A/N:
This chapter isn't too long. It's partly to provide some context, partly to give background, and partly to introduce a character that simply didn't exist in my first draft but somehow came into being when I wrote the second draft. I don't really know how. I don't even know if she'll last past Taris, but she's too fun not to include.
Four Years Before
The world was small and fertile, covered in rolling grasslands that stretched as far as one could see. The picts made it seem almost idyllic, a reminder of what nature untouched by civilization could really be. Years ago, before the war, it had been a poster child for the last great wave of colonization from the galactic Core.
It reminded Meetra of Dantooine in many ways, so incredibly similar it was to that planet where she spent much of her youth.
A small, fertile, pristine jewel of a world.
A heaven that she would turn into a hell.
She turned away from the view of Malachor V on her pictscreen, back to the bridge crew of her flagship, the Guardian-class battleship Vengeful Sword. There were too many empty seats, too many lost officers that could never be replaced. Her old Flag-Captain, Athras, an old twi'lek with a twinkling eye and a ready joke for the common crew, had died to the Mandalorian guns in the Battle of D'xun. The Executive Officer Hinoto, the bite of discipline to Athras' jovial camaraderie, fell in a boarding action at Jaga's Cluster, weeks before that.
The Army had nicknamed D'xun the Jungle of Death. To the navy, the Battle of Jaga's Cluster had been just as bad or worse. More important than the men lost had been the starships destroyed or captured. Fifteen percent of the Republic's total fleet had been wiped out in a single engagement. It was those battles-and the Council's utter hypocrisy-that was the path that had led them here, in orbit over the world of Malachor V.
As beautiful as it was, the mostly uninhabited planet had only one characteristic of note: Mandalorians considered it a cursed world, and were forbidden to step foot on it on pain of disgrace and exile. Thus, it had been the place where she, Revan, and Malak had laid their final, desperate trap. A trap that would only work once, and had to work, at the any cost.
Her fleet was the bait.
"The primary Mandalorian fleet is rounding the planetary horizon now, General." It was the sensor officer who spoke. Another junior Lieutenant who had been freshly promoted since D'xun. Meetra hadn't bothered learning her name yet. After the next few hours, either there would be plenty of time for that, or the young woman would be dead, or she would be. "We'll have weapons range in five minutes."
In any case, it didn't matter right now, just like it didn't matter when they would reach weapons range. "Order the fleet to divert all power to forward shields," she directed. "Leave weapons cold."
The communications officer hesitated looked up at her in confusion. "Ma'am? Our cannons take four minutes to reach power. If we have all power to shields-."
She just stared at him and his words stuttered to a stop. Meetra had a reputation for having a short temper. Strange that it was she and not Malak who was known for that, but then the war had affected them all differently. Meetra glanced at her new Flag-Captain Jonrick Elnaras and nodded. He was the second of the three people on the bridge who knew what was waiting for the Mandalorians on Malachor V.
He also knew the role—the only role—of the ships in her fleet was to bait the entirety of the primary enemy strike force into the estimated operational range of the Mass Shadow Generator. They would only get one shot at this, after all.
"Follow the General's orders, Lieutenant." His voice was quiet, but firm. Unwavering, like old Hinoto's had been. Meetra thought they would have got along well together. "Or I'll find someone who can."
The comms officer nodded shakily. As he relayed her commands, Meetra closed her eyes and reached out toward the one presence that she could always feel at the edges of her mind, even across star systems. The dozen CAUs (Coruscant Astronomical Units) between them were only a slight obstacle to her efforts.
Revan. How close are you?
She could feel the stress in his mind and caught glimpses of blasterfire and flashing lightsabers through his mind.
Twenty minutes from the bridge.
Too frakking long. She hissed aloud as she felt a blaster bolt graze his shoulder, only for him to dispatch the offending Mandalorian with an easy toss of his lightsaber. It took only moments for the pain in her shoulder to subside as he healed the wound.
We'll have enemy contact in three. Meetra felt his frustration and anger through the link like a wave of heat that washed over her. We always knew the timing would be tight. The fleet has to keep them in orbit until you can distract Mandalore and keep him from seeing the trap.
If you stay that long, then you might not get out in time, he replied angrily.
If we withdraw earlier, then Mandalore will call the fleet back. He's much too smart not to recognize my fleet as bait.
Suri…
Meetra smiled softly as he used her old nickname and felt him push enough power into the link to see him manifest before her, although only she could see him. His robes already had charred holes through the edges, but he seemed no worse for wear. "We'll buy you what time we can, Revan." She reached up to brush her hand against the cheek of his projection. "But we have a duty to the Republic and to our men and women. To all the people they left back home."
Revan embraced her fiercely, a gesture she returned. "I don't want to lose you."
"Then hurry the frak up." She said into his shoulder. "You said twenty minutes, right?" He nodded. "Make me wait longer than ten, and you're buying the drinks when we get through all this." He couldn't help but laugh, the hoarse, almost manic laugh of those too familiar with the specter of death and loss.
"I'll see you on the other side, Suri. I love you." His projection leaned down. Their lips touched for a moment before it winked out of her sight.
Taris
Atlee—Atlee'ira, if you really wanted to annoy her—was not happy.
In fact, she would even go so far to say as she was solidly annoyed.
"Frak all the stupid, frakking mercenaries on this dirtball." She didn't care about the looks that the other residents of Taris Lower City Apartment Block 93 thought of her muttering to herself. A crazy human woman stomping around the block probably was less strange than what they saw on a daily basis anyway.
And given that the crazy human woman just barely broke one and a half meters tall, she was probably one of the least intimidating beings that they'd ever seen around here.
Of course, the vibroblade at her belt looked well-used enough that most would-be muggers gave her a wide berth, not that they needed that warning.
Even as petite as the woman was, it was still The Atlee, after all. The first gangsters that had tried to collect 'protection money' from her clinic when she opened it almost a standard year ago had found themselves missing one limb each, but alive.
The second group had the misfortune to walk in while she was treating an injury to her drinking buddy, best friend, and perpetual headache, Suri No-I-don't-have-a-last-name-and-don't-ask-again-unless-you-want-a-hole-in-your-gut.
The one who worked the odd job with Canderous Ordo. That Suri.
Suffice to say that those gangsters were not as lucky as the first group.
It was Suri's apartment that Atlee was now stomping toward as she cursed her friend rather loudly in the middle of the apartments.
"Frak traumatized veterans and their frakking benders. Frak having to call a frakking Mandalorian hired gun to figure out that your best friend is hungover instead of getting offed by some random mob of idiot aristocrats or something." Atlee finally stopped in front of the right door and typed in her code to activate intercom. "Suri! Get your frakking ass out of bed and open the frakking door!"
No response
"I know you're in there and I know there's an intercom button by your bed, you frakking headcase!" Atlee shouted into the speaker. There was an unintelligible groan on the other side of the speaker. "I brought a plasma torch, Suri! Don't frakking test me!" There was a pause on the other end. The door hissed open. "Frakking finally."
Atlee tossed her bag on the small table in the awful excuse for a kitchen in her friend's apartment and walked into the bedroom, which was really just whatever space was behind the thin divider that kept the bed out of sight of the door. "Get out of bed, you lazy frakker! I brought you some of my great-grandma's hangover tea!" She smiled brightly at the bed-ridden form that was still desperately trying to shield its eyes from any source of light.
"Sithspit, Atlee, what are you doing here?!" Suri's muffled voice made its way through her pillow as something between a groan and a sob. "Do you know what time it is?"
Atlee narrowed her eyes. "I actually do. It's just past midday." She tossed the thermos of tea at her friend and perched herself on the back of the only chair in the apartment. "You know I've told you before: when you go on these frakking benders of yours, if I don't hear from you by midday, I'll come looking for you. And what do you frakking know?! When messaged Candy asking where you were, he said that you were out late discussing a job with him and that afterward you got more sloshed than he'd ever seen you before. Now stop staling and drink the damn tea."
Suri finally peeled the pillow of her face long enough to eye the thermos like it was a frag grenade.
"Oh come on, it's not that bad," Atlee said brightly.
"Any time that a hangover cure completely cures a headache and it doesn't sell like it's going out of style, Atlee, then there has to be something about it that's that bad," Suri muttered. Still, she downed the tea as fast as she could, partly to cure the hangover, and partly to get over the indescribably bad taste as quickly as possible. "I swear people from Batran have their taste buds removed at birth. Saying that shit is an acquired taste is like saying a rancor is a little smelly."
Atlee turned her nose up at her friend. The shadows made the contrast between her dark skin and Suri's lighter tone even more pronounced. "I'll have you know that Batran cuisine is known across the sector for its subtle flavors."
"Yeah… subtle like a Basilisk War Droid is subtle." Suri staggered to the refresher to wash the taste of the swill out of her mouth. No matter how much she complained, Atlee's tea was some kind of miracle drug. She'd never had a hangover it hadn't cured in ten minutes flat. Whether it was worth the aftertaste in your mouth for an hour was up for debate. "You know, if he ever hears you call him Candy, I'm not helping you out. You're digging that grave on your own." Suri gave Atlee a sideways glance. "Did you actually bring a plasma torch in that bag of yours?"
"I guess you'll never know, will you?" The doctor gave her a characteristically crooked grin. "Feeling better?"
"Except for wanting to burn out my taste buds."
Atlee just shrugged. "Eh. Stop whining." Her face grew more concerned than amused. "But Suri, what happened last night?" Her eyes followed Suri as she grabbed a ration bar from the cupboard.
Ah. Right. Suri managed to forget that Atlee and privacy didn't belong in the same sentence together.
"Nothing. We talked about a job. Met with the rest of the team that wanted to work with us." She tore the wrapper off the bar and took a bite, happy to replace… whatever that piss-poor excuse for tea tasted like with the rancid sawdust flavor of a surplus, past-due dehydrated nutrient chalk. Suri really wished she could afford real food, but with the blockade, that was an impossible dream at the moment.
"That's a pile of rancor shit, Suri."
"Frak off."
"Ha," Atlee barked a laugh at her. "Candy said you were more hammered than he'd ever seen you before, even worse than that time when the three of us celebrated after we stole that Sith arms shipment." She stepped forward and rammed her finger into Suri's chest. "I know you, riekja," she continued, using an old-fashioned term of endearment from her homeworld. "We've fought and bled together, and I've patched you up more times than I can frakking count. I'm your best damn friend on this galactic asshole of a planet." The doctor's eyes softened. "I frakking care, Suri. So does Candy, even with that hard-ass Mandalorians-don't-have-feelings shell of his."
Suri shouldered her out of the way and started putting on her combat suit. "I don't need you to frakking care, Atlee. I never asked you to."
"Oh for Bytlana's sake, stop being such a frakking idiot!" Atlee invoked the name of her religion's Goddess. It's strange how growing up in a culture could shape things as idiosyncratic as cursing preferences. "Is it the anniversary of something horrible? Did you manage to finally realize that you deserve better than this wretched backwater? Or was it—"
"I ran into my frakking ex, alright?!" Suri interrupted angrily.
Atlee raised an eyebrow. "I thought that you didn't do meaningful relationships since the last guy died in the war?"
Suri grabbed her gun belt from the table cinched it around her waist, glaring at her friend the whole time. "The guy I ran into was the guy who I thought was dead. But he has amnesia."
"Oh." That was the only guy Atlee had ever heard her talk about. Of course, being Suri, she didn't talk about him much unless she was drunk. But when she did, she got that far-away look that lovers have in all those shitty old holo-dramas on the 'net.
Yeah. Running into a long-term lover who you thought was dead but instead just doesn't remember you… that would explain the whole getting-massively-drunk thing, wouldn't it? "He's the one who gave you your necklace, wasn't he?"
Suri folded her hand around the piece in question. It wasn't really much of a necklace, really, just an unfinished gem set in a simple brass fitting with thin chain looping it around her neck.
Suri valued it above all else she owned. It was a memory of a simpler, happier time.
How long had it been since Revan gave it to her? It must be almost two decades now. They had snuck out of the Enclave to explore the old kinrath cave.
A faint smile twitched at the edges of her lips. Quite the adventure that had been.
"Thinking of the good old days?" Atlee distracted her from her reminiscing.
"Mm." Suri finished off the last of the ration bar and washed the chalky residue down with a drink of the metallic, brackish water from the 'fresher. Ugh. She couldn't wait to get off this planet. "Everything was so simple when we were younger, wasn't it?" She asked quietly.
The doctor chuckled. "I suppose so. Then again, it was also a lot less exciting back then."
"I suppose." Suri stared into the dull gem, as if willing it to do... something. But it just dangled from her fingers, spinning back and forth like a child's toy. "I just... I don't know what to do."
Her friend bit her lip, idly twirling a scalpel in her hand. It might have been intimidating if Suri hadn't become accustomed to the nervous habit months ago. Of course, to this day she'd never seen Atlee actually take out the bladed tool. "You know... most amnesia is curable."
"Most treatments involve going to the Jedi on your hands and knees and begging a mind healer to help." She replied, loathing obvious in her tone. "That will never happen."
The doctor cocked her head at her friend, trying to figure out Suri's facade of constant anger. She knew it was a front for... something. Pain, maybe? "You know, you never really explained why the frak you hate them so much. Did they just drag their feet too long joining the war?"
"They're a bunch of hypocritical bastards who-" The blaster bolt cut her off when it slammed into her, and her world went white with pain.
A/N:
Hope you enjoyed it. When there are meatier parts of the story, I'll try to put out larger chapters or multiple chapters at once, but for filler or connective material I find it easier to write a little at a time.
Any feedback is appreciated. Since KOTOR is a relatively small fandom, I understand that follows/favorites numbers will be less than for larger ones, and that makes reviews all the more important for readers who want to support my continuation of this fic. If you do follow or favorite, it would be great if you could leave a review as well, even if it's as short as saying "Good job."
But that's all up to you.
I really appreciate the feedback I've already received for this, especially considering the first chapter was basically a 2000 word pilot.
You get 1 logic point if you guess what happens after the cliff hanger. It's not that difficult. I already hinted at it, after all.