I woke up with what I can only assume was a strangled yell, grasping out with both hands to stop my tumble on a gigantic ship, only to find that the small room I was in now had a much better sense of gravity.

I twisted right off the bed and onto the floor and struggled for a few minutes in the swathe of bedsheets I had inadvertently wrapped myself in.

"Hey. Hey now, it's ok. You're awake ... whatever you saw was a dream. Hey, careful!"

It took me a moment to realise the person knew me. Still struggling in the dim-wittedness of waking up after a deep sleep, I had barely registered the name as my own. It felt wrong, like it wasn't mine. I fought off the hands that tried to steady me for a moment, caught in the darkness of my unintended blanket fort. The voice — someone I recognized but whose name was just off the tip of my tongue — calmed me down somewhat. The hands that brushed me in an attempt to lift the blankets from my head didn't strike with the searing hot, uncaring cut of a lightsaber that my dream-addled brain was still expecting.

I breathed a little easier and in a few minutes I had mostly unwrapped myself. A man stood before me with his face twisting as he tried very hard not to laugh.

For some reason I found myself lacking that same humour.

"How long was I out?" I asked, jumping to my feet. My head swam and I must have seemed like I was going to drop any second, but I waved away his helping hand immediately, holding my hand tightly over my mouth to quell the nausea I felt as the room moved.

His humour faded and he frowned, stepping closer as I fought to keep the room from swimming. "Do you know where you are? State your name and rank clearly, soldier."

I took a deep breath. "Yevana Mar. No rank. I worked in maintenance. And you're Carth Onasi, advisor to the Republic on the Endar Spire." I had plowed through before he could ask anything else. I swallowed and repeated my previous question.

"Two days and a bit. You seemed fine except for a concussion that should be treated by now. I put some extra kolto in a pack for you and applied it as soon as I got here. Are you ok? How are you feeling?"

My jaw dropped, "A few days? Where are we? What-"

He answered slowly as I looked around, turning my head this way and that to take in the room.

"How much do you remember? We were headed to Taris in that escape pod before you passed out. Well we uh, we made it. And not a moment too soon. Nav systems were down, the whole thing was burning up and I swear a few more minutes and it would've heated through the temperature seal too. Anyway. We crashed near here. You were unconscious so I didn't have any time to search the wreckage to see if there were other escape pods. Brought you right back here and then ... well ... hoped you would make it out alright."

Hoped I would make it out alright. A part of me was seething at the circumstances — feeling anger like that woman in my dream — but I couldn't fault him for any of this. That he had done what he had for a smuggler like me alone was probably more than I would've gotten from anyone else.

"Carth. I ... Honestly I don't know what would've happened to me if ..." My words trailed off as my thoughts took an unwanted turn. "Thanks for saving my life."

"I'm a soldier. It's what we do." He shifted uncomfortably on his feet, clearly not used to this kind of exchange. "Well, it's just the two of us and you're up now. I think we should lay out a game plan."

I squinted at him in the low light. The room was dimly lit but the strips of light growing across the bed and single chair from the slats covering the windows were sharpening the pain in my head as the room grew brighter. "'Just us two'? What happened to all the others?"

Carth pulled up a chair that looked as if he'd been sleeping in it the last few days while I was unconscious. I felt a pang of guilt. He sat down and tapped his chin thoughtfully, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. A stray piece of his hair fell over his forehead and cast a shadow over his face.

"Bastila had no way out but here. And there have been rumours of multiple pods crashing down on Taris so I'm thinking that a few of our crew survived. We should probably find Bastila first. Then the soldiers we can. Then find a way out of here."

I stared at him for a moment, piecing the information together in my head. Again with this nonsense of finding a Jedi that could've held her own against an entire shipful of dark Jedi if she was anything like the stories. Remembering Trask Ulgo's response to my thoughts on this when we were trying to leave the Endar Spire, I voiced my confusion diplomatically. A hollow weight dropped in my stomach at the memory of the now-dead soldier and what he'd done to get me here. Even saying my concerns felt like I was betraying what he had stood — and fallen — for. But hurt as the thought might have, I've never put sentiment over pragmatism.

"Well she's a Jedi. Wouldn't she have found her way off-planet by now?"

Carth shook his head, "They've put up a blockade since we landed. I don't think anything or anyone has gone out since the attack on the Endar Spire and I'm damn sure nothing will until they find Bastila."

"So shouldn't she come find us?"

Carth chuckled and looked up at me from his seat. "Right now we need her help getting past that blockade. I doubt I could say the same for someone like her. No, if we want to leave this place in one piece we're gonna have to find her first. After all. She's our mission; not getting out of here."

That last sentence felt more than a little like an admonishment. I raised an eyebrow. "Well. Fine. But that seems like a bad idea. We should at least be looking for the other soldiers. They might actually need our help."

"Look," Carth started, "We all knew the risk taking this job. Us? You? Me? Those soldiers? We're all expendable. Our mission was to get Bastila to her destination safely. And a minor setback like this is not gonna keep me from doing my job."

I crossed the room and opened one of the horizontal blinds in the window a crack, blinking furiously at the daylight and gritting my teeth at the racket in my head. We were somewhere in a tall building, though I had no idea if we were near the top. I couldn't see anything resembling ground apart from a few indistinct shapes much lower down and a few spidery bridges that made their way between towers a bit lower than my level. Speeders and slightly larger personnelcraft sped by at different levels. From the tiny window of a silver speeder I could see a human passenger in the backseat angrily mouthing off the droid driver in the front, too intent on his problem to notice me. The light of Taris' star shone brilliantly off the speeder's reflective surface as it passed several meters in front of me.

A minor setback. This whole goddamn planet seemed a minor setback.

"Besides," Carth leaned back in his chair and stretched. When I looked back at him he shot me a grin, unperturbed by the sliver of light falling on his face, "Let's be honest. Taris is under an Imperial blockade. The only way we're getting out of something like that is with a Jedi. And I'd rather it be one of the good ones."

I let go of the blinds and they rattled back into place as I turned and faced him down. But … in the end he had a fair point, and I could already tell this was going to be a pointless debate. I tried to calm my restless thoughts. Before I said anything more, I walked over to the third piece of furniture — a tiny table that stood against the wall and was packed with whatever Carth had managed to salvage from the escape pod — and rummaged through the packs. I found a tiny vial of kolto and fit it to a pack, hoping a small stim would help with the headache. A few minutes later I was breathing much easier. My head still hurt, but the pain had lessened. The pounding in my head had lightened to a gentle throb.

"Alright Carth. What do you want me to do?" I hoped my voice was as level as the effort I put into keeping it that way.

Carth nodded, thinking about something, before answering thoughtfully. "Well, first thing, we gotta find out where she is. So we'll probably have to ask around. I heard rumours that an escape pod crashed in the Undercity somewhere. That might be a good place to start."

"Undercity. Got it."

"We could gather some intel here first, make some friends among the locals, if you think that will help our search any. I don't think the Sith would just let two offworlders anywhere without a little cajoling, and I heard they've got this place on lockdown."

"You don't think they-"

"No," he cut in, as if he'd gone over this conversation multiple times already. He probably had - in his head while I was unconscious. "If they caught Bastila that would be all over the news. She's something of a legend if you'll recall."

"How could I forget," I muttered.

"Anyway," Carth continued, "Point in the direction you want to go and we'll head out."

"I think maybe we should look for some supplies-" I stopped mid sentence and turned to stare at Carth. "Wait, what do you mean 'point in the direction'? You're the superior officer here, not me. I mean," I corrected myself, "I'm not even an officer. I worked in maintenance."

Carth snorted and kept silent. As if that answered anything. The kolto had healed me up well enough but that nightmare had caused a rather large headache and I was slowly starting to lose my patience.

Carth's eyes widened. "You can't be serious. Look. Fine. If it's some secret Jedi thing and you don't want to tell me that's fine. But let's not pretend who has the chain of command here."

"Carth, what in the -"

"You were a last minute signee. Just after the Jedi took over the mission and brought Bastila aboard. They all but forced you in there as well. Now," he held up his hand to forestall my outburst, "Fine. You don't trust me enough to tell me what it is." His expression; almost hurt, conveyed exactly what he thought about that, "But I know there's something going on here and you are in the thick of it. So. Even if I didn't get any direct orders from the Jedi, I'm going to assume that you are now in command."

That seemed a hell of an assumption to go on, especially knowing what I did from the other side. I'd had no interaction with the Jedi apart from discussing how I could get away with not having to sit in some prison for five years. I still wasn't even convinced the pale, balding old man — with the permanent sour expression that made it look like he was constantly smelling bantha waste — that offered me the gig was a Jedi. The two women that accompanied him had been the only hint to his status, complete with audible gasps at some of the less-than-polite words and titles that may have been exchanged.

Sure, I had probably overreacted, and maybe "Master" was a more respectful descriptor than "asshole", but even if I did remember seeing him with a lightsaber — which I didn't — he had definitely not mentioned anything about this. In fact, given the way my conversation had ended with that man he seemed more likely to recommend Carth throw me in jail if something bad happened on the Endar Spire, Bastila and the mission be damned.

I figured in the grand scheme of things, those particular details were not necessarily what Carth Onasi needed to hear three days after having been stranded with me on a planet under Imperial blockade.

"Carth, you know why I'm here right?" I asked gently, "I was supposed to do time for a stupid mistake I made smuggling. I got caught. This is how I'm getting out of it. By doing service here. I don't think I'm qualified-"

"As I said," he cut me off again, clearly frustrated that he wasn't being told the whole truth — well, weren't we all — and shook his head. "You lead, I'll follow."

I assume the timing didn't seem right to Carth. And now he thought I was just being silent because I didn't trust him. That was a good start. Alone on a planet and the one person I needed to trust was having his own trust issues.

There was really only one way we could solve all this. I grabbed a small pouch that was laying in the corner and rummaged through it, hiding my tiny vibroblade and some credit chips within one of its openings.

"Let's go find Bastila," I growled.