate attack, but put them against an elite Republic fighter squadron and they'd be lucky to sell themselves ten for one.

"Not mindless drones, admiral. Nothing so crude. They are automated via the force."

The explanation did little to quiet Bortha's doubts. He'd seen far too much of the force during recent years to doubt its existence, but he didn't remotely trust it. As far as he could tell, everyone who came to rely on it, Jedi or Sith, met a bad end, usually taking anyone standing too close along with them. "And Revan created this fleet my lord? Before his . . ." He groped for the correct word. "Downfall?"

"Revan?" The sound that came from inside Malefic's helm was perhaps a contemptuous snort. "No, Admiral, Darth Revan may once have discovered this fleet, but he didn't create it, nor even, in the end, put it to use. As I said, this is the Rakatan Living Fleet. It is far older than either the Sith or the Republic civilisations."

Great. An antique. "And they are still in working order, after all that time?"

"The Star Forge was in full working order, was it not? The force preserves and sustains them, and this void keeps out agents of aging and decay." Through the viewport, the fleet flagship now occupied almost the entire view, darkly gleaming – sinister.

After several seconds of silence, staring at the growing ship, Malefic spoke again, voice soft. "The tale of their creation is an interesting one. Would you care to hear it, Captain?"

"My Lord." Bortha inclined his head and decided to let Malefic take that however he chose to.

He apparently took it as an affirmative. "According to documentation discovered within the Star Forge's computers, the Living Fleet was not constructed by Rakatan high command, as all other Rakatan military vessels were. After all, the Rakatan navy always had ample manpower at their disposal and, with the Star Forge, more ships than they could ever want, so why would they need to construct what you see before you now?"

The question was rhetorical, Bortha sensed, not interrupting.

"Instead, it was the creation of a rebellious Rakatan general, who plotted coup against his masters. This general had neither enough men nor ships of his own to mount a campaign against the entire sum of Rakata's military might, but he was driven by a consuming need for vengeance, and was not about to let such meagre consideration stymie him.

"After several years of painstaking work, building up his powerbase and putting the cogs of his plan in motion, the general finally managed to pull enough strings and peddle enough influence to get himself assigned to the Star Forge in an overseer role. There, with the aid of a senior scientist of surpassing genius sympathetic to his cause, he gradually siphoned off resources, altering design templates, scheduling 'classified' production runs and building up a secret fleet to his own meticulously exacting specifications. A blazing sword of retribution and fury, fit to decapitate high command in a single stroke, as he described it.

"That fleet was a masterwork, and had he been able to put it to use, the general might well have succeeded in his goal. Alas, when the time came, he was betrayed from within by one of his own lieutenants, just as he sparked his great rebellion to life. Captured and convicted of treason, the general was sentenced to have his consciousness separated from his flesh and bound to dwell, eternally alone, within a punishment box – a fate the Rakata regarded as far worse than simple death.

"Even under force interrogation and torture, however, he refused to reveal his hidden fleet's location before the punishment was enacted. No one else was able to find it, and believe me; it was searched for. Eventually it faded into the realms myth."

Bortha digested this. It did absolutely nothing to assuage his deep unease "And Revan managed to uncover this fleet, all these thousands of years later."

"Indeed."

In front of them, the side of the Rakatan flagship now loomed like a glass-smooth, gently curving metal cliff face, stretching as far in every direction as they could see. Bortha could feel the shuttle decelerating gradually around him, the entrance to a landing bay opening up before them like an enormous, devouring metal maw, ready to swallow them. Inside, he could see nothing but absolute darkness.

"I'm surprised that Revan didn't try to use this fleet, if he knew about it," Bortha said after several seconds of lingering hesitation. Too much felt wrong about the situation for him to remain completely silent, even out of the desire for self-preservation.

"Are you, Admiral?"

"Well . . . it seems too useful a weapon for him to simply sit on or ignore."

"Does it?" Malefic seemed dryly amused as much as anything. "You have to remember that he discovered it near concurrently with the Star Forge. I'm sure that he viewed this as very much a secondary prize in comparison."

"Even so, it was surely worth his trouble. This many ships, with, as you say, only the need for skeleton crews to operate them . . ." And if Revan had possessed so many extra ships to call on, the odds were that the war would already have been won well before Malak moved to overthrow him.

"The fleet has not been left completely unprotected by its creator, Admiral. I have read a report written by Revan's head of intelligence operations at the time. It details concentric layers of defences that are formidable to say the very least. And it seems that Revan may not have appreciated his find's true significance until much, much later on."

Bortha remained silent, watching as they flew serenely into the huge vessel. The only source of illumination came from their shuttle's own exterior lighting, creating an impression that was distinctly eerie – flying into a gaping abyss; the belly of a gigantic metal whale. So they were, in fact, planning to penetrate the defences of something that even Darth Revan had apparently not been able to. His feelings about the whole situation were becoming more pessimistic by the instant.

"Revan was just a man." It was almost as if Malefic read his thoughts. "His true power always lay in psychology rather than the force or strength at arms. In comparison to the myths people carry around in their heads, the reality was disappointingly mundane. He was a long way from the darkly infallible genius most recall him as."

Bortha sensed an edge of bitter jealously there – a subject he would do well not to pursue. Inside, he wondered what was more likely – that the entire fleet was completely inoperative, beyond salvage, and this was a complete waste of time, or if some more active kind of doom lay in wait for them amidst the darkness.

The shuttle stopped moving and settled gently to the floor. There was a soft metallic clunk.

"Much as I have enjoyed this conversation, it now must cease." The sense of relief as Malefic turned and walked away was immense. Bortha could feel his legs suddenly shaking with it. "I suggest you prepare yourself, Admiral. This is not likely to be a gentle stroll."

A few minutes later, he was lining up by the shuttle's exit ramp. A double squad of elite Sith troopers, armoured in red to match their dark lord, stood arrayed in front of him. With them were a pair of towering battle droids, gleaming and deadly. Then came the four Dark Jedi; grim crows flanking Darth Malefic's towering, becrowned figure. Finally there was himself, dressed in armour the likes of which he hadn't worn in more than a decade.

At his side stood another Dark Jedi, who Malefic had assigned as his personal bodyguard. Her name was Illarie. If it wasn't for the shaved head, the mask of purple and black tattoos covering her otherwise pale face, and the studs of either sharpened bone or horn that pierced through her cheeks, she might almost have been pretty. Her contempt for him, and the demeaning role she had been assigned, was unspoken but impossible to miss.

The ramp lowered. The Sith troopers moved out on the double, heavy repeaters carried at the ready.

Even as they stepped out into the landing bay, the darkness erupted in light and noise and fury

- - -

Tamar sensed Yuthura's approach, and knew that she was aware of his presence in turn. The delay before the door opened was fractionally prolonged, suggestive of her hesitation.

When she entered, her answer to his smile of greeting was tentative and faded quickly. "I think I might have been avoiding you," she said after a moment's uncomfortable pause. She walked over to a chair and sat down. It seemed to take a special effort on her part, as if at least part of her wanted to turn around and flee.

"Why?" he asked softly. The admission surprised him more than the avoidance.

Her head tails flexed in a manner that he thought indicated that she was deep in thought. Eventually she said, "No remotely good reason."

"What about bad reasons?"

"Oh yes, plenty of those." The wry smile faded as quickly as the first one had. "Shame, mostly, I think. Not wanting to look into your eyes in case I saw disappointment there."

"Yuthura . . ." he started.

She closed her eyes. "Please, Tamar, don't." There was a pause. "And yes, I realise that any disappointment would simply be my own, reflected back at me." She sighed. "I thought I'd come further than that. I thought I was . . . better now. I suppose that a proper Jedi would probably be grateful for having their arrogance and self-deceiving folly revealed to them."

"I think that 'proper Jedi' of that sort are largely a myth. Want to talk . . .?"

"Mission's been a great help pulling me out of my self-indulgent pit of crapulence." A third smile, pale and wan though it was, lingered slightly longer than the first two. "And yes, we probably do need to talk. But for now can we both pretend we know exactly what needed to be said, and have had that conversation already, and then move on from there?"

After a moment, he nodded. "Yes, I think we can manage that."

"Good." She tilted her head back, head tails dangling down behind her. Abruptly she started laughing. "You know, I have no clue what's actually remotely funny here."

"You've been with the released slaves?" he asked after some time had passed.

She nodded slowly, something flickering in her eyes. Her head tails had gone too still for it to be entirely natural. "I think that at least half of them now hate me far more than they ever did Seboba."

He tried to tell if she was joking. The impression he got was that she wasn't. "You're not serious?"

She shrugged, the gesture taking in both shoulders and lekku. "They didn't ask to be rescued, you know."

"But still . . ."

"You have to remember that a majority of them have been slaves for the larger portion of their lives. They don't know anything else, and the thought of freedom scares them." A grimace twisted her face. Angry with herself for ever believing it might be otherwise, he thought. "And when it comes to it, Seboba was a lot more intelligent than Omeesh ever was." She let out a pent-up breath. "He might have been just as cruel and sadistic as my old owner, but he used it in a . . . different way. Some of them . . . loved him I suppose, twisted as that seems. In their eyes, he treated them with kindness, a benevolent master sheltering them from the infinite cruelties of the outside world. If he was harsh now and again, it was only because he cared for them so deeply. I had the temerity to steal that away. Some of them – Nebri, Valouise – will seek to kill me the first opportunity they get, and gladly sacrifice there own lives for the chance to do so."

He stared at her.

"They hate the way I once hated. Only the direction is different." She groaned, hands coming up to briefly cover the lower half of her face as she tilted her head back and stared up at the ceiling.

"That will change in time, you know," he said quietly. "When the healing process starts . . ."

She looked back at him sharply. "There are some wounds that don't heal, Tamar. Not ever. I think you know that just as well as I do. You should do, anyway."

Eventually he nodded – not quite agreement, but acknowledgement of her point of view. "Perhaps you should ask Shiia-Na how she feels about what you've done for her. Get some balance." Shiia-Na was the Togruta she'd freed.

Yuthura didn't say anything. He wanted to cross to her; to hold her – wanted that so much it hurt inside. But he got the strong sense she was too prickly and on edge; too protective of her personal space, which he knew was of paramount importance to her.

"I actually came to see you for a reason. Not just to see how you were." He kept his voice businesslike, sensing that right now she would appreciate that far more than anything that might even hint at commiseration or sympathy, or anything like that.

"Oh?"

"I need your help." He indicated the bag resting on the chair beside him. "That contains about two dozen datapads. They've got copies of all the useful data that T3 managed to retrieve from Auza's datacore on them."

"A bit of light bedtime reading then," Yuthura said dryly.

"Something like that," he agreed. A hand came up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "We've been going about this all wrong." After moment, he amended: "I've been going about this all wrong."

She sat forward in her chair. "How so?"

He shook his head. "You remember Korriban? Those long, late-night games of chess we spent plotting and scheming." A tiny hint of a smile touched his lips. "At the time I did wonder why it all came so naturally to me. Not something that a simple soldier from Deralia should be so . . . adept at."

Her gaze dropped, seemingly studying the backs of her hands. Her voice was quiet. "It's not the sort of thing I'm likely to forget, Tamar."

"Since Dantalus – since our meeting with Darth Auza – all we've been doing is reacting to circumstances. Chasing shadows; being chased. That has to change."

"It's hardly been by choice, you know. We've done what was necessary simply to survive. It's not like there's been an excess of time for anything else."

He nodded. "I don't disagree. But it still has to change, and it has to start changing now. We need to start acting instead of reacting." He gestured at the bag of datapads. "We need to find something in there, and more importantly, we need to find a way to use it. We need to find a way to make her sweat. Draw her out. Make her the one who's dancing to avoid traps. Not us. Make her the one who's reacting to us rather than vice versa."

A head tail angled in a manner that Tamar had come to know as the equivalent to a raised eyebrow. "And that will be easy, will it?"

"No," he said after a short pause. "No, I think it will be exactly the opposite of easy. But that doesn't change the fact we need to do it. Or the fact that I will need your help if it's going to be remotely possible." His gaze locked with hers. "The help of everything that you are."

For a moment, her expression was entirely blank. Then a sharp-toothed grin flowered. "Pass it over here then." She extended a hand to him, towards the bag. As soon as she had it, she opened it, delving inside. "How are the files arranged on here?"

"Chronologically by directory."

She grunted, dividing the datapads into two lots and passing half back to him. "Better get started then, hadn't we?"

Tamar wasn't quite sure how much time had passed when his comm. beeped. It was one of the bridge crew. "A recorded message has just arrived for you, Jedi De'Nolo. It's flagged as urgent."

Something tensed inside him. "What name is it addressed to?"

"Um, both of them. Jedi Knight Tamar De'Nolo; Revan."

The only people outside of the Rancorous who should know his current location were Rath Gannaya and Dreya's Bastion. Of course, he realised with a slow sinking feeling that information could have spread by now, like a rapidly mutating virus . . . "Who's it from?"

"The identity tags have been . . . obscured.

Figured. "Does it have holo? If so, put it through to the console in Yuthura Ban's quarters. Otherwise play it over this link."

A few seconds later, the console activated and the head and shoulders of a grey-skinned Rodian appeared, floating above it. Just for a moment, he thought it might have been Suvam Tan, possibly with a rather belated warning about Defels.

Then he looked more closely. It wasn't Suvam, but it was someone else he was familiar with.

"Hulas," he murmured beneath his breath.

The holo started to speak.

- - -

Finally, after the best part of two days of near continuous fighting, there was a lull. To Bortha it seemed unreal, the silence impossibly huge and – paradoxically – loud in contrast to the prior cacophony.

The droids had come at them right from the outset, and they had come in thick waves, their onslaught relentless. He'd lost count of the numbers after the first ten minutes, blaster fire filling the air like rainfall in a lashing storm. Lightsabers flashed; force lightning crackled, and it had been ceaseless. Forward progress became measured in the handfuls of metres a minute, painstakingly slow.

That when they weren't being forced into rapid retreat, or hopelessly pinned down.

And in the brief periods when the intensity of the droid attacks did drop off, there had been very little chance of respite. During these spells they'd had to deal with the traps – far more deadly and insidious than simple droid attacks.

Now, though, felt slightly different. Several minutes had passed since the last blaster shot was aimed their way, and more importantly, the entire quality of their surroundings had changed. The ribbed, curving corridors – completely unlike the interior of the Star Forge vessels Bortha was familiar with, which were much more human in aesthetic – had opened out around them into a vast-seeming open space.

They must have been somewhere near the heart of the ship. Literally the heart of the ship perhaps. To Bortha it felt like they were tiptoeing through an immense cathedral in the middle of the night.

The lights they carried barely reached the curving metal walls on either side, and the ceiling disappeared from view somewhere high overhead. That had been another problem – the lack of light. Although the ship was obviously running at least back-up power – doors operated, lifts worked, and there was certainly enough juice available to operate the multifarious traps – the lights were off and there was no obvious way of turning them on. Added to the fact that neither the attacking droids, nor the traps, showed up particularly well in infrared, and it all started to get more than a bit unpleasant.

A dozen metres ahead, Darth Malefic, flanked by two of the surviving Dark Jedi, signalled a halt.

Getting this far had cost six Sith troopers and a pair of Dark Jedi their lives. In the circumstances, Bortha thought sourly, they'd probably gotten off lightly. There'd been times during the past interminable hours when he'd been certain that they were all going to die, pretensions of being Dark Lord of the Sith or otherwise. He still didn't believe they were remotely safe.

In fact, he had a nagging sense that this was simply the calm before an even greater storm.

The image of Alok Zar – a Zabrak Dark Jedi – leading the way down a seemingly empty section of corridor, then stopping abruptly in his tracks with a comically surprised look on his face, was something that would haunt him for a long, long time. A fraction of a second later, the Zabrak had slid to the floor, separated neatly into six pieces. There had been surprisingly little blood.

The cause had been near invisible monomolecular-filaments strung across the corridor at random heights and intervals. Alok Zar had managed to blunder through three of them before he'd noticed anything was wrong, cutting straight through upper-chest, mid thigh and ankles as if they weren't there. For all the horror, there had been an absurdly comedic element to it.

As he got nearer to Malefic, he stopped, scarcely noticing as the surviving troopers moved to establish a perimeter.

The back wall of the chamber loomed out of the darkness in front of them. It was a dense, tangled web of pipes, cables and filaments, woven together to cover all the surface of the wall that he could see. The patterns of this complex, intricately twisted and intertwining mass had a strange splendour, resembling in its complexity something that had grown over thousands of years rather than being built, for all the obvious artificiality of its nature.

As he stared at it, Bortha half expected to see it slowly moving, alive as a nest of mating serpents.

This entire tangle converged on a point directly in front of them. Here, half-embedded in the greater mass, was a structure that resembled a humanoid-shaped cage shaped out of strips of darkly gleaming metal. It reminded Bortha slightly of a high-tech version of an ancient torture device – an iron maiden, he thought it was called. The occupant – if it was intended to be occupied – would be held, securely pinned in cruciform.

"At last," Bortha heard Malefic breathe.

"What is it, my Lord?" That was one of the Dark Jedi. Kassar, Bortha thought his name was.

"It is what we seek: the nerve centre of this place. Can you not feel it? The way the force flows around us like rivers of molten lava."

Bortha could certainly feel his flesh crawling. Of the force, he had no clue.

"I . . . I feel it, master." The sudden, sheer exultation in Kassar's voice was, Bortha thought, overdone by several orders of magnitude. "It is . . . it is incredible!"

"Indeed." Bortha recognised a certain dryness to the Dark Lord's tone. He watched as Malefic stepped forward, closer to the strange cage.

For a moment the giant, red-clad figure stood in front of it, head slightly dipped in a manner that suggested he was listening to something. Then he extended a hand and touched something that Bortha couldn't see. There was a whisper-soft hissing sound and the front of the cage came open.

Malefic turned back to look at Kassar. "Whoever occupies this cradle joins not only with this ship, but the entire fleet around us. Effectively, they become part of the fleet, and the fleet becomes part of them. A symbiotic relationship."

"It is fascinating, master."

As he looked on, Bortha's throat felt dry.

"Isn't it just? Would you care to be the first to try it out, Kassar?"

Kassar's mouth opened, then closed again without producing sound. Abruptly he dropped onto one knee before Darth Malefic, his head bowed. "You honour me more than I could possibly imagine, my Lord."

"I should warn you, Kassar. It is supposed to require a considerable amount of power for the ship to accept you. The chance I offer is not without risk, and you are taking a step – for all the knowledge I have – across the boundaries of the unknown."

"I am not afraid, my Lord."

"Of course you are not." Amused contempt, Bortha thought. "You may still back out if you wish. You will face no sanction if that is your choice."

But of course, it was utterly impossible for Kassar to back out. Even without the strangely avid gleam in the Dark Jedi's eyes – thoughts of prestige gained, no doubt.

Arms outstretched to either side, Kassar stepped back into the embrace of the cage – or cradle, as Malefic had called it. The look on his face was exultant as the metal closed around him, locking him in a tight embrace.

"All you need to do is start to channel the force through your flesh. The ship itself should guide you from there."

But Kassar apparently didn't need those words, already doing as Malefic said before he'd finished speaking. Bortha watched with a kind of dread fascination.

Kassar's eyes slid shut. The mass of cables and filaments surrounding him seemed to move – no, definitely moved – writhing and twisting like the mass of snakes Bortha had imagined earlier. A fraction later, Kassar made a quiet groaning noise that sounded almost orgasmic. Wide-eyed, Bortha realised that several of the finer filaments were wrapping round him, even piercing and joining with his flesh.

The groan became louder. Pale ghost-lights began to flicker and crawl across the walls, and the air around Bortha started to feel thick and heavy, loaded with . . . something. Swallowing, he took an involuntary step backwards. No one else appeared to notice though, too busy staring at the scene playing out in front of them.

Abruptly Kassar's eyes snapped open again. They seemed to be staring off into a distance that only he could see, oblivious to everything around him. His mouth worked. "I can . . . I can see. I can see everything. Feel it . . . inside me."

"Fascinating," Darth Malefic intoned hollowly. "Now, perhaps you can do something about turning off the defence systems and switching on the lights?"

Another groan was wrenched from Kassar's lips. "The defences are . . . there is no off, but they . . . recognise us now, my Lord." Suddenly, he seemed to be in pain. Bortha could see sweat beading on his face, little tremors shaking through him.

"Excellent."

Then the lights came on. It was gradual – so gradual that, for the first few seconds, it seemed to be nothing more than overactive imagination – but within about a minute it was bright enough to see the curving walls on either side, and, finally, the ceiling high above them. The impression of a cathedral, the cradle surrounding Kassar its bizarre altar, was only reinforced.

"Very good, Kassar." Malefic sounded amused again, but also perhaps slightly disturbed, as if he hadn't expected the Dark Jedi to be able to master things so readily. As if he'd expected the ship to reject, or at least resist him. "Now, perhaps you can pull up information on the fleet's current operational status – any damage, and so forth."

"M-my Lord." The shaking appeared to be getting worse, and the sweat was truly dripping now. "So big. It is alive. It is."

"I had something slightly more detailed in mind than, alive, Kassar. Please do try to concentrate."

Face greasy, Kassar managed to nod. Bortha saw him try to swallow, but it turned into what looked like strangled choking, a line of drool spilling from one corner of his mouth. He got it under control after about thirty seconds, but he didn't look to be in pain now so much as agony.

Malefic made a noise that sounded like exasperation. "Withdraw, Kassar. It is obviously too much for you. Disconnect, and step out of the cradle."

For a moment, Bortha thought that Kassar was going to be stupid enough to demure. But he managed another nod several very long seconds later.

And then, suddenly, the Dark Jedi screamed.

It was a shockingly loud, raw sound, and Bortha was startled into taking several rapid backwards steps before he got a hold of himself. Next to him, Illarie's normally hard, sneering surface – already somewhat fractured from the constant attrition of the past day or so – cracked entirely, for a few short seconds at least. Her eyes looked wild.

"I can't! I can't! I can't! It won't let me!" Quickly even that small amount of coherence was overwhelmed, and the scream resumed, rising to ear-splitting intensity.

The air wasn't just heavy any more; it was crackling. The flickering ghost-lights crawling across the wall behind Kassar grew brighter and brighter, until Bortha finally had to flinch away, negative neon afterglow burnt into his retinas. Just as surely, the image of Kassar thrashing and twisting violently, attempting to rip himself bodily from the cradle, had burnt itself into his mind's eye.

The screaming dissolved into a ragged, animalistic howling, before finally losing even that much coherence as something inside Kassar's throat seemed to break. There was a spitting, hissing noise; a hideous wet tearing, and the acrid smell of something organic burning. Bortha was dimly aware of gritting his teeth so hard he was in danger of grinding them to stumps.

Briefly, the scream rose again in an unstructured shrieking wail, before suddenly there was a snap-hiss – Malefic's double-bladed lightsaber igniting. A moment later, the humming swoosh of a single emphatic saberstroke.

And then, mercifully, silence.

Bortha's ragged breathing sounded loud to his own ears. Gulping air into his lungs, he forced himself to open his eyes again.

Darth Malefic had opened the cradle again, and was peering at what it now contained. Bortha received an impression of something raw and burned – an overcooked side of meat – giving off tendrils of grey-white steam. At that point, he decided that he really didn't need to see any more closely than he already had.

"Interesting," Malefic finally murmured, pulling back from Kassar's remains and breaking the dreadful silence. "Obviously he lacked the power he thought he possessed. A pity. Does anyone else want to try?"

The lack of response was echoing.

"No takers?" Malefic's amusement was palpable. "Never mind. I will remember your collective courage well. My true apprentice should be arriving shortly though. Hopefully she will fare rather better."

- - -

"A wormhole," Captain Organa stated, finally breaking the silence. "I presume that this is what we're looking for?"

Bastila simply nodded, staring at it. There was nothing else of note in this volume of space, and the wormhole – if that was truly what it was: sensor readings were slightly ambiguous on that precise point – was in exactly the location her vision had suggested it should be.

Looking at it, other knowledge she hadn't known she'd possessed flickered from the depths. How you were supposed to open it. How you closed it again.

A shudder passed through her.

The tension on the bridge around her was palpable. She could feel it from all sides, claustrophobic, amplifying her own darker feelings, which she was struggling to keep in check. There had been no Sith fleet waiting for them as they'd expected, but it hadn't come as a relief to anyone. Almost the opposite in fact.

"Looks like we're late again," Canderous muttered.

"That happens too many times and it starts to get unfashionable," Organa added wryly

It was hard to disagree with their assessment. The chances of them having gained enough ground on Darth Malefic as to have overtaken him and arrived here first seemed vanishingly small. And if we'd got here first, the wormhole shouldn't be open, the knowledge that wasn't hers and that she shouldn't have, whispered to her.

She frowned, concentrating hard to block out any surrounding distractions. There was something . . . something . . .. Her eyes lost focus on what was in front of her, all sense of time and surroundings phasing out.

Canderous was peering at her closely, his gaze questioning. Almost to her surprise, she was still upright. "Decide to leave us for a second there, Princess? Don't really blame you."

She tried to sort through her thoughts. She could feel her heart thudding, far too fast and hard. "There's something in there," she finally managed. "I felt . . . a disturbance in the force." Ripples of pain – of unrelenting agony – abruptly cut off by different, darker ripples. Death. She nodded at the viewscreen. "There. Through there. There's someone still inside."

No one said anything right away.

"You're certain?" Organa finally asked.

"Absolutely." She couldn't take her eyes from the screen. She could still feel faint, demented ripples, and something else . . . something strange and alien that seemed to have, just that instant, woken up from a long slumber.

A shudder passed through her. Finally, she managed to tear her gaze away. "Have an armed shuttle prepped. I want a commando team readied to accompany myself and General Ordo. We're going in." She turned on heel abruptly and started to walk from the bridge.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Captain Organa asked after her.

Bastila looked back at him; took a deep breath. "When I become remotely 'wise', Captain, I'll be certain that you're the first to know."

- - -

Cloaking technology had never, for all there had been hundreds of years of research into it, proved to be as useful in practice as it seemed it should be in theory.

The big show-stopper of a problem with it, that no one had so far been able to successfully address, was the fact that when a cloaking device was up, it prevented anyone on the inside seeing out just as surely as it prevented anyone on the outside seeing in. Switch it on, and a spaceship effectively became completely blind to the universe as well as invisible. Which was extraordinarily dangerous if you had hopes of moving anywhere while cloaked.

Add to that the fact that it was still possible to detect a starship's drive emissions, even when it was cloaked, and you had a device where the drawbacks seemed to thoroughly outweigh the advantages.

The Republic expeditionary force, with their sensors trained on the worm hole in front of them, were certainly not on the look out for a cloaked ship moving among them. That, conventional wisdom dictated, should have been impossible.

Impossible, that is, other than for a highly skilled pilot who was capable of sensing beyond the confines of their own vessel and through the surrounding cloaking field via the force.

The cloaked ship was only just larger than a hyperspace capable fighter, manoeuvring invisibly through their neatly arrayed formations, going so slowly that any emissions it gave off were strictly minimal and masked to a greater degree by the Republic vessels surrounding it.

There was only a single person on board that ship: the pilot. After many painstaking minutes, it finally broke clear of the surrounding Republic vessels with not one of them remotely the wiser to its presence.

It flew, steadily and surely, towards the mouth of the wormhole, trailing closely behind a heavily armed shuttle launched from the expeditionary force's flagship – the Starlight Phoenix.