Nightfall
- Revan Freeflight -
I would have liked to see the stars.
Instead, there was the red flash of lasers. Yellow fire of a snub snuffing out. The grey underbelly of a mighty cruiser slowly advancing closer.
The panorama through the viewport had all the magnificence of a space battle's climax, culminating in the outcome I had struggled so endlessly for.
The Republic, emerging victorious.
Yet now, at the very end of things, I found myself yearning instead for the serene backdrop of uninterrupted space. Just the stars, and that illusion of infinite freedom before my body came to a final rest.
"That's the Meridus." My gaze tracked along the clean starboard hull of the Dreadnought-class heavy cruiser. Dodonna's flagship, my mind helpfully supplied. I may not have recognized the admiral on the holo-comm earlier, but I knew I'd worked with her fleet in the past.
"Yes. I imagine soon they'll be dusting off their victory speeches back on Coruscant." Even with the crackle in Malak's voice, he still managed to sound droll. "Do you remember Coruscant, Revan?"
"No." Not really. A feeling, perhaps- I'd been happier there, but the Core had never felt like home.
"I think I prefer you this way," he murmured.
My head felt so heavy, but I slowly managed to turn it up to face him.
Malak was staring down at me. His discoloured irises blazed with corruption. At the corner of his metal jaw, a droplet of crimson threatened to splatter free.
"Scrubbed clean and unknowing," he continued, in that softly modulated tone. "A blank plate with cracks ridden through the paint, showcasing the true clay beneath."
Something stirred inside, deep and slumberous with the weight of forgetfulness. He used to have a poetic bent, even if he kept it concealed from everyone but me. Odd... I thought he'd lost that.
My eyes shied away from his, then; for I knew there were some observations best left hidden. Instead, I looked along the length of dull silver wrapped snugly around the lower half of his face. The skin below was fleshy and sallow; ridden with the black scars of the Dark Side.
Once, the man had been hard and toned. A warrior of the sun.
Lower, across the expanse of Malak's black-and-grey exoskeleton, my gaze skimmed over a patchwork of scorch-marks and rents of damage. Near his heart – just above where my head lay – gaped the death-blow I had given him. The burnt armour fibres surrounding the wound were submerged in his lifeblood, parting open like a crimson mouth gasping for air.
The tinny scent of Malak's spilled blood was strong. He had to barely be holding back the jaws of death-
"I have enough strength left to wait out the Star Forge, Revan. Death shall not claim me before it embraces you."
My eyes closed, blanking Malak from view. In my mind, I could see the ready green lights of escape pods again. So close. Too close. It was almost cruel, the way life had thrown that last glimmer of salvation in my path.
"You are so easy to read, now," he mused, following his words with a chuckle that sounded wet in the back of his ruined throat. "There is no escape for us this time, Revan. For once I shall have my way."
My fingers curled on the ground, biting into the haphazard shards of broken ferraglass. The movement was nothing more than a hollow reflex – a living being's drive to survive even at the very end.
The vacant sense of finality in my soul was stronger.
"A blank plate," Malak repeated in a soft murmur, and I felt the brush of a gloved fingertip against my cheek. "You had a scar here, once, that I gave you. Right down the length of your face. The Jedi scoured your body as thoroughly as your mind, didn't they?"
"I have no idea."
My sense of time was muddled, but I knew Deralia happened more than a year ago. That meant... months, trapped in kolto. Unaware and dumb, and at the unholy mercy of the Jedi.
It was strange, now, to feel resentment flurry in my gut. It hardly matters. They're dead. Galdea, Karon, Vima... No, Vima wasn't. I wasn't sure if I'd ever been acquainted with the woman, but Vima Sunrider must have known me – or my mind – on a truly intimate level.
I felt my jaw spasm, and realized it was probably a good thing I'd never run into her after the Endar Spire.
It hardly matters. The thought echoed, and with a deep breath, I let my antagonism go. It was almost easier without the Force.
I blinked, and looked up again at my past. "I've collected my own share of battle-scars since then, Mal."
"So I see." Malak was staring at my maimed hand, as it idly sifted through the broken glass on the ground. I barely noticed as a jagged wedge sliced my palm open. "Was it Bandon who took your fingers?"
"Mmm." I let that one rest with a non-committal murmur of agreement. Somehow, I knew Malak would prefer the affirmation to the truth, and I was too empty inside to thwart him now.
His gaze darted back to meet mine. Malak was almost sounding... sentimental, and yet in the depths of his eyes I could see nothing but the fire of hate. His brows lowered. "You never liked Bandon."
My emotions felt like they had numbed to nothing. And yet, Malak's comment made my mouth twitch in a black humour that had once been a mechanism for survival. If I concentrated hard enough I could still visualize that braggart pinned to a wroshyr with Yudan's 'saber. "Didn't like him much at the end, either."
Malak snorted. I wasn't sure if he'd skimmed that image from my mind, but he sounded remarkably uncaring about the demise of his former apprentice.
Apprentices are tools. Tools that can be used, tools that can be broken. That's all Malak was to me, in the end. And that's why I lost him.
Malak's arm dropped from my face, abruptly, as if he had picked up on my internal monologue. His hand landed on my chest with a thud, before his fingers curled around to meet the other arm wedged under my back. It felt like the prison of a lover's final embrace.
Maybe it was.
Not a particularly pleasant prison, though – for as Malak's arms firmed around me, I found it excruciatingly difficult to choke back a gasp of pain.
"We have always been so adept at hurting one another," Malak murmured, as his icy fingers pressed softly against the cauterized injury along my ribs. My moan was muffled, but audible; and I had no sodding clue whether it was sadistic pleasure or something else tightening the faint lines around his eyes.
I bore Malak's scars, even now. And it was wrong, I knew, to feel that savage surge of satisfaction at how much deeper my 'saber had driven into his flesh.
"I guess we were," I finally came out with. "But you didn't step up when it counted. You fired on me from a distance."
Malak tensed as the barb hit home. It was probably beneath me, but... oh, who the frell cares. He's right, regardless. We ended as experts in the game of one-upmanship. And I am to more to blame than him for that.
"A true Sith knows when to grasp opportunity, Revan. I had the chance to take both you and Bastila Shan out with one cannon blast. Tell me you would not have done the same."
Bastila. I couldn't hold back a flinch. She'd fallen, regardless, and left me here alone.
It would have been better had she allowed me to die with her.
... But there is... there is still more for you to do.
I felt myself recoiling from the echo of her words. There was a sense of duty, there – an obligation, both moral and honour-bound to her memory – that I just didn't want to face.
Even so, there was a part of me that rallied to her call. A very small part, curled down deep in the pit of my soul.
But I am spent. Emptied. Force-blind. What else... what else can I do, now?
"You cared for her, in the end," Malak said. His gaze was roving over my face, taking in my reaction. A faint touch of bemusement coloured the uneven warble of his voice. "The young Jedi who held you on a leash."
"Yes." The word came out clipped and hard, and despite everything, I found my thoughts tightening into focus. My gaze narrowed as I stared hard at him. "Malak. What did we find in the Unknown Regions?"
He didn't answer, at first. Just looked down at me silently with the weight of the Dark Side blazing from his eyes. Somewhere, in the distance, a faint rumble was followed by a noticeable tremor through the superstructure. I heard the screech of a faraway klaxon splutter, and then abruptly stop.
Alarms switching off. That's probably... that's probably not a good sign.
The side of Malak's face twitched, contorting the stipples of malignance that marked his skin. "You still will not bend to defeat, will you?" he murmured. "Even the Jedi were not able to break you in the end."
I said nothing. Merely held his gaze and silently demanded the answer.
"No," Malak said with cold finality. The word hung in the air, as implacable and unyielding as permacrete. "Ignorance can be a mercy, Revan. And it is the only mercy I will grant you."
Very deliberately, he lifted his head away, signalling an end to the topic.
I could have left it there. Sun and stars, I wanted too. And Malak wasn't the only spectre of my past who seemed to think he was doing me a favour, keeping quiet – after all, digging anything meaningful from Yudan had always been a bit like mining for kaiburr crystals in a trash compactor.
I have to believe he's found a way to escape, too. When it came to Yudan, I wasn't going to trust anything Malak had to say.
I wanted to turn my head. To stare blindly out the viewport, in tandem with Malak, and accept the oblivion that awaited us. To lay quietly in his arms, and imagine we were nothing but the young lovers we had once been; the young lovers I had all but forgotten.
The yearning to surrender to that pretence was powerful; more powerful than I could have expected.
...still more for you to do.
Shut up, Bastila, I thought weakly, and felt tears sting at my eyes. Damn, but I hated it when she was right. Ignorance... ignorance might be merciful, but it also meant leaving me adrift, with no concrete conclusion on whether my purpose was complete. And I wasn't wholly ignorant anyway – which simply meant Malak's so-called mercy was merely a torture of fleeting recollections and half-forgotten objectives.
"I remember a purple world," I said, loud and abrupt.
Malak's arms spasmed around me. A wheeze, cut-off, lodged in his throat, and his body shuddered as if he'd almost dropped the Force-threads chaining life to his body.
"Which one?" he hissed, the words spitting out in a crackle of distortion.
My mind blanked. Which one? There's- there's more than one?
The shiny chrome of Malak's jaw lowered, and suddenly I was faced with the heat of his gaze again. I could only stare at him dumbly as my thoughts spun. That purple world – I remembered sensing the touch of sentient malignance creeping through the Force, while I stood on a barren moor and clasped Malak's hand.
I sensed something evil, but Bastila- Bastila had seen the complete extinction of the Force! Because Malak had shown her a different purple world, and I'd stupidly assumed they were the same!
It'd been a logical inference, perhaps; to presume we'd been viewing the same place through different lenses. Two shards of memory, both of an ominous, violet atmosphere, both of a place where the Force behaved in a way neither of us had known before.
I'd never even thought they might be memories of two entirely separate planets.
"Which one, Revan?" Malak demanded a second time, his face so close I could smell the metallic tang of blood on his breath. "Nathema or Kaas?"
I blinked. Those names stirred nothing but an eerie sensation toe-dancing down my neck. "Nathema?" I guessed weakly. Malak didn't so much as twitch. "Er, or maybe Kaas?"
"You don't know." His voice softened with pleasure. "Good. It shall remain that way."
No. No it damn well won't. "It's the end, Malak," I shot back hotly. "You may as well-"
My throat closed in on itself. It took a second to understand what was happening – weak muscles of flesh bowing beneath the whim of a Force-endowed madman, cramping inward and refusing the flow of oxygen to pass.
I choked. Desperation engulfed me, instant and sudden, like I was a burra-cod hurled to the riverbank. My free hand flailed at my throat-
Years of Jedi training kicked in, then; and my muscles spasmed as I forced myself to relax against the instinct of panic. My mind slowed; submerging into the serenity and inner calm I required. Peace, and acceptance of the whole, and then I could reach out for the Force-
Nothing. There was nothing but the burning of my lungs as they failed to inflate.
"I will have my way! For once, you will listen!" Malak roared, his voice discordant and breaking into static. His eyes pinched into gleaming slits, and the Force-bonds released, then, falling away from my tender throat. "Some ghosts are meant to stay buried!"
The first gulp of air was even more painful than the incessant stabbing in my side. I gasped again, as my breathing slowly regulated and my eyes closed weakly in despair.
"You are mine, Revan," Malak growled. "You were mine first. I will not let that thing consume you now. This is our end."
My head was fuzzy, and my throat felt like sandpaper. I slumped against his side, unsure if the faint shaking I felt was my own dizziness, or further deterioration of the Star Forge.
Mine... but I was never yours, Malak. Love doesn't work that way. And if it did, then I would belong to all those I loved, not just to the one whose bed I shared.
If only you had accepted that.
But there was something more important in Malak's last words. My thoughts reversed, hiccupping over that thing. He'd said that thing... that thing had... consumed me?
"So," I breathed. "There is something out there, then."
I knew I was poking a rancor with a stun-stick. Rolling the dice, testing my luck, and gambling that my tenacity wouldn't enrage Malak back to choking me into submission.
But did it really matter if I died now, or in ten minutes time?
Maybe Malak picked up on that thought, as well, for his next words were not what I expected.
"If you must fill our final moments with incessant prattle, then we shall talk on a topic of my choosing, Revan," he ground out. I noticed, almost clinically, that his breathing was decidedly more rattled than before. "You said you did not recall Coruscant. What of Talshion?"
Again, I was struck with the inane thought of Malak waxing sentimental. Or, maybe, he's just trying to drive me away from what I seek. Regardless, the thought of my adolescence was alluring. A time before the Force had dominated my life; a place where the Dark Side had not been present to tempt me.
"Little," I answered slowly. "Little enough that on Korriban I actually believed my true name was Ness Jonohl."
"Huh." The timbre of his voice had settled back into neutral. From hot to cold again, just like during our duel, Malak was displaying all the emotional volatility one could expect from a Sith Lord. "Perhaps that is not altogether surprising, Revan. You always did like to honour our childhood friends with those ridiculous aliases of yours. Andara, when you posited a deal to the governor as Knight Ness Jonohl. Or that time on Onderon when you masqueraded as Healer Staria-"
I paused. I hadn't connected the dots consciously before, but I knew immediately he was right. Ness. Ness and Jonohl. And Staria. I should remember them... should I remember them? My forehead creased. There were so many names from my past that meant so little. The old man, whose name I had taken in tribute. Just like I had given one to Malak-
"Devari," I said suddenly. "Your brother."
Malak had never spoken of Devari, not after- not after something happened. Something bad happened, and Devari was gone, and it pained Malak deeply, even years later. Not even with me would he talk of his brother-
"Half-brother," Malak corrected calmly, slanting a look down at me. "Devari's death stopped paining me years ago, Revan."
My breath hitched. That made sense, of course; one could never ascend through the Force if the claws of the past still bit deep. A guardian brother so cruelly taken from him in his youth now sounded like it meant nothing at all.
Devari's death might be an old injury, long-healed—but that thing... that thing he'd said had consumed me was as raw as the wound in his chest. Why?
"We shared the same mother," Malak continued on. "Devari told me they arrived on Talshion as refugees. From Kun's war, I presume. Did I ever tell you that my brother knew Freeflight from before?"
"What?" I said, startled. "I mean- no. How the frell would I know?" A cursory image of a blinded man rose in my mind. I had adored Freeflight – the invalid who had raised me after my mother's death. The man who'd trained me to think, and to dream.
My memories were so fragmented and so few, but I was suddenly engulfed with a patchwork of impressions – more feeling than recollection – of sitting transfixed at the foot of a middle-aged husk of a man. At times, I had the idea that Malak had joined me. But his brother? Who couldn't have been that many years older than us? "How did he know Freeflight- surely Devari must have been too young-"
Malak shrugged. "He would have been but a child, yes. My brother never divulged the details of how he knew Freeflight; he merely ordered me to keep my distance. Of course, I did not always listen."
"Freeflight was harmless," I snapped, suddenly irritated. My memory might have been riddled with blaster bolts, but I knew that much.
"Freeflight taught you to hope, Revan. Hope is many things – but it is never harmless. Hope led you to obsess over the stars and, in the end, they were neither yours nor mine." Malak's voice was low and monotone, but I wondered if I heard something else- a lilt of wistfulness, perhaps. "You of all people, should understand the power and the pitfalls of hope."
Conceding the point to him was difficult, even this close to the end. "I suppose hope helped turn the tide of the Mandalorian Wars," I said slowly.
"Yes," Malak murmured, sounding satisfied.
My eyes narrowed. "The Mandalorian Wars – that were started by that thing you mentioned-"
"Stars, Revan, you never quit!" he snarled, suddenly, the fire in his eyes reigniting. Malak's fist clenched tight against my ribs, but my gaze was caught on that mortal wound of his, pulsing with a thick gout of blood before it closed again beneath his control. "The Wars were no more than a testing of the waters! We could have lived out our entire lives and never seen the galaxy fall!"
There was a clawing sensation in my gut, as his words echoed in the dead air around us. It took me a second to recognize the sensation as horror. "Galaxy... fall," I whispered in shock. "Malak. This... this- we were Jedi, once." I felt my voice grow in volume. "No matter how far away a threat seems, we cannot bury our heads like the frelling Council-"
There was a low growl, building, in his mechanized throat. "Oh, and doesn't this just remind me of the past- even Jedi brainwashing can't entirely remove your damn heroics-"
"It's out there, this thing- and you just want to ignore it?" I blinked, and suddenly Malak's face was right there, his nose almost touching mine. The burning yellow of his eyes eclipsed everything else. "Malak, you can't. We can't-"
"I can do whatever I want," he hissed. "I am a Sith, Revan. There is no Jedi left within me. You burnt that away a long time ago."
Shame warred with indignation, emotions that I immediately suspected were roused as a deliberate means of distraction. My lips thinned as I pushed them both away. "You were scared," I said softly. "That's why you drew away from the Unknown Regions. Bastila thought you didn't really believe in the threat, but that's not true, is it? You were scared."
Malak didn't reply. There was a flicker in the roiling yellow of his eyes that betrayed him, and he raised his head from mine: slowly, calmly, to look away out to space again.
Something twitched in my throat. I breathed in, quick and fast and unhindered, hit by a quick surge of relief that he hadn't dovetailed straight back into choking me again-
"There was a time I would have followed you anywhere, Revan. And I did, straight into a pit of hellfire I could never have imagined." His words were monotone, now, like he was reading from a transcript. "As Master of the Sith I knew better. Why poke a sleeping demon when the known galaxy was there for my command?"
I opened my mouth to retort-
"I know your game, Revan. I know you. A feeble attempt or two to redeem me, and if that fails, anger me into losing control of the Force."
-but no words came out-
"I shall not have our last moments sullied with talk of what turned us."
I gasped, struggling, pain stabbing into my side as his arms clenched tight around me. The bastard had cinched my vocal chords shut, and try as I might, I couldn't even release the tiniest of whimpers-
"I shall not fumble the Force, Revan. I will have my way in this. For once, I will have my way."
And beneath our prone bodies, the rumbling of destruction grew to a quake. The scarlet of emergency lighting threw ghastly shadows across Malak's face, and I had no cards left to play- no voice, no Force-
Promise me you'll get out of there alive.
Oh, Carth. The bitter taste of defeat was ash in my mouth as my body slumped, and my maimed hand skittered against the glass shards of debris on the ground. I could not turn Malak, I had not convinced him, and now I was forced to face the biggest personal failure of my entire life.
He did not look to see the lone tear that trailed down my cheek. He was staring fixedly out to space, towards the stars I had always dreamed of, the stars now hidden by the battle I had brought to him.
I'm sorry, Mal. I'm so sorry.
Malak Devari had been an undisputed hero. Of the Jedi Order, of the Republic. Everything he was now was my doing. My failure to stay true to the light had turned him-
Agony sliced my palm. With a clench of my remaining fingers, I wrenched my fist upwards and stabbed a jagged shard of ferraglass straight into Malak's heart.
He convulsed. A low, disbelieving whine of pain emitted from his voder as I forced the broken wedge deeper into his injured flesh. My muscles froze; held rigid in a sudden blast of Force stasis I could not block, but-
Malak shuddered, and then the warmth of his heart's blood submerged my raised hand.
"Rev-" he choked, head dropping, wide eyes meeting mine. "Revvie..."
He slumped sideways, arms dropping from around my body, and suddenly I could move again.
"Mal," I gasped, rolling from his lap and into a crouch that had my side screaming in agony. His head thumped on the floor, but he was still blinking at me while a pool of crimson grew beneath his failing flesh.
I couldn't- I couldn't leave-
My hand rose, bloodied and shaking, to cup the side of his face. "Mal. You deserved a better end."
"S-saviour," Malak stuttered, his voder cutting out. "V-villain. Should... should've known you'd... stand alone."
His eyes closed, and his chest didn't rise again.
I tried to swallow against the lump in my throat. Beneath my wet fingers, his scarred cheek was warm. My thumb trailed along the chrome of his jaw, smudging away a fallen teardrop.
He'd been so handsome, once.
…
"This way!" the strange boy hissed, running out from the shadows of the tunnel to grab my hand. Some said these warrens used to be the storm-water drains, centuries ago when Altizir had been a dawning city on a nascent world.
I found myself half-stumbling, half sprinting after my new friend, unsure if the footsteps of the Enforcers were still following. I longed for the safety of Freeflight's dwelling in the sewers – the Enforcers never went there. There wasn't anything to take, and the smell went beyond noxious.
The boy dragged me into a nook, and the only sounds I could hear were the harsh gasps of our combined breathing.
I recognized my erstwhile rescuer. I'd seen him lurking about the public alleys with that older brother of his – a couple of street kids, just like me.
I'd not seem him venture into my corner of the slums before, though.
What was his name? Alek, or something?
"You're Revan, right?" the boy said. "I've seen you around. My name's Malak."
I smiled, and squeezed his hand in the darkness.
…
Wild shaking underneath me wrenched me back to the present. A siren within the command room itself began to wail, biting deep into my eardrums. Malak's skin had turned cold under my hands, and his pallid, dead face blurred through a sheen of betraying tears.
Promise me you'll get out of there alive, Carth had pleaded, and the words cut deep. But what life could a Force-blind Revan Freeflight have, out there in the known galaxy?
Bastila's death – and mine – would have been widely felt. And there was a large part of me that thought dying alongside Malak might be the final act of restitution I could offer my old lover, my best friend – the man who had followed me from a poverty-stricken childhood into a future that first shook the galaxy and then tried to break it.
There is still more for you to do.
I was still breathing. Blood was still flowing, and neural connections were still sparking.
I drew my hand back, and looked once more upon the decayed face of a villain I had once loved.
…
"Do you think we'll ever leave here, Mal?" I rubbed my cheek against his, and felt him frown.
"Peeps don't escape Talshion, Revvie. Not even ones as quick as us."
My breath huffed out in an unwillingness to accept that. "There'll be a way. And if anyone will find it, we will."
…
The blast of a nearby explosion made the ground quake; I found myself tumbling along the smooth metal flooring, away from Malak and towards the wall. I grunted, landing against the corpse of an unnamed soldier.
A shiver wracked me, and I was suddenly cold, whether from loss of blood or temperature I didn't know. Instinct had me fumbling to my feet, fighting against a body that didn't want to move, against muscles that were too tight and too bruised to keep going.
My jaw clenched, and I heaved myself up against the wall. The utility belt cinched over my bedraggled mesh shirt caught on an outraised vent. With numb, frozen fingers, I pulled at it, and the thing jerked loose from my waist before thudding to the floor.
I blinked, staring down, realizing at once what was missing.
Karon's 'saber... With a sick jolt, I realized I was missing that symbolic token of hope from my past. No lightsaber, no Force, no bond-sister... in that grim moment, I felt like I didn't have much of anything left.
A green light blinked from above, and I craned my head to sight the ready signals above the few un-ejected escape pods left.
The Force provides, padawan. The Force provides for us all, Jedi and non-Jedi alike.
Promise me you'll get out of there alive.
I didn't want to, I didn't deserve to, and yet I found myself struggling to stay upright as the Star Forge crumbled around me. My hand mashed against a control panel, and then I heaved my body inside an anonymous escape pod.
I looked over my shoulder, back to my past. The last thing I saw before the hatch closed was one outstretched hand with gloved fingers unfurled, as it lay fallen limp and dead on the floor.
…
I found the Jedi Temple soothing, a fortress of peace that pushed the demands of a billion sentients away, even in the heart of Galactic City. Coruscant had more people crammed together than Altizir, but the Temple was a powerful refuge, and one that called to me.
Malak was standing in the middle of the rose-scented courtyard, staring out thoughtfully at the well-tended gardens of starflowers and coru-bulbs. We'd had little time alone since we arrived less than a month ago. Our days had been packed with meetings and lectures and outings, as Master Karon and her friend Master Zhar had done their best to acclimatize us to a planet so very, very different to the only one we had ever known.
Sometimes, I wondered if Mal was still wary of this promised life – if there was a part of him, deep inside, that desired our starved, meaningless existence back on Talshion.
For I missed our friends, and I knew he did, too.
I walked towards my lover, slipping my hand companionably into his large grasp.
"Hey, you," I greeted.
Malak turned, his full lips curving in a tender smile. Eyes the tawny hue of high-grade Corellian whiskey crinkled at the corners, as the expression on his handsome face lightened with pleasure.
"The Jedi robes begin to fit you, Revvie," he murmured. "You're like a wandering star that has finally found her place to shine."
I rolled my eyes at his unnecessary dramatics, but couldn't quell my answering smile.
"And you, Mal?" I lifted a hand to brush aside the thick dark hair that had fallen over the breadth of his forehead. "Are you happy here?"
"Yes." He bent to kiss me softly on the lips. "I am. We have a good life here, Revan. You were right after all. We have a future, and it shall be great-"
…
I struggled to fit the harness on my body, fingers numb and unyielding with the cold. It didn't seem right that I should be so discomfited by temperature; that physical complaints would be so paramount. Not when faced with all the grief of the galaxy.
But deep, deep within, through the grief and past the horror, there was still a tiny flicker of purpose.
Beneath my feet, the repulsorlifts engaged with a quiet thrum as the escape pod registered occupancy.
I thumped the launch button.
The pod fired up, heaving me back against the seat. Spitting out from the ancient relic I had resurrected and then later destroyed.
And, possibly, straight into the arms of a Republic that would have zero sympathy for me.
But, in an anonymous escape pod, maybe I'd just seem like one more Sith soldier, darting away from doom like a mink-rat scurrying from a burning building. The Republic would shoot down runners, no doubt. Others, they'd catch in their net and hurl into the nearest detention centre.
If I was lucky, no one would find me.
But the Force had deserted me, and maybe my luck had too.
xXx
Author's Note:
Coming up next: part one of a provisional three-part hyperspace arc, where we begin to see the conclusion for the survivors.
A saga's apex worth of thanks to kosiah for the beta.
