Chapter Four: Bad Examples (Ziost)
"Wait." Theron pushes back from the console, almost stepping out of frame, and when he leans back in his arms are folded across his chest. "Are we really not going to talk about that?"
Lana's still rubbing her forehead, pacing back and forth along the table in front of her. "He was a traitor, as you're well aware. His punishment-"
"That's not what I-"
Cipher Nine scowls and steps over Kovach's body, putting herself between it and the projector; if it's behind her, she doesn't have to look at it. "Stop it, both of you. Lana, is that you in there, or Vitiate?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Cipher. Of course it's me."
"And a minute ago, torturing the poor idiot? Was that you, too?" The moment the words leave her mouth she thinks better of them. She shouldn't have said that; she's seen Sith Lords kill for much less, nor is she sure she really wants to know the answer.
Lana only sighs, though, a sad half-smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "I meant it to be quick." (Her eyebrows nearly meet her hairline; Theron clears his throat, almost but not quite covering an incredulous snort.) "But I lost my temper. I let my guard down, just for a moment, and Vitiate…" She shudders, and stops moving. "I've never felt hatred like that in my life. It made me want to- I'm not a monster. I'm not."
"But he's gone now, right?" The console next to Theron beeps. "Because this thing's powered up, I think, but if the guest of honor's still present we're going to be spoiling the surprise."
"He's gone, and I won't make that mistake a second time," Lana says. "You two need to be careful, though. I thought the Emperor had given up trying to get into my head. Clearly, I was wrong, and I've had practice shielding against this sort of thing. Without the Force-"
Theron chuckles. "After Master Zho and my mother? I'll manage."
"Still. Cipher, you especially- I got the impression before I evicted him that he's rather upset with you."
She exaggerates a yawn, interrupted when she spots another spray of blood on the glove of her trigger hand and rubs at it irritably. "Another member of my fan club. I've been mind-controlled enough for one lifetime, thank you. I'll pass."
"I'd imagine so. I've banned the use of Castellan restraints, incidentally- I read your report. What a disaster." Lana's in an office- not hers, hers is on Dromund Kaas, but there are enough trophies on the shelves behind her that she'd hazard it belonged to a Minister- looking over her shoulder at something out of frame. "But you asked about the plan."
She nods.
"The original plan was to overload the electrical grid. That won't work now, not with the damage to the main facility, but it reminded me about the pacification system-"
"-which is lethal, by the way, so that's a charmingly euphemistic name," Theron interjects. She can't see the console screen behind him at this angle, no matter how she tilts her head, and she can't see enough of the room to tell where he is. "Have I mentioned recently that you people are terrifying? Also, what are Castell-"
Their heads turn simultaneously, her and Lana's voices raised in sharp harmony. "That's classified."
He blinks.
"As I was saying," Lana continues, "after a failed civilian uprising about ten years ago, the Dark Council had the system installed in the event of a second attempt… a last resort, designed to administer a fatal electric shock to anyone within range. You said you've got it active, Theron- do you think you can modify it?"
"I think so." He's bent over the console again, intent, fingers dancing over the control panel. "But it's not anything like you described. It's going to take a little while."
"Then you have as long as it takes Cipher Nine to get to your position." Turning back to face her, Lana looks decidedly apologetic. Not a good sign. "Cipher, I'm afraid you get to be the bait."
(She always has to be the bait.
Not on Rishi, though. Good luck, that.)
She knows the answer, but she still has to ask. "Why me?"
"The pacification system's scope is limited, so we need to try to bring as many of Vitiate's pawns into range as possible. Theron's already in place on top of the People's Tower, which is where you need to go. I'll be moving the Logistics emergency shuttle to the tower landing pad- with luck we won't need it, and the Minister's dead so she certainly doesn't, but I think it's time we had an exit strategy-" not one of Lana's favorite phrases, judging by her facial expression. "Which leaves you to lure them in."
"I do love a good suicide mission. Do you think they'll follow me, though?" Looking at the map again it's not far from here to the Tower, a straight run up a long staircase and through the marketplace. She'll barely cover the span of a district, let alone the whole city. "I'd guess only a tenth of them will even know I'm there."
"I'd thought of that, actually. I'm going to patch you into the central broadcast network." Lana sets a little transmitter on the desk, plugging it in just about where her own image must be from the other woman's perspective. "When you're ready, say something clever. We need to keep his attention on you."
This ought to be fun.
She clears her throat; Lana nods, mouths the words go ahead.
"Ahem. May I have your attention, please? This is a message for Emperor Vitiate." Her face settles into a practiced expression of aggressive pleasantness, hands clasped neatly behind her back; she can hear her own voice echoing a dozen times over through the open warehouse door. There must be broadcast terminals everywhere. "Did you know there's a very large weapon in the middle of New Adasta? I've decided to use it to destroy you. I'm heading to it right now, so please do try to stop me."
Theron's doubled over laughing by the time she finishes, and Lana shoots him a look that could etch durasteel as she unhooks the transmitter.
"That," he says, gasping for breath, "was the best thing I've ever heard."
"It was certainly direct." Lana, eyes closed and teeth sunk firmly into her bottom lip, might be trying not to smile. (She might also be trying not to burst a blood vessel. It's often hard to tell with her.) "I'd start running now, Cipher, if I were you. I'll get the shuttle airborne."
The holo goes dark, and she runs.
Even by the time she's through the doorway there's a gathering crowd at the far end of the street, moving toward her in shambling, uncoordinated unison.
(She's never seen possessions on this scale in her life- those cleanups were usually Sith work, or military in the worst cases- so the closest she ever came was the Killiks, but this isn't anything like the Killiks at all. Vector, for all his lack of choice in the matter, is better in so many ways for having Joined. He sees more, hears more, knows more. He is faster and stronger and cleverer when connected to his brothers and sisters in the hive. Most of Vitiate's puppets are just that- awkward, sluggish, jerky creatures on invisible strings- but the fact that he can do it at all to this many people makes her blood freeze in her veins.
She carefully ignores the idea of whether she would consider Vector improved had she known him before his transformation. That is another dangerous question. It reminds her too much of Keeper- of Shara.)
By the time she reaches the top of the stairs her legs throb, quadriceps and calves tense from six flights taken three stairs at a time, and still running she pulls the cap off an adrenal stim with her teeth and slams it through her trousers into her thigh. Her pulse pounds in her ears, in time with the rush of blood from her heart; her muscles ease their spasming. Most of her pursuers are slow but still they are following, a slow wave rolling up the long staircase, with another pack moving toward her through the market stalls.
A few are faster, Jedi and Sith both, flanking her from the shadows of tall buildings, a block away but closing in.
She keeps running.
The People's Tower looms in front of her, open entryway thankfully empty but completely indefensible in the way of all Sith-designed structures. (If she had her way there'd be solid doors, heavy bars and large guns in front of every administrative building in the Empire, but the Sith idea of security has always been two apprentices with lightsabers and no amount of Intelligence persuasion will ever convince them to change.) The foyer is mostly occupied by a large projector table and a colossal statue of the Emperor- for a moment, she's sure it's staring at her- and two turbolifts, one stalled and sparking near the top, the other platform a broken mess with scattered bodies crushed beneath it.
"Theron? Lana?" She whispers into her comm. There's no other way to the upper levels that she can see, not even a staircase. "I'm here, but the lifts are dead. I need a way up."
On the far side of the statue, three shadowed figures cross the threshold; she fades into invisibility, tucked into the shaft with the broken platform.
"Yeah, that was my fault." Theron sounds distracted, and she can hear a steady beeping on the channel. He must still be slicing the system. "My timing was off. Meant to drop the grenade down, but it landed on the platform. I'm guessing you don't have a grappling hook with you?"
"I do, actually, but only a magnetic one. It won't get me more than three stories up without a harness. Maybe four." She looks up. Ten floors, at least. "Any further than that, I won't be able to hold on."
"Three will work. I can get you into the ducts from there." He pauses. "Is there a big dead guy under the platform, by chance?"
She checks. "Yeah." Very big and very dead, with- "Is that a rocket launcher?"
"Hence the grenade."
"Oh." Her pursuers (definitely Jedi, at this distance- one human, two Twileks, green blades and brown robes) round the base of the statue, fanning out, searching. They cannot see her, she knows, but this close she can smell them, smoke and blood and the ozone tang of active lightsabers, and she drops her voice even lower. "I need out of here, Theron. Now."
"Look up- there should be a grapple point. I'll talk you through the rest of the way."
She sees it and lets the hook fly, the attached rope gripped tightly in her gloved hands. Her aim is good, a solid latch against the bracket above the fourth-floor platform, and when she snaps the rope taut she feels her spine twinge as it pulls her abruptly upward. The acceleration is more than her generator can handle, though, and as her toes leave the floor her stealth field fails and the closest of the Jedi lunges in her direction.
He misses her by inches; he jumps again, higher by several feet than should be physically possible but not high enough to reach her. The noise he makes when he lands is inhuman, a screech that hits her like icepicks through her eardrums. When his companions take up his outcry, it's deafening.
Swinging herself down onto the ledge, she unlatches and tucks the grapple back into its pouch. "Alright," she says into her comm, louder than before over the howling below, "one of you two needs to tell me where I'm going."
"I think Lana's in the air. She's been quiet since we went off holo. Are you safe?" Theron answers her almost immediately. "Sounds like a zoo down there."
"A few of your Sixth Line friends got a little closer than I'd like. They're unhappy, but I'm fine." The lift entrance opens onto a short corridor, doors closed to her right and left and a metal hatch a meter square at shoulder height on the wall ahead. "You mentioned ducts, before? I see an access hatch here."
"If I remember right, all the floors are the same. Open the hatch and go-" he pauses; she imagines him, eyes closed, tracing out a map behind his eyelids in the way he did on Rishi, on Yavin- "right. I think. You should come to a vertical shaft with a ladder."
A few quick shots from her blaster shear the bolts fastening the grating cleanly off, and the metal cover falls hits the ground with a clatter. She hoists herself up and in, crawling along on all fours to the right, toward the-
"It must be a left at the junction. Right's a dead end." At least the space is big enough to turn around (her last trip through ductwork was a much tighter squeeze, and she had to wiggle backward on her stomach after her contact forgot to mention the nerve gas canisters in the ventilation system). It was left; she can see the ladder stretching up along the back side of the cross-shaft, and once she's close enough she gathers herself into a crouch and leaps, catching at the ladder rungs with both hands.
"Was it left? Hold on, almost done with the last... okay. System is modified, just needs to charge now." Theron exhales. "Sorry. I was pretty sure it was right, but it's been a while."
She's past the fifth floor now, still climbing. "I thought you took the turbolift up. What do you mean, it's been a whi-" Sixth floor. The memory she was searching for in the evacuation tunnel flickers back across her brain, still elusive but coming more into focus. "You've been here before."
"To borrow a phrase," he says, "that's classified."
"How long ago?"
Theron sighs. "You have a disturbing talent for getting me to say things I shouldn't, you know."
"It's a gift." The ladder stops at a welded panel on the seventh floor, tiny slits enough to let airflow pass but much too small to wedge herself through, another duct heading off perpendicularly. "You're sure this is the right way? The route up is blocked."
"It's been a few years and we were doing it in reverse, so my memory's a little hazy. They've probably changed a few things, too." She can hear him tapping on the console, another of his nervous habits. "Can you get to the other side of the building? There should be a stairwell up to the roof, if the ducts are sealed."
"Now you tell me." The layout's just the same here as where she entered; flat on her back, she kicks at the hatch and on the fifth try it pops open. "A few years, hm?" She slides down into the hallway, opens the right-hand door. "So you came down through the Tower, used the evacuation tunnel to get into the Command Center, and then-"
-and then the memory she'd been searching for comes into perfect focus, and she remembers an ops report from three years ago. It was the only one she'd read cover to cover during her time on hiatus, mostly because she couldn't figure out how the SIS had managed it at all. On first glance it was a complete fiasco, a botched assassination attempt on the then-Minister of Logistics, but the real mission-
"The Black Cipher." She grins before she remembers he can't see her- a pretty piece of intelligence, indeed. "You stole Davidge's Black Cipher, didn't you?"
He doesn't answer for a long moment. "I really hope Lana didn't hear that."
"I don't think she's listening, but let's see." She clears her throat, studying her surroundings. The corridors only wrap halfway around the building on this level- through the decorative windows looking out onto the atrium she can see the outstretched arms of the massive statue, spanning the distance between her and her destination across the way. Well, that's one way across. "Lana, remember the last time you read my mind?"
No response.
"She's definitely not listening."
"Do I want to know?"
"Only if you like being lectured at." She smashes the window with the butt of her rifle and jumps, landing crouched in the palm of the Emperor's hand (she considers, for a moment, the irony of it). Step by step, moving carefully from palm to wrist to sleeve to shoulder, she makes her way across. "Was that your work on the Ascendant Spear, too? Throwing a blaster at Darth Karrid- that's got you written all over it."
"You know I can't-" he stops. "Actually, you know what? I'll answer that on one condition."
She's balanced on a chiseled fold on the back of the statue's neck. "No promises. What condition?"
"What are Castellan restraints?"
When she looks down, the ground below is teeming with Vitiate's puppets, and she cannot tell whether the knot in her stomach is because of the height, the crowd, or the question. A pile of them are stacked, one atop the other, against the wall near the exploded platform, and others are scaling the pile like a ladder; as she watches, a few reach higher floors and disappear into the hallways beyond. "No. Also, we've got some climbers."
"Why not?"
"That file's sealed, Theron." The granite's slickly polished. One foot slips and she wobbles, just a little. "Release on confirmed death of subject. I'm still alive."
He sighs. "Okay, okay. I won't push. But when you mentioned the mind-controlled thing, I wondered-"
"When you killed Darth Karrid- assuming you did kill Darth Karrid," she says, "the Republic probably gave you a medal, right?"
The noise he makes is noncommittal.
"I defied the will of a Darth, defended myself when he tried to kill me. For that, the Dark Council wanted me executed. The compromise was Castellan restraints." And then, she doesn't say, you people used them against me. "If we're ever not enemies, ask me again. But not today."
Ten more steps, one foot in front of the other, and she's safely across, almost missing his reply in the shattering of the far window.
"I should have died on the Spear." He's quiet, serious, the usual bite of humor gone from his voice. "Half my armor off working in a hot engine room and she came at me, saber blazing. I only survived because she was completely insane, like every Sith. Cared more about saving that ship than killing me. And yes, they gave me a medal for it."
She dives and clears the window frame with ease, rolling neatly into the corridor, and she can see the staircase at the far end. "Karrid used to be a Jedi, you know. Fed us intel on the Order for years before she finally defected in earnest. So if you're trying to stereotype, that's not the best example."
"Maybe not. But compare any other Jedi to your bosses-"
"I'll remind you I'm technically a freelancer. But at least my bosses wear their genocidal monomania on their sleeves."
Theron snorts. "You say that like it's a good thing."
Five flights up. Nearly there. "It lets me know what to expect, in any case. I'll give you one more bad example, since we're being honest. Ardun Kothe."
"Ardun Kothe wasn't a Jedi." He's lying and knows it. She can hear it in his voice.
Four flights left. "And I'm the queen of Onderon. I didn't hallucinate that lightsaber."
"When did you-?" Another long pause; three flights to go. He swears under his breath. "You were the Cipher he thought he'd turned."
"Three files: Taris, Hoth, Quesh. Read them, then talk to his agent, if he's still alive. Codename Chance." Two flights. "Tell him Legate says hello, that he owes me one for Taris, and ask him about Castellan restraints."
"I might just do that." Last one. "I'm ready to go up here, Nine. Are you close?"
Nearly there, now, just on the other side of a long antechamber, but-
"I'm at the door, but you forgot to mention the welcoming party. I don't think they're happy to see me." Pacing, agitated, lightsabers humming, a Mirialan woman and a black-tattooed Twilek cross back and forth in front of the sealed door. She ducks back down the steps, slipping into stealth, but it's too late; they've seen her, and one drops a seeker probe that makes its way down the length of the room.
"Damn it! How many?" The door starts to hiss, the locks depressurizing. "I'll be right there."
She taps her earpiece twice and draws her knife, skirting along the side of the room, the probe's field sweeping so close she holds her breath. Theron always targets right. She'll do the same.
When the door opens the Mirialan's on her right. Three blaster shots in quick succession hit the Twilek in his left shoulder and he spins, looking in the opposite direction toward Theron, who's out of sight behind the doorframe. The woman turns, too, exposing her back, and when she gets in range she lashes out with her blade; she takes her in the right kidney and the Jedi staggers. Another quick strike severs the hamstring just above the right knee and she's falling, and as she drops in front of her Cipher Nine pulls her knife across the woman's forearm at the elbow- her hand goes limp, her lightsaber clattering to the floor and extinguishing, and one last pommel strike to the back of the head knocks her opponent unconscious.
Theron's having rather a harder time with the Twilek (she's told him time and again he needs a close-range weapon- blasters against a Jedi are useless in a one-on-one fight), but at least the blaster fire's keeping him distracted. She closes the gap between them at a run, launching a corrosive dart that sinks into one of his lekku and whips his head back as it starts to burn.
That was the opening he needed, apparently. Two more carefully aimed shots drop the second Jedi at her feet. The Twilek grins up at her, red blood on red lips and skin, red aura licking at her boots like a living thing. "Hello, little Cipher." The voice is the Emperor's, with an undercurrent of anguish. "You'd better hurry. Your speech attracted quite an audience."
"That's enough, Master Onok." Theron steps out from behind a column, holstering his pistols. "I don't even know how they got here- they must have already been inside the building. Help me with him."
They drag him back into the antechamber, next to the Mirialan, and bind them both hand and foot; neither resists much, Onok too wounded to do anything but taunt and threaten and the woman- Master Landai, he calls her- still out cold, her chest rising and falling steadily.
Theron presses two fingers to Landai's neck. "She'll need a medic, but she'll live. Thank you."
She shrugs. "You're welcome? I doubt she's as grateful."
"I should never have sent them here. At least it didn't kill them." He straightens at the noise of footsteps on the stairs. "Come on. Let's finish this."
They run back to the balcony, door sliding closed behind them, and Theron pauses at a familiar-looking console on the wall below the landing pad as a little shuttle comes speeding over the top of the nearest building.
"And there's Lana, right on time." She peers over the edge of the balcony at the plaza below, packed edge to edge with bodies. "She'll be pleased. Her plan seems to have worked just as designed."
He nods, enters a final few keystrokes. "We'd better get under a shield. This'll hurt, otherwise." The sirens that sound when he steps away from the console can probably be heard from orbit. "Still might, if I didn't do it right."
"Can't say we didn't warn them."
"Nope." Theron sets a shield generator on the ground in between them, dropping to one knee and beckoning her inward as the dome arcs overhead. "Sorry for the close quarters. I didn't think this would be a team mission, or I'd have brought better gear."
The generator's tiny, its dome clearly sized for one; she kneels down beside him, shoulder to shoulder, and even then they're both just inside its margins. "Beggars can't be choosers. How long until it fires?"
"A minute from activation. Not long now."
She nods, nudges her knee into his thigh. "It really is good to see you again, Theron, despite everything that's happened."
"It's good to see you too, Nine." His mouth quirks up at the corners as he nudges her back. "This actually went better than I'd imagined our next meeting. Minus the armies trying to kill us and you threatening to have me shot, I mean."
"Better? You've got low expectations. Or was Yavin that bad?"
"Depends on which part you-" The door slides open, a dozen soldiers spilling out onto the balcony, and they both reach for their weapons-
The shield dome flickers as a coruscant cloud of lightning arcs around them, cascading down from the topmost point of the tower and enveloping everything along its path to the ground. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as the shield flickers again and she's suddenly bowed low, her cheek pressed against something smooth and cool and a half-familiar weight along her back. Even with her lids tightly closed it's bright, so bright that her eyes ache and she sees stars.
The silence when the system's discharged, the sirens quieted and the crowd below no longer howling, is what makes her finally open her eyes. There are bodies on the ground around her- around them; Theron's arm is wrapped tight around her shoulders, his body a second shield between hers and the dome and her head against his chest, the coolness on her face the leather of his jacket.
"Are we dead?"
"I don't think so." His breath ruffles her hair. "For a minute there it looked like the shield had had it, but it seems to have held. Thought I'd take the high ground, as it were. Just in case."
"You and your Republic chivalry again." She says it like she minds. (She usually would. She doesn't, which is a problem. Mustn't let him know that.) "Are they dead?"
"Still breathing. I think we did it."
Lana's voice rings out from the landing pad above. "Cipher? Theron?"
They jump apart like guilty teenagers, both looking up, and so neither of them see the woman until she's already through the doorway. She thought she'd left the curly-haired Jedi safely behind a force field and solid walls; judging from the dust layered atop the blood, at least one of those walls probably looks decidedly worse for wear.
"A good attempt, little Cipher." The woman's lips curl back in a mockery of a smile. "Not good enough." She buries her lightsaber in an unconscious soldier, who arches around the blade like an insect impaled on a pin and then goes still. Lana launches herself from the upper level, hitting the ground in a crouch behind the Jedi, but before she can even stand the woman waves a hand dismissively; Lana goes flying into the doorframe, head striking metal, and crumples wordlessly to the ground.
Theron steps forward, signalling sharply back at her- wait! "Master Surro? Can you hear me?" He takes another step toward the woman. "Try to fight him."
"Hm," Surro says, and raises her fist, "no. I don't think so."
His feet lift off the ground, arms stretched wide, and she remembers Kovach and her stomach ties itself in a dozen awful knots. Theron twists, looking back over his shoulder at her.
I'm sorry.
The Jedi unclenches her hand, flicking her fingers, and he launches into one of the duracrete columns ringing the balcony. Something cracks, loudly. It isn't the column.
"Enough distractions." Surro ignites her lightsaber again. "Time to die, little Cipher."
"You bitch." Here goes nothing. She deactivates the safety controls on her stealth generator, pulls every stim she's got from her belt and yanks all the caps, takes two in each hand and sinks them deep. When her vision blurs and her breath catches in her chest she grins. "You're going to wish you hadn't done that."
It isn't a pretty fight; fights against Jedi never are, and with the Emperor's power behind her a direct hit from Master Surro's liable to slice her in half. Instead, she flickers in and out of hiding, a thousand little bites from her blade driving every poison she carries deep into every wound on Surro's body, striking and disappearing before the woman's saber swings around.
After the fourth time she overrides her generator her eyes stop focusing, her brain trying and failing to process so many shifts in and out of phase. It doesn't matter. She's fought blind before, and she can hear the Jedi's lightsaber and the erratic rasp of her breathing, feel the swish of the woman's robes as she turns, frantic. She hits her again and again and again.
"There is no contemplation-" Surro finally gasps, dropping to her knees- "there is only duty." Her saber falls and rolls away, her head lolling over her chest. "Please. I can still hear him inside my head."
She makes it a few feet away before she's sick, her body overtaxed and exhausted, her head swimming, and she can hear Master Surro sobbing. The stone of the balcony's cool against her cheek; she closes her eyes.
Time passes.
When she opens her eyes again she tastes kolto on her lips, a soft mist of it raining onto her face from a medical drone, and Lana's kneeling beside her.
"I missed the party, I'm afraid," Lana says, and helps her sit up. "Can you walk? We need to get out of here."
"I think so." She's still dizzy and phase-sick but the kolto helps. "Where's Theron?"
"Seeing to his Jedi, but he's badly hurt. He's agreed to surrender. We'll take them all to the orbital station, have the medics look over them, and open negotiations with Saresh from there."
She nods, then stops nodding. Moving her head makes the world spin. "Surro needs antitoxin. Help me up."
Leaning on Lana, she manages the walk up the stairs to the shuttle. Theron's already in the back, sitting beside a cot holding the still-weeping Master Surro, her face turned toward the wall; Landai and Onok, both unconscious, are tied into their chairs. He looks up when they enter and she winces at the sight of him. His bruises are back, worse than ever, one implant cracked completely in half and his left shoulder clearly dislocated.
"You need this more than I do." She shifts her drone over to Theron and draws a syringe from her nearly-empty pouch. "And this is for her. I had to use poison to slow her down."
"That explains the tremor." When he slides the needle into her arm the Jedi whimpers. "It's alright, Master Surro. You're safe."
"You know," Lana says absently, closing up the back ramp, "we really ought to study her. We could learn a great deal about the Emperor's techniques, what his influence does-"
"Over my dead body." Theron starts to stand and stops, right hand over his ribs. "Study yourself, if you're so curious. She needs help, not you poking at her brain."
"We can't fight him if we don't understand him, Theron."
"We can't fight him, period. I surrendered, yes, but I'm not letting you experiment on my people."
"That's enough, both of you!" The noise hurts her head, too. "Lana, he's right. We heal them as best we can and return them to Saresh. She won't agree to a withdrawal if we give her Jedi back with brain damage."
Lana scowls. "Fine. Strap in, then. I'm taking off." She disappears into the cockpit.
"I'd hug you for that, but I can't feel my left arm and I'm pretty sure my ribs are broken. Again." Theron shrugs his right shoulder; the medical drone chirps agreement, and he chuckles. "Well, then."
She settles into the last vacant seat, fastening her restraints. "We'll all be in medical for a while, I think. I took enough stims to stun a bantha. When they wear off-"
"Yeah." He closes his eyes. "How many times did you override your generator? I hit my head pretty hard when she threw me, but I could barely keep track of you."
"Five. Maybe six."
"Ouch."
"Yeah."
The engines ignite and the shuttle lifts off the platform; through the window, New Adasta blurs into a featureless haze.
Or perhaps it's just her eyes.
(For more on the Black Cipher, the Ascendant Spear and the other adventures of everyone's favorite half-naked SIS agent, please see Drew Karpyshyn's The Old Republic: Annihilation.)