It happened too quickly for Bastila to really see it, her vision overwhelmed with brilliant light, her eyes burning. The noise was all-consuming, the vibrations shaking her body numb, so intense she couldn't feel, she couldn't think. It went on for an infinite instant, fire and chaos, surrounding her hot and cold, the Force around her filled with screams of pain and the void of death.
And then it was over, abruptly as it'd begun.
Bastila opened herself to the Force almost without thinking. Soothing warmth coursed through her, turned only slightly pungent from the agony of the dying. Millions of microlacerations in her tissues were stitched back together in a blink, sensation quickly returning to her as healing life flooded into her head. She turned onto her knees, balance only slightly shaking, lightsaber slapping into her palm with a reflexive reach. She turned, instinctively, toward where Revan had been, preparing to—
She stopped dead. That light, whatever that had been, had torn through the huge transparisteel viewports forming a ring around the bridge, the crew stations to her left and right, all down the length of the large triangular room scorched and shredded. A few spots here and there still glowed, superheated materials afire from within. It was just...gone, the whole bridge was gone. All the crew were dead, nothing of them left, the faintly crackling blue haze of the ray shields the only thing standing between Bastila and oblivion.
The forward point of their safe corridor was a wreck, metals and plastics blackened and warped. Whatever blast had taken out the bridge must have burned through the shield, only temporarily before the system compensated. A paltry handful of meters from the center of the blast were two figures. One wore Jedi robes, the cloth dotted with blood in a couple places, stripes of black left from passing lightsabers. Kavarr, he was alive. He was kneeling over another, mostly hidden under a pooling cloak of red and black.
Revan.
"Is she..." Bastila didn't finish the question: she already knew. She could feel it. The faintest warmth, sunlight blocked by layers of cloud, a heartbeat more felt than heard. Revan yet lived. Barely. Her presence in the Force was weak, flickering, faltering.
"It is done." With surprising gentleness, Kavarr laid a hand on Revan's unmoving shoulder, his presence cool and still and solemn. "It is a shame, the way things turned out. She had such promise."
Bastila knew there was some truth to that, no matter how...controversial Lesami po si Revas had been with the masters from the beginning. She was exceptionally powerful, of course, exceptionally gifted. Bastila hadn't even heard of her before the war — she was a decade younger, and they'd been trained in different enclaves — but everyone had known about Revan, that dramatic, charismatic figure leading dozens of Jedi to take the fight to the Mandalorians, in explicit defiance of the Council. No one had known who Revan really was, of course, knowledge of her real name had been strictly classified back then, but everyone talked about her, all the time. Not always in a flattering light, especially among the older Jedi, but to the younger generations...
It was somewhat embarrassing looking back on it now, but Bastila had admired Revan, once upon a time. "Admired" might be too soft a word, in fact.
This, she had thought, this is what a Jedi is supposed to be. This is our true calling.
Not sitting in some temple somewhere, constantly philosophizing and bickering in the abstract, contemplating the Force in isolation, no, no. Jedi were meant to be out in the world, they were meant to serve their fellow beings, in whatever capacity their own talents allowed. They were meant to bring light to the darkness, relief to the oppressed, succor to the poor and the outcast. They were meant to lead, they were meant to inspire.
A younger, more innocent Bastila had seen Revan's actions, heard her words, and thought to herself, Yes, this is what we truly are. This is what we are meant to be.
Then, Revan and the Jedi she had led into war had become something...else. And Bastila had learned exactly what the masters had been afraid of the entire time. In retrospect, that she had been so taken with the passion and the pride that had inevitably led to corruption was a little horrifying, she preferred to not think about it.
If Bastila had only been a little older, she could be...
And there she was. A warrior turned murderer, a champion turned tyrant. The woman once credited with saving the Republic from the brink of annihilation, only to turn around and bring it to its knees once again. Lying there — beaten, broken, done.
There was something strangely sad about it. It just didn't seem... It felt empty, somehow. All the ways Revan could have died, this wasn't one Bastila would have imagined. Larger-than-life figures like this weren't supposed to go out quietly, sinking into an unconsciousness so deep they'd never rise from it. Before, fighting the Mandalorians, she should have died in a blaze of self-sacrificial glory, taking a thousand of the galaxy's most fearsome warriors with her, perhaps covering the retreat of her men, yes, selfless and terrible and awe-inspiring. A martyr, a symbol to take them through the rest of the war. Now, as the leader of the Sith, it should be just as terrible, though in a different way — a final, desperate gamble, perhaps, power and pride and self-destructive theatrics, inevitably including some diatribe about how they small-minded fools simply couldn't understand the brilliance of her vision. Something, there should be something.
Standing there in the ruined remains of the bridge, surrounded by death, the battle still raging beyond the thin ionizing field isolating them from the void, the idea couldn't quite penetrate. It didn't feel quite real, some visceral part of her rejected the thought out of hand. It wasn't...
She couldn't quite believe that this was the end of Lesami po si Revas, of Revan, the Revan. It just felt...wrong.
The deck shook, the superstructure of the massive ship raked with further turbolaser blasts, the scattered light dazzling her vision, again and again and again. Through the flashes and the spotting, she saw Kavarr rise, slowly, as though he'd aged decades in but moments. "We need to leave." And he started toward her, toward the door back into the rest of the ship.
He left Revan on the floor behind him.
The words blurted out with absolutely no conscious input from her. "We can't just leave her here."
Kavarr stopped, stared at her. He wasn't surprised, exactly, his face hard but his eyes soft. "She will not survive, Padawan. Your instincts guide you well, but—"
Without really meaning to, without even realizing she was doing it, Bastila had moved, kneeling over Revan's motionless body, her form hidden under layers of cloth and armor. And the Force leapt at her invitation, thick and warm, garren chowder at the end of a long day, a thick blanket on a winter night.
They'd saved her, but it wasn't enough.
In the silence of hyperspace, racing for Dantooine with their illicit cargo, Bastila sat in the tiny medbay of their unassuming freighter, sat with Revan. She was so small. They'd removed her robes and her armor, her infamous mask, and she was so small. Standing she'd be shorter than Bastila, toned but somehow more delicate-looking than she had any right to be. She looked like any other human woman, really. It was almost hard for Bastila to remember who this was, this was Revan, she just seemed so...ordinary.
Bastila had seen holos of Jedi Lesami before, of course. It still seemed strange, though, somehow wrong.
She's going to die on this table.
They could both feel it, she and Kavarr, they knew. They'd healed her body, yes, but her spirit still felt so weak, so far away. She was sitting within arm's reach, and she could still barely feel it. And it wasn't the fault of the sedatives — Kavarr had insisted on it, they couldn't risk her actually waking up. They'd healed her body, but her mind was still dying, still drifting away. Soon she would fade to nothing, and Revan would be gone.
It still felt wrong. Over the last hours, she still hadn't managed to find the words to describe exactly why the thought bothered her so much. She simply couldn't imagine Revan, the Revan, dying here, like this. It was just wrong.
Idly, without fully thinking through what she was doing, Bastila reached for the dying woman's mind. She'd always had a talent for this sort of thing. Perhaps she could feel what was wrong, could do something about it. Because Revan shouldn't still be dying, they had healed her, there was nothing wrong with her...
The instant she made contact, Bastila was overwhelmed with an inescapable tide of darkness.
Not Darkness, no, this was something entirely different. Something different from what she'd honestly expected. She'd expected to find a mind consumed with hatred, with fury, so twisted and tainted by the Dark Side it was hardly recognizable as a person anymore. She'd expected corruption and madness, and little else.
She hadn't anticipated despair.
Opening up beneath her like the yawning void, blackness reaching for her, drawing her further inward.
She'd tried. But it was exhausting, she was so tired.
Day after day, years upon years, one disaster after another...
She wanted to think she was accomplishing something, but it just got worse, and worse, and worse...
Nothing would ever change, and she was so tired of trying.
Lesami knew she hadn't died, not really. She could feel the pull back to the living world. But oblivion in the Force called to her. It called to her, soft and quiet, she could finally lay down all her cares, she could finally rest. And she was so tired.
The part of Bastila that was still entirely herself was taken aback. Revan was still fading because she wanted to. She'd given up. She would let herself slip peacefully into the Force, and that would be the end of it.
For some reason she couldn't describe, the realization made Bastila furious.
She didn't think about it, she wasn't fully aware what she was doing. It was instinct, anger made power, will made motion. One foot firmly planted in the physical world, Bastila groped for the mind drifting away from her, wrapped herself around it, pulled, pulled, with everything she had she pulled—
Not just around it, she forced herself into it, pouring into Revan's blackened mind with light tempered by fury. No, she didn't get to die, not like this, not like this, not when there were still questions to be answered, crimes to answer for, amends to be made, she wasn't allowed to surrender like this, not if Bastila had anything to say about it, she would—
And the mind she surrounded and was surrounded by responded, slowly at first. Because Bastila was right, there was still so much to be done, she couldn't leave it, not like this, not like this—
Her eyes snapped open and she sprang out of bed, the lamp bursting into life at her touch. For a moment, her eyes were dazzled, but she quickly recovered, glancing frantically around the room, panic setting her blood to burning and her empty hands twitching. But there was nothing, she was alone, it was just a dream, she—
In an abrupt moment of clarity, Bastila ripped it all away, surrounded herself with mental walls of thickest durasteel. And she was awake, back in her cage, the chill of the floor and bars against her skin contributing but little to her shivering.
Hands tight against her face, she squeezed her eyes shut. She gathered all her terror, all her shame, all her despair, filling her near to bursting, and she cast it out into the Force, where it could all fly far away from her.
But she couldn't. She couldn't even touch the Force. She was alone.
The first sob wrenched itself out of her throat before she could stop it. And then it was too late.
Cina glared at Carth over her caf. The arse had the nerve to just smile back at her like an idiot. "I didn't sleep well, okay? Shut up."
"I didn't say anything," he insisted, with a smirk that said everything.
"No, but your face is annoying enough words aren't necessary."
He snorted. "Mission has been a terrible influence on you."
That had Cina smiling, despite how completely awful she felt. Carth thought Mission was a bad influence on her? He clearly hadn't been listening when they'd talked about slicing the city infrastructure.
The brash little kid was out there somewhere, probably with Zaalbar in one of their safehouses they apparently had scattered all over the capital. After they were dragged off to meet this Gadon Thek person, Cina had offered to let them stay with her and Carth in the apartment they'd stolen. Safety in numbers, and all that — it wasn't impossible someone was still out there looking for them, considering the scale of that stunt they'd pulled yesterday. But Mission had waved it off, quick confirmed they had each other's com codes, and disappeared.
Well, disappeared after waiting for Zaalbar to extract a promise from Cina she wouldn't do anything stupid without calling him first. Wookiees did take their life debts seriously.
"So." Cina took a bite out of her protein bar — then she grimaced, turning a glare down at the thing. She hadn't thought these things even could expire. That's it, she was buying some real food later, she didn't care that their money problems had suddenly gotten far more urgent practically overnight. "We need credits, and we need them fast."
"What, don't have another windfall waiting in the wings?"
She shot him a glare. It had just been good luck there happened to be a sabaac tournament going on so soon after they arrived. She wasn't some sort of professional scam artist or anything.
... She didn't think she was. That didn't sound like the sort of thing she would be.
"This one's yours, Flyboy. I can't do everything around here."
Carth huffed, but as far as she was concerned he had absolutely nothing to complain about. She'd secured a place to stay, formed a working relationship with a local power, recruited a skilled marksman and a talented slicer, and acquired intelligence on where Shan was and when and how to get close enough to make an attempt at recovering her. She'd done nearly all his work for him. "I don't know. I still think we should try to convince Thek to lend us a swoop."
She shook her head. "He won't. We're not worth that much to him." Thek seemed to have some affection for the Republic, but handing over a speeder — one good enough to compete in the race at that — was far too high a price. People died in swoop races, all the time, and if whichever one of them did the flying managed to get themselves killed, losing the bike in the crash was more than he could afford to spend on them. Honestly, allowing them to wear his colours for the day was more than she'd expected, given how much face he could lose if they made complete arses of themselves.
"We could try to steal one."
Which, at the rate Carth was going, was almost guaranteed. "Onasi, that is the stupidest idea I've ever heard."
"Oh, come on, some of these gangs don't have the discipline to—"
"How many bikes do you think any of them have that are actually quick enough to handle this kind of race? I'd be surprised if the Beks have more than five, and they're one of the big fish around here. You don't find that kind of hardware sitting out on a concourse, Carth, those bikes are seriously expensive, and they take constant attention from professional mechanics to keep them running at peak. Not only would we have trouble stealing something so valuable, but you can be sure they'll recognise the thing when we turn up with it at the circuit. Which is like to spark a light before we even get started.
"No," Cina said, sharply shaking her head, "if we want any chance of getting close enough to nab Shan, we need to place high in that race, and to do that we need a lot of fucking credits. What I got from the tournament isn't nearly enough."
Carth winced — apparently the same thing had occurred to him, just hoping Cina would come up with some trick to pull it off. Or maybe that was from biting into his bar. Once he'd choked the shite down, he cleared his throat, washing his mouth out with a generous gulp of caf. "Right. And you have no ideas what we should do?"
"Fuck me, can you have a single original thought of your own?"
His face immediately hardened into something cold and stoney, his glare impressively intense compared to his usual light smirking. "I'm a fighter pilot, Cianen. I'm a little out of my depth here."
"I know, I—" Cina forced out a harsh sigh, one hand rising to rub at her temple. It didn't do a thing about her headache, of course. "I'm sorry. I just feel awful, I shouldn't take it out on you."
The statuesque severity vanished, replaced with a hesitant sort of concern. "Are you...okay?"
"Relax, Carth," she said, her eyes rolling of their own accord. "The Jedi magic holding my head together is doing just fine. I'm not going insane on you, I just didn't sleep well." Though, dreams about bodiless Jedi falling into an abyss of despair that never ended wasn't indicative of a perfect grip on reality, but there was no reason Carth needed to know about that. "And no, I don't have any ideas. Hunting a few marks for the Exchange is the only thing I can think of that might get us enough credits to meet the deadline, but I don't think either of us want to go there."
Carth sneered, shaking his head to himself. "No, let's not. We might just have to crash the party."
"That...would be risky." An understatement if Cina had ever made one. All the lower city gangs would be there, the Exchange and the Hutts, all their enforcers and their thugs and their mercenaries. Sneaking in wouldn't be difficult. Snatching Shan and making a break for it?
If Carth really wanted to kill himself, there were less painful ways to go about it.
"We'll work something out. If nothing else, we can always tail whoever wins her, break into their place, and kill everyone in our way."
The idea seemed to make Carth a little ill. But his head dipped in an uncertain nod anyway, fingers tightening around his mug. "Before they sell her to the Sith."
"Well, yes, obviously."
"And then we have to find some way to get all of us off planet and through the blockade."
"Let me fix your problem I'm currently working on before giving me new ones, okay? I'm just one woman, honestly."
Carth just smiled back at her — as though that weren't irritating enough on its own. One of these days someone was going to blast that stupid roguish smile off his stupid handsome face.
After spending a few days in the lower city, seeing actual sunlight was a little strange. Not bad, of course, just peculiar.
The air smelled a lot better, at least.
Cina had made her way to the upper city by herself. It was about time to bring in Asyr, but she had reasons of her own. Partially to check how much a high-end speeder bike actually ran for, partially to look around for any promising money-making opportunities, but mostly just to give herself a few hours away from Carth to think. He kept trying to talk to her, it was very distracting.
Her research on the net and talks with dealers were less than encouraging. Assuming the gangs were using tournament-standard sport bikes — which, given that Taris had been part of the professional circuit before the Sith took over, was quite likely — any model that would make them at all competitive could run them two million credits at the least, but more likely upwards of eight. (She didn't like the look of that one dealer, felt shifty to her.) A few hundred thousand credits had seemed like plenty of money a few days ago, but it was nowhere near enough. Wouldn't cover mercenaries to "crash the party" either. They would have to come up with the money somehow.
And that looked not at all promising. As one would expect, it wasn't exactly easy to make a million credits in under a week. Credits wouldn't be worth anything if it were. (Inflation was beginning to be a bit of a problem, actually, but wartime economies could be volatile.) She and Carth did have rather valuable skill sets, but the sort of people who valued those skills, and would be willing to part with that many credits that quickly just to borrow them, tended to be found on the less than wholesome side of the law. Even then, that was iffy. If they did hold down their gorge and sell their services to one criminal organization or another, she doubted that would be enough. Especially since those sorts of people would wait a bit for new associates to prove their trustworthiness before giving them the high-value jobs, they didn't have that kind of time.
Now that she thought about it, it seemed she knew quite a bit about how organized crime operated. That was...weird. Maybe she really had been a con artist, or something of the like. That would explain a lot...
Of course, all this was assuming either of them could actually fly well enough to place in the race, putting them within reach of Shan. There was no guarantee of that. She knew how to fly a speeder — it'd felt natural enough when she'd stolen one to chase after the thugs who'd snatched Mission and Zaalbar — but she seriously doubted she was that good. It didn't feel like a skill of hers. (Not that it was easy to predict what she'd be good at, these days.) Carth...maybe. He was a fighter pilot, which was hardly the same thing, but with a little luck he might be able to pull it off. When she'd floated the idea, he hadn't sounded entirely confident, but confident enough for Cina to run with for now.
It wasn't like she had any better ideas, and it wasn't like it even mattered. Whether Carth was good enough of a flier to make it was a complete non-issue if they couldn't come up with a bike for him to fly, it was so much pissing in the wind. But they simply didn't have the money, and it wasn't like she could just withdraw it from her expense account with—
Cina froze in the middle of the concourse, the skin at the back of her neck, all down her spine tingling, intense enough she had to fight a shudder. Slowly, she turned her head to her right, staring wide-eyed across the concourse at the bank of windows she'd just passed.
It was a bank. Well, not really a bank — they were involved in all sorts of money-related things, from investment to insurance, but the word "bank" was accurate enough to be getting on with. SFS, Senathi Financial Services, she knew the name, they had branches all throughout the core. She'd never stepped foot in one, though. Alderaan had a public bank, she'd never had any reason to use a private one.
But...looking at the swooping green and blue curves of their logo, she felt... She knew it. Not just knew the name, she knew it, it was familiar.
Cina rubbed her thumb against the pads of her fingers. Biometrics. Most private institutions used biometrics as identification for many secure transactions. Not usually as a first resort, but the option was certainly available if someone happened to be without any proof of who they were.
She was mad. This idea was completely mad.
The inside of the bank was all white and silver and green, the lights bright enough and every surface polished enough it almost hurt. There were a few well-dressed people about — she probably stuck out a bit, she hadn't bothered buying anything nice — but she didn't pay them any mind. She went straight for the counter, walking up to an available protocol droid, its frame gleaming intense enough it seemed to glow. "Good afternoon." No reason to be rude just because it was a droid, after all.
"Good afternoon, ma'am." The droid's simulated voice sounded vaguely feminine, smooth and pleasant. "How may I serve you today?"
Cina tried not to flinch at the use of the word "serve" — how obsequious people programmed droids had always made her uncomfortable. "I'd like to make a withdrawal."
"Of course. If you would please provide your member card, along with identification issued by any recognized authority."
She forced a wince, giving the droid a sheepish shrug. "Ah, I'm afraid I lost those. My arrival on Taris was...less than perfectly smooth." If that wasn't an understatement...
"No matter. If you'd hold your hand out for me, please?" Even as it gently took her wrist, the droid reached under the counter, its hand reappearing with a rather clunky automatic hypo, the electronics attached to the thing making it more bulky than they usually were.
Cina felt an eyebrow tick up her face — honestly, genetic testing? SFS didn't fuck around.
"A slight prick." Cina didn't feel the high-end hypo pierce her skin at all, actually, the faint hiss of air released the only indication anything had happened. "There we are. One moment, please." The droid latched the hypo into a slot built into the counter, waited in companionable silence for the testing to finish. It didn't take long. The droid jerked, the first hint of emotion slipping into its voice, the barest sense of surprise. "Oh, my."
"Yes?"
"Apologies, my lady, but it seems there is a hold on your accounts."
Cina tried not to react to the honorific. Who the hell was she? "What kind of hold?"
"Ah, according to our records, you are deceased. The administrator of your group has refused to consolidate your accounts — otherwise, they would have been closed months ago."
She blinked. "Well, as you can see, I am quite alive."
"Yes, I do apologize for the mistake, my lady. Give me a moment, and I will correct it."
While the droid went through whatever process was necessary to end the hold on her accounts — apparently they were still open, so it shouldn't take long — Cina tried to stop her feet from shifting, her fingers from tapping at the counter. She tried to not look too suspicious. She couldn't help the feeling some employee of the bank would find out what was going on here, and...
She didn't know, really. The droid's abrupt switch to honorifics meant for nobility was making her nervous. Seriously, who the hell was she? She wavered for a moment, chewing on her lip, before deciding to not just come out and ask. Droids did tend to be less perceptive than biological beings, but it was still very possible it would notice how odd it was for her to ask what her own name was. And that would make any complications coming up far more likely.
She'd rather not be arrested for impersonating herself, thanks.
That and... Well, she couldn't help the feeling that she didn't really want to know. She wasn't certain she'd be happy with what she learned.
She was far more comfortable with violence than she was...entirely comfortable with, and she realized how circular that was, yes. Previously, her only real exposure to violence (that she could remember) was through fiction. People always... It was a very common trope, in virtually everything she'd read or watched, that someone who found themselves in a position where they killed someone would, well, angst over it a bit. If they weren't a villain of some stripe, there would always be some sort of personal moral struggle, sometimes subdued, sometimes so powerful it overwhelmed the narrative and she honestly found it annoying.
There had been nothing. Cina didn't know how many people she'd killed by now — the fight in the Endar Spire had gotten a bit fuzzy by the end, and rescuing Mission and Zaalbar, there had been too many explosions, too much fire and smoke, to be sure. There'd been a blank sort of shock, those first two soldiers she'd killed on the Spire, but she'd just...settled into it. It'd become easy. Something she didn't have to think about, something she was, she was good at. Something she was used to.
She didn't think whoever she had been was completely evil, no. "Cianen" certainly would have tried to help someone like Mission if she could, but going to the lengths she had... That had to be a holdover. Especially when slavery was involved. "Cianen" was morally opposed to slavery, but it wasn't...personal, to her. There had never been any reason for it to be, it didn't exist in the core, she'd never met a slave or even a former slave in her entire life. But now...
She wasn't just against slavery. She hated it. Whenever she allowed herself to think about it, that it was happening here of all places — not that she knew why that this was Taris specifically should bother her — she was overcome with a black, overwhelming rage, one that made it hard to think of little else. Part of her, a cold, vicious part of her, wanted to go to the Exchange, go to the Hutts, every property they held on this rotten planet, and utterly destroy them. Paint their halls with blood and consume them with fire, tear them apart piece by piece and rip them from the bedrock, until all that was left was a painful, but healing, scar.
The depth of her own hatred frightened her. She'd never felt this way about anything before.
But, however much she might despise slavery in particular, she did know quite a bit about how organized crime functioned. Enough that it couldn't just be from being taught about it (not that she remembered learning that). More concerning, it didn't really...bother her, that much. Some stuff, yes. Contract murders, for example — euphemistically referred to as "bounties" — were a grey area. Too often, unsavory people with connections would use a third party to eliminate someone who annoyed them, or the powerful would do it to cripple political opposition, but sometimes?
If she could find and pay enough assassins to wipe organizations like the Exchange out of existence, she would do it. If she could annihilate the boards of the more exploitative of the corporate conglomerates, she would do it. If she could remove the most authoritarian and regressive individuals throughout the Republic bureaucracy, she would do it. She'd have them all killed, in a heartbeat.
Some people, she felt, simply needed to die. And she didn't particularly care how it was done.
A lot of the day-to-day bread-and-butter of organized crime she didn't have any particular problem with. Most of them operated primarily on the production and distribution of controlled intoxicating substances, which, well, she wasn't entirely sure why they were controlled in the first place. Yes, some of them were dangerous — the critical word there being "some" — but she didn't see why it was the government's business to say which drugs people were allowed to have and which they weren't. A lot of shitty, exploitative nonsense happened around the fringes, true, but most of that wouldn't be necessary if these cartels weren't operating outside the law in the first place. These substances being illegal created more suffering — the entire problem could be solved by legalizing them, then regulating the cartels like any other pharmaceutical company.
More often than not, the average person involved in organized crime did so out of desperation. The further away from the core, the harder life got. Out on the rim, the corporations controlled everything — the governments, the land, the markets, everything. Sometimes there weren't enough jobs to go around, and even the people who had them were often underpaid. (Or slaves, which was technically illegal for corporations licensed by the Republic, but it happened.) If the people needed to resort to theft and piracy to get by...well, Cina could understand that. It wasn't ideal, but the universe often wasn't.
At some level, this acceptance horrified her. That civilized coreworld academic part of her, it cringed at these sort of thoughts, it was just... But it was a quiet part of her, the smallest doubt, more confusing than it was controlling. Because, see, her entire life, everything she'd learned, everything she'd believed, that enlightened, civilized view of reality should be her primary influence, but...
The main problem was, Cina liked who she was. She liked Cianen Hayal. Her life wasn't perfect, of course, but whose was? She enjoyed her work, she enjoyed needling undergrads, she loved her family, and her friends. She was a bit opinionated, when it came to politics and such, but the Republic was less than perfect, especially these days — she had principles, okay, ethical principles, she couldn't help it. Her cousins thought she was a bit insufferable lately because of it, but she'd always thought they were a bit simple and shallow, so that road went both ways.
She wasn't even certain her cousins actually existed. She was half-tempted to try to call her parents back at home, but that sounded like a bad idea. The Jedi probably had actors waiting around just in case. That would just be...uncomfortable.
But, she didn't think she would like who she used to be. The my lady stuff, she had a theory percolating in the back of her head. Most core worlds that still had noble families were unlikely — Alderaan, Tepasi, Atrisia, core worlds were just too civilized for their nobles to slum about with criminals like she obviously had. Kuat was different though, she could be Kuati. Hapes was...possible, but unlikely. (If for no other reason, she was too short to be Hapan.) Somewhere Tionese fit uncomfortably well.
The Tionese, and the Kuati to a lesser extent, tended to not have such a strong opinion about slavery, though. Not to mention, Cina did have the wrong accent — Kuati and Tionese languages were related, and separate from the Alsakani–Shawkenese group. But there was an explanation for that. She could have married into a less-than-reputable noble family. If it were Kuati, she could be from somewhere on the near Perlemian or the Shawken Spur. (The Kuati nobility were largely matrilineal, but while it was unusual it wasn't unheard of for a foreign woman to marry in, especially if she'd been born wealthy to begin with.) If it were Tionese, she could be from a little further out on the Perlemian — but not too far, the Alsakan character of the accent diminished quickly from Alderaanian influence.
Or perhaps, she was from the core, and had ended up being taken by slavers. There were far fewer slavers active in the core, but it did still happen. They could have taken her out to the Tion Cluster, where slavery was legal. And she'd managed to crawl her way back up to respectability. Probably with a lot of violence along the way.
That would explain a lot. Her accent. Her familiarity with the languages of Hutt slave species. Her knowledge and partially ambivalent acceptance of organized crime, while at the same time passionately loathing slavery. The ease with which she killed. If she had somehow fallen in with a Tionese crime family, all of it made sense.
Except the more academic knowledge she had, anyway, but it could be from before she was taken, or the Jedi could have put that in there as part of the Cianen persona. That didn't disprove the theory.
And if she was a Tionese noble... She didn't want to know. The Tionese were a bit...
If she was, she was out. She didn't want to go back.
She liked who she was now. Even if she scared hers—
"And how much would you like to withdraw today, my lady?"
Cina jumped, forced her attention back on the droid. How much should she ask for? She had absolutely no idea how much money she had access to, or if whoever the "group administrator" was would be more likely to notice a larger sum vanishing. (Though, they'd likely notice the hold was taken off in any case, that might come back to bite her.) Having no better ideas, Cina closed her eyes, let out a slow, calming breath, emptied her head of thought as thoroughly as she could. Then she said the first thing that came to her, speaking from instinct. "Twenty million should do nicely, until I can get myself off-planet."
She had to hold back any reaction to the figure she'd just requested. Inflation had become something of a problem the last few years, but twenty million credits was still a lot of money. It'd just seemed...natural, that she would be carrying around twenty million credits in her pocket. That she'd need twenty million credits just to put herself up until the blockade was lifted.
(Okay, that made the Tionese theory somewhat less likely — if she'd spent any time at all as a slave, she doubted she would be nearly so accustomed to extravagance as it sounded like she had been. The slightly less unpalatable Kuati theory was looking a little better now. Still.)
And, a few seconds later, the droid handed her the credit chits, divided into manageable denominations. Just like that.
Trying to look innocent, Cina promptly fled before they could change their minds.
Well. She guessed their money problems were solved for the foreseeable future. She should go ahead and pick up a suitable racing swoop while she was up here.
And a pilot. She'd just remembered where they might have a perfectly suitable one waiting for their call.
"We have a problem, Captain. Get up."
Asyr blinked at the human doctor, taking in the tension in his shoulders, the flickering of his eyes. "What kind of problem?"
"The Sith kind." Zelka dropped the cloth bag he was carrying onto a nearby counter, started loading it up with hypos and meal packs and bottles of water.
Oh. All right, then. Setting her borrowed datapad aside, Asyr tipped onto her feet — then winced as pain ripped through her left knee, radiating up her thigh, nearly taking her to the floor. Damn it. Holding back an angry sneer, she grabbed the cane leaning against the side of the bed, propped herself up to her full height. "I'm assuming you're sending me out the back." She held out the pad toward him.
He snatched the thing out of her hand, stuck it in the bag. "Yes. You don't know the area, I'll send— Kenna!" One of the nurses, a human girl who looked to be barely out of adolescence, jumped, turning to blink at Zelka. "Take this—" He tossed the bag at her, she caught it with a surprised oof. "—and take Captain Lar'sym out back. Take the stairs, find somewhere down a few levels to hole up. I'll call you as soon as the Sith are gone. If I don't call you, the other two said they're somewhere near a cantina on the lower levels, it's marked on the map on the pad. Get her out of here. Go. Go!"
They didn't need to be told again. Kenna scrambled to Asyr's side, moving to take some of her weight, but Asyr waved her off, fighting the urge to snarl at her. (The girl was just trying to help.) Asyr limped forward, leaning against the damn cane to take enough of the burden off her still healing knee it didn't protest too much. There was still a bit of twinging with every step, but not so much she couldn't walk. Just past the door out into the storerooms the girl caught up, leading the way through the maze of hallways and closets, bringing her to the rear end of the clinic.
They came out into a partially open-air alley, closed off above their heads but extending both sides to the end of the block. Over the noise of the city, Asyr picked out the thrum of heavy speeders, military grade — they probably only had minutes before Sith troops would be pouring into the alley to surround the clinic. Kenna swiped a card and punched a code into a keypad and a heavy door swung open, she led her inside before slamming it closed again. It was shockingly cold in here, a quick glance around revealed shelves and shelves of vials and samples, another storeroom for the clinic. Another door on the other side opened into a lab, unfamiliar machinery lining the walls, a handful of techs looking away from their work to blink up at them for just a second before turning away again. Kenna brought her across this one toward a hallway.
She immediately stopped, swiping her card again to open a narrow door just outside. They stepped into a maintenance access of some kind, small enough Asyr's limping gait brought her left shoulder bumping against pipes and ducts. The walked for a few more meters, coming to a narrow, twisting staircase, the grated metal making it partially transparent. With how tight it was, Asyr had a little trouble making it down, finally finding she could lean against the railing and lead with her left foot to take them with the least fuss.
She was still slow and awkward, though. She was trying to not feel too embarrassed about that.
Kenna led her down a few flights, through another maintenance shaft, and into a proper hallway. This place lacked the white and green theme of the medical complex Zelka worked out of, they must be out. They found a turbolift next, taking it down a few floors. Then Kenna led her through a few more halls, bringing her to—
Asyr blinked: they were walking into a cafe. A comparatively nice establishment, so far as such things on city worlds went, all woods and glass, everything smooth and clean, the air filled with the aromas of spices and breads and fruits and steeping caf. Kenna took a moment just inside, forcing her breath level. (Though, anyone observant would notice the sweat on her neck anyway.) And then she led Asyr up to the counter, smoothly rattled off her order to the droid there.
Okay...
A few minutes later had them sitting at one of the booths, Kenna with a drink of some kind and a pastry with far too much icing on it, Asyr with buns with nerf gravy and a bottle of water pulled from the bag. (She never had developed a taste for caf.) Asyr took a quick glance around before leaning over the table. "I thought we were going somewhere out of the way."
Kenna shrugged. "I doubt they're gonna search this far out, if they even search at all. And if they do, well, best look like we belong here, yeah?"
For a second she hesitated, but then nodded. She wouldn't know any better how to predict what the Sith would do in this sort of situation. This wasn't exactly her area of expertise — she was a pilot, she'd hardly ever fought on the ground, and had exactly zero experience in covert ops. So she pulled out her datapad and started scrolling through the news again, absently picking at her food.
The war had, of course, gone on without her. The Sith advance up the Perlemian had mostly been halted — despite a series of attacks over the last months, Tanaab hadn't yet fallen — but they were still eating away all throughout the Slice. Revan's plan, she knew, had been to pin most of the Republic fleet at the front lines on and around the Perlemian, while working her way through the Slice and all the way around the core to Yag'Dhul. She would block all the major trade routes from the core rimward, effectively splitting the Republic in two so it could be picked apart at her leisure. While her subordinates tied down the Republic by nipping away at systems in her wake, Revan had thrust through the mid-rim, the opening moves of the encirclement that would ultimately choke the Republic to death.
Fortunately, she'd been assassinated before she could get very far — Nanth'ri had signed a treaty to join the Sith just the week before. Ever since Revan's death, the Sith assault had been rather less focused, seemingly just blasting away at targets at random. But the border had still managed to crawl as far as Daalang.
Daalang was only a couple short hops away from Bothawui.
Luckily, so far as she could tell, the Sith had been making no moves to attack her people directly. Perhaps they didn't want to antagonize the Hutts — they'd remained mostly neutral in the war, but if the Sith kept gobbling up systems so close to their borders that might change. Perhaps they simply couldn't spare the necessary forces at the moment — hers was a martial people, they were more well-prepared for an invasion than most.
Perhaps Malak was simply too unbalanced to focus on the threat to his south long enough to deal with it. It was impossible to tell.
Revan, at least, acknowledged her people for the power they were. She'd heard rumors she'd tried to negotiate an alliance in the opening weeks of the war — and nearly succeeded, at that — and her planned invasion corridor neatly cut them off from the Republic without having to fight them directly. Malak, on the other hand, was a fucking idiot, and clearly had absolutely no idea what he was doing.
Honestly, she couldn't imagine how anyone could stomach following him. Aliens, sometimes...
They couldn't even have been waiting for an hour when Kenna's com started pinging. She twitched, letting out a startled eep, scrambling for the thing. "Doctor Forn? Are they gone?"
Asyr snorted. She certainly hoped they were gone — if anyone were listening in, that would be a very suspicious thing to open a conversation with.
"Oh, good. We'll be back in a few minutes."
"Actually, I thought it was about time I go down to find the Captain and the Professor." She'd been stuck in the clinic for more than long enough, she felt. At this point, she probably wasn't quite recovered enough to be of much use, but she still hated sitting around doing nothing. She'd be fine in a day or two, it was time to move on.
"Um..." The girl stared at her for a moment, wide-eyed. "Captain says she wants to go find the others." There was a short pause as she listened to Forn — she had the directional audio on, Asyr couldn't hear a thing. After a second, she gave the com a baffled sort of look, turning up to her again. "Ah, actually, one of your friends is up there right now. Cianen, was it? Apparently she was coming to pick you up. The Sith freaked her out a little, I think."
Asyr huffed. Having to backtrack would be a bit annoying, but she might as well. She didn't know exactly where she and Onasi had set up shop, after all. "Fine. Tell them we're coming." She twisted out of her seat, started limping for the door.
The girl led her back to the clinic along a much quicker, more direct route, taking a single lift all the way up. If she had to guess, she'd been concerned the Sith would have thought to cordon off the main thoroughfares, so she'd taken the sneaky way around. Which Asyr could only be slightly grateful for — she had the feeling getting up stairs on a cane would be harder than down them.
When she stepped back into the main room of the clinic, coming in through the back again, she froze, staring around with wide eyes. Everyone who had been in the tanks, every one, were laid out on the beds, bits of orange gel still clinging to hair and fur in a few places. They were still, but not with the stillness of a coma. No, every single one was dead.
"What happened?"
"The bloody Sith happened." Doctor Forn was suddenly standing at her side, cold fire in his eyes. "The officer wanted to interrogate them, but when I said they were all unlikely to wake up, he ordered me to euthanize them all. He watched me do it, refused to leave until it was done." And Forn wasn't taking it well, his clawless hands clenched at his hips, shaking with suppressed rage.
Asyr opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. Civilians didn't think of death in the same terms. She and Onasi would have to get off-planet, as soon as possible. They wouldn't have recovered in time to come with. Even if Forn could get them up and moving again somewhere down the line, the Sith would be here to collect them.
She'd heard stories of how prisoners of war were treated under Malak. It was better they were dead.
And there was Cianen, shooting her a crooked smile. "Well, look who's up and walking again. Getting cooped up yet? Feel like getting out of here?"
"Yes." She hissed the word out before Forn could say anything — and it did look like he'd been about to. It took a few minutes, suffering the human doctor's warnings to go easy on her knee for a couple weeks, thanking him again for his help. Cianen slipped him a credit chit at some point, waved off his protests, and then they were gone, stepping out onto the concourse just out the front door.
"This might be uncomfortable." Spoken in a whisper, Cianen's accent was rather less noticeable. She sidled a bit closer, taking her arm, started leading her slowly off to the right. "The humans up here a bit xenophobic, I'm afraid. Just, let me do the talking, and try not to scare anyone too much."
Asyr wanted to be annoyed at the suggestion, but she was probably right. The less enlightened humans did tend to find people like her frightening. "I shall try to contain my wounded pride." She wasn't sure the sarcasm was noticeable.
"Mm." Cianen rolled her narrower shoulder into her a bit — if she had to guess, suggesting Asyr could lean on her a bit if she had to. At least she was being subtle about it. Not that Asyr was even certainly Cianen could take her weight, she was such a tiny little thing. "By the way, the battle conductor is alive. We're working on a plan to get her back."
It took her a second to work out what Cianen was talking about. When she did, Asyr stumbled, her wrist turning about her cane nearly taking her to the ground. Whisper turning into a harsh hiss, she said, "What? You're certain it's her?"
"Yes. We got the information off some locals, it's good."
"Tell me everything."
Cianen started at the very beginning, waking up in Forn's clinic. Claiming an apartment in the lower city, winning a sabaac tournament, rescuing a couple locals from slavers, winning their loyalty in the process — something to do with this Zaalbar's home culture, it wasn't entirely clear — getting in with one of the swoop gangs so they could be there when Shan was handed off. They had to get a speeder bike and fly in the race, do well enough they would be in the winner's circle at the end. Winning outright would be ideal, of course, but just being close enough to interrupt the exchange would do.
The whole time, Asyr just stared at the top of her head, blankly frowning to herself. Cianen couldn't have done all that. She was too...well, soft. She was a tiny little thing, she– She was a university professor! What in the Black was she doing, running around and lighting up gangsters, talking about starting a flaming turf war just so they could nab Shan and get away clean...
But she was different. It was hard to put words to it. She was dressed differently, of course, her clothes would have gone up with the Spire. Rough leather and synthweave, looked like a down-on-her-luck spacer more than anything. An impression the battery packs at her hips and the blaster in the holster at the small of her back fit with perfectly.
Even the way she walked was different. It was subtle, but there, her gait steadier, sharper. And her voice, harder, lower. And she still smiled at her the same, a corner of her peculiar soft mouth curling with dark humor, but something about it was...
"You're not Cianen Hayal."
The smile faded, flickering down to nothing. "I'm the same person you met on the Spire. It's just... Well, it's complicated. Ever since I hit my head during the battle... I think the Jedi rebuilt my mind at some point. I have no idea who I am.
"So anyway, how do you feel about checking out some swoop bikes?"
Asyr wanted to ask. How was she supposed to leave a comment like that alone, she'd have to be someone quite else to not be a little curious. But it was more than clear Cianen didn't want to talk about it. Which was perfectly understandable, she doubted she'd want to be interrogated about that either, if it were her.
They'd still be having a conversation about it later, of course.
Hapes — In canon, the Hapes Consortium developed during a period of isolation after the destruction of the Lorell Raiders around 4050 BBY, a century before KotOR. However, I'm not certain the history of Hapes makes sense, for a variety of reasons. If nothing else, it's a little close to the core to just be conveniently forgotten/ignored for a few thousand years. I'm pushing their origin back eight to ten thousand years, to make their being permitted to develop their own new society in isolation more believable. This means they do exist in the KotOR era, and people know they exist, but they're fiercely isolationist, so have little to do with the outside galaxy. (They wouldn't be the only people like that, there are a few independent states here and there.)
Captain — The observant might have noticed that Carth and Asyr both have the same rank, despite Carth being Asyr's commanding officer. The full explanation is complicated, but essentially Carth's responsibilities on this particular task force reflect a higher rank than he actually holds, largely due to his reputation and the Jedi rearranging things as they please to put someone they trust in charge. They can do whatever they like with how the task force is actually run, but they can't just make Carth a general because they say so. (It also doesn't help that Asyr was loaned from an allied force, that tends to complicate things.)
I'm sure Cina withdrawing twenty million credits from that particular account will have absolutely no unintended consequences whatsoever.
A little longer getting around to it this time, I know. Been trying to work on a collaborative HP project with LeighaGreene. (All According to Plan posted under LysandraLeigh.) Also still getting distracted by other projects, so delays of a few weeks now and then aren't unlikely. I am focusing on this more than any other of my solo projects, so it shouldn't get too bad.
Next chapter is about something completely different. Two more Taris chapters after that, and we're moving on to Dantooine.
Until next time,
~Wings