Shattered Knight Chapter 17: A Lesson in Pain, a star wars fanfic

17. A Lesson in Pain

Dustil Onasi wiped a hand across his brow, smearing sweat and grease in messy streaks. He laid the hydrospanner down carefully on the pitted, oil-stained plastocrete floor and quietly closed the side compartment in the speeder's main thrust engine.

Then, still lying on his back, he listened intently, despite the fact that he knew with queasy certainty that it wasn't any sound that had caught his attention. He tried to strangle down the spark of Force presence inside himself even more firmly than he normally spent his every waking hour doing.

Why now, an inner voice demanded. It sounded scared, and he gritted his teeth, angry with himself. His right hand crept across the plastocrete towards his toolbox. More especially, towards the vibroknife and holdout blaster it contained. In the background, he could make out the distant sounds of Coruscant's traffic. Slightly closer came muffled shouting and clanking as freight was unloaded from trucks in the surrounding depots. In the immediate proximity though, everything was quiet.

Far too quiet. Even the incessant background hum of Glotz whistling tunelessly or muttering to himself about the general unfairness of life was gone, replaced by slow, steady, rhythmical breathing.

Asleep. Dustil was almost surprised to find that the mechanic didn't snore.

Then he froze, fingertips still trailing short of the toolbox. His heart lurched, the abrupt, wild thumping of it drowning out everything else. Under the curve of the speeder's sleek hull, he could see someone standing. Or at least, he could see a pair of boots.

Black. Highly polished, with low heels. Practical design. The cut, and the slender leanness of the legs, were both subtly feminine. Above the tops of those boots, he could see the hem of a plain brown robe.

Fraking, frak-faced frak. With frak on top.

Dustil's head tilted back and he found himself staring up at the ceiling, choking back on a rising panic attack. A Jedi. He had the sudden urge to drive his clenched fist hard into the plastocrete floor. What in all the hells was a Jedi doing here?

Except he knew the answer to that one well enough, didn't he? It had been bound to happen eventually. Somewhere inside he'd even been expecting it.

The Jedi hadn't moved, or spoken, or made any other attempt to announce her presence. Part of him clung to the hope that she hadn't noticed him yet – that if he didn't do anything to attract her attention she would eventually get bored and go away.

Except Jedi didn't get impatient. And she was looking directly at him. Or more precisely, at his feet, sticking out from underneath the speeder. Two people, completely silent, staring at each other's feet. It struck him that it should have been funny . . . except his sense of humour seemed suddenly to have atrophied.

Finally, he wetted painfully dry lips and forced himself to speak. "If you're looking for Mr Slynt, you want the office through the front entrance."

"Thank you." Dustil had heard more emotion from a computerised spaceport announcer. "But no, it's actually you I'm here to see, Dustil."

"Dustil?" He tried to keep his voice neutral; disinterested. Fraking, fraking frak.

"Everyone here thinks your name is Nikos. That's what your ident papers say. But we both know differently, don't we?"

"Do we?" He snagged the holdout, for all the good it would do him. She stood squarely between him and the exit.

"Shall we do each other the courtesy of not playing games? I know that you're Dustil Onasi, only son of the Republic war hero, Carth Onasi. I know that you dropped out of the Coruscant Academy three months ago; walked out of your brand new apartment, and haven't touched a single credit from the sizeable allowance fund your father set up on your behalf. There are certain lies we can bypass."

Just frak off. I don't want to talk to you. The temptation to use his old trick for ending unwanted conversations flared briefly despite the vows he'd made, but . . . on a Jedi of any strength, it was likely to prove entirely counterproductive.

And she was strong. Senses he'd been striving to ignore for a long time told him that much.

Taking a deep breath, slipping the tiny blaster he held up the sleeve of his oil-stained coveralls, Dustil forced himself to rise to his feet. He could feel his stomach fluttering unpleasantly. "So, what is it you want exactly, Jedi?" Jedi was pronounced as an insult. "I'd have thought you'd have more important things to worry about, what with your own masters being murdered in recreation parks."

He'd seen the breaking news feeds a couple of hours earlier, on his break. They'd left him fighting down deep disquiet. Perhaps he should have paid that disquiet more heed.

"I am no more a Jedi than you are a speeder mechanic."

He stared at her. The hood of her robe was pulled up, her face concealed in shadow. Just for a moment though . . . it didn't look like she had any face at all. Simply a blank space.

Suddenly his heart was thumping again. He swallowed, trying to find his voice. It had a hard, angry edge when he finally spoke. "Then you're every bit a Jedi."

"Is this really all you want, Dustil?" He thought she was amused, though there was no external sign of it. "Do you really think that this is what the universe is going to allow you to be?"

"I don't give a frak. I've heard all that tedious bantha swill about destiny and the will of the Force before. Get out of here, Jedi. I told Thalia I wasn't interested. I'm telling you the same."

That had been what put him on this course. Part of it, anyway. Thalia May and Kel Algwinn had come to see him in the pristine apartment that was supposed to be his home – the apartment his father had bought for him. They'd both been dressed in plain Padawans' robes, and had spoken calmly and matter-of-factly about second chances and opportunities to make atonement; of serving something far deeper and more rewarding than simply oneself. He'd barely recognised them, entirely different people to the individuals he'd known on Korriban. They'd hardly seemed like people at all in fact – smiling, brainwashed automata serenely spouting dogma.

And that had terrified a deep-seated part of him; filled another part with burning rage. Jedi. Sith. The galaxy would be better off without either. He hadn't actually told Thalia he wasn't interested. Instead, he'd said that he would think carefully about their words as he ushered them out the front door. The moment it had closed behind their backs, he'd started packing his bags.

He realised now he should have gone off world.

"I told you, I'm not a Jedi." She stepped forward, and the shadows beneath her cowl lost some of their depth.

She wore a featureless metal mask beneath. Dustil stared at it, his own shadowy reflection faintly visible in the mirrored surface. He could see his hair standing up in wild spikes. "What then?" There was an abrupt heaviness inside, and the realisation that he was – potentially – hiding from far worse things than Jedi. "Sith?"

"Would a Sith have settled for putting your friend there to sleep? Would we simply be talking now?"

He took a step back from her, inwardly weighing up his options. He could, he judged, have the holdout in hand and fire before she could ignite a lightsaber and block. However, the shot would have to be near perfect.

And it was his father who was the crack shot of the family.

Instead, he stepped to the side, hoping to draw her into walking round the speeder and opening up a clear line to the exit.

"Maybe. Maybe not," he said. Not idiot bullies like Bandon, Shaardan and Lashowe had been, certainly. But others, like Master Yuthura . . . she'd been able to tie them into knots simply by raising one brow, or smiling in a certain way. She'd rarely had to resort to anything as uncouth as threats. "And that wasn't a denial."

"No it wasn't." She made no move to follow him around the speeder. "I'm a Sith in exactly the same way that you're a Sith, Dustil."

"And what's that supposed to mean, precisely?" He thought about trying to tap the Force to speed his movement as he made a run for it. It was a long time since he'd done anything like that, and he'd spent a long time trying to forget he even possessed that ability – to suppress it until it eventually withered and died entirely, leaving him free to live a normal life.

"That I left them, just like you did. Two years ago now, in fact, after it became very clear that our vision had been lost. Those weren't the reasons I'd joined the fight."

"Well, hey, I'm happy for you. But whatever it is you're trying to peddle, save your breath. If this is an invitation to some kind of Sith deserters' reunion party or something, then sorry, but please pass on my regrets."

The mask of course gave no hint of an underlying expression, but he had the impression she was amused once more. "Are you happy, Dustil? Do you like your job here, working for a pittance for Keigo Slynt? Perhaps it's all the fascinating people you come into contact with that makes it so rewarding for you?" There was an odd twist to her voice as she spoke – inwardly directed he thought. "Do you truly think you're fulfilling even a fraction of your potential?"

"I don't deal with people who hide behind masks." He made his voice cold and hard.

After several very long seconds, the woman nodded. "A sensible enough attitude, I suppose." Then she reached up and freed a pair of hidden catches.

For a moment, Dustil thought he was going to pass out, the rest of the world suddenly very, very distant. He couldn't wrench his gaze away.

"Is it all right if I put it back on now?" Her voice was different now, no longer so artificial. He wondered how she even formed words without the aid of lips. "One of the reasons I wear it is because otherwise, I'm prone to picking up infections."

Dustil nodded vaguely. Dear, sweet Force . . . "W-What happened to you?"

The mask clicked pack into place. "A war wound."

He swallowed, thoughts whirring. If she'd incurred an injury like that on a battlefield, it would have killed her. There was nothing accidental that could cause such specifically targeted damage . . . "Someone did that to you deliberately." He felt suddenly nauseous. "It was a punishment."

She inclined her head – didn't say anything.

"Can't you . . .. Can't anyone do anything to fix it?"

There was a pause. "Possibly," she said finally. "But it would be a very lengthy and expensive procedure, and in the end it wouldn't be my face it restored. Besides, it's the scars we all carry on the inside that are the worst ones, wouldn't you agree?"

Dustil groped for some kind of response. All of a sudden, he felt almost entirely enervated, unable to get past the vision of that near-skeletal visage. "What do you want? Why come to me?" This time the words were quiet and subdued.

"Maybe I want to help you."

The cynicism, and the fear, were back, full force. "Right."

"Can't you see what you're doing to those around you, Dustil? Can't you see what you're becoming?"

"What I'm becoming?" His face twisted in an angry sneer. Anger was better than fear. Or doubt. "Oh, please. Just frak off. Whoever the hell you really are."

"Morrigance."

"What?"

"My name. My real name, for what it's worth."

Dustil was starting to look to the exits again, desperate to be away. Away from her.

She noticed, apparently. "Run away then, if that's what you want. I won't chase you. Disappear again, somewhere else this time. A deeper, darker hole. It won't make any difference. Someone will still find you, and you'll still become what you're becoming."

"So what am I becoming? I asked once. Stop babbling." The rage was searing then, and he embraced it. He could use it. Feed from it . . .. Uthar Wynn's voice was close then, an echoing ghost in his soul. Gritting his teeth, he shoved it away. No. He'd abandoned that. It was no longer a part of his life.

Morrigance seemed oblivious to the inner turmoil. "If you used your eyes – your senses – instead of trying to hide away, you'd know already."

He sneered again, though it was forced and unconvincing this time.

"A black hole of bad luck; a singularity of negative probability." Quiet and calmly matter-of-fact. "That's what you are now."

Dustil snorted, caught unawares. "Is this some kind of joke?"

He could sense her amusement and grimaced, adding. "My luck is just fine."

"Your luck, yes," she agreed. "Because you're the beating heart of the singularity. Take how you got this job, for instance. An accident with a repulsor-jack. A paralysing injury to open up a vacancy, just when you needed it."

As he listened to her, he felt something twist inside. His teeth ground together. He wanted to barge past her and out of there, but something held him in place.

"Perhaps you'd like to ask Mr Slynt about profits since you started working for him? About all the inventory that's been damaged in transit; the break ins; the emergency loan he's been forced to take out with Reedol Larp. And I don't suppose you've noticed the way that the speeders you work on have an alarming tendency to be involved in traffic accidents? No? Check. It's really quite alarming. Three of them fatal in the past month. Nothing to do with your skill as a mechanic, I hasten. You're actually quite good at that."

"You're lying." Something in his saliva tasted bitter.

"Am I? Well, you can verify what I say one way or another easily enough. And then we come to the matter of Elendri Ves."

In that moment, it felt like something in him was going to seize up entirely. "Don't" It was barely audible, but steeped in fury.

If Morrigance noticed, she didn't seem to care. "A purple Twi'lek. Interesting. Do you find it comforting when she tells you what to do?"

Dustil's voice wouldn't work. The urge to simply use the holdout and damn any other consequences was almost overpowering.

"She was going to leave when she met you, you know that? She'd finally saved up enough money and gathered together enough courage to take the out she's been searching for since she was thirteen. But then she met you, and fell in love, and decided to stay put just a little longer. What are the odds, do you think, a few months down the line, of her being beaten to death when – because of you – she refuses the implied extras that go with a massage?"

"Shut up!" Suddenly the holdout blaster was in his hand, pointed directly at that polished metal mask. "Get out of here. Now!" He forced his voice slightly calmer. "You know that, as a Sith, I won't hesitate to shoot you for a second."

She didn't move. "But you're not a Sith anymore, are you Dustil?" The words were calmly clinical. "That's the whole problem, isn't it? You're not anything at all."

"I will shoot." It sounded hollow and desperate even to his own ears.

"You can't hide from the Force, Dustil. You can't cut yourself off from it, however hard you try, because it's inside you, and it has been awakened. The more you try to run away and deny it, the more it will find other ways of leaking out. And with you, right now, it leaks out dark, tainting everything and everyone around you. It will only get worse."

He wanted to scream denial, but somewhere inside every single word made perfect sense, biting deep.

"So you just show up out of nowhere, and, out of nothing more than the pure goodness of your heart, you want to help me. Yeah, right." He put every bit of venom and contempt he could muster into his voice. "Bit stupid of you to risk my aura of bad luck though, supposing for a moment that it's even fractionally true."

"I can shield myself." She sighed abruptly. "Nothing I've told you is a lie. Elendri . . . well, Elendri is just a guess, but an educated one I think. Are you really going to take that risk?"

"Last chance." He tightened his finger on the blaster's trigger.

Her apparent calm remained infuriatingly unaffected. "I'm going to reach into my pocket now. Just a warning. I'd prefer not be shot in the head in the meantime."

Dustil stared at her as she pulled out a datacard and laid it on the floor between them.

"I don't expect you to just accept my word. I know you're not an idiot. But check out what I've told you. I urge you to do that much, at least." She nodded down at the datacard. "That contains contact details you can use do get in touch with me during the next 72 hours. Or throw it away, if that's what you really want."

Then she turned her back on him and started walking away. Dustil kept the blaster trained on her back, but he knew he wouldn't pull the trigger. He felt drained – empty. Something crawled in his gut.

At the threshold, she paused and glanced back. "Oh, just one more thing."

She nodded towards Glotz's unconscious form. "Since he started working with you, he's begun to experience pain while he's urinating. Tell him to get it checked out. It's every bit as serious as he's too scared to admit thinking."

Then she was gone.

-s-s-

"See, Mr Mayer? These Sith are not so invincible as you make out, hmm?" This was followed by a rather odd, liquid chuckling noise.

Carth barely heard Illacq, the Quarren duty officer responsible for security on the outer ring of Kamari Station. Instead, he was staring down from the security station window at the scene unfolding below him with a mixture of grim fascination and dread.

Twenty-one separate shots from Republic standard issue blaster rifles slammed into the Catcher as near to simultaneously as made no difference. Another three went wide. The lightsaber dangling from the Dark Jedi's hand didn't shift even fractionally in an attempt to block. Not that it would have made much difference if it had.

There was no crack and flash of personal shields, though given the concentrated power of that barrage, any personal shield Carth knew about would have been torn to shreds inside a fraction of a second. And the blaster shots definitely hit a target solid enough to stop them.

Yet the Catcher didn't go down.

The smile on his darkly handsome face remained fixed. He kept on walking smoothly forwards at exactly the same pace as before, entirely unscarred by the hail of incandescent energy.

"You were saying?" Yolanda's voice, desert dry, expressed exactly what Carth was thinking. His throat was clenched too tightly right then to make speech an option, though.

The Quarren made a noise akin to a deflating balloon. From below came muffled shouts of disbelief, then urgency – frantically yelled orders to stop or they would shoot again.

The second volley of blaster shots was far more erratic than the first, barely half of them finding their intended target. The Catcher kept on advancing, no more affected than before. His fixed smile didn't waver.

"Something is wrong here." Dr Ellas's statement seemed so utterly and blindingly obvious that it almost made Carth laugh.

Off to one side, one of the automatic doors down below them opened spontaneously, seemingly with no one nearby. A few seconds later it closed again, though Carth barely noticed. His attention remained fixed on the Catcher as he advanced steadily through the now continuous barrage of blaster fire, as easily as if he was strolling through nothing more taxing than a light, refreshing rain.

And suddenly, the Catcher seemed to be glowing, bright enough that it rapidly became painful to look at. What the . . .?

"Get down!" It was Ellas's voice, louder and more emphatic than Carth had heard it before. Seemingly, it had an element of the Force woven into it, because Carth's body responded before his brain could consciously intervene.

He had a last, lingering impression of the Catcher dissolving to reveal something else – something hard and metallically glinting; a droid, perhaps – underneath. Then he was face down on the security station floor, Yolanda already beside him.

A fraction of a second later there was an explosion.

Even muffled through the several centimetres of reinforced durasteel, the noise was deafening. Even face down, with his hands cradling his head and his eyes screwed tight shut, the intensity of the flash turned everything behind his eyelids white. There was a high, tortured shrieking as metal tore and buckled, and suddenly intense heat washed over his back, uncomfortable even through an insulating layer of padded armour.

Then calm reasserted itself.

The only sound, apart from a phantom roaring in his ears, was the steady crackling of nearby fires. Stumbling slightly, wincing, he forced himself back to his feet.

Yolanda was already up, blaster in hand, face angry red as though with sunburn. The ends of her blonde wig were badly charred. Ellas was in the process of rising, looking equally the worse for wear.

Illacq though . . .

The Quarren had apparently been slow to react to Ellas's warning, resistant to the Force in a most unfortunate way. A plate of transparisteel, torn free from the security station's window, had sliced right through him from left shoulder to somewhere just beneath his left armpit. Thin, oily blood the colour of liquorice was splattered everywhere.

The smell of it hit the back of Carth's throat and suddenly he was struggling to stop himself from vomiting. He wheeled away, gasping for air. Down on the floor below, there was absolute carnage. The entire security force had been utterly annihilated. All Carth could see of them were a series of charred, contorted lumps where even species was impossible to determine visually. That urge to vomit redoubled.

And in his mind's eye he could see the automatic door, seemingly opening spontaneously for no good reason . . .

He swore, drawing the matched pair of vibroblades strapped across his back. Fear spiked hard, turning his voice harsh. "Get out of here. Now! He's coming for us."

And in his head, he heard the Catcher chuckle. Carth . . . so nice to see you survived. Shall we play a little game?

-s-s-

"That's her then, is it?"

Tamar had, of course, known that Bastila was waiting for him. A moment later, he'd also known that she'd known that he knew, and stopped in front of the closed door. Before that, he'd been on the point of walking straight back to the shuttle's main passenger hold. Putting it off a little bit longer.

The door slid closed at his back, cutting them both off from the rest of the ship.

He sensed a flash of annoyance from her then. It was inwardly directed, he sensed – frustration that her words and emotions weren't more controlled. They were both out of practise at dealing with each other at this proximity, and things were slipping through that never had before.

It wasn't making the situation any easier for either of them.

"Her?" he asked quietly, knowing well enough. Better faced now than avoided, he tried to tell himself. The situation between them was in danger of turning poisonous. He could feel it. At the moment, the re-opened bond was more like a shared, festering wound.

"Yuthura Ban. That's her name, isn't it? Who else did you think I meant, precisely?" The clipped preciseness of it made him wince. He didn't need a bond to read that.

A fraction later, he almost winced again as the implications of what she was saying sank in.

"Of course I bloody felt it," she went on, in response to words not yet voiced. "You weren't making any attempt at all to shield it from me, were you? It wasn't like I could avoid knowing what was going on." Bastila paused briefly then, seemingly searching for something in his face. Her eyes were so intense they were difficult to look at. "That first time, I was in the middle of a Battle Meditation trance. Perhaps that made me more sensitive to it? I don't know, but it was certainly an interesting distraction."

While you were having your fun, I was almost dying. Her meaning came through clearly enough.

An immediate and instinctive apology rose to his lips, but he caught the words before they were voiced and stopped them. No, he decided, that was something he wouldn't apologise for.

Instead, he said, "You're right. I should have thought to shield you from it. But I didn't stop to consider the possibility. I am sorry about that."

She snorted – looked away from him. The small chamber they were in acted as the shuttle's security station, and the jaundiced light from the surrounding monitors imparted an unhealthy pallor to her skin. She looked worn – not quite fragile, but somehow abraded.

"And there I was thinking that it was my darkness. My fall, and my weakness, that drove you away from me. Now I wonder if I simply wasn't dark enough to suit your tastes." There was a raw edge to the words – scathing bitterness.

Tamar bit back on an angry retort. Yuthura, he reminded himself, was more than capable of defending herself. Letting this become that kind of argument wouldn't help anyone.

He took a deep, calming breath. "I thought when we parted, that it was a mutual decision. One we both agreed on, for both our sakes."

Anger flashed across the bond. "Easier for you that way, isn't it?"

He stayed silent. Anything he said right than would only act as a provocation.

Finally, she looked round at him again. "Do you love her?"

Yes, he started to say.

That was something else he would not lie about or apologise for. Besides, the bond made it difficult to sustain lies for any length of time. That had already been proven with bitter certainty.

She continued too quickly for him, though. "Do you love her the way you could not love me?"

He choked the yes back as the meaning of it suddenly changed – became far more hurtful. And deliberately so, of course. "What am I supposed to say to that, exactly, Bastila?"

"That's down to you, I'm sure."

Looking at her face, he was filled with sudden pain. But he also knew that anything he said to try to make it better would only be more cowardice at this point. He took another steeling breath. "Yes, I do love her. And yes, I love her in a different way to the way I loved you. It was cowardly and cruel and weak of me to do what I did to you, and I should never have tried to pretend there was something between us that there wasn't. For that I am profoundly sorry." There was a bitterness of his own creeping into his voice then, turning the words into something different than they'd started out as.

Bastila's face had gone pale. Silence grew between them – a devouring black hole.

Eventually she let out a shaky breath. "I swore I wasn't going to let this happen. I swore I was going to remain entirely calm and controlled. That I had moved beyond it."

"Bastila . . ."

She shook her head. "No Tamar, I don't mean moved beyond it as a Jedi. I'm not back to that. I just mean it as . . . as a person. None of us have time for this right now, do we?"

He nodded cautious agreement. Something still simmered at the edges of the bond, and for once he wished he could interpret it more clearly.

None of us have time for this. There was an element of accusation in those words too, he thought with an inward sigh. "I am sorry it's turned out this way between us, Bastila. I didn't do any of this to try and hurt you."

She made a small, choked sound. "Perhaps if you stopped trying so hard not to hurt me, it would all be a damn sight less painful."

They just stood there, looking at each other.

Before he could say anything more, conciliatory or otherwise, his communicator beeped. "What is it?" he snapped.

"Sir, there appears to be a . . . problem with the Rancorous." The shuttle pilot's voice was studiedly neutral, explaining the situation rapidly.

"I'll be with you in a few seconds. Out."

"Problem?" Bastila inquired. She was suddenly all cool, crisply efficient business. On the surface, at least. The undertones of their conversation still echoed quietly across the bond.

"Problem," he agreed.

The problem in question became absolutely apparent the moment they stepped onto the shuttle's cramped bridge.

The view screen showed the Rancorous, dead centre, looming and monstrously ugly as ever. There was another vessel in shot too, however. A Republic cruiser, not that much smaller than the Rancorous itself. It had caught the Hutt vessel broadside on, the main bulk of its weaponry aimed away from it. There appeared to be something of a stand off.

It was easy enough to see what had happened.

The Republic cruiser was an absolute wreck, scarred by turbo laser and proton torpedo impacts, huge sections of its hull sliced open, the decks beneath exposed to vacuum. To Tamar's eye – which in this case, most definitely was Revan's eye, and knew exactly what it was looking at – it seemed borderline miraculous that all the massively obvious damage hadn't triggered either catastrophic reactor or structural failure and destroyed the vessel entirely.

Simplicity itself for it to play possum, powered down, just another lifeless hulk floating amid the rest of the scattered debris. And easy for them to pass right over it in the cursory sensor sweeps they'd carried out. More often than not, you didn't look twice if you saw exactly what you expected to see.

A Republic cruiser was not going to take kindly to a Hutt vessel showing up way out here, seemingly intent on scavenging their corpses. It was certainly going to be very curious – to say the least – about the display they'd put on earlier when opening the wormhole.

He opened a comm link. "You there, Jolee?"

"Where else, exactly, did you think I would be?" came the tart response.

"Er . . ." he stopped suddenly. "Sorry, could you hold a moment?"

Tamar ignored the ear-blistering response, watching as Bastila leant forward, speaking to the co-pilot. "Hail the Republic ship, please." There was enough authority in her tone that the man didn't even bother asking Tamar for confirmation.

"Starlight Phoenix," she intoned, "This is Jedi Knight Bastila Shan. Could I speak to Captain Organa?"

There was a hesitation before a response came. "Jedi Bastila, this is Captain Vance. Captain Organa isn't available right now unfortunately." There was a slight pause. "It's good to hear your voice, Jedi Bastila. We assumed you were dead."

-s-s-

Carth caught the vibroblade between both of his and shoved hard, sending his attacker reeling backwards. A fast, angled slash tore through disarrayed defences before the man could recover, slicing deep into his midriff.

The Sith Assassin made a soft, hollow sound and collapsed.

Something moved in the corner of Carth's vision. He whirled, twin blades moving to intercept a new threat . . .

But Yolanda's wrist blade had already taken the second assailant through the side of his neck. The Sith crumpled soundlessly, sliding off the blade and falling limply across the one Carth had killed just prior.

Everything was still. Alarms rang out in the distance.

The attack had lasted about five seconds flat, and now there were four dead bodies decorating the corridor around them, leaking blood. Without Ellas's warning, moments prior to the quartet of Sith materialising out of thin air around them, there was a strong likelihood that there would now only be three bodies – of rather different identity – littering the ground.

The immediate edge of the adrenaline rush faded, leaving Carth feeling empty and slightly nauseous – as it always did. He could suddenly feel the stinging pain from his left shoulder, where the first assassin's opening lunge had scored a glancing hit. From plentiful experience, he could tell that it was nothing more than a flesh wound, but with repeated exertion, it was soon going to start hampering him quite badly.

A sideways glance showed Yolanda to be uninjured, though the blonde wig was gone entirely now. Ellas was a different matter, a gaping tear in the side of his robe, the surrounding fabric heavy with blood.

"Do not worry yourself." The Caamasi apparently noticed the direction of Carth's gaze, and the thought behind it. "My healing skills, at least, are competent."

He might, Carth thought, account himself a fallen Jedi, but the infuriating calm and seeming lack of urgency were still there by the bucketful.

Stepping forward, Ellas laid a large but deftly gentle hand on Carth's shoulder before he could protest. Almost immediately, the stinging sensation eased.

"How many?" Yolanda's interruption held more than enough urgency to make up for Ellas's apparent lack and then some.

"What?" Maybe the healing had left him befuddled or something, because he didn't catch her meaning at all.

"You said that you saw the door open before the explosion." It was spoken with a kind of weary patience. "How long was it open? How many got through?"

Carth called the image up inside his head and did some calculations. He could feel his heart starting to race again; the renewed flow of adrenaline. "Six to eight maybe, if they were moving fast."

"The door was wide enough to accommodate two abreast."

"Then make that twelve to sixteen." His voice was heavy.

They stood and stared at one another.

Yolanda was the first to put it into words. "Too many. We can't stand and fight that."

Carth wanted to argue, except he didn't have anything that remotely resembled an argument. He swore beneath his breath; tried to clear his head. It didn't help a plan form. "Then we lead them to the service levels, away from the populated areas."

"And then?"

"And then we improvise," he snapped, before immediately regretting it. He spread his hands placatingly. "If either of you have a better idea, then please."

"We go to the doctor's ship and get the hell away from here. How's that for right off the top of my head?"

Carth was already shaking his head. "Not an option. This isn't a military station. It'll be like a nexu pack crashing a wedding banquet."

"Fine."

The way she said it made him wince. He knew that tone of voice well enough, and again it left him thinking of Morgana. What it said was: you can have your way for now, Carth Onasi, but there will be payback, and that payback will be written in suffering and blood. Your suffering and blood.

"So let's get moving." He was uncomfortably aware that every second they wasted brought the remaining Sith assassins – and of course, the Catcher; let's not forget him – that bit closer. And the only warning they'd likely have was a split second as Ellas felt a flickering disturbance through the Force.

And so they ran. It wasn't quite as fast as Carth would have liked, since Caamasi seemed to be built for stately elegance rather out and out speed, but they ran. All the time he could feel the Catcher like an itch.

The Catcher was laughing at him still. Shall we play a little game?

As they reached the service lifts, the lights went out.

Shall we play a game?

In that moment of absolute blackness, it felt as if he'd been plunged into a bottomless pit. The terror of it was something primal – consuming. What he'd felt in the Catcher's presence on Berchest had been the merest foretaste – a palate cleansing aperitif.

Deprived of sensory input, balance and sense of direction flipped out. He slammed straight into a wall.

Shock, it seemed, was good at distracting from terror. As, apparently, was pain. Something close to rational thought penetrated the swirling tides of gibbering insanity. He'd split his head open, and could feel blood trickling down his scalp. Somewhere, close yet worlds away in the blackness, Yolanda groaned.

The lights came back on.

Or backups did, at least. They were dim and dingy in comparison to the previous sterile brightness. He glanced momentarily sideways. Blood was, inexplicably trickling from the corner of Yolanda's mouth. Then his gaze returned to the corridor ahead.

"Yeah, let's play a bantha fraking game." Carth hadn't intended to speak aloud, and didn't realise he had until he heard the words echoing slightly off the walls.

The answering laughter was real. Not some projection or figment in his head.

"I'm glad you see it my way, Carth."

He was there, standing about thirty metres in front of them in the middle of the corridor. Smiling. It was difficult to see at this distance, but Carth knew that he was smiling.

"Last time we spoke you said you were going to track me down and kill me. That was rather silly of you." The Catcher's head tilted to one side – a dark carrion bird; harbinger of death. "Nevertheless, I thought it only sporting to indulge you. Bliss says hello, by the way. She forgives you for hiding from her. She understands your fear."

The twin vibroblades were back in hand. They weren't his own beautifully crafted, Echani made weapons, the grips worn from years of use to perfectly fit his hands. Canderous had once laughed at those. Are you a simpering girl, Onasi? That's all those things are fit for. Instead, they were stock Republic issue he'd scrounged from Station security. The comfort they provided was negligible.

"Let her go." Fury filled him as he enunciated the words slowly and clearly. It thrummed in its intensity.

Behind the Catcher, the lights went out again, leaving him as nothing more than a vague outline against the darkness. A living part of that darkness. Fear rose again in black waves, but the fury within Carth rose with it.

At his side, Yolanda whirled away, filling the corridor behind them with fizzing blaster fire. Covering any attempt by more of the Sith assassins to sneak up on them. A smart tactical move, but from the sound of it none of the shots hit anything other than the plasteel walls.

He didn't look around. A pace or so behind, he heard Ellas's lightsaber ignite, bathing the walls on either side in garish green glow.

Part of him wanted to tell the doctor not to interfere, but that would require too much of his attention. If he let himself be distracted from the fury, there would only be the fear.

The Catcher started to advance towards them. As he did so, each light fitting he passed exploded in a shower of sparks, giving the impression of a wall of absolute, swallowing darkness following after him like a trailing cloak.

Carth stepped forward to meet him. He was biting down so hard that he could hear his own teeth squeaking from the strain. Vaguely he was aware of Ellas saying something, but it bounced straight off. There was only the advancing darkness.

There was still a gap of more than ten metres between them when the darkness raised a hand and pointed at him.

Ellas said something else, louder. It made no more impression than before, though for different reasons this time.

Carth's stride broke. Suddenly, his skin was burning hot, though inside he felt like ice. He was shivering violently. Sweat poured off him in sheets. His mouth opened, and dimly, as though from a long distance away, he heard himself gasp.

The floor swayed and tilted, and he stumbled. His just healed shoulder slammed hard into the wall, breaking open the cut again. And then the nausea hit and he was throwing up, so violently it felt like he was trying to regurgitate his own internal organs – forcibly turn himself inside out.

The advancing darkness came ever closer. Carth groaned, struggling to even draw breath. His hands were shaking badly with the effort of holding onto his vibroswords, delirium rising with the fever wracking him and making it a struggle to think in anything other than rapidly contracting circles.

He strove to focus on the Catcher's face, and retain his grasp upon the fury that seemed to be the only thing keeping him upright; the only thing left to him to cling to. His body fell into an Echani battle stance out of pure habit. The blood flowing through his ears roared.

Yolanda shouted something.

Valden?

He was Valden, wasn't he?

He tried to clear his head, shaking it almost madly. Something hit the ground with a thump, sliding past him. It stopped between the Catcher's feet, Carth's eyes unable to focus on it through stinging veils of sweat.

Suddenly something yanked him backwards, hard. Permacrete detonator. The object had been a permacrete detonator. Like the one they'd use to stage that Twi'leks death, back on Taris. When Tamar wasn't Revan too, and it was all less complicated . . .. As he hit the floor at Dr Ellas's feet, Carth felt obscurely pleased with himself for working all that out.

Before the detonating flash, Carth thought he saw the Catcher blink out of existence like a . . . like a hologram. He heard laughter, in his head and real, only still about thirty metres away . . .

Then everything was heat and roaring sound.

Then not even that.

"Damn it, you ronto-loving, Hutt-spawned bastard. You're too fraking heavy for me to drag!"

Carth groaned. For a moment, he was sure he was going to vomit again, but the sensation passed. His vision was a mass of weird pale, gyrating blobs, behind which other vague shapes – the real world –lurked. His skin still felt burning hot, but it was a different kind of burning than before. Not the Force-induced, feverish delirium.

Yolanda was holding him beneath the armpits, dragging him bodily along the floor. He shrugged her off, and managed to haul himself upright. Together they stumbled through a nearby doorway. Acrid smoke mixed with the salty, metallic taste of blood in his mouth to form something decidedly unpleasant.

The service lift. His vision had taken on enough definition for him to finally work that much out. As Yolanda operated the doors, he slumped against the back wall. His entire body felt like one single massive bruise. He tilted his head back, sliding slowly down to the floor, eyes slipping closed . . .

Then he remembered something important. "Hold on. Where's Ellas?"

"Holding off the assassins. He said not to wait." The answer was devoid of any emotion.

Something inside him clenched. "Wait. We can't just . . ."

She turned and looked back at him. "If he's so intent on some ennobling act of self-sacrifice, then who are we to stop him?" Her face was still no more than a vague, pale shape, but he didn't miss the absolute implacability of her tone.

Carth stared at her.

With a grating judder, they began their descent.

-s-s-

He'd lost her. The conclusion, which had been nudging around the basement of Dustil's thoughts for the past couple of minutes, finally breached the surface.

He swore venomously beneath his breath, but at the same time part of him was relieved. It was the same kind of shaky relief he'd felt on Korriban, when a nighttime Tukata hunt turned up nothing.

The words hadn't been far enough beneath his breath, obviously. A large and typically belligerent looking Aqualish turned and glared his way, then started advancing towards him, chest puffing out threateningly.

Dustil quickened his pace, ducking behind a trolley being pushed by a work-droid. The Force was as close to the surface in him as it had been in months, rising up unbidden through the cracks in his guard that the meeting with Morrigance had inflicted. He deliberately refrained from using it though, not yet ready to take that one irrevocable step.

A step he knew he would never have the willpower to go back from.

It would have been easy though. He could tell that much, just from the brief sense of the Aqualish's mind he'd gotten before he strangled everything back. It had been half-pickled on juma-juice, needing only the slightest nudge.

Fortunately, it proved easy enough to lose himself amid the aisles of bulk transport crates. A reminder though. This wasn't the place to let oneself become sloppy or distracted. In that sense, it wasn't all that different from Korriban.

This was Agatan freighter port, on Coruscant's equator, half a world away from the Senate and the Jedi Temple, and the government districts of the world-spanning city. Half a world away in distance, anyway. In other respects, it was nearer several galaxies removed.

Here the Exchange seemed to run at least half of everything, and the other half . . . well, Dustil suspected that was controlled by interests far less savoury than even them. If you transplanted this place onto Nar Shaddaa, it would be smuggler's moon that was made the seedier for it.

Ducking out of the maze of containers, he tried to get his thoughts in order – work out his next move. Morrigance's words still played inside him, over and over, cutting deep even second hand.

And her face was there, under even that. He wasn't sure if he was ever going to be entirely rid of that.

Bitter anger flared. Damn you, bitch. Why couldn't you stay out of my life? Not a Jedi, according to her words, but she certainly interfered like one.

The problem was though, that he couldn't deny what she'd said. Even the most utterly ridiculous parts. Half-truths that bit and didn't let go – that was a particular form of torture both Jedi and Sith were equally adept at. He became aware then that his hands were clenched tightly into fists, and forced himself to try to relax.

Elendri.

He had to find her. There at least was a concrete purpose.

It had been his intention – once he'd satisfied his . . . curiosity with Morrigance; satisfied himself there was breathing space – to raid his allowance for all the credits he could get, leave half for Elendri, and then simply disappear. It no longer mattered if anyone could use that action to trace him here, because by that time he'd be long gone.

Except . . . Elendri wasn't actually stupid, but in some ways she wasn't very bright either. If she had been, she'd never have taken up with him in the first place. It was a painful thing to acknowledge, but he couldn't escape the truth of it. She'd have taken her chance and gotten away without considering him at all. Alderaan, she'd always said, smiling in that way that made him feel so weak. Alderaan was supposed to be a nice place to be. They'd go there together one day, wouldn't they?

So make her take the money. Then make her leave.

Except . . . she wouldn't leave. There was a sick feeling that accompanied the thought. Not unless he made her utterly despise him. And then she'd throw anything he tried to give her right back in his face, no matter how much she needed it.

Force, you're pathetic. Worse than Algwinn. Strength. Power. Victory. But scared of facing down a Twi'lek dancing girl.

Suddenly he was yanked brutally from his inner world. He stopped hard, staring at the spaceship occupying the landing bay in front of him. A stock freighter, originally of Correllian design, though the template had proved popular enough that it had been licensed right across the Republic. A combination of relatively small size coupled to high payload space and very powerful engines made it a particular favourite among smugglers.

And amnesiac former Dark Lords of the Sith.

Dustil started breathing again. The paint job on this was different to the vessel he'd once seen sitting in Dreshdae spaceport. Gunmetal and black rather than gunmetal and rust red. But paint jobs could be changed easily enough, and this one looked fresh . . .

Back again, Dad? Run out of wars it's easier to fight than face up to your own life? His lips twisted bitterly with the thought, ridiculous though it was.

Using the datacard Morrigance had left him, he rapidly pulled up the manifest for the landing pad. The Corvine, it was listed as.

Corvine. Suddenly his skin was like ice. A black bird. Or, put it another way, Ebon Hawk.

Frak, Dad. Learn a little subtlety, please. Or, at least, tell your world burning, badass of the universe best bud.

There was someone standing at the foot of the boarding ramp. Two someones, just emerged from inside the ship. Big, both of them. Very big. Dustil walked slowly around the perimeter of the landing bay, staring, until finally the angle of shadows shifted enough for him to get a proper look.

And then he felt something akin to relief.

The nearest, slightly smaller of the two figures glinted metallically. At first Dustil assumed it was a droid, but no – there was flesh there too. Dustil's gaze didn't linger on him though, moving to the individual standing next to him.

It was the first time in his life he'd ever been relieved to lay eyes on a Trandoshan. Nasty bastards, the lot of them, in his experience. Tempers worse than Hssiss with toothache.

But a Trandoshan made this highly unlikely to be dad and friends. Trandoshans and Wookiees didn't cohabit well, for starters.

And what would dad be doing here, anyway, Bantha-wit?

Looking for me, another inner voice replied. It almost sounded hopeful.

Abruptly, Dustil's teeth were clenched again, hands forming fists. Shut up, weakling.

He was about to walk away – get out of there, and get his thoughts back on something that actually mattered – when his eyes caught on something that stopped him dead. A particular hull plate on the vessel's underside that bore heavy scarring.

In his minds eye he superimposed two near identical ships in his head. Then he swore, not particularly far underneath his breath this time. Damn, damn, damn.

A hand came up and rubbed across his face. He tried to tell himself that any vessel of this type that had a particular sort of bad landing would have scarring there. Except . . . his brain refused to bite.

The half-metal man had turned around and gone back inside the ship, while the Trandoshan was striding rapidly towards one of the landing pad exits. After watching for about a minute more, Dustil decided to risk taking a closer look, moving forward and round to the shelter of a refuelling rig. Morrigance and Elendri had suddenly faded to nothing more than twin shadows in his thoughts.

He studied the scarring on the hull plates intently, trying to persuade himself that they were coincidence. It could be. He hadn't ever seen the Ebon Hawk at this proximity, so if he was honest with himself, this wasn't achieving much.

Especially when he should be concentrating on Elendri. Just like dad. Typical Onasi, looking for new and bigger problems so you can ignore the ones you already have.

There was a soft sound directly behind him. He jolted hard, and span . . .

For a moment, crazily, he thought that his own shadow had detached itself and come to life.

Then, as his heart lurched wildly, he realised he was looking at a Defel. He'd heard about the species, but he'd never seen one at this proximity before, and in a half crouch as he was, their eyes were just about level.

"What are you doing?" it asked. It sounded surprisingly . . . normal.

"Hey, I wasn't looking to stow away. Honest." He tried to make the words sound frantically blurted; scared. It wasn't too much of a stretch.

The Defel didn't so much as blink.

Dustil stepped back, closer to the ship and suddenly the Force vanished.

-s-s-

Ulvol Ellas extinguished his lightsaber. His breath was coming hard.

As the humming cut off, it left a quiet that was decidedly unsettling. The abrupt loss of the weapon's bright green glow turned everything around him to shadow and half-light. He realised that the distant alarms had stopped.

Abruptly, Ellas staggered, gulping and leaning back hard against the wall to keep himself upright as the immediate rush of adrenaline faded. His fur was matted thickly with blood – all his own – and in places heavily scorched. The sting of more than half a dozen shallow and not so shallow cuts hit him then, far worse than when the wounds had initially been inflicted.

At his feet two more of the Sith killers lay dead, another pair at least having slipped past him while he was preoccupied, disappearing somewhere he could no longer sense. While he hadn't quite lied to Captain Onasi about his martial prowess, it was a truism that even the weakest and most inept of Jedi was not an opponent to be taken lightly.

He closed his eyes, centring himself. Finding calm amid the chaos. There, he felt out the extent of his injuries, almost instinctually channelling threads of Force just so to repair and reconnect severed blood vessels, reknit cut flesh and muscle-fibre, and finally regrow broken skin. It wasn't as thorough a job as he'd normally have done, time allowing, but he felt comfortable that – in this thing at least – there was no other Jedi in the Order that could have done any better.

And when did you start thinking of yourself as Jedi again, a wry inner voice asked.

In some ways, Ellas supposed, he had never really stopped, no matter how much he might deny it vocally.

While he still held onto the Force, he extended his senses outwards, into the station around him, feeling the fluttering fluctuations of all the nearby life – a delicate and intricately beautiful web – as he searched for a hint of the Dark Jedi. This Catcher, as both Captain Onasi and the woman had called him.

That strange, uncanny presence, clothed in walls of obfuscating darkness and fear, had seemed to vanish in the moment of the explosion, and it was certainly nowhere close now . . .

There, several levels below.

He stopped, focusing in tight. It was easy to miss – no more than a kind of vagueness where his senses couldn't quite penetrate – but he knew with rapidly increasing surety that he wasn't mistaken. The Catcher had, it seemed, ignored him entirely, going straight after Onasi with an unrelentingly single-minded purpose.

Ellas opened his eyes and let out a steadying breath. So much for his conceit that the Sith would be bound to focus their attention upon a Force adept – that they would have no choice but to deal with that threat first.

Shakily, he started back towards the service lifts.

He wasn't quite sure if he should feel relieved or put out that no one seemed to have any interest whatsoever in killing him. It was certainly rather . . . humbling. Humour flashed briefly in him then.

Perhaps the entire Order as a whole might learn a valuable lesson if they were simply to be ignored.

-s-s-

Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety six bottles of Tarisian ale on the wall, Nine-hundred-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety six bottles of Tarisian ale . . .

The residue of toxic coolant at the bottom of the vast, hangar-sized tank sloshed around Carth's ankles. It was eating, very slowly, through the material of his boots. He'd been singing various drinking songs inside his head constantly for the past half hour, trying to drown out the connection to the Catcher – hide his thoughts behind a wall of maddening inanity.

He was certainly on the point of driving himself mad. What that said about the method's effectiveness, he had no idea. Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-five bottles . . .

Briefly, he broke off to shout into the comm. unit. "Now!"

Yolanda didn't answer, but Carth both heard and felt the heavy clank and the low rumbling noise that followed it, indicating that she must have gotten the message.

If one brown bottle should accidentally fall, there'd be nine-hundred . . .

The small, dark-robed figure that had been steadily closing the distance between them stopped. After a brief pause, it looked back over its shoulder, where the route behind it was now very firmly closed.

A moment later, laughter echoed through the vast, cathedral-like space. "Oh, well done. Well done."

Carth clamped his mouth shut on any response – sought to hurl himself back into the flow of the idiot song inside his head. And ninety-five . . . no, already done that. Ninety-four bottles of Tarisian ale on the wall.

The Catcher started to walk towards him, brisk but by no means overly hurried. The ankle-deep coolant splashed with each step. Carth thought he could see that constant, hellish smile, despite the clinging gloom.

Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety-four . . .

He hit a control on his belt, and the mechanised winch cable attached to it snapped taut, yanking him up from the coolant tank's bottom. Rapidly, he started to ascend towards a small, circular opening nearly twenty metres above his head.

. . . Tarisian ale one the wall, Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand . . .

The Catcher's lightsaber ignited, glowing red. Suddenly the Dark Jedi was running, blindingly fast, speed enhanced to a truly frightening degree . . .

Carth dropped a sonic grenade – the only type he'd been able to scrounge from the station arsenal. It detonated with a brilliant, percussive flash, catching the Catcher in its blast radius and hurling him backwards . . .

The winch came to a juddering halt, still at least two metres short of the tank's exit hatch.

Carth swore. Inside his head, he'd completely lost track of just how many bottles of Tarisian ale there were supposed to be on the wall. A downward glance between his dangling feet showed the Catcher rising smoothly from where he'd been thrown by the sonic detonation. He didn't seem the slightest bit impaired, though at least his lightsaber wasn't anywhere in sight anymore.

"Well, well. Look what the spider caught."

The voice sounded different from before, or maybe the explosion had done something to Carth's hearing. He strove to ignore it, attempting to pull himself up the remaining length of winch cable hand over hand. The muscles in his arms burned from the effort, and he could feel his palms slipping.

Beneath him, the dark, hooded figure walked easily forward until he stood directly beneath him. Its head tilted back . . .

Frak knows how many bottles of Tarisian ale on the wall . . .

Carth's hand slipped. The steel cable, designed for lifting heavy equipment rather than climbing, tore through the palm of his glove and ripped deep into the flesh beneath. He fell back with a ragged cry, bouncing around erratically on the end of the cable. The pain was absolutely excruciating, turning his vision red.

He continued to swing back and forth like a badly balanced pendulum. Beneath him, the Catcher was just standing there, watching.

Groaning, Carth forced himself to move – to do something. He attempted to pull one of his blasters from its belt holster, but the cable yanked taught against the rim of the opening above him at exactly the wrong moment, spinning him round and trapping his arm against his side. The blaster slipped free of his fingers . . .

And landed with a splash, directly between the Catcher's feet. Carth briefly closed his eyes.

Then the cable, a metre or so above his head, made a sharp twanging noise, spontaneously starting to fray apart. For a moment, Carth stared at it numbly. Then, in pure desperation, nearly screaming with the effort, he tried to pull himself up again.

His torn hand was simply unable to grip, the pain of even attempting to do so taking him to the edge of blacking out. He fell back.

As he dangled – a damaged puppet – a silhouette passed across the opening above, slender and graceful. It was gone so quickly that Carth wondered if it was just his imagination.

Yolanda.

The cable continued to work itself steadily and deliberately apart. Not long now . . .. He heard the Catcher chuckling in amusement. It seemed to be mainly inside his head.

Abruptly, the winch started again, jerking him rapidly upwards. By now, he was quite literally dangling by a thread.

Just as he reached and caught hold of the lip of the coolant tank, the cable snapped. For a moment, his legs kicked over nothing, and he started to slide back . . .

Then, somehow – a last, instinctual surge of adrenaline perhaps – he was up on solid ground, smeared red handprints covering the plasteel around him. Crackling Force lightning shot out of the tank behind him, filling the air with the stench of frying ozone.

Breath sawing, Carth forced himself to keep moving – to finish it.

Sweat stinging his eyes, he staggered against a nearby control console. Blinking rapidly, he tried to focus, before hitting a control. Behind him the tank sealed with a clang, cutting off a second blast of Force lightning.

Sealed the Catcher inside.

It was a matter of activating a short, pre-programmed sequence to redirect the coolant from one of the two identical adjoining tanks and flood the one he was standing on. Then Carth slumped down, listening to the muffled sound of rushing liquid directly beneath him with a kind of grim satisfaction.

Exactly to plan. He gave a shaky laugh. His torn hand throbbed, blood still oozing from it thickly.

A shadow passed over him. "Damn, that was quick. I didn't think you'd make it. Not that I'm complaining or anything, Yolanda . . ."

"Not Yolanda, flyboy." The voice sounded sad.

He blinked at her, dumbfounded. No, not Yolanda.

Bliss.

The expression on her face was grave. As his gaze focussed on her, she faded – a pale yellow ghost, then nothing. The Catcher stepped into view, directly behind where she'd been.

"So who was that in the tank?" Feeling almost resigned, Carth finally broke the silence.

"His name was Ulic, I believe. Same as Quel-Droma. Sadly, the two of them didn't have much else in common."

He grunted noncommittally.

"Easy enough, to make someone see something that's not really there," the Catcher continued. "Especially if there are already similarities between what's there and not. The human mind almost seems to want to fool itself. A protection mechanism designed to preserve our sanity, I suppose."

Carth tried to grasp the fury, but all he felt was numb. "And you just sacrificed him for . . . for . . .?"

"Entertainment? As good a reason as any." A smile. "There is no death. There is the Force. If that is so, then what difference does it make? He is with me now, in any case. You were up to Nine-hundred and ninety-nine thousand, eight-hundred and ninety three bottles by the way. If you feel like continuing."

Carth levered himself upright. He still had his vibroblades strapped across his back, and one of his blasters. Suddenly though, he didn't think they'd do much good. "Is it even you here now?"

The Catcher just shrugged, stepping forward, and Carth knew the answer well enough. He could feel the aura of fear that surrounded the man like a cloud.

"It's been a good chase. Shall we finish it?" Vivid orange energy shot from his outstretched hand.

-s-s-

"He thinks that if we get to know one another, we might actually come to like each other. Or at least, to respect each other." Yuthura broke the uncomfortably long silence.

"Does he?" Bastila's response was hardly welcoming. She gave Yuthura only the merest of sidelong glances.

They stood together on the Rancorous's viewing deck, where the ship's former Hutt masters used to watch the command crew carrying out their orders from on high. Outside of the bridge's viewports, the blankness of hyperspace was the only thing visible. Matters with the crippled Republic cruiser had been sorted out – for now – and its surviving crew were now ensconced aboard. To say there was an air of tension was to understate chronically.

"But I think we both know better than that, don't we?" Yuthura pressed ahead, regardless of the lukewarm response.

This time there was no acknowledgement at all.

Yuthura bared her teeth in a variant of a smile. Somewhere inside there was a kind of dark amusement, the tips of her lekku flexing. Mostly though, she was wondering why she felt the need to do this – now especially. In the end, she thought, it came down to similar reasons to why people were compelled to pick at scabs until they bled again.

"We both know what we were far better than he can possibly, for all he once was," she continued. "Even if he still had all the memories of his past absolutely intact, I don't think he could quite understand it the way we do."

This time she did manage to provoke a response, clipped and chill. "What are you talking about?"

Yuthura could sense the uncertainty there though. For a moment, she stared down at the bridge crew as they went about their work. Her bridge crew, theoretically. Her ship too, in a way, if you applied salvage laws to their fullest extrapolation. It wasn't a hugely comforting idea and she pushed it away, concentrating more firmly on Bastila – the conversation she was trying to have.

"Just that he never went through a Sith apprenticeship, however accelerated, and therefore he can't truly appreciate what we have both done. The truly vile, sticky, unpleasantness of some of the acts we have performed – not at arms length or by proxy, but in person."

"I have no wish to talk to you." Yuthura could see that Bastila's cheeks had gone completely pale save for two heightened spots of red.

"Have you ever told anybody? All of it I mean?"

Silence. Then finally, just as Yuthura was ready to admit defeat, a snort. "Have you, Twi'lek?"

Her head tails flexed, uneasily. She half wondered if defeat might not have been better; that she had wanted to fail and have done with it, whilst allowing herself to pretend she had at least made an effort to bridge the gap.

"The first night on Dantooine, after Karath and the Sith fleet departed," she said eventually. "I sat with my old master, overlooking the space where the Enclave had once stood. The ground still glowed from the turbo laser bombardment. You could feel the heat still hanging in the air. I told him everything then."

Yuthura could feel Bastila's eyes upon her then, though she didn't look round at the other woman. It was still painful. Some wounds, perhaps, didn't ever fully heal.

"No," she amended at length, correcting herself with an angry little flick of her lekku. "Not told. Poured it all out on his head. Threw it in his face, and used it like a weapon. The only weapon I had left to me. I wanted to show him exactly how despicable I was and make him hate me utterly. To cast me down into damnation and turn his back on me forever." The words became barely audible. "So much easier to accept that than kindness you know you can't possibly deserve."

Bastila made a quiet sound that might have been an affirmative. Or it might have been something else entirely.

"I think I hated him when he refused to turn away from me. I . . ." She broke off and took a deep breath. She was losing track of what she was trying to achieve. "I certainly understand one of the reasons why Jolee left the Order when they failed to punish him in the manner he thought he should have been. If you can't find anyone else to punish you, then the only thing left is to face yourself and try to accept what you are. And I think that can be the hardest, cruellest punishment of all."

The silence that fell between them was very different in quality this time. Eventually Bastila cleared her throat. She sounded slightly shaky. "And is there a point to any of that?"

Yuthura turned slowly and looked at her, their eyes meeting for the first time. "Only, I suppose, that I know Malak would not have accepted your acquiescence simply from his torture of you, no matter how much gain it brought him. To become his apprentice, he would have required you to bind yourself to him utterly, and do things that, in your heart, you knew there was no possible way back from."

"And what?" Bastila sounded almost incredulous – contemptuous. "You, of all people, seek to use that against me?"

"No." It came out as a snap – almost vicious. "That is the last thing I seek. Because I know that you know exactly the same things about me. About what I am, and the things that I have done." She felt her lekku contract almost convulsively. "And because of what we know about each other, and what we are, we can perhaps never truly become friends. But the last thing we should seek to be here is enemies."

Bastila said nothing.

Yuthura took a steadying breath and started to turn away. It had been worth a shot, at least. Even if it did prove entirely counterproductive.

"Wait."

Yuthura stopped; looked back at her again.

The words that followed were almost a monotone – toneless and dead. "Malak . . . showed me the darkside, like showing me my own reflection in a mirror. He used it on my body, over and over, until I had learned to understand every single power he called upon intimately through observation and experience. I thought I was being clever . . . staying calm, and learning how to turn his own weapons against him. What could be greater strength than that? But now I see . . . I see that was exactly what he wanted in the first place. And once he was confident I had learned everything well enough, he allowed me to escape my chains. A perfect demonstration of the Sith Code in practical form."

Listening, Yuthura tasted something sour in the back of her mouth. Watching Bastila's frozen profile, it struck her how terribly young the other woman was. Young in body at least.

"The other Sith in the Rakatan temple responded to my escape as if it was genuine. I don't believe that Malak had warned them otherwise. When they tried to stop me, I used all the new power I had learned – the power I could feel surging inside me – to annihilate them utterly. I drank their screams and painted the walls with their blood and entrails. Charred their flesh to ash. I revelled in it. It was joy. It sang to me in my veins."

Bastila paused, as if for breath. Her voice, having risen, became quieter again, once more void of emotion. "And as I was about to cross the threshold and leave the Temple behind me, Malak appeared, blocking my way. He congratulated me on passing my final test, and as I lashed out at him with all my hate and anger, he dismantled me – made me scream like I had made the other Sith scream, until something in my throat broke and I could make no sound at all. I collapsed before him with no strength left to even move, and then he promised to teach me the power I needed to in time destroy even him.

"I accepted eagerly, because I saw suddenly how I could betray him utterly, and have everything I ever wanted. How I could make everything in the universe right again."

After a moment had passed, Yuthura started to open her mouth.

Bastila cut her off. "No, I don't want your sympathy. I don't want your words. Like you say, we understand each other well enough."

Yuthura simply nodded. After a moment she turned away again, knowing that pressing any further right now would just undo anything that might have been accomplished – if anything actually had been.

She made it as far as the doors leading off the viewing platform this time, before Bastila spoke again, unexpectedly.

"So why did you seduce him?" There was an echo of pain in the words, both accusation and quiet pleading for understanding.

"What makes you think that was how it happened?" Yuthura responded finally, despite her initial intent to ignore the question and keep on walking.

"Because . . ." There was a hesitation, and when Bastila spoke again the words were not the ones Yuthura had already been mentally filling in. "Because I know him at least a little, I think, and since he has found out what he really is, he would not choose to inflict himself on someone else."

Well then. She almost smiled, but held it back, knowing that it would be misinterpreted. "Perhaps he has changed since the two of you parted. Or perhaps you didn't know him quite as well as you thought you did. It didn't happen quite that way."

Bastila's lips compressed to the point they almost seemed to disappear, but at length she nodded. Yuthura was surprised to sense a glimmer of genuine acceptance of her words. Some of them, at least. "And the two of you could not have . . . waited. Until all of this was done with . . ."

"Before succumbing to our base lusts?"

"No. That isn't what I meant." She sounded almost pained. "But . . ."

Yuthura stifled a sigh. "How could we have been so undisciplined as to let feelings and personal matters intrude at a time like this?"

Those spots of colour were back on her cheeks. "If you want to put it like that. Then yes."

Yuthura almost turned and walked away without speaking, but in the end paused. "Because it is always a time like this. There never is an after. It doesn't miraculously change and get better, and the universe never stops to accommodate you. All any of us has is now, so unless you're an utter fool you use it how you can."

Then she did turn and walk away. When it came to it, the only future she could see for either herself or Tamar – even if everything they planned worked absolutely perfectly – was a place of honour at their own execution.

There was no after, let alone a happy one.

-s-s-

Carth's back arched so violently that he almost snapped his spine. He could taste blood in his mouth. It was just about the only thing that held him connected to reality.

That orange energy faded, the third crackling arc of it in rapid succession. He flopped about on the metal walkway like a landed fish, random misfiring nerve impulses overwhelming any semblance of conscious control. It felt like he'd been burned away inside, and now all that was left behind was an empty husk. It seemed to have sucked away his will too, although on the upside, the dull apathy he was left with blunted the fear that the Catcher wore like a cloak.

He watched as the Catcher sauntered easily towards him, unhurriedly lithe. An inner voice screamed at him to move, but that seemed distant and unimportant. The only difference it would make was which precise second he died in . . .

I didn't realise that the Republic's greatest war hero was such a coward. It sounded like Bliss's voice, scathing and distorted by anger. Die now and I promise that my entire remaining purpose will be to make your afterlife the purest hell.

Yeah? Don't see you helping much here. He tried to move – to refute the voice. In the end though, it was the Catcher's smile that galvanised him as the Sith assassin stopped directly in front of him – the gleeful mocking whiteness of it.

His blaster was still in his hand. How, Carth wasn't quite sure. He scarcely remembered the point he'd even drawn it.

Aim. Visualise the target. Smoothly squeeze the trigger . . .

Except no. The Catcher's lightsaber blade would intercept it, and deflect it straight back, like on the bridge in Calius saj Leeloo.

"It will be easier for you if you just accepted it, Carth. So much easier."

He could almost feel the Catcher's thoughts then, as if they were joined, mind to mind. The sheer bizarre alienness of the sensation was utterly terrifying.

Eyes refocusing, he yanked the blaster barrel upwards, aiming over and to the left of the Catcher's head. As he pulled the trigger, an incandescent bolt of red energy struck a pipe emblazoned with yellow and black warning symbols dead on.

The pipe ruptured explosively just as the Catcher twisted round, warned belatedly via the Force . . .

And because of that, he took a blast of high-pressure superheated steam directly to the face.

The resulting cry of pain was shrill and shattering, somehow in itself laden with the Force. Carth's vision split and fractured like the facets of a broken mirror. He fired repeatedly at the various fragmentary Catchers that flitted in front of him, scrambling backwards on the seat of his pants as he did so.

"Very. Clever." The voice was distorted, almost animal. It came from every direction at once.

The primal rage in it was strangely satisfying. It was the first time Carth had heard the bastard lose control. When his vision solidified back into a semblance of normality, there was no one in front of him at all.

Heart thudding percussively, he forced himself to rise. Raw pain stabbed through the palm of his torn hand as he accidentally put pressure on it. His legs felt like jelly and he staggered forward a couple of steps before he managed to catch himself.

There was no trace of the Sith whatsoever. His ears strained, trying to pick out the distinctive note of lightsaber hum, but the only sound he could make out was the continuous gurgling and clanking of the coolant tank beneath him.

Grimacing, he struggled to calm a rising sense of agoraphobic panic. His current position was far, far too exposed, with two many routes of approach. The vast, cathedral-like space around him held one of eight identical fusion reactors that provided power to Kamari station. Ribbed walls curved to form a vast dome high above his head.

The sheer sense of scale was in itself almost overwhelming.

Coming to a decision, Carth started forwards across a narrow and precarious bridge spanning a deep trench between the curve of coolant tank and wall. He needed to get out of there; somewhere he could get his back to a wall, and the Catcher could only come at him from one direction. Somewhere he could take stock and make a stand.

And Yolanda would be coming from that direction. He had to find her before . . .

Without warning, his legs gave way beneath him.

He staggered sideways, dry heaving painfully as his stomach sought to evacuate contents that were already gone. The same burning, Force-induced fever as he'd felt earlier turned his thoughts to instant mush, his hip banging hard against the bridge's railing. Suddenly, balance gone, he swayed forward over an alarming drop . . .

The Catcher's thrown lightsaber missed him by a matter of centimetres. Instead of slicing and cauterising flesh, it cut deeply into the supports of the flimsy walkway. There was an alarming shriek of rending metal, and abruptly, the bridge fell away beneath Carth's feet.

Dimly he was aware of sliding rapidly down an ever-steepening slope, jolting and bouncing all the way. He tried to grab onto something, but the surge of pain as his torn hand tried to arrest his slide almost made him black out. And then, suddenly, there was only empty air beneath him.

Somehow, the drop managed to be both longer and shorter than he anticipated. He tried to roll as the wall curved back underneath him again, but the impact blasted the breath from his body anyway. There was another vicious spike of agony as his leg twisted beneath him, then he was tumbling head over heels, bouncing hard . . .

And finally, as the curve of the wall levelled into floor, he came to a thudding halt.

For a time he just lay there on his back, gulping in an effort to draw breath into his lungs. Almost everything seemed to hurt to one degree or another. It was an entire universe of multifarious and varied pains.

Get up. Get up.

Go away. You're dead.

You can't lose consciousness now, you useless bastard! He's still coming.

"Just shut up," he told the voice irritably, not realising that he'd answered it aloud.

A groan of agony wrenched from his lips as he tried to put weight on his injured leg. The burning edge of the fever seemed to be falling away though, almost as if the pain of the injury worked to clear his thoughts.

His eyes alighted on his dropped blaster, about a dozen metres away. Remarkably, it still looked to be intact. Just beyond it was a maintenance hatch. He'd come through that way before, when he'd still believed he was leading the Catcher into a trap.

Grimly, leaving bloody palm prints to mark his way, Carth started forward in an awkward, lurching semi-crawl.

Somewhere behind him, he heard a gentle thud. He didn't look round though. He didn't need to.

He could feel the Catcher's presence the same way he could feel the pain of his battered body. There was no shred of amusement in the Sith now – just steely focus.

It wasn't a game anymore.

Perhaps that was, in its own way, a triumph of a sort.

-s-s-

Yolanda whirled at the quiet humming noise. She managed to hold back from pulling the trigger though, registering that the glow the lightsaber gave off was green rather than red.

"You ought to be more careful, Doctor," she said finally, breaking the silence. The acoustics of the reactor chamber made her voice sound small and odd. "Sneaking up on someone like that can prove dangerous."

"My apologies." Ellas spoke calmly, inclining his head in a manner she suspected was meant to be apologetic.

She lowered the blaster pistol. "Since you made it this far, I gather you have some means of tracking him."

There was a pause as the Caamasi walked – or glided, as it more closely resembled – towards the central platform on which she stood. "That depends on who you mean by him."

"At this point I'd settle for either." The calmness of her voice was strange. It reflected her inner state, but in a way, she found herself wishing that it didn't. That she wasn't so . . . disconnected. "I think it amounts to more or less the same thing."

Ellas pointed downwards. "The Dark Jedi is somewhere down there, beneath us. He no longer even tries to disguise his Force presence."

Yolanda wasn't certain if that was good or bad. "There's blood." She pointed. "Lightsabers, as a rule, don't inflict wounds that bleed. Can you tell who it belongs to?"

Ellas stepped past her, dropping to his haunches beside the spot she'd indicated. Long, deft fingers trailed lightly through the still tacky smears that covered once-white plasteel.

"Carth," he murmured softly. Then, "I sense a great deal of pain."

"Carth?" Something inside her tightened. The Catcher had called him Carth too. At the time, she'd been too preoccupied to do more than file it away for later reference.

The Caamasi looked up at her, expression solemn. With him, it was always solemn. "Another name, like Valden is. You have many different names too, I believe."

But none of them is Carth.

Outwardly, she didn't make an issue of it though. She indicated the fallen bridge. "One or both of them went down there, and not the easy way. There's more blood on the railing. Aside from the obvious, there doesn't appear to be any easy way of following."

"I can lower you."

It took her a moment to realise what he meant. Her doubt must have shown in her expression.

"I may not be a warrior, but that doesn't mean I lack ability in every area."

It wasn't really the doctor's competence or lack thereof that worried her. In the end though, she simply nodded assent. Alternatives were few and far between. And time was even sparser in quantity.

-s-s-

Briefly, Carth started the bottle song inside his head again, before halting again almost immediately. His face twisted in an expression that wasn't entirely pain.

If the only time he tried to shield his thoughts that way was when he had something he desperately wanted to hide, then all he was doing was announcing to anyone prying that he was hiding something. It wasn't like it would take a fraking genius to figure it out . . .

He cast a desperate glance back over his shoulder. Not long now. Not long at all . . .. Part of him was amazed that he'd made it even this far, more than a kilometre through Kamari Station's underbelly of service tunnels, to a storage hold beneath one of the shuttle landing bays. By rights, the Catcher should have had him already, but he seemed content to close in slowly. Steadily.

Savour the kill.

Perhaps the bastard could be made to regret his lack of haste. Perhaps the bastard could be made to choke on it . . .

Carth staggered then, falling against the refuelling tank as his leg crumpled yet again, his throat contracting tight. The pain was shattering. Beyond rationality. His teeth ground together, a thin hissing note emerging from between them. It wanted to be a scream.

Get a grip soldier. Suddenly he was back in the Mandalorian wars. The jungles of Dxun. Liquid heat and delirium. Green hell . . .. Groaning aloud, he tried to focus on the now and not get sucked in. Damn it, you coward. You've gone through worse than this before. Get your ass in gear . . .

The leg almost went again immediately as a fraction of his weight resettled on it. Whether it was broken or he'd simply shredded the knee ligaments was pretty much moot. It simply didn't want to work. Groaning, he wrenched round on the fuel tank's flow release, and more of the thick, highly volatile liquid began to gush out across the deck, joining that from the four other tanks he'd already visited. Dimly, he registered the blood he'd left behind, seeping through the rags wrapping his torn hand.

And then he stopped.

There was no sound. The hum of the lightsaber was drowned out by the gurgling sound of running liquid.

But he knew immediately. He was there, standing directly behind him, watching. There was a seductive sounding, feminine giggle.

Drawing his blaster, Carth turned around slowly. Inside, he felt something plummeting.

"A shame I wasn't a minute or so later. It might have been interesting then."

No response.

"You might even have won."

"Too slow, Carth. Too slow." It was Bliss, right next to his ear. She sounded both regretful and chastising.

He didn't let his focus be distracted from the dark figure in front of him. That smile. Right now, he wasn't sure if even his old hatred of Saul Karath compared to how much he hated that smile. He knew that he would gladly give up just about anything to see it wiped away.

"Look down. What you're standing in." It almost managed to sound calm. The flow of raw shuttle fuel had reached as far as the Catcher's boots. "The fuel mix contains Peragus ore. Cheap. Nasty. You don't waste the good stuff on shuttles." As he spoke, he realised he was grinning. Sanity had decided to take a break. "It burns like nothing else. I wouldn't want to be standing in it with, say, a lit lightsaber. Not when all it takes is a spark."

Of course, he was standing in it too.

The Catcher glanced briefly down, made a soft unreadable noise, then looked up again and inclined his head. "Thank you, Carth. My gratitude for the warning." The lightsaber extinguished with a soft snap-hiss.

The blaster came up almost without conscious thought. Carth pulled the trigger smoothly, aiming for the middle of the Catcher's face. It was just about a perfect shot.

Except the Catcher's right hand came across, instantly surrounded by a sheath of charged particles, deflecting it away. It ricocheted wildly, sparking off the plasteel walls. Not quite perfect enough.

Deathly silence. The Catcher's head cocked slightly to one side, listening to something Carth couldn't hear. There was an indulgent chuckle. "Firing blasters right now might be considered even more stupid than using lightsabers."

"You think I care what happens to me?" Carth's response was quietly ferocious. "There's nothing left in my life worth living for. Isn't that what you told me?"

"If you didn't care, Carth, you would have ignited it already." The Catcher took another step forward, further into the expanding pool of liquid. The raw, stinking fuel lapped around his boots. "Blown us both to hell."

Really here. Not an image. Not a decoy. Awkwardly, with only one leg to thrust off, Carth launched himself forward.

Awkward or not, his shoulder drove hard into the Catcher's midsection and they both went sprawling over on the deck together in a tangle of limbs, rolling in the spilled fuel.

Carth drove his fists repeatedly into the Catcher's torso – went at it like a vornskyr with a chew toy – drawing on deep, dark reserves of rage and pain until he was barely conscious of what he was doing, overwhelming any opposition by sheer fury and brute force. He slammed the Catcher's skull back against the metal deckplates with crunching force – prepared to do it again, and again . . .

It was like a gigantic fist seizing hold of him and gripping him tight. Suddenly Carth was flying backwards through the air, slamming into the storage hold's back wall.

His vision looped through strange gyrating patterns as he struggled to hold onto consciousness. There was a sensation similar to a Wookiee sitting on his chest and he couldn't draw breath. Just for a moment though, everything stabilized and was clear.

He was outside of the expanding pool of shuttle fuel, having been hurled at least ten metres. The Catcher was still right in its middle, drenched from head to foot, rising slowly and remorselessly, grinning even now.

He still had his blaster. Somehow, Carth realised that the weapon was still clenched tight in one fist.

He aimed at the ground right in front of the Catcher's feet. Pulled the trigger.

The wall of flame that leapt up was bright blue. To Carth's dazed senses it was one of most strangely beautiful things he had ever seen. From somewhere in its bright, ferocious heart, he heard laughter ringing out.

Then the rapidly expanding outer edge of the explosion caught hold of him, picking him up and slamming him back against the wall again, even harder than before. Dimly, distantly, he could feel raging heat . . .. From somewhere far, far away he could still hear that uproarious, almost hysterical laughter, even over the roaring of the flames.

Mixed in with it was the sound of a multitude of voices, screaming like the damned.

Fade out to nothing.

-s-s-

"I have to confess I find this a somewhat . . . strange place to conduct a meeting." Arathor Dann's voice was light, but it was obvious, even to the most casual of listeners, that that was entirely forced.

Morrigance stopped beside the Miraluka, leaning against the railing. Beneath her feet, she could hear the sound of rushing water. The circle of dim light surrounding them both didn't stretch very far. Certainly not far enough to illuminate even a fraction of the echoingly vast space around them.

"Worried that I might be setting you up for the traditional Exchange style execution? A swim wearing plastocrete boots?" Her tone matched his for lightness, though there was no feeling in it.

"It had crossed my mind. I can't imagine that you're pleased with me."

They were thousands of metres below the surface of Coruscant, standing on a walkway above one of the immense underground reservoirs that supplied both water and hydroelectric power to the teeming megacity high above their heads.

"Don't concern yourself Arathor. My schedule is a busy one. I could not afford to take time out of it to arrange so . . . elaborate a punishment. I simply happen to have other business here."

Arathor, of course, knew enough not to ask what that business was. She could sense his curiosity clearly enough though.

"I assume that you wouldn't seek a personal meeting simply to inform me of the lack of progress in your efforts to apprehend Hulas?" she prompted when he didn't say anything.

"The Rodian has proved . . . elusive. If nothing else, that one has very strong survival instincts. Estray continues to conduct the search in my stead, and I believe she has some interesting leads. But yes, you are correct. This is not directly about Hulas."

He paused, as if for some kind of response, but then cleared his throat uncomfortably, realising that she almost certainly wasn't in the mood for small talk. "We tracked Hulas to a meeting on Nawathwai, in Bothan space."

Morrigance knew Nawathwai. Her one time boss, Drevon Rae had run business through there when she'd worked for the Exchange. All those lifetimes ago.

"Hulas never showed up," Arathor continued. "Saw us coming at a guess. The person he was meeting wasn't quite so observant though."

She could sense the excitement in him then, most unusual for Arathor, so allowed herself to indulge him. "And who exactly was this person?"

His head turned towards her, blank eyes concealed behind a strip of cloth. "It was Revan."

Something inside her tightened. "Tell me."

-s-s-

"Carth, huh?"

He blinked slowly, briefly surprised, though he couldn't quite manage to grasp what he was surprised about. It seemed like he was disconnected from his body, floating in a warm, shallow pool. It was pleasant. He didn't want to leave the pool.

A face hovered above him. It took him a moment to put a name to it. Yolanda. It was surrounded by blue light, except the blue light wasn't real . . .. He struggled for a moment to place the blue light, but couldn't manage it. The effort disturbed his floating anyway.

Something else disturbed his floating even more. To her he was supposed to be Valden. "Not Carth . . ." His voice seemed to come from an entirely separate galaxy.

"Shh. Don't try to talk." Yolanda's attention shifted to someone else close by. He realised he was on some kind of trolley, or perhaps a stretcher, being pushed along. "Can't you do anything else for him?"

Doctor Ellas. The Caamasi. Carth recognised the other person only belatedly. He looked rather the worse for wear.

". . . disconnected him from the pain. I'm sure he looks a lot worse than he feels. The more visible injuries will take time though. He needs a prolonged spell of recuperation in a kolto tank."

Carth didn't catch Yolanda's muttered reply. "Valden," he insisted weakly, feeling that he couldn't let the matter pass.

"Then tell me. Why does everyone else call you Carth?" The skin around her eyes looked taut and bruised. She looked worried. The blue light had faded.

"'s a popular name on Telos. Like Han on Corellia. Used to be . . . good alias." He felt rather pleased with that.

"It's popular everywhere now." Her smile didn't look quite right. "Even non-humans are naming their children Carth these days, though some haven't quite grasped that it's supposed to be a boy's name."

"Can't use Carth anymore. Attracts far too much attention . . ."

"I told you to hush. You're hurt. You need to lie back and relax."

Part of him was inclined to argue, but that seemed a lot of effort on the whole. And floating was so much nicer, in the end. Briefly, he wondered who the third person, walking between Ellas and Yolanda, was. They hadn't spoken.

"You're sure about this?" Carth distantly held Ellas saying.

"You want to try and make it all the way across the station with him like this? Trust me. It's our best chance. Probably our only chance."

Carth couldn't quite work out what Yolanda and Ellas were talking about. Neither could he make himself care. He attempted to focus on the person walking between them. They seemed to be surrounded by a flicking corona of blue.

"You can get past the launch codes?"

"It's a Czerka made Type-D disguised warship. Standard infiltration vessel, currently in use by Sith forces among many others. Believe me when I say that the launch codes won't be a problem."

There was a pause. Carth's vision was slowly clearing. He thought that the person standing between them might be a Twi'lek. Those looked like lekku, anyway . . .

"Something about this feels wrong."

"Is that the Force talking, Doctor, or just your own doubts?"

Carth didn't hear any reply to that. His vision had just sharpened to diamond sharp clarity, and suddenly his heart was trying to batter its way out through his sternum.

It was Bliss.

Once yellow skin was now charred black, save were it had cracked and split, rawly oozing clear fluids. Her eyes had cooked and changed colour, red-pink blood blisters looking down at him through cloudy white irises. He could glimpse flashes of her teeth through one perforated cheek.

The blue glow came from the fact that she still smouldered in the shuttle fuel – a dancing corona of pale, centimetre high flame.

"Why did you burn me, Carth?" she mouthed. Those dreadful eyes bored into him, unrelenting. "Why do you hate me so much?"

The Catcher.

The Catcher was still alive. Somehow, despite the flames. He tried to speak – to warn – but he couldn't force air past his constricted throat. And suddenly everything was spinning.

Fade out again.

-s-s-

The wrist blade made a soft, unpleasant noise as it retracted from its newfound sheath of flesh. Expressionless, Yolanda shoved the Sith pilot out of his seat, where he crumpled in a boneless heap, joining the rest of the freshly butchered bridge crew.

She leaned forwards, wiping blood splatter from the instruments with the sleeve of her jacket. It took no more than a moment for her to activate the back door built into the control systems.

For all her earlier expressed confidence to Ellas, there was a very definite sense of relief when it actually worked. The mechanism had been added to the systems of all Sith vessels to provide emergency access and control to top-level assets. It wasn't the kind of thing she'd had much opportunity to put to the test before.

She spoke into the comm. "Brace yourself, doctor. I'm about to blow the emergency docking clamp releases. It could be momentarily uncomfortable."

"Acknowledged." The answering voice sounded vague and distracted.

A few seconds later, a series of sharp jolts vibrated through the disguised warship's hull – explosive bolts detonating in quick succession to set them free of Kamari Station's grasp, drifting free in space. Immediately Yolanda's fingers started to dart over the controls in front of her, initiating the main ignition sequence.

"He's on board."

Ellas's voice over her earpiece made her jolt more violently than the emergency release sequence had. "What?"

"The Dark Jedi. The Catcher. We weren't quick enough. He made it on board before we cut free." The uncharacteristic snap to the Caamasi's words forestalled any questions.

She started to stand up, heart racing. "I'll be there in . . ."

"No. Head to port bay two." Suddenly he really did sound completely different. Decisive. Commanding. A true Jedi Master. "There's some kind of modified attack ship there. Big enough to take about four people. Get Carth from the med bay and get out of here."

Arguments rose, but she bit them back. A sneaking, cynical part of her wondered if he was taking the opportunity to betray them.

"I'll buy you the time you need." His spoke more softly now. Slightly regretful, perhaps. "If you can activate the self destruct, I'd do it now."

She couldn't. Although she had the required permission levels to access the necessary codes, it would take two separate crewmembers to successfully initiate the sequence. Crewmembers that she'd killed.

She told Ellas as much.

There was a tiny pause before he answered again. "Well, if you can do anything inside the next thirty seconds to disable the controls, then do it. Otherwise I'd advise that you run."

"Doctor . . ." she started.

The tone of command faded from his voice. "If we get the chance we'll . . . we'll talk later. Now please, go."

The comm link shut off, leaving her in silence.

-s-s-

"What have you just done?" The Catcher's voice, emerging from the darkness, was a broken rasp.

Ellas stood firm, bathed in the green light of his saber as he stared at the shadow wrapped figure in front of him. He was surprised to find that the serenity managed to hold back even the surging tides of fear. He was surprised to find that he felt calm and even confident.

"I have freed him from you. Severed the bond you forced on him." Even if he were still defeated, that one thing meant victory. He told himself he was content with that.

The Catcher's answer came in the form of harsh, hissing laughter. He took a dragging step forward. The blackness still clung to him tightly – a living force.

"We do not need to do this anymore. We do not need to fight." Ellas's words were strong and calm. "Let me heal you. Let me soothe your pain."

The figure stopped – tilted its head to one side, as though listening to something that Ellas couldn't hear. "My pain?"

Ellas almost felt pity then. "You have been burned. Badly burned. I can help you, if you let me."

There was more broken laughter. Briefly, Ellas wondered if the Dark Jedi's sanity had cracked entirely.

"Burned? No, no." Suddenly the Catcher's posture had straightened out, his voice losing the rasp and becoming smoothly mellifluous. "Not burned. I learned a lesson from the flames. It is amazing the things that you can learn when you really, really have no other choice."

Ellas suddenly felt cold.

The Catcher extended a hand, and Ellas was aware of the Force being channelled. He stepped back, raising his lightsaber in preparation to defend himself. He could feel his fur prickling uncomfortably, and suddenly serenity seemed a long, long way away.

Bright blue flames burst from the Catcher's fingertips. He trailed his hand back and forth, making those flames dance, seemingly entranced by them and the pale, flickering light they cast. "See? The flames tried to consume me, but I didn't let them. I made them part of me instead." Gleaming white teeth flashed. "They are beautiful, don't you think?"

The serenity fractured entirely then, fear sweeping over Ellas in crashing breakers.

"Now." Ellas couldn't see the Catcher's eyes but he could feel them. Their gaze crawled across him avidly, almost a physical thing – swarming, parasitic insects burrowing through his fur. "You have taken something from me that I value, Jedi. For that I intend to extract full restitution."

The Catcher's lightsaber ignited. Its glare finally peeled back the shadows around him, and showed his face in its entirety.

It was smooth, unscarred by fire. Unbroken skin gleamed darkly.

Then the Catcher moved, like lightning. Like living flame.

-s-s-

Yolanda heard the beep that indicated an arriving transmission a moment before she hit the controls of the Tukata class fighter-bomber and made the leap to hyperspace.

As the star lines faded, she let out a breath, allowing herself to slump back in the pilot's seat. They'd made it.

The transmission beeped at her again, insistent.

A recorded message then, rather than a live incoming call. She was going to ignore it and check on Carth – odd to think that he wasn't Valden anymore – although the strong likelihood was that he was still off floating somewhere in a state of drugged out bliss, entirely unaware of anything around him. A glance at the ident tag gave her pause though.

Dr Ulvol Ellas. She sighed softly, then hit the control to play the message back. He deserved to be heard at least.

It wasn't Ellas's voice that spoke to her though. Her breath contracted sharply.

"Warm felicitations to you, Carth. You seem in quite the hurry to get away." The words were followed by a quiet giggle that set Yolanda's teeth on edge.

She grimaced, her hand moving to stop the message playing back. Something stayed her though.

"I thought you'd like to know. Your friend, Dr Ellas, has been persuaded to . . . join with me. I should thank you for helping to introduce us. He really is a most . . . fascinating person. Let me assure you, I will not waste the knowledge he has so generously bequeathed to me."

Yolanda didn't know why she kept listening, but she did.

"You may come to form the impression that the bonds between us have been severed. You would be mistaken. Our connection is not defined purely by the Force."

She muttered something unflattering beneath her breath.

"Should vengeance for Dr Ellas and dearest Bliss not be sufficient reason for you to seek me out – and I'm sure it will be – I'd like to propose a race between us. I've decided to head for Coruscant, and there Carth, I intended to track down your son."

Frak.

"If you can get to Coruscant and find me before I find him, however, I shall generously allow you to volunteer to take his place."

There was a pause in the playback.

"Be seeing you, Carth. Do try not to dawdle."