Part 6
"I won't make the greatest sacrifice. You can't predict where the outcome lies. You'll never take me alive--I'm alive!"
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The grove ruins, ominous in full daylight, were absolutely menacing under nothing but the cold light of the moon and stars. Broken columns and barely-recognizable palisades surrounding the small crumbling shrine in the center of a tiny clearing among the enclosing trees had a ghostly aura about them, making the scattered stone and tenaciously-standing structures seem alive with an otherworldly presence.
Kath hounds and other wildlife avoided the place, as would Bastila under any normal circumstances. But from what she now knew about the men out on the plains searching for Izaya, Bastila realized that there was no place she might not be driven to if it would mean escape.
The ruins were deep inside the ancient grove, a thick, confusing, and almost impassable sanctuary forest. The shrine within was near impossible to find without first knowing how; the only reason Bastila had suggested it.
Had she the choice, she would not have stayed very long in the desolate place. For Izaya, however, Aliid intended to take every precaution and as much time as he thought would ensure her safety.
After he'd started a tiny campfire - which he shielded against the wall to keep the light down - and made Izaya as comfortable as he could, Aliid started off on an unending patrol of the ruins' perimeter, not wanting to be caught off-guard for even a second. He had shucked his outer cloak, laying it over Izaya to help keep her warm and ostensibly to increase his mobility in the thick entwining branches of the surrounding trees. Observing him leave, Bastila hadn't been able to keep sight of him more than a few seconds after he stepped beyond the crumbling walls and into the dark embrace of the forest, so complete was his stealth.
From what Izaya had told her about the beasts hunting her, she only hoped Aliid was up to the task. For his part, he took to it with a vigorous determination.
As the pregnant woman slept intermittently, Bastila, nerve-frayingly awake, absently poked at the small fire with a stick, trying to occupy her mind and keep it from the horrors she'd learned from the Sith woman. Abruptly, she remembered something that made her smile wistfully.
Izaya's eyes cracked open. Wearily, she propped her head up on a hand and stared at Bastila. "You are still awake?" she asked.
Bastila nodded silently, her own gaze enraptured by the slowly smoldering end of her stick.
"Izaya, who is Aliid? You love him, don't you?"
A smile of her own came to Izaya's face. "Yes, I love him, and he loves me. He is the first one who ever touched me wanting to help." The smile left her face. "Bastila, I have told you that I destroy the Force within anyone who touches me with it, but that is not entirely true. It is partially true, in that there is a part of that person that is destroyed and they are no longer able to call upon the Force. But another part of them is embedded within me. For most who have touched me, this is a terrible connection to have, and it is the reason my father has in the past gone to such great lengths to kill anyone who does.
"With Aliid it is different. He found me shortly after those beasts were finished having their way with me, and in such compassion as I rarely see, immediately tried to help me. I tried to warn him not to, but the first thing he tried to do was calm me with the Force; a mistake. I was surprised by the feelings I felt through that connection, and I begged father not to kill him when he finally found me.
"Months later, when they returned to take my child, Aliid found me again, and he tried to stop them. Bless his soul, he did everything he could but it was not enough. They were too strong for him. Before they left us, they beat him, cut off his fingers, and left him at my feet."
Izaya paused, fixing Bastila with a look of helpless longing that was mirrored in her own heart. "Do you see? It was my turn to care for him, to show him the same kindness he had tried to show to me. That first time, he realized that he could not help me with his powers, so he instead tried to protect me from them." Tears filled her eyes. "He is the only man I have ever known who would do such a thing for me, and by the Force, I won't lose him."
To see such love and compassion existing amongst the Sith sent shock waves of shame through Bastila. She remembered all too well the ignorant, self-righteous judgments of any and all Sith she'd once fanatically clung to. How cruel and insensitive they seemed when confronted with the truth as she had come to know it.
To know such Sith as Izayus, Aliid, and Izaya existed gave Bastila hope. Hope that Calum would ever come to accept the truth of who and what he ultimately was; Sith.
A terrifying sense of wrongness woke Bastila.
The small campfire had burned down to little more than a few contentedly smoldering embers within the tiny rock-rimmed enclosure. Dawn had broken over the horizon, the few weak rays of sunlight providing only a murky half-light within the thick forest. Dewdrops collected over everything in the chill of the night gave the early morning air a crisp dampness that made Bastila's robes cling to her skin.
She sat up quietly and concentrated her attention on the woods surrounding her, trying to determine what had so unsettled her.
Again she heard it. A faint sound of movement, something straining against another, and then heavy breathing, all muffled by the carpet of dead leaves on the ground and the encompassing foliage of the trees.
Suddenly, a mortal scream cut the still dawn air, instantly waking the sleeping Izaya. It was abruptly choked off, and a clipped gurgle drifted through the branches back to them.
It could have meant either one of two things, one good, one bad, but Bastila did not want to have to wait to find out. She desperately began scanning the immediate area for something, anything that she could use as a weapon to defend herself and Izaya if need be. Rifling through the underbrush around the broken walls, she found only dead, rotting sticks and a profusion of ivy growing over the decaying stone.
More sounds reached her ears, more struggle. It grew increasingly distinct, as if it were coming closer, which Bastila had no doubt it was. She could make out individual cries of pain, grunts of exertion, blows being exchanged. She searched faster, trying to find a club, a gouge, a weapon of any kind. A thought finally occurred to her and she ripped off a few lengths of ivy.
She had started fashioning a makeshift garroting wire when a particularly painful grunt caught her attention. She heard something whistling through the air, land on the ground beside her. Her instinctual reaction was to expect a grenade, but it was nothing of the sort.
Bastila stared in mute shock at Aliid's prosthetic hand device lying broken on the ground.
Izaya screamed as three huge men suddenly emerged from the dark brush. They were mountainous hulks of men, with shoulders as broad as a Wookiee's and arms that seemed as thick around as Bastila's waist. In one massive fist, one of them held Aliid - bound at his wrists - by the neck and cast him to the ground on top of the remains of the campfire, where he screamed in pain as the hot coals seared his back. Izaya screamed again. The three men, each with long black hair, dark green eyes, and cruelly handsome faces, grinned in twisted lust at the sight of her terror.
Before she could react, one of the men grabbed Bastila by the hair, jerked her toward his face as if he were examining something as trivial as a melon at a produce stand. Her scalp stinging, Bastila could see only watery visions through the sudden agony.
The man pawed at her with a meaty hand before dropping to the ground, where she collapsed like a rag doll, trying to think through the pain. "An unexpected blessing, brethren," the man said, eying her lecherously. "We can have some entertainment with her while we wait for the mother's child."
The other two men hooted and Bastila knew only too well what sort of "entertainment" they had in mind.
"No!" Izaya screamed again. "You want me, take me! But let her go!" she pleaded to no avail.
One of the men grabbed her, hauled her upright by the shoulders and held her tightly in his muscled grip while a second slapped her forcibly with the back of his huge hand. She recoiled from the blow with blood running from her nose.
In the grip of an uncontrollable rage, his body pumping full of adrenaline, Aliid leaped up from the ground, wrapped his bound hands over the second man's neck and bit into his scalp with his teeth, trying to drag the man to the ground. Growling more in anger than pain, the monstrous man drove a massive elbow into Aliid's midsection, but the fingerless assassin tenaciously clung onto his choke hold as he managed to gnaw off a patch of his assailant's hair, eliciting a howl of pain.
A fist to the back of Aliid's head by the third man, the one who'd grabbed Bastila, knocked the wiry man out cold and he slid to the ground like a boned tach.
Two of the men started tearing viciously at Izaya's clothes while the third leaned a gigantic knee down on Bastila's stomach.
Bastila cast her eyes about desperately for something she could use to her advantage, even as purple spots began clouding her vision. Suddenly, her eye caught the glint of metal among the folds of Aliid's tunic. Her lightsabre!
She felt the man's weight on her stomach shift as he bent down to grope her and she seized the chance, driving her fist into his groin with all the force she could muster. He howled in sudden agony, his hold on her slipped, and for a brief moment she was free.
With every ounce of strength she possessed, Bastila lunged forward, going for Aliid's unconscious body, stretching her hand out and grasping for her lightsabre with a thin tendril of Force energy. Responding obediently, the double-hilted lightsabre flew toward her, rapidly closing the distance to her outstretched hand.
Suddenly, Bastila was cut down from behind. The weapon missed her waiting hand as the third man grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her face down into the ground. Her head rung loudly from the hard impact as Bastila felt herself pummeled by the man's huge fists. A tooth broke, she spat it out, getting a mouthful of dirt in the process.
She refused to accept what was happening. There had to be something she could do! The pessimistic part of her mind told her to stop struggling, that it would only get her hurt even more, that it would be better to endure whatever might come as a true Jedi should. But the other part of her mind, the part that wanted someday to return to her and Calum's wilderness home and live in peace, told her to fight with everything she had, in spite of her hopeless predicament.
Every time she had an opening, Bastila hit back; threw a fist, an elbow, a knee, a forehead. Everything she did seemed only to amuse her attacker, but still she kept at it, refusing to give in. Izaya's screams continued ringing in her ears as she battled desperately, the sounds permeating the fresh morning air with the frightful odor of despair, horror, and helpless suffering.
Seeming to have grown bored of battering her, the man on top of Bastila started was starting to rip at her clothes when the most astonishing thing happened.
The point of a green lightsabre suddenly burst through his forehead.
As his hulking frame suddenly fell like a ton of liquid duracrete on Bastila, she saw the most surprising of people hurriedly drag the heavy corpse from off her.
It was Master Vrook.
Shocked beyond belief, Bastila could only stare. He said nothing, just acknowledged her with a quick nod and handed her the familiar hilt of her lightsabre and she instantly knew exactly what to do. Painfully, she got to her feet and ignited the twin amber blades.
Instantly, the two armed Jedi caught the attention of the other men, who were viciously slapping Izaya as they held her down. Rising from their task, they both produced crimson sabres of their own and charged the Jedi in their midst.
Bastila went straight for the heart of her foe, abandoning everything in her Jedi training that demanded death only as a last resort; she wanted this man's blood. Her anger grew when he turned aside her blow, his skill an irritating obstacle to his death. Her rage was ice cold, she craved this monster's death with every fiber of her being.
Ultimately, she was not to be denied as she slid around his brutal counterattack and rammed her lightsabre up to its hilt in his stomach. To see the look on the animal's face as he realized, sickeningly too late, that his own mortality was a reality, was exhilarating. Bastila rejoiced as breath left his body with irrevocable finality.
She was standing over the dead body, panting while she tried to calm herself down, as she noted Vrook cutting off the arm of his opponent and ending the threat with a broad swipe across the beast's chest. Only gradually did she come to the realization that it was over. Izaya's cries had lessened to steady weeping, Aliid was stirring on the ground as he regained consciousness, the mechanical fingers still on one hand flexed experimentally as he groaned in pain.
Only after a long moment had passed did Bastila finally begin to move again. She clipped her lightsabre to her belt and bent down to help Aliid to his feet, wincing from the aching pain in her own body as she did so. Vrook had still said nothing to her; he was crouched over Izaya, laying his brown cloak over her nearly-naked body. Aliid was instantly by her side, holding her to his chest as she wept on his shoulder.
"Why?" was all Bastila could think to say to Vrook. She couldn't understand the Jedi Master's actions, had thought he'd abandoned her as a traitor to the Order.
"Vandar and I sensed a disturbance in the Force deep into the night," Vrook answered tonelessly, still not looking at her. "There were Sith on Dantooine, and their presence could not be permitted."
For a while, Bastila thought he would leave it at that, but then he spoke again, this time with a trace of remorse in his gravelly voice. "Sometimes, Padawan Bastila," he said, "prophecy outwits us, makes us think we are smart enough to avoid the disasters we see in its pages, and drives its sword into us while our backs are turned."
Bastila understood. Vrook didn't apologize; she doubted whether he even knew how. This was as close as he could come to saying he was sorry, that he'd been wrong. She wanted to cry with relief that he was, after all, still the wise Master she'd thought him to be.
Suddenly, Izaya gave another cry. Its unexpected sharpness struck a nerve, elicited a unique empathy in her that Bastila was at a loss to explain.
"What's wrong, Jastine?" Aliid asked, trying his best to comfort her.
Izaya gritted her teeth, drew a hissing breath as she shut her tear-streaked eyes in effort. "The child is coming," she finally wheezed.
Aliid looked helplessly up at Bastila and Vrook.
"We'll take her to the academy," Vrook assured him. "This is no place to deliver a child."
Odeth - its surface lacking the faintest vestige of green, only pale blue, slate gray, dull brown, and ashen white - was one of the singular most inhospitable planets Revan had ever visited. On account of its periodically shifting planetary climate, its population of indigenous species was one of the smallest in its part of the galaxy.
After the last failed colonization effort, ghost towns and half-finished cities were all Odeth had to offer in terms of civilization. A great many of them had been taken over by smugglers, mercenaries, and just about every other sort of criminal, cutthroat, and scum one could imagine. The only facility in the former colony that was still maintained to any sort of competency was the star port. It was Republic regulation to keep the star port operating and functional, but the miserable crews stranded on Odeth were invariably bought and sold within weeks of their assignment, and could be counted on to be just as corrupt as any other scumbag to be found on Odeth.
Revan could almost smell the alcohol on the breath of the dock officer over the comm as he first requested, then badgered and threatened the man into letting him land.
As he was bringing the ship into low orbit, something on the Hawk's sensor grid caught his eye.
"Now isn't that odd, HK," he casually remarked to the assassin droid who had planted himself firmly in the co-pilot's seat, despite the fact that Revan had unilaterally refused to allow him to help fly the ship.
"Statement: Please be specific, master, as to what you are referring, so I may render my input if required to do so."
Juhani leaned forward over his shoulder as he pointed to the monitor where was displayed a large energy signature.
"A Sith ship," Revan pronounced. He gestured to another readout. "Destroyer by the looks and size of it."
"What do you think it means?" Juhani asked.
Revan furrowed his brow. "I'm not sure yet. But I intend to find out."
Several minutes later, and after a harrying experience trying to land the bulky freighter, the Ebon Hawk touched down at what had to be the most dilapidated excuse for a dock he'd ever seen. The rough pad - which, thankfully, was a sturdy structure - was covered in rust and stains from every sort of engine fluid, fuel, and grease imaginable. A stagnant breeze brought the acrid smell of xerylthol diesel exhaust from a third-rate generator to Revan's nose.
Carefully controlling his demeanor, Revan strode confidently from the open cargo ramp, trailed by Juhani and HK-47, and casually paid off the dock officer with a pile of credit chips. Once the money had been forked over, the man was only too happy to take care of the ship while they went about their business. Another few credits bought Revan expert directions from the obviously juma-addicted Republic employee.
Revan chose his objectives carefully. He was primarily searching for leads, having nothing besides his jarred memory of this particular planet as being a probable location of Clan Izaya. And he knew a thing or two about places like this, where the law was nonexistent and vice was the currency of the realm, chief among them being that where there was booze, there was sure to be information if one knew how to go about asking. Therefore, his first destination was the local cantina.
The seedy establishment he soon found himself in made him thankful he had decided not to let himself and Juhani traipse around in their simple Jedi robes. Among such filth and brusqueness they would have stood out like flashing beacons. Even as they were, attired in matching sets of Echani fiber armor covered lightly with gray cloaks, he and Juhani still looked a little out of place for not being dirty enough.
Revan sat down on a vacant seat at the bar and slapped some credits chips - a substantial amount - on the counter. The tender, a scraggly hulk of a man, raised his bushy eyebrow at the money and, without making eye contact, asked, "What'll it be?"
"Juma, straight from the bottle," he requested.
The bartender huffed. "You sure? I could put a couple girls under you for this much."
The counter-top suddenly received a few new scratches from Juhani's claws.
"When I want a prostitute," Revan said icily, "I will inform you. Just the drink, please, or instead of credits you will be receiving severe head trauma."
With a look of indifference, the man shuffled off to take care of the rest of his clientèle and fetch the juma. Revan surreptitiously scanned the dimly-lit establishment, looking for familiar faces or anything else that might jog his memory. Nothing did. The faces meant nothing to him.
The bartender had brought his drink and he'd taken several sparing swallows when Juhani slightly nudged Revan's shoulder, catching his attention.
"What is it?" he whispered.
The Cathar gestured and Revan turned his eyes but not his head toward where she pointed. He saw a man sitting at a table in a far corner of the cantina, watching him.
"Well," he said, "it looks as if we might have a candidate for confidential informant."
As he started to get up, Juhani made to follow him.
"No, you stay here. I'll go alone."
"I am going with you," she insisted.
Revan shook his head. "I'll be better able to catch him by surprise if I'm alone. No, you stay here and guard my drink." He shrugged at her. "Chat with HK or acquire a taste for juma while I'm gone. Force knows you could use a distraction every once in a while, Juhani."
She scowled magnificently at his suggestion, but stayed put while he melted in with the rest of the cantina's customers, using the crowds to his advantage as he slowly advanced toward the silent observer. He turned his hood up to cover his face while he stalked, making like the rest of the people and keeping his eyes away from faces, his body language stiff and defensive as if he expected an attack to come out of nowhere at any instant. Even if his clothes were too clean to fit in perfectly with his surroundings, his manner more than made up for whatever conspicuousness he might otherwise have radiated.
The stranger was taken utterly by surprise when suddenly Revan's gloved hand seized his neatly-cut hair from behind and held the cold emitter of his lightsabre to his neck.
"Looking for me?" Revan growled into the observer's ear.
"It is you!" the stranger exclaimed in a whisper.
"And who would that be?"
"Lord Revan, forgive me. We all thought you long dead."
"Well, obviously that's not the case." Revan withdrew his hand and pulled a chair out for himself, sitting down beside the man.
Up close, he was able to get a better look at the stranger. The man nervously ran a hand through his disarranged mid-length brown hair. The hair framed a face that was both ordinary and elusively ethnic. Attentive blue eyes shone beneath a level brow and blunt forehead, his chin displayed the slightest hint of a graying beard.
"So," Revan began, wracking his mind in an effort to dredge up recollection, "what are you doing here?"
The stranger took a brief drag from his drink before answering. "When you were... killed, Malak's ascendancy brought about a greater rift than most people realize. Few people outside the Sith know what sort of Darth you were, Lord Revan, and so cannot understand why so many of us would feel such loyalty to you. There were a number of us who refused to serve under the new Darth and there was mutiny among the Sith ranks. At first, Malak was obsessed with crushing us under his heel, until, as they so often did, his priorities underwent a massive shift. Once the Jedi and their Battle Meditation had begun posing serious problems to his conquest of the galaxy, he forgot about those of us who escaped."
The man gestured. "Eventually, I hid Righteous Judgment and her crew here, out of the line of fire and under the Republic's nose."
Something in Revan's mind finally clicked. He suppressed the urge to shoot to his feet in surprise. "Jalek! Admiral Lorn Jalek!"
The man smiled. "So you do remember me. You were always good to those who served you well."
"Jalek, the war is over. Malak's dead."
Jalek nodded. "Yes, I know. But I have... other commitments, that keep me and the others here."
Revan leaned closer, sensing he had come to the right person. "Admiral, the reason I am here is I am in search of a renegade Force group, a bastion that has too long escaped my notice. I have reason to believe they may have been hiding on this planet, as you have been doing."
"Tell me how I may assist, Lord Revan."
"They call themselves Clan Izaya."
At the mention of the name, Jalek's expression darkened with distaste. In deliberate slowness, he set his drink down on the table. "Beasts!" he swore. "By the word of truth and honor, such abomination has no place among true Sith." He fixed Revan with an unreadable expression. "You were right never to employ their services."
"You know of them, then?"
Jalek glowered, his face confirming the question. "They are here, Revan. Every few weeks, one will show his face around here and pay outlandish sums for whores, which are never seen or heard from again. I don't know what they do in their remote sanctuary, but it is nothing you would ever have permitted. Forgive me for questioning you, but why in the name of the Axia do you wish to find them?"
Revan turned his face away, leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms as for a moment he was filled with a nearly-intolerable longing. Bastila's absence was like a hole in his heart, their separation a burden that threatened constantly to drag him down into the horrors of self-loathing and misplaced guilt.
The moment passed and Revan spoke to his once-loyal subordinate. "I need to destroy them."
"Truth, honor, respect." Jalek clapped a hand over his heart. "By your word, Lord Revan."
'Return to your ship and tell your men that your Lord Revan has returned," Revan ordered. "And then make ready for flight. I am going to need that ship."
At the command, Jalek's face paled and his demeanor changed entirely, fear taking predominance.
"Lord Revan, there is much you don't know," he protested, making it clear by his tone and his manner that the last thing he wanted to be doing was challenging his orders. "My men and I have all sworn allegiance to a new Sith."
Revan frowned in displeasure. Jalek wrung his hands anxiously.
"A Sith Empress rose up in your absence, Lord Revan. It was she who offered us escape from Malak's notice here, on this planet, if we were to swear allegiance to her rule. She commands the Three Axia, and demands that my ship and my crew remain here."
"Then it seems I must deal with this upstart," Revan hissed, angered by the obstruction of his mission. "In the meantime, you will carry out my orders and ready your ship, Commander Jalek."
Perspiring, Jalek bowed his head, accepting the rebuke. "Yes, my lord, I will do as you command."
As the man hurried off, Revan walked back over to Juhani and HK-47 at the bar. The Cathar visibly relaxed when she saw him approach; she'd been eying his juma bottle with suspicious glares and hissing intermittently in annoyance at the abrasive assassin droid she had for company. Revan tossed a few credit chips on the counter and snagged the bottle, bidding the pair to come.
As much for his own benefit as for hers, Revan forced a smile. "I didn't manage to get myself killed, now did I?"
She scoffed at his humor. "It is not your safety I am worried about. It is the safety of your wedding vow that concerns me."
Revan scowled at her own attempt at humor but didn't retort. There was already too much on his mind.
He was stowing the Echani armor back in its locker when Calum saw it again for the first time in six months. Still it engendered the same apprehension, the same vague loathing as it had the last time. He wasn't quite sure why he had kept it even after all this time, knowing the kinds of things it brought out in him, what it ultimately represented.
Still, he supposed, he was again Darth Revan. He should at least look the part.
Cautiously, reverently, as if he expected it to at any time lurch back and bite him, Calum lifted his old burnished red armor from the storage locker. More than anything else in recent days, it brought back memories, some recent, some not so much. He liked none of them, but bore them stoically, protected from the horror by a shield of necessity.
The heavy red plates still fit him like a glove, the dark folds of the mantle enveloped him like the illicit embrace of a secret lover. It was disturbing, yet comforting at the same time.
He had come home at last.
And as for the last piece of his horrible symbolism, he resolved to destroy it. But not yet. He still had need of it. Resolutely, Revan pulled it over over his face.
The Mask of Soulreaper had one last hand to play.
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End Part 6
The song quote is taken from the Disturbed song "I'm Alive" and is the property of David Draiman.