Disclaimer: KotOR isn't mine.
Chapter Thirty
Aithne nodded at Bastila to rejoin them, and the three of them set out for the Czerka Offices. Aithne hummed a little tune to herself, every so often skipping a step or two.
"Um…you're really excited about cheating Czerka, aren't you?" Mission asked amusedly after the third time Aithne waved crazily at a complete stranger on the street.
"Well, yeah," Aithne admitted. "They're a huge, slaving, corrupted intergalactic monstrosity of a company that deals with the Sith, and I love to cross them any time I can, but after we do so this time we get to leave Tatooine! No more sand, just think of it!"
Bastila broke out into a smile similar to Aithne's then. Aithne continued.
"And Bastila's made things right with her mother, Dustil's safe on Telos, you're fine with the Griff situation, I have all my friends with me, and every step I take I get closer to taking Jawless Incompetent out of his usurped position of King of the Universe, and handing it back to the bumbling but lovable children we call the Republic Senate."
Aithne skipped again, and this time Bastila laughed. "When you put it that way, it does seem a lovely morning."
Mission grinned. "I suppose it ain't too bad," she agreed slyly. "But I don't think I'll be singing and dancing in the street any time soon. 'Course, I might feel differently if I was in loo-oove."
Aithne blushed to the roots of her unruly hair, which for once she had left down for the day. Mission giggled. "Aithne and Carth, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S-S…"
"You know," interrupted Bastila. "If you really are serious about wishing to be treated and talked about like an adult, you might try acting like one."
Aithne opened the door for her friends and stared at Bastila as the younger Jedi walked primly inside.
"Why Bastila Shan! First you stop the lectures, now you're defending me from fifteen year old twits teasing me about my love life? You'd better stop now. Any more of this, and I might start taking you for a human being!"
Bastila glared. Then, she smiled. "You might not want to try me," she said mildly. "I'm sure I could think of much worse ways to frustrate you then Miss Preschool, here."
Mission looked at Bastila, respect in her face. Aithne released the door, tripping ahead. "Um…I'm going to talk to Madame Czerka Mind-Slave, now," she mumbled.
"Coward," Bastila said simply.
Aithne walked up to the Czerka Representative. The woman turned a bright, professional smile on her. Before she could start droning, Aithne held up a finger inquiringly.
"Hey, I have a sack load of Sand People sticks," she said. And indeed she'd picked up quite a few off of the bodies of the Sand People who had attacked her before the treaty. "You want them?"
She swung down the rough cloth sack she'd put them in. The woman looked down her nose at the clacking wood sound and the twenty-odd sticks in the back. "I see that," she said finally. "But do you have the all-important Chieftain's Gaffi? That was what you agreed to get for us."
Aithne looked at the woman pityingly. She crossed her arms and rocked back on her heels. "You know, it's not surprising you're stuck out here on Tatooine with that memory. You'd be useless with the contracts higher up." She studied her nails as the woman began to go red. "I never agreed to get the Chieftain's Gaffi. As I recall, you promised a bounty for each gaffi stick. The chieftain was extra. Your exact words were, 'I'll give a bonus for the chieftain's'. Contractually, I was never obliged to get it for you."
With every word, the woman looked more annoyed and chagrined. Aithne let the silence hang in the air for a minute, before unbuckling her pack and whisking out the Chieftain's Gaffi. "Fortunately, I do have the Chieftain's Gaffi, so you don't have to tell your boss you messed up and bribe someone else to go after the Sand People."
The Czerka rep didn't know what to say for a moment. Finally, she reached out, and took the stick with trembling fingers. "Well, that is a very big headache you have removed. I'm sure there are still Sand People out there, but they will be quieter now."
Aithne smiled politely. "No doubt," she said.
"I think I'll give you a bonus for this," the lady said, as if she were being very generous. "You've more than lived up to your side of the bargain. Czerka Corporation thanks you."
And she paid Aithne a rather pretty little sum. Aithne smiled as falsely as the Czerka representative herself and took the money. "No thank you," she said. "Really, you're too kind."
Aithne bowed out and, together with Mission and Bastila, they headed back to the Hawk, wondering exactly when Czerka would find out that they'd been tricked.
When they arrived, Zaalbar and Teethree were loading the last of the supplies, and Carth was overseeing the fueling of the ship. From experience, Aithne knew that the Hawk would be in space in about half an hour. Bastila went to the storage bay to help Juhani catalogue the new supplies, and Mission caught up with Zaalbar to tell him what had transpired. Aithne headed to the cockpit.
When Carth arrived, Aithne was staring at the map.
"There's just Manaan left," she told him quietly. "Just one Star Map. What comes after that, Carth?"
Carth shrugged. "I don't know any more than you do, beautiful."
Aithne shook her head. "The Jedi never told me what we were going to look for. What is the Star Forge, anyway? What are we supposed to do it that could possibly stop Malak?" She stared at the little blue dot that was Manaan on the map, in awe of the presumption of the crew of the Ebon Hawk yet again. They'd circled the galaxy looking for maps to who knew what, hoping somehow that they could defeat the greatest threat to galactic peace in the past fifty years.
Carth nodded in agreement. "It's…it's a mess. But we'll figure it out. We have our resources," he assured her.
He came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. "We've got Bastila on our ship, the key to the entire war effort. We've got Mission Vao, the cleverest little stealth and slice operative I've ever seen. We've got Zaalbar, crown prince of Rwookrrorro, wielding Bacca's Blade for us. We have Canderous Ordo, one of the best Mandalorian warriors there is, fighting alongside the Republic. We have T3-M4, our brave and efficient little astromech. We have Juhani, a great warrior and Jedi Knight. We have…we have a cranky, irritating old hermit that nevertheless has demonstrated himself to be a very wise man and a brave Jedi in the person of Jolee Bindo. We have…" he paused, and a bit of disgust entered his tone, "HK-47, a frankly frightening assassin droid with speech patterns that will annoy our enemies to death even before he gets out his rifle."
He rubbed Aithne's shoulders, laughing a little. "There's me, the most handsome pilot in the galaxy." He turned Aithne around to face him. "And then there's you," he said softly. "Aithne Morrigan. Possibly the most brilliant, compassionate, stubborn, and insane woman in the galaxy."
Aithne made a face at him, "I'm pretty, too," she said. Carth leaned in and kissed the tip of her nose.
"You're gorgeous," he corrected.
Aithne smiled. "Malak doesn't stand a chance," she whispered.
"That's more like it," Carth said, giving her a brief, hearty shake. "So, to Manaan?"
"To Manaan, Carth, if you're quite finished romancing Padawan Morrigan," Bastila said crisply, entering the cockpit.
Aithne turned red. Carth smiled. "For now," he answered Bastila impudently. The younger Jedi sniffed.
"If the Jedi Masters could see the pair of you," she began, then stopped. "Forgive me," she said. "Old habits die hard."
Aithne gripped the younger woman's shoulder. "Yes, but they are dying. Bastila, you're growing up, and you won't be stodgy or judgmental when you're done. In fact, I think you'll grow up to be the kind of Jedi Master that might have made me volunteer to join the Jedi."
"Really?" Bastila asked, looking over her shoulder at Aithne. Aithne was suddenly aware of how very far they'd come. She'd gone from hating this woman, from tormenting her at every opportunity and fantasizing about her dying crushed by thousands of copies of the Jedi Code, to sympathizing with her, and then to liking her. Now Aithne would say that Bastila was probably one of her closest friends, and Aithne could see that Bastila had gone from a total disdain for her to a deep liking and respect.
Aithne smiled fondly at the younger Jedi. "Yes," she said, and left it at that.
Carth spoke over the intercom, "Brace yourselves, kids, we're taking off."
And they did, Aithne clinging to the back of Carth's chair, laughing at the whoosh in her stomach as the soared out of the Tatooine atmosphere and up to the stars.
"We'll make the jump to hyperspace in half an hour," Carth related to the crew.
But they didn't. Because twenty-five minutes after the pilot said that, there came a sudden jolt that knocked Aithne off of her feet.
Alarms started ringing. "What's going on?" Aithne demanded.
Carth punched controls, trying to get the ship to moving again, but it had slowed, and was now moving backwards.
"Sith interdictor ship," he related over the intercom. "We're caught in the tractor beam."
"Do you recognize the ship?" Bastila asked hastily.
By the set of his jaw and the fire in his eyes, Aithne knew what Carth was going to say before he said it.
"It's the Leviathan," he told Bastila. "Saul Karath's vessel."
Aithne commandeered the intercom in one fluid movement. "Crew to the conference room," she said clearly. "Immediately."
Everyone was there in thirty seconds. Aithne motioned for silence in the hubbub.
"We are caught in the tractor beam of a ship belonging to Saul Karath," she said once everyone had hushed. "Admiral of the Sith Fleet. The ship is big, and probably is host to about thirty times the crew of this vessel. They're going to capture us. That's inevitable. If we don't escape, they will torture everyone for information, and give at least some of us over to Malak himself."
"You mean you and Bastila, and maybe Juhani," Canderous interjected pointedly. "The rest of us will either be forced into the Sith army or killed. It's conquest policy."
Mission began to tremble, and Aithne's lips tightened. "I don't intend to let any of that happen," she told the entire crew. "But if we're going to formulate an escape, now is our chance. We'll be boarded in about ten minutes."
"When we escape, if I get a chance to kill Saul, no one better get in my way," Carth growled.
Aithne glared at him. "Don't do anything stupid," she snapped at him. "All of us are at stake here."
"I'm not going to do anything stupid," Carth said. "But if…"
"If we come into contact with Saul Karath," Aithne said, "and if you get a chance to kill him without putting the crew or our mission into any more danger than it's in already, I won't hold you back."
Carth nodded tersely. "So how are we going to escape?" he asked.
"Maybe the Admiral doesn't know how many of us are on board," Bastila suggested. "One of us might have a chance to evade capture and stage a rescue."
"Every Sith in the fleet knows you, Carth, and I," Aithne said impatiently, thinking. "We'll all be watched too closely to blink. But one of the others…"
Aithne considered, looking over the crew. Every single one of them were proved soldiers by now. All of them had different abilities they could exploit in order to rescue the crew. But she needed someone she could trust with her life, and with everyone else's life. Someone who could escape and who would never give up until each and every one of the crew had been rescued. A staunch defender of their cause, but someone the Sith might overlook as a serious threat. There was only one person that she thought fit that bill.
Her eyes focused on that person. "Do you think you could escape the guards and rescue us?" she asked.
"I can, and I will. You can count on me!"
Aithne looked around. "Alright then," she said to the crew. "We don't want to make this too easy for them. Arm up. Fight them off. But not too hard. I want everyone alive when we get through this."
With that, Aithne headed to the entrance, lightsabers in hand. Bastila joined her right away. Soon nine crew members stood on the ramp of the Ebon Hawk. Carth stood on Aithne's right, fiddling with the safety on his blaster. Bastila stood on her left, eyes closed, clearing her mind before the onslaught. The ramp lowered.
Close to fifty armed Sith soldiers stood in the hangar, surrounding the entrance. Aithne looked at them calmly.
"Surrender," called one in red armor near the head of the group.
Aithne twisted her mouth into something resembling a smile. "Do you know who we are?" she asked the group as a whole. "Now!" All at once the crew began to fight. Those with blasters fired. Those with melee weapons jumped into the fray.
It was short. Aithne had known it would be. She saw Zaalbar go down on her left, forced to submit to shackles. She saw Bastila taken from behind somewhere up ahead. And then a gauntleted hand hit her on the side of her head, and she blacked out.
A/N: Yes, well, they had to get captured eventually, didn't they? Coming up, things only get darker for the crew, as the despicable Saul Karath tortures Aithne, Bastila, and Carth for information, and for some reason seems to think Aithne likely to switch her loyalties. Keep reading, and I hope you enjoy. But whether you did or not, I'm going to ask you to hit that button there and tell me what you thought.
-LMSharp