They sat in awkward silence for some time, Trista in the central chair and Atton one over, munching on stale ration bars and packaged water they'd found in a nearby desk. Trista had made her way through several already, claiming it was her body "adjusting" to wakefulness. She was sitting as any would expect a proper, half-naked Jedi to sit. Back straight, ankles crossed under the chair, one hand resting in her lap as the other drew the ration bar back to her chest after each bite.
Atton would never admit he'd been watching her closely, of course. Not him. He had no breast in her interests — shit, no interest in her brea—no, there was nothing to do with that part of her anatomy. Or any other, for that matter. Nope. Never. Especially if she was a Jedi. Twenty-one, flip the face of the +/-2, total is nineteen—
"So it must be tough," he said, clearing his throat. "Being a Jedi, and all. No husband, no family—"
"No more difficult than enduring your false sympathy while you're staring at my chest," she retorted, still staring out into the asteroid field.
"What!" Atton coughed hard on his water. Flip the face of +/- 1, total is eighteen — "I wasn't, I mean, come on, you've got it hanging out for everyone to see, you know. The sheet's only doing so much. They didn't leave you clothes?"
"Sure they did. Let me pull them out of thin air."
Snark. He could work with snark.
"I'd like to see that, si—" A series of chirps interrupted him from the console, and Trista leaned forward. Atton looked away with an awkward swallow as it accentuated the lines in her back.
She bit off another chunk of her ration bar. "The lift seems to be unlocked."
"Guess the trash compactor did it." He leaned over her shoulder, checking the screens. "But... why'd he open the turbolift to the mining tunnels?"
Trista picked up the vibrosword she'd leaned against the console. "That's where I'm headed. Stay here and monitor the comms. I need to reach the dormitories."
"What? No!" He responded more explosively than he'd expected, and shoved the feeling back down, deep into his gut. Swap the +/-6, total is sixteen— "The only thing down there is superheated rock and cave-ins. It's suicide!"
"It's our only chance to get the codes for the hangar. And it's better I risk my life than yours."
"Sure, yeah. Whatever you want." She turned and headed for the lift in question, still padding silently, and he turned. "Wait!"
She turned back and, with a moment of hesitation, Atton pulled off his jacket and threw it to her. "Look. That's got some armor-plating sewn into it. It won't do much, but it might help a little. I'll monitor the comms and try to give you a heads-up on things but... be careful. Don't play hero too much."
"When you put it that way, it sounds like you care."
"Hey, you're my best chance of getting off this rock."
She pursed her lips. "Your concern is noted."
"I'll keep the commlink open. I might help guide you a bit. But I don't know if I'll be able to reach you once you get too deep."
Trista nodded and started away while wrapping his coat around her shoulders. Atton stared after her, taking a deep breath and dropping back into his chair. After a moment he propped his feet up on the console and opened his comm.
"Testing. Just making sure you can cross the room by yourself."
"Hilarious, Mr. Rand."
"Just Atton, thank you very much."
"MISTER Rand."
He turned off his comm and leaned back, staring out the viewport with a small grin on his face.
Swap the face of the +/-1...
#
Trista stepped off the lift and into a wave of heat unlike almost anything she'd felt before. Her first instinct was to discard Atton's jacket, tossing it over a plasteel container she found next to her. She then pulled it off and opened the container, hoping it'd have water or anything to cut the heat.
Instead, she found a miner's uniform. With a happy sigh, she let the sheet fall from around her neck and dressed. An energy shield lay at the bottom of the container, and she snapped it around her wrist. She studied Atton's jacket for a moment, then pulled it on over the outfit. It had armor-plating, so it'd at least be useful.
With the boots in hand she settled down on a convenient, but warm, rock, and laced them up. As her fingers fumbled with the second, her comm chirped.
"Testing. Can you read? Testing."
Trista flicked her comm open with a sigh. "I'm here. For a moment, I thought you and Kreia were telepathic."
"Huh? Your signal's crammed with static, I didn't read."
His was just as crackly. "Never mind."
"Well, there's a lot of interference, probably the rock. But it looks like there might be a route to the fuel depot. If the passages are intact, at least."
"Can you tell from up there?"
"No, the explosions ripped the sensors a new one. There should be an emergency crate near you, did you find it?"
"Yeah, it's right here. There's an energy shield, a safety harness, and some clothes. Looks like a uniform."
"Damn!" Atton stuttered out a correction. "Uh, I mean, good! Good. It's distracting. For the droids."
"Sure, Mr. Rand. Anything else?"
"Yeah — be careful. I'm getting a lot of droids down there, but I can't pin them down."
"Copy. Morace out."
She clipped the comm to her belt and started forward, swinging her torch — also liberated from the crate — back and forth in the dark tunnel. The heat pressed on her, the dry air tugging moisture from her lungs and mouth. Up ahead, through hissing steam, the clicks and whirs of wandering mining droids echoed back to her.
She cut her way through a few before she turned a corner. Ahead of her sat a wall of molten air, hazing in the tunnel ahead like fog.
"So I narrowed down the ID signals and, if I'm right, you've got a battalion of mining droids with you."
Trista clipped the comm off her belt with a sigh. "Any more wonderful news?"
"Well, they're all mining models, so they'll shoot like a moisture farmer militia. Get in close with your sword and bash them, and you should be fine."
"Got it."
"You could shoot them from far enough back, but most of them are shielded." She groaned. "Yeah. Just mining shields. I brought some in on a Telos run a few days ago. They're heat-based, but they'll absorb some laser fire."
"Up close, it is."
"Just be careful. There should be some central controller down there — if you find a terminal, you might shut them down."
"Hm." Trista switched on her shield and moved through the steam. "I guess you are capable of good ideas."
"Yeah, I have 'em. No need to make a show out of it." He clicked off the line.
She cut through the rest of the droids between her and the main fuel lines with ease, somehow suiting the numb feeling in her stomach. Feeling combat return to her was strange. Not that she hadn't fought in the years since Malachor V — she hadn't fought with the Force since then, and that she recalling itso effortlessly terrified her. She was hardly brushing the surface of that deep-running current, still too afraid to dive in again, and she didn't know what type of emergency might push her back into her old life.
But if what Kreia said was true—
::It is.::
If Kreia believed—
::It is not a matter of belief, Exile.::
Since Kreia was convinced — an exasperated sigh trailed through her mind — there was something hunting her, it likely meant those things could use the Force. Perhaps meeting one of them would shock her enough to dive into the Force headfirst. But until then, she would fight it.
She hadn't used the Force to destroy Malachor, but it had destroyed herthere.
She'd felt the planet die, felt herself die. She'd felt her hold on the Force snap just before she'd lost consciousness. And when she'd awoken and found Revan at her bedside, maskless, she'd just... known. What made her a Jedi was gone, and she swore to walk away. The Jedi, the Sith, war, whatever, it didn't matter.
She just wanted left alone.
::You knew that would never happen, foolish girl. And reflecting upon your past is a waste of precious time. You should continue on the suggested task.::
"Going to the central control panel for the droids?"
::Yes. You need not speak aloud. I can hear your mind perfectly well.::
Trista paused her thoughts long enough to carve through a few more droids. "So, are you just... riding around up there?"
::I have not made a nest or den in your mind like some creature, no. However, you are serving as the eyes I no longer have, especially when apart.::
"If you'll be a semi-permanent fixture up there, I want to know what you are."
::Perhaps another time. Swiftly. I fear our enemy draws closer.::
Trista sighed as she reached a vast, circular room, a platform in the middle surrounded by long drops into nothing below. A few droids scurried around the perimeter, clicking against the metal floors, and she waited until there was a gap to slip through to the platform.
After an unsuccessful hack, she pulled her sole spike from a pocket and broke into the system. A few commands shut down the droids and, after a glance at the map, she followed up with the fuel containment fields.
Athin haze of fuel vapor assaulted her nose and throat, burning raw against her nerves. Her stomach, holding little more than a few stale ration bars and residual kolto, churned as she moved on. The droids whirred as she passed this time, and she pulled her shirt up over her nose and mouth, hoping to block some of the vapor.
As she entered the tunnel that should lead to the lift, her comm chirped again. "Mr. Rand?"
"What in the hell are you doing?"
"What?"
"The fuel levels down there have skyrocketed! What happened?"
"Oh, I had to shut down the containment fields to get through."
"Ah, shit. That whole place is going to blow. You need to get out of there."
She broke into a jog toward the lift. "Can you slow it down?"
"No. I'll do what I can."
"I'm almost out." The comm died in a blaze of static, and she broke into a sprint for the lift. The stench of fuel was stronger now and almost felt wet against her skin.
By the time she was a foot away, heat bore down on her back. She threw herself into the lift, the doors slamming closed, and kicked the panel to go up. The lift rocketed upwards, faster than it should. Far faster.
"Shit," she mumbled, prying open the doors and wedging them with a mining laser she'd picked up in the tunnels. This momentum was not just the lift. She readied herself in a runner's crouch, bouncing on her toes. Metal whizzed by, then the shortest gap of light at the top, and she launched forward.
She hadn't picked a good angle.
Trista hit the floor outside the lift and rolled, the air fleeing her lungs and taking the fuel vapor with it. She lay there for a few moments, coughing, as the world slowed back down and her lungs stopped protesting the air. She fumbled the comm into her hand and drew it to her mouth.
"Mr. Rand?" Nothing but static. "Atton?" More static. She sighed and picked herself up, rolling pain and tension out of her shoulders. There must be too much rock. So, she was on her own.
Better that way.
Trista pulled herself to her feet and leaned against the wall to finish catching her breath. Just as she'd calmed her breathing, something clanked behind her and she nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Excited Statement: Master! It's so good to see you unharmed!"
Trista spun, vibrosword out-held. She couldn't place the familiar, silver-plated protocol droid, but it bothered her.
"I'm... not your master?"
"Correction: But you are, master! My former master was the captain of the Harbinger. And considering his untimely demise, I'm afraid my ownership passes to the last living passenger, which would be you. Therefore, you are indeed my master!"
Trista scrubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, coming away with a streak of sickly orange paste. She frowned. "Have you been active the past three days?"
"Supplication: Yes, master, I have indeed."
"Fill me in on what happened."
"Irritated Answer: Oh, master, it is a long and dull story, and not relevant to our current situation."
She narrowed her eyes. "How about you do it, anyway."
"Hesitant Explanation: Well, master. That topic has been the subject of much discussion since our arrival. Many have attempted to claim you and this unit as salvage. I was crudely interrogated concerning our history together on the Harbinger, before its communications, weapons, and engines suffered the cascade failure that disabled the ship."
"The Harbinger was a Hammerhead-class cruiser. It had to be intentional – there are too many redundancies." If the droid could shrug, Trista suspected it would have. "Why don't I remember this?"
"Speculation: It is possible you were incapacitated and locked in the well-shielded cargo compartment as the Harbinger was being systematically crippled, Master."
Her eyes narrowed again. "Incapacitated? Locked?"
"Supplication: I only mean to communicate that you were somehow rendered unconscious and placed in a locked cargo hold, Master. I am just a droid, I do not know how that could have happened."
Trista blew out heavily through her nose. "Fine, keep going."
"Recitation: Just before the unusual set of coincidences that led to the ship's cascade failures, we were boarded by a small freighter with unknown ID codes. Your cargo compartment was breached, and you were taken on board said freighter shortly before the systems went critical. I, too, managed to board this freighter before the Harbinger's destruction. We were most fortunate to have survived, Master."
"And this freighter was damaged? By what?"
"Evaluation: I do not know, master. But judging by the damage, it was a much larger vessel. And it was fired on again when it attempted to escape the Harbinger with you on board." It paused. "Addendum: It seems odd that such a small vessel attracts much larger vessels. Not a welcome trait in a freighter, certainly."
"Do you know anything about it?"
"Explanation: I believe it is a smuggler's vessel by the name of the Ebon Hawk."
"Right. And how'd we get here?"
"Clarification: I am afraid I do not know, Master."
She sighed. "Then what happened after we got here?"
She listened to the droid's long-winded recounting of recent events. By the time he finished the tale of her journey from the Harbinger to Peragus' medical lab and the subsequent deaths of, presumably, everyone on the station, Trista had resolved to never turn her back on this droid, and to leave him on the facility when she left.
"All right," she said, "I'm working on getting out of here, but I have to reach the dorms."
"Comforting statement: Oh, master, I'm afraid I can't help you. You see, the only way to the dormitories is through the administration level — which, it seems, is locked down."
She chewed on her lip. "There's construction scaffolding outside, right?"
"Shocked Exclamation: Absolutely not, Master! You would need to acquire a spacesuit, which is impossible. And then, the airlock is voice-locked!"
"Well, who locked it?"
The droid nodded his silvered head to a nearby, mangled corpse. Trista pursed her lips. "Point taken. But, if you're a protocol droid, you can mimic his voice, right?"
"Protest: Oh, no, master, I could never. That would violate the ethical programming droids are believed to possess!"
"Fine, right, point taken. There must be something I can do around here. Don't... go anywhere, all right?"
"Acknowledgment: Truly, there is nowhere to go, master."
