She woke up, and immediately regretted it.
But she knew she couldn't go back to sleep. She had woken somewhere that was definitely not a bed, metal cold and unyielding. There was more than a hint of smoke on the air, each breath coming thick with charred plastics and melted flesh, enough she felt she might vomit, stomach clenching with every twitch, her throat tight and hot.
Or, maybe that was the concussion, come to think of it. At least, she thought this was a concussion. She'd never had one before, but she was feeling pretty certain. Even the slightest movement set something between her eyes to stabbing, her stomach to roiling, her head felt heavy, like someone had set off a fire extinguisher inside her skull, the foam leaking out one of her ears. The sirens weren't helping, her teeth vibrating with each beat of the klaxon, she felt her eyes might fall out of her head.
She couldn't go back to sleep. Well, she wasn't certain she'd been asleep, it seemed more likely she'd passed out after being hit in the head. That she didn't remember being hit in the head pointed to concussion, yes, she was pretty sure that was a thing. Considering the last thing she did remember was the ship she'd been on being fired on by a Sith fleet, getting up seemed the proper thing to do.
She should do that. Yes.
The world swirling around her even with her eyes closed, she turned onto her knees. She sat back on her heels, nearly tipping over backward as her head went all fuzzy, the floor shifting under her. She cautiously cracked her eyes open, but while everything was a mass of colored blurs, at least it wasn't too bright. That stinging spot between her eyes only got worse when she was trying to look at things, but she kind of needed to see to walk. As she sat there, shakily breathing, ignoring as best she could how dizzy and weak and awful she felt, she squinted at her surroundings, trying to pick something out of the chunky soup of grey and silver and black and red.
She was in one of the interior hallways of the Spire, she decided — those looked like right angles between walls and ceiling, everything made of the familiar grey metal broken with spots of bronze, yes. Around her was a sea of Republic red and gold and black, fuzzy figures splayed out across the deck, in one place huddled together in a corner.
No, not huddled. Piled. Eventually, her vision slowly clearing with each second she sat there blinking, she picked out more details. Patches of a different, wetter sort of red. Limbs that bent the wrong way, heads set at awkward angles. In the corner, bodies twisted into each other, tangled and broken. They were all dead, or at the least injured and unconscious.
A thought surfaced from the dizzy, numb blankness that passed for her brain. Power surge. The ship's system had gone out, perhaps just for the blink of an eye. Including the artificial gravity. They'd all been thrown against the wall, slamming into it at who even knew what speed, under what force.
She'd come away with a concussion. It looked like she'd been lucky.
Her wandering gaze found a face a short distance in front of her, at the edge of the pile of corpses, eyes still and open, one colored an unbroken red. It took her a few seconds to recognize Ulgo. And he was supposed to be getting her to an escape pod.
Rude.
She broke into high, breathless giggles, her head only going heavier and emptier as she struggled to breathe. By the time her chest finally stopped heaving, the corridor stopped swirling, she was lying on her back, sweaty and sick and dizzy, she thought she might pass out again.
No, bad. Get up. She turned over, struggled to get at least one of her feet under her. She stood on shaky knees, but the hallway pitched around her, she crashed to the floor again, her already bruised hip screaming at her. Okay. Ow. She glanced toward the pile of dead Republic men and women. Forcing herself to her hands and knees, she dragged herself across the ground in fits and starts, each breath a sickening fire in her lungs, each beat of her heart setting her head to swimming.
She made it to Ulgo. And cursed to herself — he was dressed as a navy officer, he wouldn't have anything useful on him. She slipped the blaster out from his belt though, wedged it into the waist of her pants at the small of her back, dug the security chit out of his glove, put that deep in her pocket. And she crawled over him, making for the nearest figure wearing proper armor. Luckily, he just so happened to be laid out at an angle she could get at his back. It took her a moment to find the catch in his armor, popped it open.
A first aid kit plopped to the floor at her knees.
She rifled through the contents, sorting through the handful of hypos. Her vision wasn't clear enough to make out the text, but these things were color-coded for a reason. She grabbed a deep blue one, popped the cap with a thumb, and jabbed it into her arm. She didn't feel the injection itself, too numb for that, but the neurostim hit her like a ton of bricks. Her headache immediately got about twenty times worse, white fire radiating down the sides of her neck. She bowed down to her knees, her fingers clutching her head, clenching her teeth to keep herself from screaming.
It faded in a few moments, still hot and tight but at least manageable. When she opened her eyes again, her vision was much clearer, the hallway around her, striped with pale shadows cast by the pinkish emergency lights, now made of sharp lines and corners, the spinning...mostly gone. Mostly would have to do for now, popping two of those right in a row was a bad, bad idea. Her fingers noticeably more steady than they'd been a moment ago, she closed the pack again, then played out the strap, throwing it over her head and tightening it around her waist. Shuffling over to another nameless corpse, she grabbed a second one, just in case. She gathered a few extra power cells from nearby bodies, slipping them into her pockets, her waistband, tucked away a couple spare gas cartridges while she was at it. Only needed to replace the cartridge every few hundred shots, but, well. She took a second security chit from a body with a sergeant's insignia on his chest, might or might not open more doors than Ulgo's, but, well. She took his com too, clipping it to her waist after a bit of fumbling.
Just in case.
Unfortunately, none of these poor bastards had a blaster rifle. She was a better shot with a pistol, of course, but in tight quarters like this the greater rate of fire and higher powered shots could still be an advantage.
Cianen frowned, tipped back to sit on her ankles again. She pulled the pistol she'd swiped out from her back, held it in her lap. She turned it around, confirming it had a full charge, snapped the chamber open to check the cartridge quick — the inside of the glass cylinder was clear, pristine. She clicked it back closed, flipped the safety off, the electronics whirring to life in her hand. And she stared down at the thing, blinking in astonishment.
How the fuck did she know how to do that? She'd never held a blaster in her life.
She shook her head, casting away the odd thought — which was a bad idea, the corridor went spinning around her again, she had to wait a moment for it to stop. Once reality was done going crazy for a minute, she pulled another pistol from a soldier's belt, confirmed the safety was on with a glance, tucking it away at her back. All right. That should do.
It was a close thing, her numb knees almost refusing to support her weight, but she made it to her feet this time. With one hand against the bulkhead, she stumbled forward, each step she took more steady than the last, the swirling at the edges of her vision slowly fading.
The blaring of the klaxons was still pounding in her head, though. Because the Sith had to leave that thing working. They were evil like that.
Eventually she made it to the door, a slab of heavy durasteel blocking off the whole hallway. She tucked herself against the wall, blaster held halfway up and ready, and tapped at the panel.
And nothing happened.
Glaring at the thing, she started reaching toward her pocket for Ulgo's security chit. And she froze halfway there, staring at the panel. It had gone dark. The power was cut.
Shit.
A voice suddenly cracked across the air, she whirled around on her heel. Which sent the hallway spinning again, she teetered against the door, glaring at the wall. Because, of course, she'd had her back it, there couldn't have been anyone behind—
"Professor? Can you hear me?"
Cianen jumped, her hand snapping to her waist. Right, the com she'd taken. Ha. She fumbled with the thing, eventually finding the VOX switch, flipping it on. "You just about gave me a heart attack, Onasi."
"Yeah, saw that. Sorry." She blinked, glanced around. There wasn't anyone she could— "You and Jedi Annas are the last two on board still alive. Think you can make it to the escape pods?"
Oh, she got it. He must have been searching for survivors through the camera feeds. "Ah, I'm a bit shaky, but I can walk." Sort of. "Aren't the escape pods this way, though?" she asked, slapping the sealed door with her open hand.
"The quickest way, yes. But you can't go this way, there's a hull breach between here and there. You'll have to go around. I can give you directions, but you'll have to go fast. The Sith are scouring the ship looking for Bastila, and I don't know how long I can hold them off."
"Right." She pushed off the door with a hip, staggered a few steps before finding her balance again. She still had to walk with a hand to the wall, but at least she was moving. Her stomach turning rather more easily now that she was trying to walk, she picked over the corpses strewn about the hall, giving the pile in the corner as wide a berth as she could. Cianen almost couldn't believe she'd been picking over them for supplies just a couple minutes ago. It already didn't feel quite real, like something out of a dream. "I hope it's a short walk."
"I hope you know how to use that blaster."
"We're about to find out."
"...What?"
"Never mind." Cianen limped around the corner, the next hall empty, looking somehow artificial in the strobing of the emergency lights, a slightly less-than-realistic computer simulation. At least there weren't any more corpses around here, or even anything at all, the hall completely empty. Everything must have been shaken out during whatever had killed all those men back there. "Let's rely on my theoretical ability to shoot people as little as possible, shall we."
"Jedi Annas is picking them off, but there will still be a few." Onasi's voice came quieter than it'd been a moment ago, a whisper low enough she almost didn't hear it over the klaxon.
She frowned. Then she glanced ahead, only a few meters away. This hallway opened up into the external corridor, the walls curved, bowing outward. She paused a moment, fumbled at her belt for the com. She flicked off the speaker, unfolded the earpiece, wedged it in place. A quick check the blaster was readied, and she nodded, pointed ahead.
There was an odd note on Onasi's voice, now coming from right against the left side of her head, but he didn't say anything about whatever it was he was thinking. "You'll be going to the right. Around the bend ahead are two Sith troopers, blaster rifles and full armor."
"No way around?"
"I'm sorry, no."
She winced, but started forward all the same, leaning one hip against the wall. Once she was around the corner, the rounded walls of the external corridor meant she couldn't lean against it anymore. She made her awkward, shuffling steps as quiet as she could, which mostly meant going very slow. Her head ached, her spine tingled, her left hip and ankle throbbed, but she kept limping along, blaster pointed unwaveringly at the bend in the corridor ahead. Approaching within a couple meters, she sank to a crouch. Then drew in a sharp breath as her ankle protested, the hot stabbing nearly taking her to her knees. She clenched her teeth, slowly creeped, step by step, toward the waiting soldiers.
It felt rather surreal. Was she really about to kill two people? Cianen had hardly ever even gotten in a fight before. It felt like something out of a dream, a horrible dream.
She stopped just out of sight, leaned her head out just far enough to spy the soldiers around the bend. Two tall, thick figures in the silver and black of the Sith military, covered head to foot in gleaming metal, the breastplate on one sporting a slash of char, a glancing hit. Both carried wicked-looking blaster rifles, as long as her arm. They were clearly talking about something — they faced each other, occasionally twisting with a half-made gesture — but the sound was contained by their helmets, the figures were almost eerily silent in the noise of the wounded ship.
Drawing a long breath through her nose, trying not to wince at how her head flared, she carefully lined up the end of her blaster with the faceplate of one of the soldiers, the one toward the opposite side of the hall, the better angle. With a little pistol like this, there was no way she could burn through that armor, but the visor was just hardened plastic, shouldn't be a problem.
Cianen had no idea where she'd learned all that.
Casting her confusion off, she let out a thin breath, and squeezed the trigger. There was a scream of superheated air, the blaster twitching in her hand, a flash of reddish light too quick to follow. Before she could blink, a glowing gash had been seared into the soldier's helmet, and he was toppling boneless to the ground.
The second started moving, but she was already scrambling backward. After only a few steps she slipped, falling hard on her arse, but she didn't bother trying to get up again. She sat on the floor, blaster pointed upward to the corner, her breath hot in her throat, the clanging of the second soldier's footsteps loud in her ears. The instant he came around the corner, before he could bring his rifle around, she squeezed off a single shot. With a second flash of light, a second squeal of protest, the second soldier was collapsing, dead before he hit the floor.
Cianen took a moment to breathe, her hands quivering, her chest and head throbbing with the pounding of her heart. But only a moment — she had to keep moving.
As she forced herself to her shaky feet, Onasi's voice again sprung to life in her ear. "Not bad, Professor." This time that odd tone on his voice was recognizable as suspicion, most intense on professor, almost ironic. Which wasn't unreasonable, honestly. He was probably wondering how exactly a bloody xenolinguistics professor had learned to do all this.
Cianen didn't respond. She didn't have anything to respond with. She had no better idea than he did.
A few steps later, she came upon one of the fresh corpses, a thin trail of steam still rising from his helmet. She came to one knee, ignoring the twinge of pain from her ankle. She unhooked one side of the strap on the blaster rifle, gave it a good yank to get it out from under his shoulder, cradled the thing in her arms. Full charge, but a flick of the chamber showed the gas cartridge had gone just a little foggy. Hmm. She reached for the man's waist, unbuckling his belt after a few awkward seconds of fumbling. Thick, black synth bearing spare cells and cartridges down the entire length, was too long to fit around her waist, but she could sling it over a shoulder just fine. The rifle used different sized ammunition than her pistol, after all.
She limped around the bend in the corridor, picked her way over the thin carpet of slain navy officers toward the Sith soldier she'd killed. Most of the Republic people, all of them pocked with charred and bloody blaster wounds, weren't even armed. Seemed...excessive. She kneeled over the first person Cianen had ever killed (don't think about that), started working his rifle out from under him.
"Do you really have to do that?"
There was a twinge of queasiness on his voice, enough she frowned to herself in confusion. "Do what?"
"Loot the bodies."
She blinked. "I'm just taking the weapons." The chamber flicked open, and she saw the gas cartridge in this one was much clearer. She dropped the first one she'd picked up, settled the strap so the second would hang over her hip, comfortably in reach. "It's not like I'm turning out their pockets."
Onasi grumbled a little, but dropped it.
She pushed back to her feet, set off limping down the corridor. Her ankle and hip were getting worse the further she walked, stiffer with each step, throbbing in time with her heartbeat. But she kept going, leaning heavily against a hand on the bulkhead, stumbling now and again over the arms and legs of faceless corpses strewn across the floor, but she didn't fall, forced herself on shaking knees, on, and on, and on.
She imagined, with the rifle and the ammo belts slung over her shoulders, the medpacs and pistol stuck into her waistband, she probably looked like the hero out of a terrible action holo right about now. Cianen had to bite her lip to hold in the mad urge to break into giggles at the thought.
Okay, yeah, she might be just a little delirious. Some medical attention would be nice.
Around another bend in the corridor, she came upon a door. After confirming with Onasi the room beyond was empty, she dug a security chit out of her pocket, waved it over the panel. The door receded into the wall, and she limped into—
She froze, blinking around the room. Half of the emergency lights were out, a few panels throwing out sparks, the place cast in deep, flickering shadows. She made out computer terminals, a few chairs here and there, a large flatscreen, webbed with cracks, stretching all along one wall. "You're leading me toward the bridge."
"Everywhere else is blocked off. It's the only way through."
Gritting her teeth, she started making her way across the room, propping herself against terminals and chairs whenever one was convenient. If the Sith troops were going to be concentrated anywhere, it would be near the bridge. "Any on the other side of this one?"
"Ah, five, looks like."
She stopped, turning to rest half her weight on the corner of a control panel. "Five? You're kidding."
"Afraid not. Have any more tricks up your sleeve?"
"Let's hope so." She tipped fully onto her feet again, then staggered as her head went light and fluffy, her hearing gone fuzzy and the room spinning around her. A hand and a knee against the terminal kept her from falling, a few heavy breaths and her head slowly cleared, the swirling lessened. It didn't go away completely, but it'd have to do.
"Hayal? Are you okay?"
"No, I'm not. In fact, I've been having a very bad day."
"It seems to be going around."
She grunted. A few moments of limping her way across the room had her coming to rest against the wall, just to the side of the door. There was absolutely no way she'd be able to take out five. With the rifle on full auto, she might have gotten lucky, but that was far less likely with her head spinning. She doubted she'd be able to pull off the kind of marksmanship she had just a couple minutes ago. (Not that she had any idea how she'd done that in the first place.) Unless she came up with something clever, she was going to die.
Thankfully, she was very clever.
It took only a couple seconds staring at the pistol in her hands to come to a decision. She did have two of the things. She popped open the chamber, slipped out the cartridge. Poking around the inside, she wrenched the limiter off the board, tore out a bit of the housing, then wedged the cartridge roughly in place, snapped it closed again. She slid out the power cell, whacked the end of it against a nearby terminal. Then again, again, the cap at the end slowly twisting off with each hit. She took the plastic between her teeth, ripped it off, revealing the metal of the high-density batteries inside. She shoved in the little bit of metal she'd taken from the cartridge housing, twisting it around a bit, until she was sure she'd made a bridge between the cells. Taking a steading breath, she slapped the whole pack back into the base of the pistol.
"Uh, Hayal? What are you doing?"
"Improvising." She dialed the power setting all the way up. A security chit held in one hand, her finger hovered over the safety. This was a terrible idea. "Are they clumped up at all?"
"Yeah, they're all by the door, across the room. Shit! Go! Come on, come on!"
"What's wrong?" A flick of her thumb had the safety off, the blaster whirring to life. And then whirring more and more, the sound rising to a piercing, electric whine. Before the thing could start burning her hand, she flipped it around, grasping it by the barrel. And she waited, watching the pistol as it started to steam, to spark. A little more. A little more...
"No, it's not me, I— They cornered Annas, she's trying to fight her way out. Come on, come on..."
She scoffed. As far as she was concerned, the more of them the Jedi killed the better. She'd rather her fight it out than sneak around. But she didn't have time to argue, not if she wanted to keep her hand. She swiped her security chit, the door sliding open.
Across the room, strewn with terminals and chairs and projectors but in much better shape, was a clump of figures. Four soldiers in gleaming armor, another in the synthweave of a naval officer, cast in the blacks and silvers of the Sith. She quickly took aim, then hurled the hissing blaster into the room. She didn't wait to watch it land, ducked back around the door, slammed it closed with the push of a button.
Less than two seconds later, there was a muffled whoomph, the wall shuddered against her back. Ignoring Onasi cursing in her ear, she waited for three counts before opening the door again.
Where the soldiers had been was a ruin, armor and bodies thrown into a blender, reduced to a broken, bloody, smoking mess. The floor and ceiling and parts of the wall near them had been charred black, the closest terminals smashed to sparking pieces, the air quickly thickening with dark smoke.
"Ooh, shit..."
She limped across the room, trying to ignore the way it tilted and spun around her. The smoke only turned her blood thinner, her head so light she feared it might float away, but she kept plodding forward, one step then another. When she noticed one of the armored soldiers was still moving, she put a bolt from the rifle in his back without a blink.
"Remind me to not piss you off."
Through the pain and the dizziness, she felt her lips twitching into a smirk.
She stepped onto the bridge, paused a moment to look around. Not exactly an area of the ship Cianen had been allowed to poke around in. The room was long, narrowing to a point in front of her, where the metal of the hull fell away, the blue-grey curve of Taris slowly wandering across the transparisteel viewports as the Spire drifted. To her left was a large greenish panel of glass, broken in the middle, shards scattered on the floor. To her right was a bank of terminals and such, some intact and some smashed and fitfully smoldering, forming a solid row splitting the bridge in half. To get to the door on the other side she'd have to walk all the way around, near to the stations for the command crew toward the front.
She could see from here some of the chairs at the front still had bodies in them. There were a couple more strewn across the bridge, but not very many, most of the crew must have gotten out. By the look of the hallways she'd been through, they probably hadn't gotten very far.
Before she could even start for the front of the bridge, the door on the opposite side of the terminals blew open, huge slabs of durasteel tumbling into the room with a crash that made her head flare white, she barely managed to stay standing. She heard the pounding of footsteps, ducked behind one of the terminals, peaked over the edge.
Scrambling backward onto the bridge, her lightsaber moving so quickly it almost seemed a solid blue energy shield before her, blaster bolts melting their way into walls and ceiling and sizzling electronics, was a Jedi. Cianen knew this one, she'd been hanging around when she'd been watching the battle break out on the holoprojector in the briefing room. Didn't know anything about her, wouldn't know her name was Annas if Onasi hadn't said so, but then, she'd avoided contact with the Jedi on the ship as much as possible. They just made her uncomfortable.
She was hardly alone in that. A lot of people didn't like Jedi.
A black-silver blur shot through the door, red striking blue in a shower of a sparks and a squealing noise that made her teeth ache. Slowed down for a second, the blur resolved into another Jedi, a bald-headed man in a mix of synthweave and plasteel, cast in Sith colors. And then they were moving, blue and red lightsabers slashing and spinning and clashing in a dance too quick for the eye to follow, the two figures darting back and forth, jumping over terminals, surrounded with the flashes of sparks and fire and lightning, debris from the smallest shard of glass to whole chairs flying through the air as though caught in a whirlwind, the noise of it incredible, squealing and crashing and hissing.
Yeah, there was nothing she could do about any of that.
Her eyes were drawn by a storm of clanging, heavy boots striking the floor in chorus. A group of Sith soldiers were streaming through the door. Two, three, five...eight, it looked like eight. They hadn't seen her, had their rifles pointed at the fighting Jedi. Waiting for an opportunity to shoot Annas in the back, most like.
There was something she could do about that. She flicked her rifle into full auto, propped the end against the lip of the terminal, and opened up on the Sith. The ear-piercing scream of superheated air came as a constant agony, her hands consumed with a distracting tingle, blooms of red light and char stitched across silver armor. A few of the Sith were hit, twitching at each smoking hole scored through them before collapsing, but the rest dove away, ducking behind corners and terminals. She ducked before they could fire back, the first shots searing over her head after she was already down. It wasn't quite empty, but she popped out the power cell anyway, slipping a fresh one off the belt.
There was an odd thrum, like her heart beating hard felt everywhere at once, a tingle so intense it hurt running up her spine. Without thinking, she sprung upward, rolling over the bank of terminals, the bone-shivering hum of a lightsaber passing behind her, jabbed in the sides again and again with who knew what as she tumbled to the other side. She fell graceless to the floor on her back, gasping for breath.
One of the Sith soldiers was crouched behind the second terminal from her head, his rifle already turning for her. Firing straight up, she stitched a line of fire across him before he could get a shot off, then rolled over onto her knees, trying to ignore how the room spun with the motion, how the cacophony filling the bridge pounded at her skull. There were still several Sith about, blasters peeking out from behind partitions and terminals and control panels, and she was far too exposed. She swept over their positions with laserfire, not trying to hit them so much as discourage them from hitting her, the metal of the walls glowing a pale red from hit after hit. She managed to take out one of them, a lucky hit right across the top of his head, but she couldn't keep up fire this thick for long, the power cell would run out too quickly.
Just as the rifle beeped at her, five shots left, Annas came swirling back into sight, a tail of blue light trailing her. She jumped, rolled back over to the other side of the terminals, getting a few more stabs in the side from corners and switches and such, popped in a fresh power cell before peeking over again. Annas had fallen upon them with all the unstoppable force of a meteor, lightsaber tearing through metal and plastic as easily as flesh and bone. Most of them were already dead, dismembered corpses mixed with faintly glowing shards of whatever they'd been hiding behind, only a couple still fighting, wildly scrambling backward, firing aimlessly in the Jedi's general direction. She managed to put down one of them, her swirling vision sending half the burst into the wall next to him, Annas slashing through another, flying for the last so quickly she was a blur.
"You!" She jumped, turned around, a hip against the terminal steadying her as the room spun. The Sith was there, lightsaber loosely held down at his side. It was hard to tell, with how unsteady her vision was at the moment, but his eyes did look rather wider than they should be. "How are you—?"
She didn't bother waiting for him to finish his sentence. She squeezed the trigger, and held it there.
The Sith moved inhumanly fast, lightsaber a solid barrier of red light, the bolts hissing against walls and terminals and ceiling instead. Through the eye-dazzling chaos, she caught a flash of actinic blue.
It was cold, like the subzero winds on the mountains outside of Aldera tearing across her face, but a hundred times worse, and reaching much deeper, penetrating to the bone. It was hot, like sticking her hand in a campfire, but a hundred times worse, and running all through her, her blood replaced with magma. Like being sliced into ribbons by a million blades at once, crushed under bone-shattering weight, over and over and over. Vision cast black and white and purple, her blood rushing in her ears, it ran over her in waves, again and again and again, she couldn't get away, it was everywhere, she couldn't—
The world returned with a numbing crash, leaving her shivering and gasping. She'd fallen against the deck at some point, she wasn't sure where. Her arms and legs more cramp and bruise than flesh, every nerve afire, she was so tired, the cool metal of the floor felt too good against her cheek, she didn't want to get up. She just wanted to stay here, pass out right here, and let it all fall away.
But she couldn't. She could hear the crashing and crackling of the Jedi and the Sith fighting, only a few meters away, Onasi shouting right in her ear. She had to get up, if she didn't keep moving she would die.
Despite the agony setting her limbs to shaking, she pushed herself to a knee, blindly groped for the lip of a nearby terminal, pulled herself to one foot, the other. Her knees were weak, a constant shiver, her hip and ankle screaming, the bridge reduced to swirling blurs. But she stumbled forward anyway, one hand against the equipment at her side, limping forward one staggering step at a time. Toward the noise of the fighting Jedi. She didn't know what she could possibly do about that, but she wouldn't make it out of here with the Sith still alive, she had to—
Her rifle twitched up, and she fired.
And there was silence.
"Cianen, come... Come here."
She wasn't entirely conscious of doing it. She was so tired, so numb, her body seemed to move on its own. She was limping across the room, then she was kneeling on the floor. The Jedi, Annas, she was sitting there, half thrown over one of the chairs at the front of the bridge, arms and legs limply hanging. There were burns scattered over her, legs and arms, one over her shoulder, the cloth burned away to reveal blackened skin. That wasn't the worst, a bloody pit weeping above her hips, bits of sharpened metal gleaming, flesh shredded into ribbons.
Even with the details muddied by the foam filling her head, she knew at a glance Annas wasn't going to make it.
"You have to..." The Jedi was reaching toward her, bloody fingers grasping blindly in the air. She took her hand, and nearly fell over when the Jedi yanked, wrenching her wrist down and twisting. "You, find Bastila." Annas slid a cylinder of warm metal into her hand, clenched her fingers around it with her own. A lightsaber, she knew with a start. "Go back... You must. Everything, everything dep... You must."
She really didn't know what to say to that. She wasn't even certain what the Jedi was trying to tell her. So she just nodded.
"Go." The Jedi patted the back of her hand, still trapped around her lightsaber, her touch wet with blood. "Go." And she let go.
She straightened, so far as she was actually capable of standing at the moment, clipped the lightsaber onto the ammo belt, over her hip. She hefted her stolen blaster rifle. After a short, tense sort of pause, the Jedi nodded.
The high-powered bolt burned through her skull, and Annas died instantly.
Setting the useless hunk of crap on the table with a light thunk, Meetra said, "I still don't see what the point of this is."
Lesami's head raised an inch, glancing across the table at her. Thankfully, she wasn't wearing that absurd Mandalorian mask of hers at the moment — she was confident enough in the base's security to go without. So Meetra got a full view of the mild glare Lesami was throwing her, unfiltered voice touched with exasperation. "You can't even guess? That's disappointing. And here Kreia said you were clever."
Meetra twitched at the mention of that particular Jedi Master. They didn't exactly get along. Honestly, she was a little surprised she'd spoken well of her to Lesami at all. "I can't believe I'm going to be charging into battle with blasters and grenades."
"Grenades are useful." With a sharp motion, Lesami finished whatever she was doing with the rifle, something sliding home with a deep snapping noise, a high whine of electronics powering on. She set the thing down on the table, pointed carefully off to the side, before looking up again. "But no, I wouldn't expect you to use blasters much."
"Then what is the bloody point?"
Lesami sighed, her eyes tipping up toward the ceiling.
Over the next minutes, Meetra didn't get her answer. Lesami crouched next to her at the table, walked her through how to replace the gas cartridge, the power cell — she had her practice that several times until she could do it quick enough she was satisfied. Even snapping the thing apart to replace the entire barrel and the emitter worked into the base which, though Republic soldiers always carried a single replacement, only ever failed in extreme circumstances. She had her fumbling over the tuners and settings, quizzing her every so often, going nearly back to the beginning whenever she got anything wrong. And on and on and on and on.
By the end, Meetra was struggling to not show her growing frustration. Master Vima hadn't taken so long to explain the basic operation of a lightsaber, and that was something she actually used.
And the long, condescending lecture about how to hold the thing and not point it at anything she didn't want dead, which should really go without saying, was just annoying.
And then there was the actual shooting. It wasn't by any means difficult — leaning into the Force to augment her aim turned the entire exercise into child's play. She didn't always hit the center of the targets, but she couldn't miss entirely. It did feel a little weird, firing the thing. Sympathetic vibrations from the magnetic accelerators, she knew, a side-effect of slight imperfections in manufacture. Her hands felt a bit tingly and numb after a while, which was making her aim slightly clumsier, but it wasn't that bad.
What the whole thing was was tedious. Lesami had her firing down the range at nearby stationary targets, then further, then further. Then moving targets, first moving smoothly, then more quickly and erratically. All kinds of nonsense she had her do, they had to be at it for an hour.
They were at it long enough they weren't alone anymore. They'd come in very early in the morning, when people who couldn't refresh themselves with a half hour of meditation would still be sleeping. It must have been hours, a slow trickle of off-duty soldiers in street clothes finding their way into the range for practice. Mostly ordinary soldiers, anyway — Meetra recognized two beings she knew were Jedi, part of Lesami's entourage. Though they were Temple Jedi, Meetra didn't even know their names. On their way in, most of them acknowledged Lesami one way or another, lazy salutes or waves, a litany of "Commander" as they walked past. A few actually stopped for a quick chat, but Meetra wasn't really listening. The enormous room gradually filled with a low rumble of muttered conversation, the clinking and snapping of blasters being fiddled with, the screech of bolts scorching the air.
Eventually, Meetra's patience ran out. Popping out yet another expended power cell, she whirled around to face Lesami, keeping the note of annoyance off her voice only from long practice. "I'm sorry, Lesami, but is there a point to all this?"
The tiny little woman stared up at her, one eyebrow slowly ticking up. "Still haven't figured it out?"
"Why don't you just come out and tell me?"
Lesami sighed, her eyes glancing away. Then her head tilted a little, a brief frown crossing her face before being replaced with a warm smile. "Captain. Good to see you on your feet again."
Glancing that direction, Meetra spotted a Cathar man, walking by only a couple meters away. He'd obviously had recent surgery, the fur shaved away across half his head, a few other places visible on his arms, giving him a lopsided, ruffled sort of look. "No one's more pleased than I am, Commander." He walked toward their booth, a noticeable limp in his left leg. It must have hurt, but still his eyes were curled into a smile, his voice light. "My men tell me I have you to thank for getting me back alive."
"Oh, piss on that." Lesami flipped her fingers in a harsh, dismissive wave. "Just doing my job. Anyone else in my position would have done the same."
"Of course, Commander." Meetra was less than familiar with his species, but she had the feeling that was amusement on his voice.
"Anyway, you have great timing." Coaxing the injured soldier closer with one hand, Lesami turned back to Meetra. "This is Captain Rashah Suun, commander of Tinna Company. Captain, this is Meetra Surik, the best lightsaber duelist of our generation." Meetra instinctively opened her mouth to deny the superlative statement, then closed it again. It was probably accurate.
Suun blinked. "I thought that was Squint."
"Only in his dreams," Lesami said, her smile tilting into something more like a smirk. "I've been giving Meetra here a rundown on standard-issue weaponry, and she can't seem to figure out why I bother. Think you can give me a hand?"
"Sure thing." Suun took a few steps closer, practically coming into the booth with them, Lesami moving around behind Meetra to give him room. He poked at the controls to the side for a bit. "We're under fire, take all these out as quickly as you can."
Meetra glanced down the range, seeing her alley was filled with a dozen targets, the shielded droids darting all over the place. With a sigh, she slipped a fresh power cell into her rifle, flicked it into full auto, and mowed them all down. At this point, it wasn't even slightly difficult anymore. The thick stream of fire hit one, another, another, pinging the last even as the low power warning beeped at her. She popped out the expended cell, grabbing a fresh one with numbed fingers.
"Oh shit, there are more."
With a quick look at Lesami, finding only an implacable stare containing not a hint of mercy, Meetra turned back outward. This time there were a couple more, but she managed to hit them all, using every single shot.
"There's one more, quick, take him!"
Meetra jumped — either she'd missed one, or Suun had activated another when she hadn't been looking. She yanked back on the release, the depleted power cell clattering to the ground, grabbed a fresh one, slammed it in—
The cell skated off the lip of the slot, she nearly drove the thing into her own arm. Meetra made a couple more attempts, but her fingers were too numb from firing so many shots in so short a time, she couldn't get the cell aligned properly. Turning the rifle a little so she could see it, holding the cell closer to the top, she finally got it to slip in. She brought the thing back up, lined up the shot, fired...and missed. "Dammit."
"Are Jedi supposed to curse?"
"Depends on the Jedi. Most of them are fucking prudes, though."
Meetra shot Lesami an exasperated glare over her shoulder. The so frequently aggravating woman just smiled back at her, eyes dancing. "Okay, this is fun, but we'll be getting to the point soon."
Instead of either of them answering, Suun poked at the controls some more. She glanced that way to see a single, stationary target, floating there halfway down the range. "Stun this one."
A quick flick of a switch, and Meetra fired. Stun bolts, due to the radically different composition of the energy packet, moved far more slowly. Of course, "far more slowly" was relative — something flashing by at twice the speed of sound certainly seemed slow compared to something pushing half the speed of light. The point was, the bluish blaster bolt was actually visible for an instant, lancing out toward the waiting droid...before fizzling out, decohering into a harmless cloud of sparks a few meters short. "What the— Oh, the packet's too loose, isn't it, it falls apart from air friction."
She turned in time to catch Suun's nod. "It depends on the composition of the atmosphere a bit, but generally speaking even your high-powered stun bolt has a range of about thirty meters. And, you would have noticed, the more shots you fire the clumsier you get. It wears off pretty quickly, if you take breaks between bursts, but you can't always do that. We have far more practice dealing with it than you do, but even we'll fumble sometimes."
"I suspect," Lesami said, her smile gone a bit absent, "that you might have guessed stun bolts have a more limited range. At least, if it occurred to you to think about it. But how numb firing a blaster can make your hands would be new."
Meetra frowned. "Well, yeah, I didn't know that. So?"
His face contorting into a snarl she felt must be a Cathar equivalent to the human smirk, Suun said, "If you don't know someone's capabilities and limitations, how the hell are you supposed to fight alongside them?"
There really wasn't anything she could think to say. She hadn't even thought of that.
After a short pause, Suun giving Meetra a look she was trying to avoid thinking of as smug, Lesami spoke. "Thank you, Captain. You can get back to whatever you were doing."
"Commander, Master Jedi." A quick pair of nods, and Suun turned away, started limping off again.
Once he was out of earshot, disappearing into the low-key chaos of the shooting range, Meetra turned back to Lesami. "That's it? I mean, we're spending so long going over all this stuff, and..."
Lesami gave her an odd look, seeming to be half-amused and half-exasperated. "It's rather important, don't you think? I can't be sending you out with a platoon until you at least know the basics. How are you supposed to lead worth a damn if you don't know what the options are?"
"I... Well, I guess it didn't occur to me."
"You're not the only one, none of us knew what we were doing at first." Lesami reached over, switched off the rifle Meetra was still holding. She turned around, started walking for the door out, pointing Meetra off to the storage racks with a nod. While Meetra got everything situated away — which took longer than it probably should, she fumbled getting the gas cartridge out — Lesami waited, fingers tapping at one of her arms, crossed over her stomach. "It led to a few...difficulties. I can't tell you how many times I got into shouting matches with Major Nothrian and even the Admiral. I had to learn, like everyone else.
"It's something we Jedi aren't taught, you know," she said, leading Meetra out the door. By the first couple turns she took through the tight, empty halls, probably toward the mess. "How to fight with non-Jedi, I mean. Oh, we do get combat training, of course, but it's all geared toward a very particular sort of combat. A small number of Jedi against a similar number of Sith, or against some group of criminals or militants. Our training regiment isn't designed with proper battles in mind. Which is by design, the Council believes Jedi have no business fighting in wars."
Meetra shrugged. "In any other situation they might have been right. They couldn't have anticipated the naked barbarism of the Mandalorian method of war. With the Republic unwilling to take the threat seriously, we had to do something." Of course, the Republic was taking the Mandalorians seriously now, they'd just taken too long. If not for the Revanchists, the Republic might have moved too late, and it was already a close thing, the Mandalorians pouring through the Slice virtually unchecked.
Somewhat to her surprise, Lesami shot an unimpressed glare over her shoulder, sudden and sharp enough Meetra jumped. "Any student of history could have anticipated this. The Senate has demonstrated a consistent pattern of caring little for conditions on the rim. If things had gone differently, they might have ignored the Mandalorians right up until they invaded the Arrowhead. The Order, despite our traditional insistence we are not an army, have found ourselves pulled into one war after another, all through the history of the Republic. None of this is new. The 'barbarism' of the Mandalorians isn't even unusual. We may like to think we're an enlightened people, that we have rules of engagement, but those rules are almost always abandoned once the fighting starts. War is barbaric. Nothing will ever change that.
"But that's not the point," Lesami said, waving the topic away. "You'll hear all these people who think they're great military geniuses talking about how you have to know your enemy. Above all else, you have to know your enemy. But too many of them miss something critically important: no matter how thoroughly knowledgeable you are about the people you're fighting, it's useless if you don't understand your own people. And I'm not just talking about their training and weaponry. Have you studied the Seventh Alsakan Conflict in detail?"
Meetra blinked. "I know the basics, of course, but not really." The Seventh Conflict was, at its core, a civil war within the Pius Dea Republic. It'd been going on for some time, the theocratic, xenophobic perversion of the Republic scrambling to suppress one rebellion of some non-human species, then another, then another.
Eventually the Jedi, having abandoned the former democracy nearly a millennium previously, joined forces with the Alsakani, who had seceded with near on a third of the known galaxy to form their own, far more enlightened state. They entered the war on the side of the rebels, liberated the core, and overthrew the Contispex dynasty. For a century afterward, during what is now called Reconstruction, Alsakan operated as the de facto capital of the Republic, Coruscant essentially under military occupation. In the aftermath, the Alsakani donated to the Order the land on which the Temple now stood, charging them to keep a closer eye on the political climate on Coruscant to stop such a thing from ever happening again. Beyond that, Meetra didn't know anything more about the period.
When studying history, the primary impression one came away with was that galactic civilization was old — the Constitution of the Republic had been signed over twenty-one thousand years ago, and the Order had been around in one form or another even longer. No matter how much someone might want to, it was impossible to study it all. Even experts were only knowledgeable of a certain period or topic. Beyond recent centuries and the Hundred Year Darkness, Meetra had only a rough impression of major events.
"Well, the traditional narrative focuses on the various regional rebellions, the influence of the Jedi, the meddling of the Alsakani and the Corellians, but it was more complicated than that. Only devout members of the Faith were allowed to ascend to any sort of significant rank in their military, but full on a third of them defected. They were ordered to kill rebels, dissidents, even protestors. Firing into crowds, harmless people. One Crusade after another, scorching worlds from orbit, wiping out billions of people, entire species. These commanders, they were moral beings — pius beings, as they would put it. The xenophobic brainwashing they'd all undergone could only hold against such atrocities for so long. In time it was too much, and they broke with Coruscant, turned their guns against the very empire they'd been serving, pleaded with the Jedi and Alsakani to join their cause. Without the Renunciates, the Pius Dea Republic wouldn't have fallen nearly as swiftly as it did.
"See, Meetra, you have to understand your own people. Not just their capabilities, but how they feel, what they believe. How can you command an army if you don't know what it can do? How can you lead anyone if you don't know what moves them, their passions, their dreams, their fears?" As Lesami spoke, they walked into the mess, dozens of soldiers packed around them, the noise of clinking and chattering and laughing a physical weight pressing against Meetra's skull. Lesami didn't slow, but she wasn't watching where she was going, her eyes instead sweeping over the room, taking in them all with the intensity of a student at lecture. "Any leader who doesn't understand the skills, hearts, and minds of her own people is doomed to failure, sooner or later. Do you understand now?"
"Lesami, with the way you go on, if I didn't get it by now I'd be concerned for my own intelligence." The thought had occurred to her before, if Lesami hadn't been drawn out to war by the Mandalorians she'd probably have become one of the instructors back at the Temple. That is, assuming the Council would permit it — as knowledgeable and even professorial as she could get at times, Lesami was hardly the most dogmatic of Jedi.
In fact, Meetra thought she understood rather more than she was meant to. She hadn't missed the faint note of admiration on Lesami's voice as she'd spoken of the Renunciates.
Unease hung over her at the thought, a distracting tingle crawling across the back of her neck.
Her heart pounding in her throat, her blood filled with fire, she jerked, snapped up to sitting. Or, at least, she tried to — her head didn't move a millimeter, locked solidly in place against her pillow.
No, not a pillow. The realization bubbled up from somewhere deep under the surface, drawn out by the odd weight draped over her, the scrambling of feet and the shouting of voices and blaring of alarms. The patches of an odd, cold, sticky wetness here and there across her body, numb but distracting. Bacta patches. She wasn't on a bed, not really. She was in a medcenter somewhere. They'd immobilized her, but not all of her, she could still move her hands and feet. CNS trauma, they thought she had a cranial or spinal injury.
Judging by the hot throbbing in her head, they weren't far wrong about that.
"Good, you're awake." An arm, sleeve pale and skin dark, drifted into view, a manual hypo slung in its fingers. A doctor, had to be, only professionals used those, judging by the texture of his skin a human one. She felt an odd wave of cold through her neck as whatever was in there was injected into her blood. In an instant, the agony in her head diminished, the heat of what must have been an adrenal of some kind fizzling out. "Can you speak? I need you to ask a few questions for me."
She worked her tongue for a moment, her mouth dry and filled with ash. The doctor leaned over her, some device she didn't recognize held in his hand, pressed close to her forehead. He was an older man, dark skin thinly wrinkled, white shot through his bushy eyebrows and mustache. Her voice came out as more croak than speech. "Shoot, Doc."
"What's your name?"
For a brief, disorienting moment, she couldn't remember. But then it came, floating out of the fuzziness that filled her head. "Cianen," she said, but even as she said it, she felt... It felt like knowledge, a fact she'd learned somewhere, but she didn't quite...
"Nice to meet you, Cianen. My name is Zelka."
"Charmed."
His mustache twitched with the shadow of a smile. "Do you have any chronic medical conditions I should know about?"
"No."
"Count down from twenty-five by threes for me."
She got down to ten before he stopped her.
"Do you know where you are?"
"...Taris?"
"Is that a question?"
"I was in an escape pod..."
Zelka nodded. Whatever he was doing, there was an odd tension in the side of her head. It didn't hurt, exactly, it just felt...weird. "Yes, you're on Taris. Name as many of the Core Founders as you can."
She hesitated, but just for a second. "Alderaan, Coruscant, Alsakan, Caamas, Shaw-Shawken, Corellia, Duro, Tepasi, Chandrila, Brentaal, Axum, Anaxes, Kuat, Rendili, Iphigin, Humba—"
"Stop, stop. What was the first question I asked you?"
"What's my— No, can I speak."
"Right." Zelka lifted whatever that thing was away from her head, a wave of dizziness sweeping over her before vanishing again. "You're going to be fine. You have some bruising, and what looks like light burns from grazing shots, but none of that looks serious. I know they can itch, but try not to scratch at the bacta patches, we can probably take them off tomorrow. You did have a concussion and a mild cranial hemorrhage, but I was able to repair the damage, and the swelling went down with meds. However, you might still be dizzy for some hours yet, so I recommend you keep off your feet. Oh, and, if you can't hear out of your left ear that's normal, we'll look at it again if it isn't better in a day or two.
"Did you have any questions for me?"
That didn't sound too bad. Considering everyone else in the hall she'd woken up in had died, and how completely out of her depth she'd been fighting her way to the escape pods, that actually sounded pretty fucking good. "Nah, I'm good. Let me up, maybe?"
"Oh, of course, sorry." There were a few little beeps to her side, and the invisible bands holding her in place loosened, her head sagging to the side a bit before she caught it. "If you're going to be moving around, just try not to get in—"
"Doctor! We're losing this one!"
"Shit." Zelka swept through the side of her vision, running off deeper into the room, shouting about combined adrenals and unisubs. Before long, she lost his voice in the cacophony filling the room to bursting.
Her arms weak, her head tingling and floating, she pushed herself upright. She was right about the medcenter thing, obviously. The clinic had maybe twenty beds, metals and plastics cast in antiseptic whites and greens, the walls lined with cabinets and coolers and all kinds of equipment she didn't know enough about medicine to recognize on sight. The place was a mess, most of the beds occupied with mangled and bleeding men and women wearing torn and blackened fragments of Republic uniforms, the floor between packed with beings. A few wore white and green uniforms, clearly medical staff of some kind, but the majority were in street clothes, running the gamut all the way from the casual comfort of the upper middle class to the rags of the destitute.
A thought floated up from somewhere deep beneath the surface: volunteers. It happened, all the time, in emergency situations, citizens of conscience pouring in off the streets to give medical professionals any assistance they could. By the paucity of staff she could make out in the crowd, and just how many patients they seemed to have, she was betting they could use the help.
She watched — passive, empty — as Zelka and a handful of aides scrambled to keep someone alive, the patient completely obscured by the people around them. For long minutes they worked, until, letting out an explosive curse she could hear from across the room, Zelka jerked a sheet down the bed, and sidled over to the next patient, jumping straight into motion.
Less than a minute later, a pair of Ithorians appeared, lifted the body off the bed, and disappeared out the door. With that kind of coordination, that couldn't be the first corpse they'd moved today.
"You're still alive. That's something."
She jumped, jerked around to look over her shoulder. The sudden movement had her head spinning, she closed her eyes a moment to fight back the nausea. There was a man standing there, a human man, just a couple steps from the bed. Dark hair fashioned by sweat into spikes, dark eyes shadowed by a frown, the masculine sort of face you got weird looks for calling pretty. It wasn't until after she caught the two blaster pistols at his waist, ineffectively hidden by a padded leather jacket, that the name came to her. "Onasi. Don't look too happy. I wouldn't want to think you care." The sarcasm came easy, natural, right.
But Onasi didn't seem to take it well, his frown narrowing as he turned to her. It took him a moment to find his words, she could almost hear his teeth grinding. "We're the only ones likely to live so far."
She blinked. She looked out into the room, the beds filled with wounded Republic men and women, the streets, the skies filled with who knew how many more.
Oh.
The thought of all those people, thousands of them, wounded and dying and dead — and for no real purpose, it'd been a trap, she had warned them — left her feeling...exhausted. Not an exhaustion of the body, but more a sort of heavy despair falling over her. She could get up, but a part of her didn't want to. A part of her just wanted to lie back and rest, rest and never rise. To give up on the outside galaxy, let it tear itself apart without her. A part of her, a deep, visceral thing rising from the very core of her, was tired, so very tired, and didn't want to do this anymore.
Even as the thoughts, the feelings crashed over her, like waves striking shore, she slowly grew confused. That reaction didn't make any sense. What exactly was she so tired of, what didn't she want to do anymore? Cianen had never been in this sort of situation before. If anything, she should be in shock, not... It didn't make any sense.
Except she had, she had been here before. All these people who had died, it hadn't been necessary, she'd warned them, she should have done more, she should have made those idiots see. This feeling, she could have done something, it was painful, it was overwhelming, it was depressing.
And it was familiar. It was unpleasant, yes, but in an odd way...natural. Like she'd felt like this before, far too many times before.
It didn't make any sense.
But it wasn't the first thing that had happened lately that didn't make any sense. Over the years, she'd studied more languages than she could remember, needed both hands to count the ones she spoke fluently. But, in her time on Coruscant, waiting for the Jedi to clear her, she'd overheard a few languages she was pretty sure she'd never studied before. Dosh, Yuska Rodese, a Devaronian language she didn't even know the name of, whatever the hell the Givin spoke, Ithorian, Anash Zeltrosi. She didn't remember studying any of them, but she understood every word she heard, as easily as though it were Basic. She'd even held a few full conversations in Caamasi, which she had studied theoretically, but certainly hadn't practiced to the point of fluency.
And that hadn't been the only thing about Coruscant that had felt, just, familiar. She'd made excuses about it to herself, that the core worlds were culturally and architecturally similar, it just reminded her of Alderaan, it meant nothing. But she'd been fooling herself, she knew that now. The Capitol District looked nothing like Aldera, the aesthetics were similar but the layout of the buildings wildly different. She'd never gotten lost in the Jedi Temple, she'd never gotten lost anywhere.
Except, one time, she sort of had. One night, the Jedi had finally released her rather late, the sun had long set by the time she was getting into her rented airspeeder. She'd flown without thinking, landed at an apartment building, only a couple miles away, very fancy. On autopilot, she'd walked the halls, rode the turbolifts, came to a particular door. She'd only stopped when she'd reached for a security chit that wasn't there, and belatedly realized she had no clue where she was, what she was doing.
And on the Spire. The D-213 and C-206, the blaster pistols and rifle she'd picked up, she knew everything about them. She knew who'd designed them, and when, she knew where they were manufactured, she knew their charge tolerances and power ranges and rates of fire, she knew all of it. She didn't know where she'd learned any of that.
And she knew how to use them. She'd killed people with them. But she'd never touched a blaster in her life, Cianen had never even slapped anyone before.
And yet it'd felt...
She leaned forward on the bed, resting her elbows on her knees. Avoiding the bandage she felt at the side of her head, she rubbed her temples, the effort useless against the spinning, the throbbing, the lurching of her stomach.
Something was seriously wrong with her.
She was saved from her own thoughts a few minutes later. A group of locals showed up, carrying between them a figure in a Republic flightsuit.
A Bothan with black fur.
Kreia — There's a fan theory that Kreia and Arren Kae, the mother of Brianna from KotOR II, are the same person. I'm not incorporating that theory. While Arren was Lesami's primary lightsaber instructor at the Temple, she was more Kreia's apprentice than anyone's.
Hundred Year Darkness — A civil war amongst the Jedi (and, by extension, the Republic) following the Second Schism. (7000 BBY, about three thousand years before KotOR.) After being defeated, the survivors of the Dark Jedi were exiled from the Republic, where they eventually stumbled into Sith space and reformed the feuding clans into an empire. And we all know how that went.
Pius Dea Renunciates and the Seventh Alsakan Conflict — This is all canon, by the way. Well, pre-Disney canon. When I say "canon", assume I mean the EU before Disney came around and axed all of it.
So, here's a thing.
It's a weird coincidence. I just started reading a fic where the plot is thrown a bit off when the MC gets a head injury on the Spire, kicking the implanted personality a bit askew. Which was my plan from the beginning. (Though, the Jedi kind of fucked it up in the first place, not the point.) Apparently, my ideas aren't as original as I think they are. xD
Until next time,
~Wings