The sunlight shining through the valleys of the Tarisian skyscrapers, as obscured and filtered as it was in the Lower City, was almost as welcome as the hot meal had been earlier that morning when Aithne and the others arrived back up top. Fighting the odd Black Vulkar again was refreshing after hours of mutant, contagious rhakghouls. At least the Vulkars didn't spread disease.
More, though, Aithne felt that something was about to break on Taris, that they were close to the turning point that would finally get the lot of them off this rock, including Bastila. After that, life was a blank, but hey, you had to take things one step at a time.
It was nearing lunch hour when they got back to the Bek base. Aithne walked in, prototype accelerator in hand, and laid it on top of Gadon's desk. Because Zaerdra hadn't called a challenge, Gadon knew she was a friendly, but it took the blind swoop gang leader a second to identify her body signature with his implants.
"Moran, is it? You have returned. Do you have the prototype swoop engine accelerator with you?"
"On your desk, Gadon," Zaerdra told him. "The two off-worlders are dirty and tired but unharmed. It's the same with Mission and the Wookiee. It took you all long enough."
"Oh, you know," Carth said. "Fifty rhakghouls or more, a run-in with Gamorrean slavers, dodging round the Sith and the Exchange, not to mention raiding the Vulkar base. We did what we could."
"You did well," Gadon agreed. "But I was beginning to worry. The race is tomorrow, and my mechanics need time to install the prototype into the swoop engine of our bike."
"And then you can hold up your end of our bargain. We've held up ours, and—as Carth says, it involved a great deal of personal risk on all our parts."
"Don't worry," Gadon assured her. "I'm a man of my word. I promised you could ride in the swoop race under the Hidden Bek banner, and I'm still going to let you do that. And," he said, in a salesman's 'that's-not-all' voice, "I'm even going to do you one better: I'm going to let you ride the swoop bike with the prototype accelerator installed on it. Without it, you won't stand a chance."
Aithne sensed Mission shoot Carth a worried glance behind her back. Zaerdra spoke up: "Gadon! You can't be serious! We need one of our best riders on that bike! We can't just let some rookie take the prototype engine into the race!"
Gadon shifted, and Aithne zeroed in on the tell: he was nervous, possibly guilty. "Because it's new technology and requires an experienced touch, or because it's unstable?" she asked, pitching her words to Zaerdra but staring down Gadon.
"You've got it," Gadon admitted. "The accelerator technology isn't finished yet. There's a good chance it could explode during the race."
Carth, Mission, and Zaalbar stepped forward, all about to protest. Aithne raised a hand, waiting for the gang leader to finish. "I can't ask one of my own riders to take the risk—they'll be running unmodified swoops in the race. You'll be the only one using the prototype. If you can complete the track before the accelerator overheats, then you'll win for the Beks. If you die, then one of my other riders could still come through for me."
"Wait, so Aithne's just . . . expendable?" Mission demanded.
Aithne looked at the Twi'lek. "He's protecting his people, Mission," she said. "I've always been expendable. People hire freelancers to be expendable. Terms for this job were a little odd, but the setup was pretty standard. If we hadn't shown up, Gadon would've had to surrender his gang's technology to Brejik or risk a team of his own people in recovering it. Fortunately, he had currency valuable to me and Carth: information on Bastila and a way for us to rescue her. He paid it to us, and what he got in turn was both his gang's technology back and whatever Bek lives he might have lost if he'd had to make the recovery attempt instead. Now he's offering another deal—giving us not only a chance to save Bastila but the best chance to save her, if, again, we will assume more risk than he's willing to ask his own people to assume and obtain an asset that's valuable to them."
She hoped Mission would take the secondary point: that Mission herself was less valuable to Gadon Thek than the lives of actual members of his gang, that he'd risked her too. If Aithne died on Gadon's swoop bike, she didn't want Mission going back to the Beks.
"How can you talk like that?" Mission exclaimed. Her lekku were twisting wildly. "He's talking about your life!"
"Bastila's life is on the line too," Aithne pointed out. "If I or one of the other Beks don't win tomorrow, off she'll go into slavery, just like Zaalbar. Well, Gadon. You have all your bases covered."
Gadon's face was unreadable. "You don't get to be leader of a swoop gang if you don't know how to work all the angles," he said. If you don't know how to make sacrifices, he means, Aithne thought.
She turned around to Carth. "If I do this, I can trust you?" she asked. With Mission and Zaalbar, with making sure Bastila gets out no matter what happens to me, even though you don't trust me, she meant.
"You can trust me," he said. She believed him.
Aithne turned around to Gadon. "Okay. I'll do it."
CARTH
Gadon offered to let them stay in the Bek base for the rest of that afternoon and through the night. They ate in the Beks' mess, and then Mission took them back to the Bek barracks, where she and Zaalbar had slept often.
Aithne was strangely silent. Through the past few days, Carth had gotten used to the sound of her voice, arguing with him, advocating for Mandalorians and Sith foot soldiers of all people, taking the lead as if Republic rank and protocol had never existed. Ridiculously sharp, witty, funny—sometimes dry or sarcastic, reflective, thoughtful. On occasion, incisive and devastating, like just now with Thek or with him the other day in the sewers outside the Gamorrean hideout. In any event, Aithne was never at a loss for words. That she was now worried him.
Mission's lekku wouldn't stay still. She kept rolling over on her bunk, getting up to pace around the room. Zaalbar was sitting in a pile of their salvaged weapons, cleaning some, tinkering with others.
Eventually, Aithne got up and left the barracks. Carth got up. He started to follow her, but Zaalbar stopped him. He growled at him softly, and Mission translated. Her voice was flat.
"He says to leave her alone," she reported. "That she needs to come to terms with what she's vowed to do on her own. Even if she gets herself killed doing it," she added in a bitter, venomous voice, clearly speaking for herself instead of the Wookiee now. "Frak."
"Language!"
Mission slid her eyes to him, completely unimpressed. "Way I see it, it's time for some karking cursing, if we're just going to sit here without doing nothing else. You just let her say she'll ride that swoop bike! Like, does Aithne even drive swoop bikes?"
"I don't know," Carth answered.
"You could've volunteered," Mission insisted. "You're supposed to be the soldier. She's what, some scout and linguist the Republic brought on like yesterday. What about me and Big Z?"
"What about Bastila?" Carth countered, even though he felt uncomfortable about the Tarisians too. "We're here for the Jedi. She's enslaved now, and unless she's rescued, her life will be a living hell and the Republic war effort is doomed."
"I get that," Mission said. "We gotta help her. I just . . . wish there was another way. I wish we'd never got back that prototype accelerator. The Beks could of won the race without it, and they don't do slavery, though I guess they were quick enough to jump on using a girl from nowhere who just needed a little extra help, and . . . you know, the rest of us." She curled up on her bunk then, and her lekku wrapped around her throat like her arms were wrapped around her shoulders.
"You caught that, did you?"
"She meant me to," Mission said. "Practically laid it out on a big silver platter: you're not a Bek, Mission, just a security spike on legs to these people, and they don't give a flying flip whether you live or die. And she was right, wasn't she?" Mission looked up at him, and Carth hesitated.
"Zaerdra wasn't happy when Gadon wanted us to come looking for you," he said. "I think some of them care a little. But, for the most part—"
"I thought the Beks were my friends. I thought I could trust them, that they were good guys," Mission said. "But even if they did invent the prototype accelerator, they still were willing to ask us to murder a whole slew of Vulkars to get it back, and for us to get murdered too, or end up rhakghoul meat or whatever. Even if they wanna free your friend if they win the race, they're using her being sold, manipulating Aithne and the rest of us. It just—it makes me mad enough to spit. Geez, I thought Zaalbar was naïve and gullible. Since we been running around with you and Aithne—"
Zaalbar roared something else. Mission's face softened. "Thanks, Big Z. He says I shouldn't think so much, that Aithne'll come through. I guess he wouldn't of sworn a lifedebt to her if he didn't think she was special, and I know she is, but—I just don't want her to die. I know Bastila's important and all, but I never met her in my life. Aithne—she's my friend."
"That's when things are hardest," Carth told her. "When you've got orders that mean you and your unit are at risk for an objective you just can't value like the brass does. When all there is to do is . . . is just trust they know what they're doing."
Mission snorted. "And what happens when they're wrong?"
"You lose," Carth answered. He stood up and left the barracks. The Wookiee didn't stop him this time. He walked through the halls of the Hidden Bek base without paying much attention to where he was going or who he was passing. Mission would be okay with Zaalbar. The Wookiee knew her a hell of a whole lot better than Carth did. He'd know what to say or what to do or . . . whatever.
For all he knew, Mission had been right to be angry with him. They had no idea whether Aithne could ride a swoop bike or not. As ranking officer, maybe he should've assumed the risk. To everyone but the dead, he was replaceable. There were thousands of qualified pilots in the Republic. But Aithne—she had two new dependents, a family, as strange as it was to think of, and she hadn't had near time enough to make arrangements for them. There also might be other considerations.
The Jedi had requested Aithne's services, and Carth had seen enough by now that he was starting to know why. Her ability with languages was an asset, and because she'd spent the past ten years on her own, traveling widely in and outside of Republic space, she had a point of view that most soldiers of the Republic lacked. She saw new sides to issues and could think creatively and solve problems independently in a way that didn't rise up naturally in rank-and-file soldiers. In fact, she was almost perfect special forces material, but it was more than that. Aithne Moran had a klick-wide streak of some unidentifiable quality—some stroke of luck or inspiration or destiny that made things work out for her, that made things happen for her. It had got Zaalbar to swear a lifedebt to her in the sewers after less than an hour's conversation and a rescue two other people had taken part in; let her pick up two random datapads in a day that turned out to be the long-lost instructions to some sort of salvation colony in the Undercity. He had a feeling it was the reason that Mando kept turning up. And that quality, whatever it was, was also why he thought she might have a shot at rescuing Bastila tomorrow.
But if he was wrong, if the Jedi had some other purpose for her, and Aithne's skills and abilities weren't up to tomorrow's challenge, it was wrong to let her take the risk. On the other hand, while he had no idea what kind of swoop racer she'd make, Carth was fairly sure he'd make a bad one. He was heavier than she was, at any rate, and he didn't know but that her reflexes might be better too.
He also had an idea that even if he suggested taking her place tomorrow, she wouldn't go for it. For one, she might think he was asking because he didn't trust her. But even so, operating on her plan with her allies, it would be so damn easy for her to subvert the entire mission . . .
Carth growled aloud. Out of the cockpit, Karath.
Anyway, he reasoned, it wasn't like he wouldn't have noticed if Aithne was planning some kind of betrayal. Every thought and emotion she had showed on her face, and she voiced most of them out loud. She could be cold and practical enough at times, though he thought a lot of that was a front, but she was the furthest thing from a liar.
Carth stopped. He looked up. He didn't know where he was, and it took him a minute to realize he'd walked blindly across the base to the Hidden Beks garage. Four swoop bikes were standing ready, gassed and polished, ready for the race tomorrow. In a special room to the right, three or four mechanics worked on a fifth. And standing seven meters away from the window that looked in on it was a woman in a loose-fitting white linen shirt tucked into tight-fitting combat-weave pants.
Aithne'd used the time to track down a shower and change. He'd have to do the same, Carth thought. He looked down and realized his boots were still spattered with Undercity muck, though he'd avoided a lot of the rhakghoul blood spatters Aithne and Zaalbar had come in the way of today, and he hadn't had a chance to use an actual fresher in days.
Aithne's hair was clean, and loose for once, down in a cloud around her shoulders and skimming the top of her chest. It was thick and curly enough that, from his position, it was hard to see more than the tip of her nose. Aithne Moran had some gorgeous hair. A lot about her was beautiful, in a comfortable way that didn't make a huge deal out of itself. He liked her height, liked her curves, and the way she smiled, when she did. He liked the light behind her big brown eyes, the freckles across her cheeks, and the way her hands moved when she talked.
Back in the Vulkar base, she'd accused him, obliquely, of mixing his signals a little, and he'd had to confess that he had. He hadn't meant to be unprofessional, had never meant calling her beautiful to be more than idle banter in a conversation meant to distract anyone trying to eavesdrop on them in a cantina. When he'd suggested they drop rank and protocol between them to keep themselves safe from the Sith, he hadn't meant for it to disappear completely. But here he was.
Probably another symptom of whatever it was that had made everything that had happened since they got to Taris center on her, he thought, that quality that was probably the reason the Jedi wanted her. He thought she was out of her mind half the time, especially on politics and Mandalorians, and she was damned frustrating, the way she got at him without, as far as he could tell, trying or . . . or even wanting to, the way some women had tried after Morgana, or in long tours away during their marriage.
As if she'd heard his thoughts, Aithne's head turned, and her eyes caught his. She tilted her head, inviting him to come stand beside her.
"Come to comfort me my last day among the living?" she asked.
"I don't think you're going to die tomorrow," Carth answered, surprised as he said it at just how strongly he did feel it. He was upset. He was worried about her, but somehow, he just knew Aithne would come through this. "I think you're going to march back into that Upper City apartment after the swoop race, Taris swoop champion, and I think you'll have Bastila with you."
Aithne caught his eye again. She regarded him for a moment. "What, you starting to trust me or something, Onasi?"
Carth shook his head. "It's not about that," he objected. "It's just . . . you. A feeling I have. I can't explain it any better than that."
Aithne was silent a moment. "I agree with you," she said then, "and for pretty much the same reason. Going in, this looks like the worst deal imaginable. You know, I only ever rode a swoop bike once before. Did it on a dare. I was sixteen years old. Did a run down a canyon course back home after sneaking out in the middle of the night with a couple friends. Beat all the old hands by two seconds, but that bike scared me to death. There's no reason to think I'll live through getting on that death machine tomorrow with absolutely no experience, but—" she shrugged. "Still, it's got me thinking."
She handed him a datapad. Carth looked it over. There was a row of numbers on it, and a link to a text file. He opened the file and stopped. Last Will and Testament.
"Not sure if I did that right," Aithne told him. "Never had anyone to leave my stuff to before or any last requests to make. I might not even have any assets to distribute if the Republic didn't follow through on their promise to unfreeze 'em. I don't think I'm going to die tomorrow. I think I'll win. But on the off-chance I'm wrong—I can't just plow into stuff like this without thinking about the consequences anymore. Zaalbar will be fine. He's an adult, though I think he's a young one, and he's strong and skilled enough to make it even in a galaxy where more than 9,900 people out of 10,000 aren't going to understand a word he says. But Mission—she needs more than just one friend she can count on. She needs a home and school and a future. She's a total idiot to throw in with me, just trying to stay close to Big Z 'cause it's all she knows, but I'm gonna do the best I can for her. I will."
"Did you ever have a sister? Or a kid?" Carth asked.
Aithne shook her head. "I was an only child, and I've been smart—or lucky—enough in my dealings with men not to have run into any . . . complications. I just—when there's a kid, looking to you, you take care of her, don't you? Even if she doesn't think she needs it."
"She's been reevaluating that, the past couple days," Carth said.
"Good. She should," Aithne said. "She won't actually be an adult until she knows she doesn't know a thing."
Carth chuckled at that.
"I want her set up with resident ID codes in the Republic. I want Zaalbar legally set up as her guardian, if I'm not, just 'cause it'll make the paperwork a whole lot easier," Aithne went on. "I want her vaccinated against all the major diseases transmissible to Twi'leks on high-traffic worlds in the Rim and in the Core. I'd like to get her out of the war entirely and in school on the safest planet possible, but if I don't die tomorrow, that won't happen. She'll go wherever Zaalbar does, and he's going to follow me. Anyway, I think she's had enough gaps in her education that she'd be way behind and unhappy in an on-level program for the moment. She's smart, but she'd feel like an idiot, and I don't want that for her. Better to structure a homeschool program for her, at least for a year or so, but I haven't had the time to come up with one."
Carth examined the datapad, her bank account number and a will that detailed everything she was explaining to him now. "I'm surprised you've had time to do this much," he said. "You . . . you've really taken her on."
"She didn't give me a whole lot of choice."
Carth shook his head. "There's always a choice," he said. "I was a . . . I had a . . ." he trailed off.
"I thought so," Aithne said. "She's not wrong that you talk like you're her father, talk like someone who was or is a father. Like my dad, too, what I remember of him. Not that you treat me like you're my father," she clarified, face heating, as Carth frowned and started to protest. "Just with her. You do and say stuff like I remember my dad doing and saying for me. He was a good father."
"How long has it been since—"
"About nine years," she answered. "I don't remember a lot about my mother. She died when I really was young." She looked at him. "Just 'cause I'm telling you about me, you don't have to tell me about you," she said.
"Thank you," Carth said. For him, Telos was still too close. Shouting for the medics, Morgana in his arms, never even finding Dustil's body. He tried to explain. "It's not that I mind, telling you. It's just . . . it's still raw."
Aithne nodded. "Is it funny, that I'm more scared about what'll happen if I don't die than if I do?" she asked then. She gestured again at the swoop bike across the room. "If that monster machine takes me out tomorrow, it's all over for me. I know you'll make sure Bastila and the Republic are saved no matter how the race turns out—" her voice was a little drier and more ironic than he'd have liked, but there was no real bite to it. "—and I know I can trust you and Zaalbar to do what's best for Mission too. But when I live, I gotta figure out how to get the Jedi all those Sith are looking for off-planet and keep a teenage girl safe and educated when she up and follows us all into the heart of the war. That's what's got me shook."
"It's not funny at all," Carth said. "It's normal. People like you and me, we're used to taking risks, to putting our lives on the line for the cause—or maybe, out of professional honor, for someone like you."
Aithne tilted her head at him. "Now you're getting it," she praised him.
Carth shifted. "But family, the people we care about—that's the best reason we do it. Better than justice, or compassion on people we don't know, or revenge. And worrying . . . worrying we'll get it wrong, that we'll let them down . . . fail. That's the worst thing. To be scared of—or have happen." He ended in a voice so low he didn't know whether she heard.
She didn't speak for a long moment. Then she said, "Let's get a drink, Onasi. Beks have to owe me a few free shots if I'm risking my tail on their death machine for their glory tomorrow. Besides, watching these mechanics work is making me twitchy. I keep thinking maybe I'd do better."
Carth straightened. "You know about swoop bikes?"
She shook her head. "Not a blessed thing, but I know about droids and computers, and in a second here I'm sure I'll fool myself into thinking it's the same thing and barge in on Gadon's inventors who created that prototype accelerator."
"You might be more likely to do that after a few free shots," Carth pointed out.
"But it'll be funnier," Aithne replied. "So?"
She faced him, hands on hips, head tilted. Carth smiled and fell into step beside and a little behind Aithne Moran. Just enough to admire the view when she didn't think he was watching. It was becoming a habit of his, he thought, and part of him was more than a little worried about it. The other part of him just really thought that drink sounded great.
BASTILA
Bastila's body ached. Her head buzzed as that blasted neural disruptor kept trying to keep her disoriented. She'd been confined for days. She'd lost count. She'd been in a dark cell someplace. It had been small, she thought, but she couldn't quite remember. She had wondered if the Sith had captured her, if they were trying to break her.
There is no emotion; there is peace.
She'd realized the Sith couldn't have been the ones to capture her when her wounds from the crash had been healed. Her clothes were taken away, and she was forced into a skintight, brightly colored costume. If she was remembering right, the cakelike stuff on her face had been applied a few hours ago. She didn't know how she looked, but she rather felt like her chest might fall out of her get-up at any moment.
Voices. There were more now, and Bastila almost shrieked when they led her out into bright light for the first time in days. There were voices everywhere. Human. Twi'lek. Rodian and Duros. She appeared to be someplace very busy, and as her captors led her by the talk blazed up.
Prize. She was a captive. She was to be offered up as a prize. A slave. Bastila knit her brow as they lowered the cage door over her, trying to impose her will over her sluggish, disjointed thoughts. She felt the Force, like always, but it seemed fragmented, broken into pieces around her.
Now and then, someone would come stand before her cage, leering at her, boasting loudly about what they'd do when they'd won . . . what? The race? Bastila kept having to force herself to focus. The light of the track hurt her eyes. All the voices echoed off permacrete walls and corroded industrial durasteel trappings and came back, doubled and trebled, to bounce around inside her skull.
Some instruments played a fanfare, and then a rumbling started. Piercing cheers rose up from all around. The din nearly split her brain in half. Bastila clutched the bars of the cage. The steel in her hands helped to dispel the confusion of her emotions. Maybe when the race was over, the winner would remove her collar. Then she could get them.
There was something she was meant to do for the Republic, for the Jedi. She was on an important, dangerous mission, sensitive and highly classified, especially from its subject. She was unprepared, but the only possible one for . . . why couldn't she recall?
A voice broke into her thoughts. The voice of a human female, speaking Basic with an alien nearby. Low and musical, dramatic and expressive. Charismatic, Bastila thought. Dangerous. Somehow the voice cut through the noise of the disruptor and the swoop track. She focused in on it, directed her thoughts towards it. The voice itself was familiar, but for some reason, she couldn't fit it to a face. Instead, she only received an impression of a black cloak spinning to the ground, of the flash of a lightsaber.
The alien the woman was speaking with was taunting her. /You were pretty good. Too bad I was better. You, and me, and Republic over there can have a party to make it up to you./ The sexist and offensive presumption of the remark sent a spark of anger through Bastila. She started to breathe in a pattern, controlling her response, beginning to see the circuits of her neural disruption collar within her mind's eye as the conversation went on.
The conversation ended as one or the other of the participants walked away, but the thread of the Living Force she had sensed in the voice of the human female remained, and Bastila held it like a lifeline, pulling on it in order to free herself from the morass of confusion caused by the disruption collar and her many days' imprisonment.
Within the passage of maybe half an hour, she had the measure of the collar. She knew she could break it at the most advantageous moment, but she was still trying to decide when that might be.
She had also cleared her mind enough to remember what had happened and understand what was currently happening. She had been captured on the planet of Taris, not by the Sith but by members of the Black Vulkar swoop bike gang. She was to be their share of the prize in the annual planetary swoop bike championship race.
The humiliation of it was almost enough to send her spiraling back into confusion, but, with difficulty, Bastila maintained her breathing pattern, repeating the Jedi Code inside her head like a mantra against the manipulations of the neural disruption collar. One thing she was sure about: she was not going to be awarded to some petty thug, as a trophy or an object for their lust. She was a Jedi, and even without her lightsaber, they were not going to reduce her to helplessness again. But surprise and a good sense of timing would still be critical if she were to escape.
The races were drawing to a close now. It seemed that another bike gang—not the Vulkars—had sponsored a freelancer, and that was the person in the lead. Bastila heard the buzz of conversation, along with all the deafening cheers, and it said that the woman had actually broken the all-time Taris swoop record. No one had come within eight seconds of the time set in her latest heat.
It was encouraging that the current leader was a woman. Not that women couldn't be cruel, abusive, or seek out other women to enslave and torture, but statistically, it was a rarer occurrence than that of a man commodifying and using a woman for his own amusement. It was possible that the race winner would be more interested in selling her at some later date than in making immediate use of her. A lack of any focused intent or attention on her could furnish Bastila with an opportunity.
The fanfare sounded once again. "Ladies, gentlemen, and various others," an announcer called over the loudspeaker in Basic. "I present to you the winner of this year's swoop race: Addie Fe! Put your hands together and show your appreciation for one of the most daring riders this swoop track has ever seen!"
The swoop enthusiasts went wild. Fortunately, Bastila was sufficiently recovered that the sound no longer injured her.
"Through your skills and courage," the announcer went on, "you have proven yourself the premier swoop rider on Taris and brought great glory to the Hidden Bek gang! Now, here to present the champion's prize, Brejik, leader of the Black Vulkars!"
Bastila watched from under her eyelids as her captor strode up to the stage. He looked angry. Bastila fought a sudden surge of hope. If Brejik caused a commotion . . .
"People, hear me," he cried to the audience. "Before I present the so-called champion of the Beks with her prize, there is something you should know: the winning rider cheated!"
From her narrowed, downcast eyes, all Bastila could see of the woman who had won her, Addie Fe, was that she was every bit as tall as her accuser, armed with vibroblades on either hip. The track lights shone on an aureole of small curls that had escaped her braided crown, painting them red and gold, though her hair, Bastila thought, was probably brown.
"That's the tack you're going with?" Fe asked, in a mildly curious tone, but the voice fell like a jolt on Bastila's ears. It was the same voice she had recognized half an hour ago, the one the Force gathered to like a nova, the one that had given her the strength to break through the collar's confusion. And the person it belonged to wasn't known as Addie Fe at all.
"Because I read through the rules and regulations of your race here early this morning as I entered my name into the roster. They didn't say anything about the modifications in place on my bike being illegal."
"The prototype accelerator you used was clearly an unfair advantage!" Brejik snapped, face red, infuriated. He turned to the crowd again. "Because of this Hidden Bek treachery," he announced, "I'm withdrawing the Vulkar's share of the victory prize!"
Fe unsheathed her blades as the announcer wrung his hands. "You can't do this, Brejik! You know the rules: nobody's allowed to withdraw a victory prize after the race. It goes against all our most sacred traditions!"
"You old fool," Brejik snarled. "Your traditions are nothing to me! I am the wave of the future! If I want to withdraw the prize and sell this woman out on the slave market myself, nobody can stop me!"
Bastila acted. The worst-case scenario was remaining with Brejik and his Vulkars. She popped the collar. She pushed with the Force, shoving the door of her cage wide open. She grasped the guard by her cage by his wrist and shoulder, threw him over her shoulder and stamped down hard upon his windpipe. Taking the double-bladed vibrosword from his corpse, she took up a guard position. "I might have something to say about that, Brejik."
Bastila ignored the screams and murmurs around the crowd, how many of them were slipping quietly out the doors and others were retreating to a safe distance as what appeared to be the makings of a first-rate brawl was beginning by the victor's seat. She kept her eyes upon Brejik.
"You were restrained by a neural disruptor!" Brejik accused her. "How could you have possibly summoned the will to free yourself?"
A few gang members, in yellow to the Vulkars' red and blue, were making their way to the back of the race winner. Bastila didn't know if she would end up having to subdue the Hidden Beks as well before the end; it could be that they also wanted her as a prize. For now, the Beks would be allies.
"You underestimate the strength of a Jedi's mind, Brejik," she said. "A mistake you won't live to regret."
Brejik darkened with rage. "Vulkars!" he shouted. "To me! Kill these women! Kill them all!"
In a single, flying leap, the woman Addie Fe jumped to Bastila's side, taking up position at her back. Bastila fought a surge of annoyance. She was supposed to be handling Fe, though she was almost sure the woman wasn't meant to be using that name. Bastila was not intended to end up being rescued by Fe instead. She didn't like to think what this would look like in her report to the Council.
Her annoyance showed itself in an unwontedly vicious kick to the Vulkar coming in on her right. Bastila dealt him a brutal blow to the collarbone that sent him sprawling to the floor, screaming and clutching at the base of his throat, trying to keep his blood not just from leaking but from spurting away.
Behind her, Addie Fe impaled a Kadas'sa'Nikto dressed in a racing suit dyed the Vulkar colors upon her right vibroblade. "Applauding your 'strength of will' and all," she said, pulling the blade free with a grunt, "but did you have to mention to everyone present that you're a Jedi?"
Bastila swung her vibrosword in a wide arc, meaning to behead an attacking Vulkar, but the metal didn't cut as easily as her lightsaber. It stuck in his throat, sending blood shooting all over the ridiculous costume the Vulkars had dressed her in. Bastila tried not to gag. The smell of combat was diminished, fighting with blades of metal instead of plasma, but the sensations . . .
The fact that announcing her affiliation had actually been a tactical error while she was surrounded by enemies and still missing her lightsaber just served to annoy Bastila even further. This mission had gone poorly quickly. She had been meant to control things, right from the start. Everything depended upon her maintaining control. Instead, she was off-balance on a world with a large Sith presence, in the power of the very individual she had been meant to keep within her power at all costs.
Not that it had ever been a very promising mission. She was merely a Padawan. Her primary teacher had been killed one Republic standard year ago, in the very engagement which had bound her to a task she had very little hope of ever fulfilling. She could sense the power of the woman behind her. A sense almost like heat from that of a forge at full strength. Beside it, she, her Battle Meditation, and all her training amounted to little more than a quiet domestic campfire. Yet the Council had charged her with keeping the other in check, and, indeed, they had explained that she was the only one with hope of doing so.
Yet here she was, within the first days of her mission, in completely over her head and out of her depth, making errors she ought to have known better than to make.
As she and her unwelcome rescuer turned together to face Brejik, the woman called out to her, "Aithne Moran."
Yes, that had been the name, Bastila remembered. A freelance scout, to account for her propensity for independent thought and action but build within her the makings of what they hoped would be a sense of honor. Widely traveled, to account for experiences, skills, and opinions that would not be otherwise easily explained.
"Bastila Shan," she shouted back, as Moran delivered a strong kick to the Vulkar leader's stomach. Bastila dodged a sweep of Brejik's vibrosword and dealt a blow to his shoulder.
Her savior dashed into a millisecond gap in his defense and stabbed him to the heart. He fell dead at her feet. Wasting no time, the woman knelt beside him, expertly searching him. She stuffed a few items into a nearby pack that lay forgotten by the wayside, and then held up a double-bladed lightsaber. "This yours?"
Bastila could have wept with relief, and Moran took her expression as affirmation and tossed the hilt of the weapon. Bastila caught it easily, feeling its accustomed weight in her hand. She did not have a belt to attach it to in this costume, but just holding it gave her back a sense of confidence.
She activated the saber. Twin blades of yellow light slid out with a hiss. Bastila deactivated it again and looked across at Aithne Moran, gathering her pack with her back to Bastila. She was wary: she hadn't had the opportunity to introduce herself to the woman aboard Endar Spire in a way that would be plausibly casual before the ship had been attacked. She didn't know how the backstory Moran had been given would lead her to act. If things were as she thought, the situation might actually allow for intimacy and an assumption of her mission sooner rather than later, but if something unexpected occurred once again . . .
"I assume you do not intend to collect me as a prisoner?" she managed finally. "Because if you do—"
"To rescue you, actually," Moran answered, turning around and facing her full-on for the first time. Bastila had only ever seen her unmasked face once, and thereafter at a distance, from behind the window of a guarded medical bay in the Jedi Temple. She was amazed at how ordinary the woman appeared now. Her eyes had been sickly yellow and were now a warm golden brown. The blue-black veins that had been visible beneath the surface of her pale skin had faded, and her hair now did not appear as though it would fit inside a war helm. Instead, beneath the blood from the fighting, Aithne Moran vaguely resembled an aunt Bastila remembered from her early childhood—an artist, or a teacher. A librarian? Bastila wondered if looking ordinary made the woman more or less dangerous.
She licked her lips and began to play her part. "I don't believe this. You're . . . you're one of the soldiers with the Republic Fleet, aren't you? Yes, I'm sure of it. How did you end up racing for these swoop gangs?"
Moran's nose wrinkled. Her mouth twisted up into quite a comical little expression. "That's a long, complicated story best told someplace away from here. For now, just tell me: did they hurt you?"
"No," Bastila told her. "I suppose Brejik was saving that for whoever ended up with me." Suddenly the weight of all the danger she had actually been in hit her, along with the annoyance that the person who was her assignment had ended up having to take her from it. By the stars, what had taken her so long? "Was saving me what you were trying to accomplish by riding in that swoop race?" she was demanding before she could help herself. "As far as rescues go, this is a pretty poor example." She might have only a fraction of this woman's power and experience, but at least when she rescued someone, she did it properly, instead of leaving them to fight half the battle after making a gambit that could have so easily ended in failure.
Aithne Moran sat back on her right leg, hands on hips. Even leaning backward, she was a full handspan and a half taller than Bastila, and Bastila felt the difference. "Yes, well, you're welcome," she said mildly.
Bastila felt the reproof, and it turned her annoyance into something much closer to actual anger. "In case you hadn't noticed, I managed to free myself from that neural restraint collar without your help," she insisted, though actually, she wondered if she would have managed to do so without the nexus of Force energy that gathered to Moran like a magnetic field. It didn't stop her mouth from running. "In fact, it's more accurate to say that I saved you! Brejik and his Vulkars would have left you for dead if I hadn't stepped into that fight. You're lucky I was here to get you out of this mess!"
Moran regarded her, brown eyes moving across her face. "I'm sorry we took so long," she answered then. "I know you've been scared, if you've even been fully conscious since the crash, and today has to have been worst of all. Try not to take it out on me if you can. I was out a couple days myself, and it took us about that long afterward to find out what had happened to you, let alone determine the best opportunity to retrieve you and arrange the necessary circumstances to make it happen. We did the best we could."
"Who is 'we'?" Bastila asked. "You weren't the only survivor of Endar Spire?"
"There were several," Aithne answered. "At least one ended up a victim of the rhakghoul disease in the Undercity, and about six others, as of a few days ago, were in degenerative, vegetative states in an emergency clinic due to various severe injuries or wounds suffered in the battle. But my pod came out in relatively good condition. I got the worst of it, but Major Carth Onasi dragged me clear and found us shelter to form a plan. He's waiting for us now in our base in the Upper City. We should meet him."
She started toward the exit, and Bastila followed dumbly, almost flooded with relief. Carth Onasi! He was Telosian, the descendant of at least one known member of the Agricorps two generations ago, probably more, and his lineage showed in both his medicals and his service history. He was a dependable, trustworthy officer, and possibly the best equipped of the Republic soldiers who had been aboard Endar Spire to keep an eye on Aithne Moran. Besides that, Bastila liked him. "Carth Onasi is alive? Finally, some good news!"
Aithne shot her a sideways look, and the right side of her mouth quirked upwards. "You know, I'd've appreciated that kind of greeting," she remarked.
"Carth is one of the Republic's best soldiers," Bastila explained. "He's proven himself a hero a dozen times over! And he sent you here to save me?" She regarded Moran, reassessing. "Carth wouldn't have sent you if he wasn't confident in your . . . abilities." If the major had witnessed any . . . questionable . . . behavior from her, he would have immediately pulled rank and taken charge of her retrieval himself. And he had the experience to know. "Forgive me," Bastila said. "Despite my training, I still tend to act a bit rashly sometimes. Please, take me to Carth right away! Between the three of us I'm sure we can figure out some way to get off this planet before the Sith realize we're here."
Aithne cut right into an alleyway, moving them quickly but confidently away from the swoop track, towards other areas of the Lower City. "It'll be harder now," she said. "The Sith are all on high alert. They haven't been looking for Carth and me, but they all want to find you, and your little announcement at the swoop track won't have helped."
"I said I apologize," Bastila said, nettled. "I'd been under the influence of that neural disruption collar for days. Revealing my identity was foolish. I recognize that. But surely we can find some way to compensate."
"Maybe, if we work fast," Aithne conceded. She shot Bastila another look. "But I think our first objective has to be to get you changed. You look like a Nal Hutta entertainer. It's pretty much the opposite of subtle."
Bastila wondered if the end result of this first part of her mission would be to put her in the dark cloak and mask instead of Aithne Moran, but she hurried after the older woman anyway, melting into the alley shadows in search of a secondhand shop.