The Return of the Darkness and Evil
We don't need their scum, B-2ON had haughtily proclaimed, not that it had done much good. How to explain the creature, he asked himself by way of distraction, trudging through the sea of sand, the hot suns above his head, beating down upon them both; the creature, that bounty hunter, had been somewhat insect like in nature, he thought, wrapped in an ancient cloak of deep red, a coarse material pulled low enough to conceal the metal helmet he wore, the carefully tuned vocal modulator that allowed him to converse with others outside of his native environment, the breathing apparatus that he required in order to last long enough upon such alien worlds that he might be able to function well enough to have such conversations. At his side, he held firmly onto an electrostaff, its tip bristling with anticipation should those with whom he did business have cause to question his services.
B-2ON had disapproved the moment he had contacted them, the signal faint across the void of stars, his antique Quadrijet barely capable of interstellar travel. Such had been fine, B-2ON reflected, knowing all too well the value of keeping those in such a character's profession at arms' length. Still, he knew of his mistress's ambitions, he knew of her search, and he had known that Lady Am would not ignore any information that might lead to discovering where her brother now resided.
Ah, such familial piety, B-2ON thought, if his servos weren't in danger of locking up in the heat of the blasted suns of this foreign world, he might even have been a little touched. Ahead of him, Lady Am strode ahead as if ignorant of the blistering heat, testament to her dedication, her singular goal, her vision. Again, B-2ON would have been moved if he had not been suffering so.
It was true that he had been programmed with unswerving loyalty to his mistress and master, that his entire reason for functioning was so that he might watch over them—from their early days, grown from the very æther of the Dark Side on Korriban, to their adulthood, the fashioning of the Gemini class Star Destroyer over which they presided—yet B-2ON did not feel that he was wrong in his belief that the two of them represented that which had made the Dark Side so strong in æons past—there was something of the old Dark Lords in them, of Revan, of Vader, of Krayt. Yet there was something of Caedus also in the way in which Lord Karre had grown, something that could not let go of the light. That unnerved B-2ON. That, he was sure was the reason they found themselves in the situation they were in now, trudging through deserts far out in the Outer Rim on the word of a bounty hunter alone.
Perhaps such was the way of things, he reflected; perhaps the dark was never quite so dark, and the light never quite so light. When he cast his mind back on those Dark Lords of the past, many of them, he felt, had had moments in which they had wavered, in which they had not been able to fully commit themselves to that which the Dark Side asked of them. A weakness to be sure, but perhaps such was at the heart of carbon based lifeforms; perhaps they could never be as pure as the ideals to which they aspired.
Such matters were beyond his programming he decided, trudging ever forwards, sure that the combination of the suns and the sand would do irrevocable damage to his workings. Yet still, he could not complain, the shape of Lady Am moving onwards, her cloak dragging behind, flowing black against immaculate white. If such as his mistress was willing to make sacrifices based on the words of a bounty hunter, and if she really believed that such a journey would lead them close to wherever Lord Karre had crashed, then who was he to argue?
Above, the twin suns continued to swell, their own slow, languid journey carrying them through the blue skies. In the distance, amidst the clouds, three moons hung lonely, waiting, like B-2ON also, for the dark to fall.
