SEVENTEEN

"And this is the end result of the latest genetic adaptations," Chodo Habat said as he pointed to the small plasynth container. Mission bent down to get a closer look and smiled as the small pink flower unfurled velvety petals.

"It's beautiful!" she exclaimed. She looked up over her shoulder at Habat. "And you say it can clean a hundred cubic meters of air a day?"

The Ithorian bobbed his head solemnly. "It is an important breakthrough. With this flower scattered across Telos, we can increase the rate of restoration by fifteen percent." The alien hummed in satisfaction. "Of course, we will need substantially more resources to produce the flowers." He pulled a datapad from his portfolio.

Mission suppressed a grin as she stood back up and glanced through the datapad. As usual, Habat had requested about twenty-five percent more resources than he actually needed to do the job. The TRP budgeting committee would claim he could do it for twenty-five percent less than he actually needed. It was her job to get the right amount of resources to put the flowers in the ground. "Well, I'll see what I can do, Ambassador. You know that the committee is pressing us for—"

"Facilitator Valenta?" someone asked behind her. Mission turned to see one of the TSF guards standing in the doorway. At her nod, the guard continued. "You have two visitors, ma'am, from the Ebon Hawk. I—I think they might be Jedi."

Mission's heart leapt into her throat. She knew Carth had left with Dustil and the Exile on the Hawk to find Case. For two Jedi to return without him. . .she cut off that line of thought. "Show them to my office," she said. She made her excuses to Chodo Habat and strode quickly to the administrative sector of the station. She hadn't even sat down at her desk when her door hissed open and two people came in.

Mission thought for a moment that Carth had walked in with a lightsaber hanging from his belt. But she blinked and realized it was Dustil she saw, not his father. He was accompanied by the Exile, who looked as cold as ever under her brilliant hair. "Mission," Dustil greeted her. "Or should I say, Facilitator Valenta?" He grinned. "I can't believe you married Jan Valenta."

"Where's Carth?" she snapped, in no mood for bantering. "What's happened to him?"

Dustil looked perplexed for a moment, then understood. "He's fine, Mission, don't worry. Didn't you get our message? He's on a moon at the edge of the Unknown Regions, with Case and Bastila." He held up a hand at her question. "There's no time to explain. We have to get down to the surface where you found those holocrons right away."

Mission ground her teeth. She hadn't seen Dustil in five years, and now he thought he could just walk in without explanation and order her around in her own office—clearly, he was as arrogant as he had ever been. But she would try to be at least polite to him for Carth's sake. "Come on, then," she said. "I'll take you down."

The shuttle ride was uneventful, and before long they were on the edge of the polar region and blinking into the bright glare. "The silo is about five klicks from here," she said.

"Great," Dustil replied. "Which direction?"

Mission smiled and crossed her arms over her chest. "Not until you tell me what's going on."

The Exile burst into laughter. "So much for your Omniscient Jedi act, kid," she scoffed. Mission's opinion of her went up a tiny bit.

"Look," Mission explained, "I know I wasn't born here, but Telos has become my home, too. If there's really something Dark going on down here, I want to know about it. And besides, if you two get your all-powerful butts kicked by some Sith Lord, I have to fill out a lot of paperwork."

Dustil sighed exaggeratedly. "Fine. There is a new kind of Sith, creatures who actually take the Force from others and use it themselves, like parasites. We think this silo of yours is a kind of collection center for the Force powers of a group of prisoners in the Unknown Region. If that's true, these new Sith will come here to collect the stores, and use the Force to get stronger. The collection centers are connected to each other, like an electrical circuit, and we think if we destroy the holocrons here, we can disrupt the circuit."

"But what if one of these Sith is actually at the silo?" Mission asked.

Dustil grinned fiercely. "Oh, I sincerely hope one will be."

The Exile tapped her foot. "Okay, good enough?" she asked Mission. "We need to get going."

Mission knew that they hadn't told her the whole story, and there must be some reason why Carth and Case had stayed behind in the Unknown Regions, but she thought they were telling her at least some of the truth. She pointed them northeast and tossed Dustil a datapad. "That will give you realtime updates from the satellite I have monitoring the silo. It will also connect you directly to my comm—if you run into trouble, I can have a TSF unit down here in twenty minutes."

"Aren't you coming?" Dustil asked. "We could use some blaster cover fire."

Mission smiled ruefully, thinking of the girl she had been on Taris, the reckless, indestructible one who thought she would live forever. The one who had no one to worry about her, and who had nothing to lose. Life might have been more exciting back then, but she wouldn't become that girl again for all the credits in the galaxy. "I'm afraid not, Dustil," she said. "But good luck."

Dustil looked like he might try to talk her into changing her mind, but nodded instead. "Force be with you, too, Mission," he said.

Mission watched Dustil and the Exile walk away from her onto the icy plain. She could still see their silhouettes when she turned and got back into the shuttle. "Okay," she told the pilot, "let's go home."

The Stasis didn't wear off until Carth was on a speeder with his hands in binders behind his back. They had been loaded four to a speeder, and most of the Vintari from the Resistance camp were too incapacitated from Force collars to even respond properly to commands. Carth knew that a physical rebellion was going to be impossible.

Startol was gathering the last of his men together and issuing commands in Vintari. It would not be long before they left the camp and headed back toward the city. Carth heard rustling in the speeder behind him and turned to see Gellan struggling to get his arms, in binders behind him like Carth, in front of his body. He didn't appear to be groggy from the collar like the rest of the prisoners, perhaps because he had been in one so recently.

"Don't bother with that," Carth advised. "You're too tall to get your arms under you and in front."

Gellan continued to struggle for another minute before giving it up. "I'm not going back there," he said, almost too low for Carth to hear. He looked up, and Carth could see the desperation on his face. "I'll make Startol kill me here first."

"Hey, calm down," Carth said quickly, worried that Gellan was going to try to get out of the speeder and make good on his threat. "No one's getting himself killed. It will take a few hours to get back to the city, and that gives us plenty of time to come up with a plan. We just—"

"Where are they, human?"

Carth looked up to see Startol coming toward him. The Vintari's headfur was an irritated dark gray. "Where are who?" he asked innocently.

Startol crossed the distance between them in four steps and struck Carth hard across his jaw. With his arms immobilized behind him, Carth had nothing to keep him from pitching almost out of the speeder. Startol shoved him upright and glared. "The other humans! The Jedi who seek to conquer us again. Tell me their plans."

Carth forced a smile to his face in spite of what felt like a couple of loose teeth. The small alien could throw a good punch. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said as falsely as possible. Carth knew that because he had no Force powers for the Vintari to steal, he had to give Startol a reason to think he could eventually get something valuable out of him. Otherwise, there was no reason for Startol not to kill him before they left the camp.

Startol narrowed his eyes. "We will see what you know, human." He shoved Carth back into the speeder and turned without another word to mount a nearby speeder. He gave instructions over his comm and the last of the soldiers mounted speeders and turned them toward the city.

Carth allowed himself a small moment of relief. He had bought himself a few hours, at least, but he had no illusions that they were safe. He knew that unless he could figure a way to escape or Case and Bastila were successful, he would be killed as soon as Startol realized he wouldn't cooperate, and the Force Sensitives would be consigned to a short life in prison before their own deaths. They didn't have much time.

The two Vintari soldiers in the front of the speeder were engaged in conversation and didn't seem to be paying attention to the prisoners in back. None of the soldiers, in fact, seemed experienced in handling a group of potentially dangerous prisoners. If Startol hadn't had the Force users with him, the Resistance probably would have defeated the attackers. Carth turned to Gellan and asked quietly, "Is there any way to work yourself out of that collar?"

Gellan smiled without humor. "You wouldn't ask, Admiral, if you had ever been in one. But I'll see what I can do."

Carth turned back toward the front and made a quick count of the prisoners in the speeders around them. He frowned and counted again. They were three short. He didn't think anyone had actually been killed in the fighting, so that meant someone had escaped or been left behind—he remembered abruptly his order to Limae just before the attack. He told her to take two people and check their flank for an attack in that direction. A closer look around at the speeders told him that she was, in fact, missing.

He twisted around as best he could in the binders to scan the horizon around them. Once in a while, he saw a flash of what might be a trailing speeder, but he couldn't be sure. As frustrating as it was to sit still and hope for a rescue, he had little choice in the matter. Carth tried to make himself comfortable in the speeder and hoped Case was having better luck than he was.

Night was beginning to fall when the group of speeders approached the city. Carth's frustration had evolved into full-out anxiety. There was no sign of Limae or of the prisoners from the city, which meant that either Case and Bastila had been delayed, or something had gone wrong with their plan. Either way, they had very little time left before arriving in the city. Carth turned to check on Gellan, who was bent over his knees with his hands still awkwardly behind him. He hadn't spoken to Carth at all since beginning to try to get out of the collar, and hardly moved, except when his body jerked from the shock of the collar. It was painful to watch.

"Gellan, we're close to the city," Carth whispered, one eye on the still inattentive Vintari soldiers.

Gellan lifted his head a few centimeters to acknowledge Carth's words. "I'm close," was all he said. He clenched his eyes shut and even someone without the Force could tell how intensely he was concentrating. The collar sparked and vibrated, and Carth made a show of coughing to cover the strangled sounds Gellan was making. Then, abruptly, the collar snapped open.

Carth looked quickly around to see if anyone had noticed the use of the Force. One of Startol's Force users looked back at the prisoners, then shook its head and went back to whatever it had been doing. They were clear. Carth breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to Gellan, who had straightened and was grinning in spite of the bloodied nose his efforts had given him.

"I hope you don't feel as bad as you look," Carth remarked with a grin of his own.

"I have the worst headache you can imagine," Gellan replied, "but it was worth it. I won't be collared again." He looked around, squinting into the darkness. "Any sign of the group from the city?"

Before Carth could respond, the comm crackled to life and a blur of Vintari syllables came across. Carth listened hard, trying to make out anything, and thought he heard the word "Jedi." He glanced back at Gellan, who was suddenly expressionless. "What?" he asked.

"Jedi Lanatal and Shan have been discovered and trapped," Gellan reported, not quite covering the dismay in his voice. "Tepai has gone to deal with them herself."

"Damn," Carth said quietly. Gods, not again. He wanted to take the speeder to the city by himself, run in with blasters firing, and rescue Case or die trying, but he knew he couldn't abandon the Resistance when they had trusted him to help them. He shoved his screaming fear for Case into a box and straightened. "All right. They're both powerful Jedi, and they may be fine. But in the meantime, we have to stop Startol and free the Resistance. We can make our stand just before we approach the city. Can you open all of the collars at once?"

Gellan responded to the implied order. "I think so. It might take a couple of minutes for everyone to recover from the collar's effect, but we should be able to—"

At that moment, a high pitched whine flew in from the group's left flank and Carth instinctively ducked. The prairie ahead of them burst into flames. The guards piloting their speeder shouted and skidded their vehicle to a halt. Gellan took advantage of the chaos to snap his and Carth's binders, then jumped out of the speeder to work on the other prisoners' collars. Carth jumped out of the other side and crouched briefly in the shadow of the wing, looking for the source of the attack.

A shadow materialized beside him and fired at the guards still in the speeder. They slumped over. Carth felt a blaster pressed into his hand and saw that the shadow was Limae. "We rescue," she said, grinning.

"Great timing, Limae," he replied. "Is it just the three of you?"

She shook her head. "Three younglings and Royei are waiting away. They come when we call."

Royei would be of help if they had injuries, but Carth couldn't risk the elder being killed in what was rapidly turning into a free-for-all. Blaster shots and shouts echoed through the now dark prairie, and Carth knew the casualties on both sides would be high. "We have to knock out their Force users first—take your best people with you and disable them. Then concentrate on the soldiers."

"Where you go?" Limae asked.

Carth smiled grimly. "I'm looking for Startol."

The tension across the narrow hallway was palpable. Bastila held her double blade away from her body, weight balanced on her toes to let her move in any direction. She could feel the anger emanating from Tepai and the cold amusement from Case. The two collared Vintari working with Tepai seemed oddly neutral, as though they weren't strongly aware of what was going on around them.

Bastila heard sounds of battle outside the building and knew that they would get no help from the prisoners they had just rescued. She and Case were on their own. She glanced to the side and nodded to Case. The intense months of searching for the Star Forge had taught them how to fight together, how to rely on each other even when there was no time to form a plan.

Bastila leapt toward the two Vintari, blade held high overhead. She ducked their Force Pushes to land between them and snapped the sides of her blade against them in two quick blows. Their shields held, but their concentration was broken, and the Force power that Tepai was draining from them stuttered. Bastila saw Tepai falter and Case quickly moved to engage.

Bastila was slow in deflecting one of the Vintari's Horror attacks, and she was momentarily paralyzed by crushing fear that came from all sides. The other Vintari raced toward her, a collar in its hand. The sight of the collar shook Bastila out of her stupor and she whipped her double blade into a Flurry. When the battle adrenaline cleared, she was standing over two dead bodies.

Case was busy deflecting Tepai's Force attacks and occasionally tossing an attack of her own to keep the Vintari off balance. Bastila couldn't figure out why Case hadn't closed with Tepai—Case couldn't hold a blade in her ruined hands, but she had other powers at her disposal. Then Case's words reached her.

"You can come back to the Light, Tepai," Case said. "Believe me, what you've done isn't unforgivable."

Bastila felt a surge of anger. What did Case think she was doing? Tepai had violated her again and again, humiliated her, treated her like an animal. What Tepai had done was worse even than what Malak had done to her, because it left her with no choice even to fall to the Dark side. How could that be redeemed?

Some of her anger must have reached Case, because the woman's gaze flicked toward her concernedly. She looked back to Tepai. "There isn't much time. You must choose now."

Tepai shook her head and threw another burst of Force Lightning. "Do you think you can stop us just by killing me, Case Lanatal? Do you think I am the only True Sith? The Sith who conquered my planet sought only strength and stability, no different than what your Jedi seek. That is why they failed, for how can one hand defeat the other? The True Sith are a belief, the choice of anarchy against order, of entropy against creation. We are chaos and we are eating your strength out from the inside."

Case continued to look contemplative. "We've been approaching this the wrong way, then," she said, almost to herself. She shook her head and yanked Tepai off her feet and into the air. "I won't give you another chance to turn away from the Dark. Tell me—"

Bastila felt the surge of power before she saw it. Tepai yanked on the Force powers of every collared prisoner, every Force user who had refused to leave, and Bastila gasped as they all joined the Force at once. Tepai swelled with power and let loose a nova of energy directly toward Case. It blasted through Case's shields and tossed her against the far wall.

"I have the power of thirty Force users, Jedi!" Tepai crowed. "You cannot stand against me."

Before Bastila could react, Tepai turned a hand toward her and destroyed Bastila's shields like they were wet paper. Tepai threw Force Drain, like reverse lightning, and suddenly Bastila found herself sprawled on the ground next to the dead Vintari. Tepai had taken all of her Force reserves.

Case struggled to shove herself upright but Tepai held up a hand and Force Drained her, as well. Case fell back to the ground.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Tepai asked softly, stalking toward Case like she'd forgotten Bastila was there at all. "You were the one who enslaved my people years ago. I should thank you, then, for giving me a reason to seek out the power of the True Sith. If it had not been for you, I never would have found the holocrons that showed the ancient philosophies, that showed me how to consume the Force. But now your Jedi Council is gone, and no one Jedi is strong enough to stand against me, not even you."

Bastila saw Tepai raise her hand again, and she knew that this time, Tepai would kill Case. She looked desperately around for something, anything that she could do, and her gaze fell on the dead Vintari, the Force collar still in its outstretched hand. Whispering thanks to the Force, she scooped up the collar and threw herself toward Tepai. Tepai turned at the last second and threw a blast of Lightning squarely into Bastila's chest. Bastila's scream was sucked away by the energy and her vision darkened, but momentum carried her against the small alien. As they both crashed to the ground, Bastila heard the collar click shut.

Tepai screamed and clawed toward something in her tunic. Bastila could barely move to see what she was doing. She saw Case pushing herself to her knees.

"The cube," Bastila heard Case say, but it was like she was hearing from a long distance, too far away to be of any importance. "Bastila!" Case repeated, and somehow Bastila knew what she was saying was important, but she didn't know why. "The cube!"

Case's words finally penetrated and Bastila realized that Tepai was reaching for the cube that she used to drain the Force. If she drew enough power to break the collar, they would be unable to stop her. As though underwater, Bastila forced her muscles to move and somehow got a hand on the cube. She shoved it away from Tepai's clutching fingers with the last of her strength.

Bastila rolled awkwardly off of where she had fallen onto Tepai and found herself on her back. Her chest burned where the Lightning had hit and she seemed to be having trouble breathing.

"Bastila, look out!" Case called. Bastila felt her lightsaber snatched from her unresisting hand and saw through dimming vision Tepai above her on her knees. The yellow blade glowed above her. She had no strength left to resist, and Case could not reach her in time. Tepai would kill her, after all.

Instead of the killing blow Bastila expected, Tepai grabbed Bastila's outstretched hand and shoved something into her through the Force, something like a memory, or a ball of Force power. It seemed to explode into Bastila's head, and suddenly Bastila couldn't tell whether she was herself, or Tepai. She could see herself, robes scorched and torn, on the ground at the same time as she saw Tepai looming overhead.

"Your memories," Bastila gasped, desperately trying and failing to shove whatever it was back to Tepai. "You gave me your memories." They swirled in Bastila's head and seemed to burn with cold ice. "How—why?"

"Remember, Bastila Shan," Tepai whispered. "We True Sith are like the ocean eroding the shore." She pulled Bastila's lightsaber blade inward through her own chest. While Bastila watched helplessly, Tepai fell to the ground and joined the Force. It seemed that the Vintari was smiling.

"Bastila!" Case called, but her voice was too far away for Bastila to respond. She heard Case crush Tepai's cube under her boot, and the rush of escaping Force power sounded simultaneously like the wind on the Dantooine plains and the breeze over a Vintari lake. Bastila smiled at the memories and finally let unconsciousness take her.