"Who in the hell is this?"
Carth turned to find his brother ambling down the aisle toward them, his blasters still out and at the ready. Carth raised a hand in placation, shooting his brother a mean, disappointed look. The gray-robed figure dropped down to stand beside him, bringing with him the smell of dark, lush roses and smoke. He put a heavy hand on Carth's shoulder and shook his head.
"It's alright," he told Gatlin gently. "I know your brother Carth. I do not seek to harm him."
Through the fabric of his jacket and shirt, Carth could feel the pulsing, radiating strength of the Jedi. It was a familiar touch, a touch not unlike Revan's. Carth's sadness was short-lived as the man shook back his head and the hood fell away, revealing soft waves of sunflower yellow hair. When they had known each other before the man had worn his hair shorter. His jaw was peppered with rust brown stubble, defining the line of his strong jaw.
The Jedi extended his right hand to Gatlin who, after a moment's hesitation, took it. Carth noted that the Jedi wore only one glove, a fitted fawn-colored leather glove over his right hand.
"My name is Mical," the Jedi said, by way of introduction. "And you are free to take that young woman as your prisoner."
Carth saw the air in front of him shimmer, as if a heat wave had suddenly risen out of the ground. Spryte had recovered from her fall and pushed roughly past Mical, stomping up the stairs of the dais. "You're damn right we are." She pulled something round and slender out of her back pocket and snapped it into place around the frozen Jedi's neck. A force-inhibiting collar.
"You took quite a tumble," Mical observed, turning to look at Spryte. Carth thought he detected a note of annoyance in the Jedi's voice, but his impassive face revealed nothing. Mical waved his gloved hand and a patina of sparkling waves rose up around Spryte. She shivered, the scratches and bruises on her cheeks healing visibly before their eyes.
"Thanks," Carth said, smiling wanly, "For stepping in."
"It is the duty of all men to see justice done," Mical replied. "I was merely fulfilling that duty."
"Is there something we can do?" Gatlin asked, watching Spryte pull the Jedi down off the dais. "You know, like payment or something?"
"Payment is not necessary," Mical said. "I ask only that you do not harm this young woman and that you deliver me to Coruscant, if that is not too much trouble."
"Sure," Gatlin said, nodding emphatically, "No problem, it's right on the way."
"Excellent."
Spryte wrangled the Jedi down to their level, holding the girl by the shoulders. Dazed, the black-robed young woman stared around at them, confused and disoriented.
"I've stunned her for the time being," Mical explained, smiling sadly at the girl in black. "She shouldn't be any trouble. However, I would take great care with her; when the stun wears off she will be angry and confused, not the sort of Jedi one would want to deal with."
"Noted," Gatlin said shortly. He made a quick hand motion to Spryte and she marched the Jedi away, up the stairs towards the back exit. Akil stared, stone-faced, at Carth and Mical, his mouth downturned at the corners. Carth stared back, determined not be intimidated by the aloof Zabrak.
Akil had arranged for a speeder taxi to meet them at the temple. They rode back to the landing pad in silence, Carth sitting beside Mical in the back of the taxi. His mind reeled with questions, first and foremost what Mical was doing there and how he had known to intervene. But there were other questions, questions about the Jedi, about where one might find a missing former Sith Lord that made his skin prickle with heat.
"In good time," Mical whispered to him, "all your questions will be answered."
They arrived at the landing pad ten minutes later, making good time with the Iziz native helming the taxi. He had jostled them considerably, zooming in and out of taxi and foot traffic with the reckless suicidal driving skills of someone long-versed in the taxi driving profession. Akil paid him generously and helped Spryte unload the Jedi, whose head hung limp on her shoulders as they marched her into the ship.
Gatlin stood apart, watching as Mical boarded. Carth felt acutely embarrassed by his brother's open mistrust of the Jedi; Mical had saved them, undoubtedly they would have been killed without his intervention, and yet not one of them besides Carth had thought to thank him. He ignored Gatlin's gaze, following Akil and Spryte as they brought the prisoner—under Mical's watchful supervision—to the brig. They secured her to the electrical shackles on the wall and double-checked her force-inhibiting collar. Akil stalked off and Spryte made sure to "accidentally" cuff the Jedi girl across the face before she left. Carth watched the figure strapped to the wall and wondered if she would be alright; when they reached space it would be freezing in the empty brig.
"I'll look after her," Mical told him, watching Spryte go with a cold stare. He steered Carth out of the brig and down the hall. "In fact, I'll ask the captain if I might bring her to the 'fresher. She's absolutely filthy and she will need warmer clothes. Could you arrange some?"
Carth nodded, strangely intimidated by Mical's calm, firm directions. Carth was Mical's senior in years and had once, long ago, been his boss, but this was not the same Mical, not the shy, eager young man he had watched climbing through the ranks of the Republic bureaucracy. He was confident, assured of his own power and Carth couldn't help but feel that Mical was now somehow older than him, wiser. The questions bubbled up again but he quelled the urge to hound the Jedi; as he had said, there would be time for that later.
He went in search of clothing. Spryte was unhelpful, claiming that she would rather eat a live gizka than loan that "filthy witch" her clothing. Akil wasn't even an option. Carth found Gatlin in the cockpit arranging their flight to Coruscant.
"You might have thanked him," Carth said.
"Hello to you too, Carth."
"I knew you were a thief and a liar, I didn't know you were a complete asshole," Carth said, shaking his head, feeling for once like the older brother he was. "We wouldn't be alive without his help."
"I'm taking him to Coruscant," Gatlin replied, holding his ground. He had shucked his coat and stood now in his shirtsleeves and holsters, the fabric of the shirt straining against his barrel chest. "And that's plenty. If you have a problem with the way I run my ship then you're free to go."
"Oh I'm free now? Since when?"
"Since I don't need you," Gatlin said, laughing merrily at Carth's outraged expression. "We've got the Jedi, we've completed the mission and we don't need you anymore. It's obvious now we never needed you to begin with. So just holler when you want us to drop your useless ass off. I'll forward the credits to your account next week."
"You do that," Carth said. He nearly turned to stomp away but stopped himself, knowing he had come for a reason. "The prisoner needs some clothes. She'll freeze to death in the brig."
"Ask Spryte."
"I did. She was her usual charming self."
"Fine, there's a trunk under my bed. It's unlocked. Take whatever you need from the bottom of the pile. It's clean enough."
Carth left without another word. He found Gatlin's trunk and, with Akil breathing down his neck, he searched through the contents until he found a thick woven sweater, a pair of heavy thermal winter tights and a rolled up pair of boot socks. With a black look in Akil's direction, he left the sleeping quarters and went in search of Mical. Soft hisses, whirs and clicks led him to the medical bay. Carth stopped short of the door, nearly dropping the pile of clothing in his arms.
Mical stood with his back to Carth, stripped bare to the waist, wearing only his loose gray Jedi pants and wide belt. To his right was the medical droid, reactivated, its needle-like arms hard at work on Mical. Carth gaped, mesmerized by the bizarre sight; Mical's entire right arm was gone, replaced by a robotic contraption so intricate and detailed that it mimicked perfectly the muscles and tendons of a human arm. Carth felt a little sick, noticing that the apparatus had been fused to the living tissue at the bony ridge on Mical's shoulder. A small portion of his bone was visible, capped with a metal filling to hold the bulk of the arm in place. He flexed his hand and wrist as the droid worked, testing the responses of the steel tendons. All up and down the arm a chain reaction occurred, his movements sending ripples in the mechanisms up to the juncture of his bicep.
The work was so fine, so detailed that the ropey cords of his neck and the broad, tightly muscled landscape of his back worked seamlessly into the shape of the arm, so natural that it might have been part of him from birth. Carth had seen hands and feet and joints replaced, all soldiers had seen such things, but this was like nothing he'd ever laid eyes on.
"Lust."
"I'm sorry?" Carth stammered, frozen to the floor.
"You want to know how I lost my arm. It was lust."
"Oh. I don't want to pry, it's just… I can't imagine surviving after a wound like that." Carth took a few steps closer, morbidly curious. Up close the robotic arm was even more impressive, a dizzying labyrinth of miniscule hammers and slides.
"I nearly didn't," Mical said with a good-natured laugh. For a moment he was silent and Carth wondered if he should prompt him to go on. Mical stretched his palm, staring intently at it. Then he said quietly, "I don't suppose in your travels you ever met a man called Atton Rand?"
"Rand? No, I don't think so."
"He was one of my companions aboard the Ebon Hawk. We traveled with the Exile, and with the betrayer, Kreia," he said. Carth heard the unmistakable tenderness in his voice. He had heard himself use that very same tone many times before. "We followed the Exile to the end, to Malachor. Rand was… Well he was a bit of a rival. We both loved the Exile, he aggressively so. That forsaken place destroyed what little was left of his control. He had a great darkness inside of him and his lust, his infatuation, led him to hate."
"He did this to you?" Carth asked.
"It's funny. I thought I could bargain with him. He was always strong with a lightsaber but his mind… His mind was not nearly as strong. I remember telling him I didn't want to fight, that my feelings for the Exile were different than his. They weren't, not really, but I thought it would calm him. I'll never forget it; he looked at me with those horrible dead eyes and said: I don't care. I just want you to die."
"But you defeated him? Even after losing… that?" He nodded toward Mical's arm.
"In a way," he replied. "The hatred, the lust had made him more powerful in some respects but he was weak at heart, sick and poisoned. I infiltrated his mind; I simply showed him his own actions as if in a mirror. I suggested what his love, the Exile, would do when she found me. In that moment he realized his great error and I saw my chance, my opening."
"And then you… You…"
"Killed him? Your mind leaps to dark ideas, Carth. No, I did not kill him. I would not. I couldn't," he said, frowning a little. He waved the droid away and turned to face Carth. For a flashing instant, Carth imagined fighting this man, seeing his hulking frame coming toward him with his terrible robotic arm gripping a lightsaber. He swallowed hard.
Mical continued. "As evil as he was, as cruel as he had become, he had taught me a valuable lesson. For some time I had believed my love was too simple, too innocent to be of any value, that the Exile deserved someone like Rand, someone who wore their lust like a suit of armor. I realized then that I was wrong, that a pure love would always triumph and that I had nothing to fear."
"You weren't angry?" Carth asked, incredulous. "I mean… If someone did that to me, I'm not sure I could keep my head."
"It is inconvenient," Mical said mildly, looking down as he flexed his metal bicep, "But that moment changed my life. I paid a price, certainly, but I would've sacrificed much more if it meant proving myself to her. Rand had played his final move and he showed himself to be the weaker of us. My pain was also my revelation. My pain was his undoing."
Carth fell silent, dumbstruck. He didn't like imagining himself in a situation like that. He could imagine sacrificing any number of things for Revan, but if someone had tried to fight him for Revan's affection, he couldn't be responsible for his actions. His jaw tightened, hardening at the mere idea of competing over her.
"Why kill a man who has been brought to the depths of despair?" Mical added quietly. "It took all my strength to keep from dying then and there. I pulled myself out of that pool of blood, my own blood, and as he languished, destroyed by his selfish act, I knocked him unconscious and bound him. I delivered him to the Jedi Order, trussed up like a swine for the slaughter. What they did to him for his past crimes, of which there were many, I neither know nor care. Above all, it was not for me to decide."
"Sounds heroic," Carth said, adding a bitter laugh.
"It wasn't," Mical replied. "It was simply what had to be done. My arm was destroyed and the tissue was dead, there was too much damage to reattach it. A friend built this arm for me." He stopped, smiling fondly at the memory. "I was very lucky to survive Malachor and lucky that enough of my shoulder remained to make this apparatus possible."
"And now you're hunting Jedi? Isn't that sort of strange?" Carth asked.
"Hunting? What do you mean?" Mical asked, his head falling to the side. In the low, yellow light his arm glinted with a menacing mechanical gleam. The tiny reactors and silver sinews worked in his shoulder, sliding side to side like a twitching muscle. Carth looked at the Jedi's eyes and shuddered at what he saw, at the raw power that lived there, like two pulsing slivers of ion fire. Then Mical laughed, a bright, amused laugh.
"I'm not here to arrest her, Carth. I'm here to recruit her." The Jedi reached for his robe and shrugged it on, replacing the fawn colored glove over his silver hand. It suddenly dawned on Carth that something was wrong, he frowned, backing away slightly.
"I'm sorry to do this, Carth. I really, truly am."
Carth reached for a blaster that wasn't there. His mind exploded in pain and he reeled back, dropping the clothing and slamming into the corridor wall. He slid slowly to the floor, guided by Mical's outstretched hand. Carth stared up at the Jedi, his brain on fire, his heart pounding, and pleaded for mercy, pleaded with his tear-streaked eyes.