Author's Notes

Hello, everyone. The Prologue got a warm reception, so let's see how you like this one.

The ghost of Yoda reminds me to say that Star Wars I own not, and that illusion money is (also, death and pants fall into this category—kudos to you if you get the reference).

Please enjoy. Full notes at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 2

The Force was faint. Tab hadn't felt so isolated from the world since before Paragus station. His old mentor Kreia had found him then, and helped him heal and surpass the Jedi he had been during the Mandalorian War. Now he felt stronger than when he had woken up in that bacta tank years before, but it wasn't as much of an improvement as he would have liked.

"Not again," said Revan from somewhere nearby.

Tab opened his eyes. It was so dark he could barely make out shapes of some sort of dense, stout trees above them. Wind blew, bringing with it an unfamiliar sour-sweet scent. The Jedi Master recognized neither the plant life nor the odor. No surprise, really. There were thousands of habitable worlds in the galaxy.

Tab stood up and banged his head on a low-hanging branch. "Ow," he said.

"Articulate," said Revan, getting up carefully and checking for immediate danger. Then he looked at himself, prompting Tab to do the same. "Oh, come on! I just looted those robes and had them adjusted to fit."

Both of them looked as if they had gone through a rocket exhaust at supersonic speed: robes, brows, hair—everything was singed.

Tab said, "Revan, you just had to push it, like you always do, and now we are lost, and our robes will take some serious work, and my neural amplifying circlet has shorted out, and—" He had been checking himself for damage, and his hands finally made it to his waist where his lightsaber was. "No, no, no…"

With a slight quiver, Tab raised his double-bladed lightsaber to his eyes. It was a work of art. Wroshyr wood, durasteel and silver bands, sapphire inlays looping their way around the handle making a cerulean double helix. It still looked fine on the outside but to his somewhat recovered senses it felt wrong. Tab let go of the handle and levitated the weapon in front of him, noticing how this simplest exercise in Force strained his abilities. Frowning, he carefully unclipped a latch on the inside of the weapon with telekinesis and pressed a tiny button on the outside. A beautiful arrangement of inner components was supposed to be exposed. What he saw instead was a smoking battery, a shattered lens, and an emitter that was broken in three places. The color crystal and the enhancing lightsaber crystals were fine, but that was about it. He felt something uncoil inside him, like a groggy poisonous snake waking up. He had put days of calibration into that lightsaber, and now it was gone. He would have to build everything from scratch in addition to finding their way back from wherever they had ended up. Rage started to boil under the armor of the Light Side, and Tab felt the hunger for somebody else's pain rise up from his gut and burn black-red in his heart.

"Calm down, Tabook," said Revan, and the use of his full name snapped him out of it. "You were about to start glowing red there, old friend."

Tab looked at his hands and then at the destroyed lightsaber in front of him. Sure, it was a setback, but it wasn't like lightsaber components were impossible to manufacture or find. The difficulty of creating a lightsaber lay in attunement which required the Force, not in obtaining the materials. The crystals were the only truly irreplaceable part, and they were whole—he felt the Force echoing off them.

"Something isn't right," he said. "I shouldn't have reacted like a Sith child who had his favorite torture set broken."

"No shit," answered Revan. "I feel like that time the Council murdered me and implanted the personality of a two-bit smuggler into my brain. Those were the days."

"Revan, be serious for a minute. Everything feels muted somehow…"

His friend snorted. "Sorry, but an absurd amount of irony is the only way I deal with situations like this. You should have heard me when Malak took Bastilla. I didn't stop spewing sarcastic remarks until I opened his first eye with my lightsa—"

"There is a Force technique in the area," Tab said, not really listening. "Something making it more difficult to reach out with the Light to see the consequences of our actions." He frowned, trying to go deeper, but quickly gave up. "I can't see more. It's like I'm on Paragus all over again, with barely any connection to the Force." Tab turned his attention inside, feeling for his reserves. "Oh, this is not good."

Revan was examining his own lightsaber. Like Tab's, it was double-bladed, but instead of the Councilor's warm wood and bright metals and gems, this one was matte black with a silver band separating the grips for two hands. The inside of the weapon was as banged up as Tab's. Hearing his partner's comment, Revan looked up sharply. He said, "Tab, when you say 'this is not good', it usually means 'we are about to crash from a thousand feet into a Mandalorian platoon'."

"This is worse. My reserves are still here, Revan, as is my connection to the Force. The problem is that almost everything is going into the Force Bond network to support the regeneration technique."

Revan had always been quick on the uptake, so it came as no surprise to Tab that his eyes widened instantly, and the somewhat older man covered his face with both hands. "Fuck. So we managed it. We left our galaxy."

Tab discarded all his emotions into the Force. It was a combat technique created to help maintain objectivity during combat, but this definitely counted as an emergency. "Seems so," he said, his tone now eerily calm. "That is the problem with Feedback-based continuous regeneration: the more distance between all of us, the more juice it takes from the foci. That is, us."

Revan looked into the trees. Tab followed the direction of his gaze but couldn't see or hear anything. Revan said, "Might be imagining things. Anyway, no wonder I feel like a Rancor vomited all over my Force sense. Everything we have is siphoned into keeping the regeneration going." His head jerked toward the trees, he fell into an Echani stance and ordered, "Heads up!"

A large shadow leaped at them from a tree branch above, but both Jedi jumped away avoiding the swing of two head-sized paws, and Revan even managed to land a kick on their attacker. The beast whined in confusion, and the two of them had time to spring back together and stand shoulder to shoulder. Tab could feel Revan beside him, firmly rooted in the ground, yet perfectly relaxed. His friend kept his left leg in front, his fists in front of his face, and his weight was evenly distributed. Tab was weaker and less agile, so he went for a loose stance that superficially resembled Ataru. Its aim, however, was to keep him from getting hit through rapid dodges rather than aggressively pressuring his opponent as Jedi using Ataru usually did. Tab thought he saw a light reflect off the animal's hide. It glinted like metal.

"Damn it, it's one of those planets," Revan said. "Bait and switch!"

Tab would have preferred to simply calm down the great cat-like creature they were fighting, but that particular trick required him to be calm himself, and the Councilor was still rattled from discovering what the two of them had got themselves into. He unclipped a short vibroblade he kept in his left sleeve and moved forward instead. He noticed that the blade didn't vibrate. The predator immediately focused its gleaming green eyes on him, ignoring Revan getting out his own two daggers. The visibility was poor, with moonlight barely penetrating the canopy above, and Tab had to use his now unreliable Force sense to avoid tripping.

As the fight progressed, he got more and more frustrated. He and Revan, the two Jedi who had brought down a Galactic Empire having nothing but a smuggler's vessel, a bunch of misfits, and an overpowered construction space-station called the Foundry (okay, the last one was a major factor in their eventual victory) had been fighting some oversized feline for three minutes. They had killed Rancors faster without using a lightsaber. Letting Revan handle the beast for a few seconds, Tab focused on mentally separating the river of Force that was siphoned through him and into the dimension gap from the trickle he still could control. He had been right, this was about what his students had been able to call up right after becoming Jedi.

"Shock and stomp," he commanded, dashing to the right of the feline and calling his irritation to the surface.

The trick to using the Dark Side without getting the unfashionable yellow irises, veiny skin, and pale hair lay not only in having an ungodly amount of power and control but also in being able to separate yourself form the emotions the use of your powers would ordinarily evoke. There was happiness to be found in causing pain with lightning, satisfaction in choking idiots to death, almost sexual relief in draining the life force of your enemies… Using those abilities was like managing an addiction for any Jedi of the Maelstrom Order he and Revan had founded. Revan was an exception though, as he was with most things.

The giant cat snapped at him, sensing a weaker prey, and he let the anger flow into the most basic of Dark Force Powers. A tingling, almost playful sensation ran from down his arms and to his fingers and then exploded in a shower of blue lightning that hit the animal in the face, cooking its eyes. Tab didn't have to worry about feeling good while doing this, because he had to drop to the ground immediately and roll away from the now rampaging blind beast.

Before the animal could reorient itself, Revan picked up a boulder with the Force, visibly straining, and dropped it on the cat, breaking its spine. Angry growls were reduced to faint whines, and he walked up to it and stuck a dagger into an eye.

"Fuck. That reminds me of every jungle we have visited ever," Revan said. "I mean would it be too much to expect a welcome once? Grateful natives bringing us gifts of their people? No, it is always giant lizard this, hungry cannibals that…"

He kicked the cat's corpse and turned to Tab who sat down on a log to get a breath. "That stone lifting thing took almost all I had. How hard was the lightning?"

"Like I was making it by beating two pieces of quartz against each other really fast," Tab answered.

Revan joined him on the log and started playing with the cylinder of his now useless lightsaber. Because it didn't look like he was about to speak, Tab took it upon himself to state the obvious. "We have two problems. The first one is that we are about as strong and perceptive as drugged kittens right now," he said, and Revan nodded. "The other one is that even if we get back the power, it will be damn hard to find our way back with this dark distortion I'm sensing everywhere. It's like it is seeping into space itself."

Revan slapped his left thigh and rose stowing away his former lightsaber and unsheathing the daggers again. Tab couldn't see much in the darkness, but his friend felt determined through their bond.

"First we find a ship," said Revan. "Then we build lightsabers. Then we find Jedi or, failing that, Force-sensitive people. Then we kill whoever is making foresight difficult. Then we go home," Tab felt him grin through their Bond. "Not like we haven't done it before. If all else fails, our friends on the other side might find a way to tear a hole here if we give them enough time."

"The technique relied on our unique qualities," Tab stated.

"I know, but if Bastilla and Visas team up, they'll find a way. It might involve throwing Nar Shaddaa into a star though."

Tab couldn't tell whether Revan was joking and didn't want to ask. "Alright. I think I sensed somebody sentient on this rock a while back. Let's get to high ground."

It took them an hour to find a rocky hill to climb, and by that time night started to fade into morning. It was good to see footholds in the few places where they found it easier to hoist themselves up instead of searching for a path they could follow on foot. Finally, they reached the top and took a look at the forest below them.

The sky was tinged with pink on one side, and tentative light pulled the tops of the trees out of darkness. For a moment, Tab thought their golden leaves were a trick of the light, but he soon realized that was just the way things were here. Every plant was some shade between blood-red and pale gold. Every mile or so, what looked like a giant purple elm grew a hundred feet above the other trees, cradling them in its shadow and whispering something to them as its branches swayed in the gentle wind.

"Wow," said Tab.

"Eloquent," noted Revan. "But I agree: this place is beautiful. Alive and strong in the Force." Then his reverent expression settled into his business mask. "Any sentient should stick out like a Gamorrean during a Senate hearing. Let's get to work."

He then sat with his legs crossed and prepared to meditate. Following him, Tab chuckled. "If Bastilla could see you now, actually doing reconnaissance through the Force."

"You know I try to enforce that stupid stereotype about Guardians being less suitable for this sort of thing. Gives me time to chill while a Sentinel or whoever looks ahead."

Tab let the mirth guide him gently into the Force. Both he and Revan broke the mold when it came to Force users, but much of their accomplishments weren't because Revan was a former SIth and the original Maelstrom Jedi, or because Tab was a Wound in the Force. It was because the Jedi Order had consciously forced itself into the confines of their prejudices, and the Sith went all over the place with the abilities they developed. An open mind and a lot of willpower had shown them that all three paths a Jedi could pursue led to becoming powerful, and it was only the focus of that power that changed between Guardian, Sentinel, and Councilor. Revan could enhance his physical abilities to ridiculous levels, Tab could fry a small Mandalorian army under the right circumstances, and Visas or Atton could track a Wookee on Kashyyk from across half the planet. And most of those things were possible because of training, not because of some inborn talent.

The Force followed his lead, and he started to feel the plants and the animal life slowly waking up all around them. The trees had no minds, but they exuded serenity as the first light rays of the emerging day tickled their leaves. He could feel how these leaves changed, some sort of substance flowing to the surface. Curious, Tab thought, everything was gold and red only during the night and turned green during the day. But planet exploration wasn't why he had sunk this deep into a trance. What Tab lacked in power right now he more than compensated for in skill and experience. On a feral planet like this, all one had to do to find sentient life was search for jealousy, gluttony, and depression—things sentients took to levels impossible for animals.

He opened his eyes and said, "We are in luck. There is a smuggler's base about an hour's jog away to the east."

Revan didn't answer him for half a minute, but Tab could feel him extracting himself out of a trance, so Tab simply waited and repeated what he had said when the other Jedi finally woke up.

"There is always a smuggler's base as long as the planet is uninhabited, and there is atmosphere," said Revan and chuckled. "It isn't true, of course, but it sure sounds so. How many times did we get miles deep into an abandoned ruin somewhere in the ass crack of the Outer Rim only to find a pirate's hideout there?"

Tab nodded and said, "Too many. Lugging out dozens of broken slaves got old the first time. Those aren't pirates though, just smugglers. I sensed a lot of chaos but little inclination to hurt others."

"Good."

Revan killed most slavers when he met them, and many pirates dabbled in slavery. As far as he was concerned, any Code could go up a Hutt's butt if it stopped him from ridding the galaxy of the scum that kidnapped people from backwards planets for sale. Some slavers escaped Revan's wrath, but those were half-legitimate businessmen dealing with Ryloth—the only planet in the galaxy that possessed no industry and no resources. Just breeding facilities producing ample-chested women and strong men for the rest of the universe to enjoy. Ryloth was also the only place where there was a decent chance that getting sold into slavery to some other world was more likely to improve the child's life compared to what awaited them on the homeworld, but said improvement wasn't much.

Now that Tab was properly centered again, no animals bothered the two Jedi as they made their way through the jungle that slowly flowed form shades of red into shades of green. Evolution was an insane thing at times, and the strangest traits led to species' survival all over the galaxy. Sometimes those traits simply didn't get in the way of survival and were dominant in the gene pool, and so the plants, animals, and other living creatures developed along bizarre paths without any apparent reason. This kaleidoscope of a planet wasn't the strangest they had seen. Kashyyk firmly held that position with the kind of variety of wildlife even Wookies weren't able to catalogue.

They trekked through the jungle in silence, each occupied with his own emotions and thoughts. With the bond between them, much was understood without the need to speak, and actual words could be transmitted with a slight application of Force. Tab and Revan talked with each other out loud more as a sign of respect for each other's privacy than because of real need.

Eventually the two of them climbed over a ridge and lay on their stomachs, surveying the basin below.

Men, women, and creatures of indeterminate sex scurried around the carcass of a large freighter, like ants stripping meat off a bantha corpse. Dozens of smaller vessels were around the larger ship, and everybody looked to be in a hurry to unload everything from the freighter as quickly as possible. There were hundreds of sentients of all shapes and sizes around. The two Jedi crawled back out of sight.

"I don't recognize any of the ship models," Revan said with a frown. "I mean, I recognize the ship class and the technology and could probably guess the inner layout, but I don't recognize the models themselves. Not a single one."

Tab sighed and rubbed his ear in thought. "This proves it then," he said. "This really is a parallel galaxy. Same races, generally same technology, but the details are different." He gestured vaguely toward the basin. "It doesn't change the fact that there are our twenty ways off this rock."

Revan nodded and said, "We'll need disguises."

"How will we get them?"

"Everybody needs to take a piss once in a while, and they will be stripping that freighter for hours. Let's get closer and wait."

"A stealth field generator would be mighty useful right now."

There was no better race to be for infiltration than human. Were they Rodian, Gamorrean, Twi'lek, or anything else, there would be places they couldn't get to without doing some serious legwork. Try to gain some respect in a Hutt brothel as a Twi'lek woman. Try to pass yourself as a mercenary while being Thorian—the most pacifist crowd in the galaxy. And there had been a good reason for the Council replacing Revan's personality with that of a smuggler all those years ago. Humans made excellent smugglers precisely because their race had spread everywhere

They also had many weaknesses that being a Jedi pretty much nullified if you knew what you were doing. Can't hold your breath for more than two minutes? The Force. Can't contort yourself into a cube of flesh? The Force. Need to sleep between five and ten hours a day? The Force. Have problems with impulse control? The Force. All of those techniques had drawbacks, of course, best exemplified by how the Jedi Order had pretty much set up itself for mass Fall when they started to rely on the combat clarity trick of releasing your emotions into the Force to deal with everyday impulses and temptations. But if a Jedi kept temporary solutions temporary, they could be more androids than people when needed.

Revan and Tab lay two hours the bushes under the trees at the edge of the caldera. The smuggler ship they had picked was half a mile away, but first they needed to get some clothes. There was fifteen minutes between the two smugglers, each took one chop to the neck from Revan, and soon there were two unconscious men lying unconscious only in their undergarments.

"How much time until they finish with the freighter, you reckon?" asked Revan.

"It's impossible to tell without seeing the kind of load they are relieving it off. I think the smugglers' ships will be full before they haul everything out of there."

"Right." Revan took out his knife.

Tab moved between him and the unconscious smugglers and asked, "What are you doing?"

Revan rolled his eyes. "Will you please move?" he said. "I'll cut up their coveralls and make ropes and gags. Should last long enough."

He didn't want to play Devil's advocate, but Tab still asked, "And what if they slither out before we are off this rock?"

"We could dislocate their shoulders."

"No. Even if they wake up and get out of bonds in time, they still need to find us."

By this point in their conversation the two smugglers were almost naked, with most of their clothes turned into improvised restraints. Tab knew there was a chance they wouldn't be found until everyone left the planet, or that some predator would stumble onto this prepared meal. It felt good to have power over people again, and he let the feeling flow through him. He was long past the point where power was something to fear. They left the men to nap in dirt.

The guy they had been directed to by one of the smugglers was an armory locker of a man, his face creased and worn like a mummified Hutt's ass. Sunlight reflected off the bald patch in the middle of his head.

The smuggler, "So you boys unhappy with your current boss? He not paying you enough or what?"

"He bought a Gamorrean slave recently," said Tab.

The man said, "Good slaves, Gamorreans. Strong, hard to kill."

"Yes, but he got it for sex," said Tab. "And a male one too, not that it matters."

Revan said, "And the captain, he didn't bother with soundproofing, right? 'Too expensive', he said. Well, it might be, but if I ever see a Gamorrean in a frilly dress again or hear one when—"

"Okay, okay, I got the picture," said the smuggler. "Any more and I will be begging for brain bleach. The name is Hax, I'm the captain of this fine ship. Her name is Dawn."

"So, Hax, we heard you needed people."

The smuggler squinted and shook his head. "We are almost done loading," he said.

"Yeah, but your light frigate can carry at least fifteen and you don't have even ten," said Revan pointing to the ship. "A lot of overcrowded ships around you, all we're saying. Might be some of those folks want to nab what's yours after you are finished hauling the boxes—save themselves the trouble."

Hax took a long look at the two of them and took a step in their direction. "If you are so smart, how do I know you aren't here to shoot us in the back when we get attacked from the front?"

At least the smugglers never changed, Tab thought. There was honor among thieves, yes, but there was also such a thing as asking for trouble. And not having the crew to defend your loot definitely qualified.

"Please," Revan said. "You'd be dead as soon as you got in range of this baby." He patted the looted blaster pistol on his hip. "You have one guard and she is sleeping on her feet."

"You can tell the Rodian is a gal?" Hax asked. "How?"

Revan waved a hand in dismissal. "Lucky guess. So, we have a deal, captain?"

"Aren't you going to ask what product we are moving?"

Tab was tempted to answer, but they needed to play this right, to appear only smart enough for the smuggler to hire them and no more.

"It's a Republic freighter," said Revan. "How bad could it be?"

"You wouldn't believe me," said Hax. "But we are in luck. They were making a delivery to Coruscant. Fancy foods for fancy restaurants."

Revan and Tab joined the exhausted Rodian, and there was no more trouble. One time a Zabrak came by with a pair of humans, but Revan had been telling their new friend about that time he blew up a Rancor by mixing grenades into poor thing's food, and the wannabe-extorters just walked by. Half an hour passed, and the ship was lifting off the lump of rock they had landed on the night before. Tab went to the navcomputer to get the name of the place and found out it was XZHY-193 as catalogued by a droid scouting vessel that had passed by it some two hundred years ago.

"So how did the freighter end up in this ass crack of the universe?" asked Tab as the pilot was pulling them out of the atmosphere.

The captain said, "They got too close to the Outer Rim and didn't get out fast enough. A couple of pirate friends asked them to kindly abandon their vessel, but the idiots tried to jump to a random green planet instead. Well, they jumped with two photon torpedoes exploding behind the stern. Screwed up their navigation, made them land partway inside the planet's gravity well. Inertial dampeners weren't set up properly, so deceleration killed anything on board not in stasis boxes. You should have seen the bridge. Like ten scatter mines went off all at once, and then a bantha trampled over what remained of the crew."

"How the hell did the hull stay in one piece?"

"It didn't. A third of the ship got ripped off on entry, but the shields and the astromech droids—may their scrap go to their metal gods—managed to crash the ship into soft ground at an angle. What you saw was one third of the freighter. The back third landed elsewhere in pieces and the front one got squished into a slab of metal. The bridge was in the middle, not that it did anyone on it any good."

Tab shook his head. He couldn't ask and risk betraying their ignorance, but surely the galaxy wasn't safe enough to send an unarmed ship of such size this far from the Core worlds without an escort. Or maybe there had been an escort. He asked, "And what about your pirate friends?"

"All of us are giving them a cut."

They made a short jump and the two Jedi decided to use this opportunity to get a few hours of sleep.

###

Both of them woke up at the same time. The Force was screaming at Tab that they were in danger, and he and Revan immediately rushed to the cockpit to catch the tail end of a conversation.

"We had a deal, Mark," said Haz.

There was no video and all they had to go by was Mark's voice—raspy like sandpaper on bone. "We had. I found a direct buyer for your stuff. Now be reasonable, power down your weapons, and open the hatch. I have twenty men. No one has to get hurt."

Revan leaned toward Hax and whispered something in his ear. Hax shook his head, and Revan said something else. Reluctantly, Hax nodded. "Okay, you got us. We'll bring the boxes to the hatch so your bozos don't bust half of the stuff in my ship."

"You have ten minutes."

Hax cut the connection and turned to Revan. "Hope you know what you are doing."

"Please, I could pull it off in my sleep," said Revan.

The former Sith Lord motioned for Tab to follow him and went to the workshop.

###

"Been some time since we did something like this, eh?" asked Revan, welding together the protective casing for the explosive device they were working on.

The air in the five-by-five workshop had the sharp chemical smell of acid that burned in Tab's nose, and the hint of short-circuited electronics didn't help either. He felt his nose tingle, turned away from Revan and the upcoming bomb, and sneezed.

"Damn," he said, "This so-called workshop is shit. Back home we could build a lightsaber out of a food dispenser with the kind of facilities we had." He sighed and went back to work. "I just wish they had something except concussive grenades here. Mines would be better, perhaps plasma."

Revan said, "We don't want to blow a hole in the hull and vent us all into space."

Tab took a security kit, an ultrasonic saw, and prongs from the storage box next to the workbench. He put the grenade in front of him and probed it gently with the Force, searching for the detonator. There was a tiny hole next to it, and if someone put a pin in it and then cut a thin metal plate next to it, the grenade would pop open, exposing the payload inside. It was the kind of work that didn't require particular skill, but deft hands and a sharp eye were definitely needed.

Neither of them was particularly skilled in making explosives, but between Revan's engineering expertise and Tab's careful use of the Force, they managed. After five minutes, sweat was pouring down his forehead in rivulets as the Jedi Master held the detonator firmly in place with the Force while Revan opened their fifth grenade.

"I don't think I can handle another one and still be able to fight," Tab said.

"Alright. Give it here," said Revan and added the payload to everything they had already put in the case. "Now all we need is something to shield our ears."

They had two minutes left when they brought their creation to the thatch, where Hax and his people were piling up boxes with spoiled rations and other junk inside them.

"Put three containers of the real stuff in front of the fake ones. We want that bantha fodder to get as close as possible. You got the bomb?" Hax held out a hand.

"I'll set it up myself. Don't want that shockwave blasting into us," said Revan.

The payload came in quarter-inch powdery grey granules that stuck to fingers and burned in a series of low-heat sharp claps when crushed into powder. These were now poured into a metal tube that opened on one end. The powder was pressed into one solid block. Tab helped Revan set it on the ground and move a couple boxes to pin it in place. They gingerly stabbed all five detonators into the block, hid the explosive behind an empty box, and everyone except Revan retreated behind a corner. The former Sith took out and palmed balls of plasteel they had heated and formed into primitive earmuffs. Revan punched in a command, and everyone heard the hiss of air rushing into the hatch.

"How will he detonate it?" asked Hax, his mouth close to Tab's ear to keep quiet, warm breath sliding across the Jedi Master's skin in a way he didn't appreciate.

"You'll see," said Tab. "Just make sure to start firing when he does it."

Revan was built like a tombstone: Tab had walked into him in the past and bounced right off. But every Sith was a master manipulator, and even if his friend no longer was one, the cunning and sheer force of personality he had now were even more impressive than what had carried him through the war against the Mandalorians. Revan hunched his back into a question mark, rose one shoulder slightly, and folded upon himself. He lost two inches of height and was now looking around nervously like a criminal volunteered for death would do. The thatch door opened with the scragging of old machinery, and Tab ducked behind the corner, relying on his ears to know when it would be time. The smugglers next to him reeked of sweat and he prayed for Revan to hurry.

"You! Bring the boxes to us." Mark's voice rang out in the hall. The leader of the hunters asked like every violent criminal boss Tab had ever met did. Something about a harsh life of shouting at imbeciles made them speak as if a piece of barbed wire was being pulled up their throats at every word.

"Please, I don't want to die," said Revan with a slight lisp and a Dantooine farmer's accent, his original voice barely recognizable.

Things were silent for ten second or so. A soft thump of a crate being put on the floor sounded.

"Good, that's the stuff," said Mark. "Next one."

"Boss, why don't we kill this kriffing poodoo and unload everything ourselves?" asked someone smart.

"Please, I'll do it really fast, I truly can, just don't hurt me," said Revan, and there was a light spattering of boots hitting the metal floor.

Tab peeked around the corner, seeing Revan run toward the remaining cargo while a rough bunch of pirates had him in their sights. A Rodian and a crowd of humans including one burly type, probably the leader. The Jedi Master reached a hand toward Hax and started to count seconds. Five. Revan reached for the box in front of the bomb. Four. He fumbled, nearly falling to the floor.

"Don't drop my loot, smuggler scum," said the burly leader.

Three. Revan gripped the box properly and picked it up. Two. He turned in place, still keeping his body between the bomb and Mark's crew. One. The box started to slip from his fingers and he had to step back not to drop it. On zero, Revan stomped on the metal tube, and the corridor exploded with a wave of deafening force. Even on this side of the trap, it sounded like somebody bottled thunder and then cracked that bottle over Tab's skull, and he barely managed to stay on his feet. He saw Revan jump up and get thrown up and above the pirates by the shockwave, his red energy shield flickering into place. It wouldn't last long if the enemy crew got their bearings back.

Tab pulled out his blaster, stepped around the corner, and started shooting at the prone bodies of Marks' crew. Behind him, only Hax wasn't groaning on the floor.

###

Dooku's light cruiser exited hyperspace on top of two ships docked with each other. It took a moment for the astromech droid on board to hack through the encryption, and the cabin filled with static and radio chatter.

"Seal the bulkheads in section—vent the damn—want those smugglers off—"

"—are sealing—ahead—"

"—me a plasma torch and a spacesuit—make sure that if they run, they'll tear—"

By this point the droids managed to fully get through the encryption.

"I'm welding the docking hatches together. Hax, get him a blowtorch."

Slight buzzing echoed in the speakers, and Dooku knew what to do. He stepped up the console and pressed the hailing button.

"Unknown vessels, this is Deva's Fall, under the command of Jedi Master Dooku. Stop all hostilities unless you want to be arrested."

The Jedi tensed and waited for a response, but he heard only crackling static, and barked commands. It sounded like one ship had boarded the other and both crews were in the melee.

"Let's try to get their attention. Captain, ready all our weapons and aim the turbolasers at them. Make sure you don't hit anything vital in case their shields give out."

The weapons spun to life in half a second, and the Jedi saw the change in status on the consoles in front of the pilots. Larger ships were simpler, he thought, because all functions would be separated into stations. You would have navigation stations, battle stations, pilot's and co-pilot's stations... His current ship was picked because it could move fast and pack a punch with only a dozen and a half crew members. Everything was automated.

"Acquire target," he said, and an astromech droid beeped affirmation. "Fire."

The pilot pressed a button and two bolt of contained plasma launched at the enemy ships. Normally, the art of space combat was the art of keeping close, because chugging bolts of superheated material at your opponent from any sort of distance wouldn't work. This was also why pursuing a faster vessel would normally be impossible. Dooku was quite sure that the smugglers were faster than his ship, and the pirates could be anywhere from the speed of a dead bantha and up to the speed of a lunging giant tiger from Kashyyk. It didn't matter, of course, because their opponents were currently immobile and docked with each other. He saw bolts slam into both the ships, and shields briefly shimmered.

He said, "One or both of you are violating galactic law by attacking another vessel. Stand down or we will destroy your engines."

The Jedi left it unmentioned that blowing up the engines of a ship that wasn't powered down was usually accompanied by hull breaches, power failures, and toxic fumes spilling into the ship. Losing only a third of your crew under such circumstances was considered lucky by most spacefaring folk.

The com crackled, and a man's voice sounded throughout the cabin. "Stop shooting. We are traders dealing in risky goods, and we got attacked by pirates. If you'd like to help, there is another hatch on the other side of their ship." He sounded like someone used to giving commands.

"What proof do we have that you didn't attack them first?"

There was something strange about the man's voice, and Dooku had to focus for a second before he pinpointed it. At this distance, he could feel the faintest whisper of Force coming from the pirate ship.

"Look, we are kind of busy right now. Let us finish or help us, and we'll happily answer your questions."

"I will not allow lives to be wasted—"

"Damn it, there are slaves here. He's going to murder everyone. We'll talk to you later."

"Master Jedi, they have cut the channel we have been listening on," said the captain.

"Oh, for the love of… Take us in, Captain," said Dooku. "Me and Larka will go take a look."

It took them three minutes to approach and dock. Dooku put on a helmet with an oxygen supply and switched on his lightsaber. The scanners read that there was enough pressure on the other side to breathe, but that could change any moment with people firing blasters and chugging grenades at each other. The docking sleeve pressurized between thatch doors and he and Larka crossed over, energy shields already on.

The place was dim, and Dooku could feel the dryness of the air on his skin. The floor wasn't even proper floor: it had black steel grates on it and under them he could see the inner plating of the hull.

"Pathetic," said Larka on their close-circuit radio.

"I agree," said Dooku. He heard muffled sounds of blaster fire through the door and motioned Larka to open it.

They came out behind a battle. The hall in front of them curved directly into the bridge of a pirate vessel, and a group of who appeared to be smugglers was pushing their way into it. All of them looked fairly ordinary for their trade: clothes made of worn leather or synthetics, blasters at their hips, unkempt hair, and everything like that. They also didn't stink the way the ship did. Two men, however, stood out. One was at the front of the battle, spinning, and dodging, and twisting his muscled body out of the way of the shots fired at him in a way that reminded Dooku of when he, still a boy, started his tutelage under Grandmaster Yoda. Another man was busy pinning down pirates who were shooting at the acrobatics-obsessed smuggler. That one was a lot more lithe and alert, as he looked back at Dooku the moment he and Larka entered the room.

"Revan, come, be reasonable," said the smaller man to the larger one. "We have freed the slaves, we'll put them somewhere they will learn to trust life again."

"No," said Revan.

Dooku saw the man's weapon—a serpentine vibrodagger with which he carved open any pirate he got close enough to. He reached into the Force and stretched his senses toward the man, but couldn't feel even the whisper of power he had managed to glean when they were approaching the ship. Pirates continued shooting from the bridge, and smugglers were shooting back, and a bolt whizzed past his head, splashing against the wall.

He looked at the star-shaped burn mark and said, "By the authority of the Jedi Council I order you to stop!"

He saw the pirates peeking out of the doorway to the bridge slow their suppressing fire for just a second, and then Revan sprung toward them, following a concussion grenade thrown by his friend. Dooku willed the Force to his feet and jumped forward, blasting off the floor at a low angle. He cleared ten feet when the grenade went off and he had to duck behind a smuggler for a second before continuing forward. By that point, the knife-wielder held in front of him a corpse with blood still pouring from its throat. A heavy laser whirred and the corpse shuddered as bolts hit it. Had these been ordinary wookie hunting bolts, the Raven would be dead, thought Dooku, as he rushed toward the two. It appeared that only two guards and the heavy-laser man had been on the bridge when the smuggler managed to get inside, and now only the one with the laser was left alive.

With his Knight's Speed, Dooku was almost able to reach the man when he turned and kicked the corpse at him, using the impulse to spin himself into a somersault that went over the last pirate's head. The Jedi dodged to the side and flung the corpse at a wall with a Force Push, but he could only watch as Revan landed behind the pirate and stabbed him to the back of his neck, the blade exiting from his forehead with a crack of breaking bone. The now dead pirate captain slid to the floor and the man looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time.

"You are late with your peace-keeping, Jedi," said Revan, wiping and sheathing his dagger. "You always are."

End of Chapter Notes

This first chapter turned out very different from the prologue which was reasonably cracky, but I'm happy with the way it's going. I may actually rewrite the prologue at some point to fit the tone of the story better. We'll see.

A reminder: this is pre-prequels right now. We'll get to the events of Phantom Menace in a while, but it's still a way off. I plan to run things in parallel to the main storyline, but Revan and Tab will mostly be interacting with adult characters. Anakin will get some love (because he's the 'Chosen One', of course), but I find the Obi Wan-Anakin chemistry to be the only good thing about the prequels, so he won't become Revan's full-time apprentice. Knocking some sense into Obi Wan, though, is another question altogether, and it will come up once they get into contact with the Jedi Council.

A side note. This story will be written in third person from the point of view of the protagonists (Revan, Tab, Dooku, Obi Wan, etc.). I find scenes written from Darth Sidious's perspective in other Star Wars fics annoying as hell. I don't think the Game of Thrones approach works here, because the Big Bad of the series, Darth Sidious, is just a psychopath completely lost in his hunger for power. There is a reason why Vader is the antagonist for most of the original trilogy. He is a tragic, controversial figure that a viewer can imagine themselves potentially becoming in similar circumstances. The Emperor is just pure evil, which makes him unrelatable.

If you like what I've got here, consider leaving feedback. As always, links to my other projects and stuff are in the profile.

Stay shiny and until next time.