Chapter 3

Meetra smiled as she stretched out her bar feet on the cool grass of Dantooine, her 12 year old body taking up less then four feet of space. Atris lay next to her. Atris' head side by side to Meetra's her body pointing in the opposite direction. Both of them giggled as they gazed up at the night sky.

"Do you know witch one is the one you are from?" Atris asked.

Meetra shook her head. "I don't know where I am from. What about you? Do you know witch one you are from?"

"You see those two bright stars there?" she pointed at the sky and Meetra followed to the stars that Atris was pointing to.

"Yeah I see them."

"My world is somewhere between there, though it is to far away to see."

"Do you ever miss being there with your parents?"

Atris gave a large shake of her head. "No I hated living there, my dad was a bad man and he would hit me and my mom."

Meetra looked away from her friend and back at the stars above her. "When I become a Jedi I am going to protect everyone that I care about. And I am not going to let any harm come to any of them."

"And I will help you."

The two girls stared at each other and started giggling as they rolled around in the grass. The image melted and changed from open grass to enclosed metal. The large room was lined with Sith Holocrons and Atris stood in the middle holding Meetra's own lightsaber ready to fight her.

No. she tried to yell. I don't want to see this. She knew how this fight was going to end. Atris would be surprised by Meetra's sudden jump in skill and would be quickly over powered by Meetra.

Stop it! she screamed. She did not want to be here. In that moment when their lightsabers clashed she was not fighting her best and only friend, she was fighting her enemy and she wanted nothing more then to kill her. Meetra did not want to see the end. She could not bear to see the end and have to face the choice she had made.

Meetra gasped for air as she sprang up from her bunk. She was panting hard her cloths drenched in sweat. She took several breaths using the force to calm herself. She focused on the hum of the hyperdrive, letting the rhythm of the ship sooth her. It was only a dream she told herself. But she knew it was more then that. It was her conscience haunting her.

She was aboard the Ebon Hawk. A small smuggling vassal that she had taken as she fled the Peragus II mining facility. In that time she had come to believe that the ship was cursed. Since that day they had been shot down, crash landed twice, stolen out of impound, overrun by slavers, and hijacked by the Exchange. But in the end it was a good ship and she could not imagine having any other. For all the grief she had given it, it had always come through for her, and despite the pounding it had taken it still was faster then any ship out there.

Meetra sighed as she thought back to the past few months. She had done so many things in the past that she regretted. She had made so many mistakes and she feared that others would suffer for them. The greatest one of all was being blind to what was going on in front of her.

She had often wondered what she would do if she could go back and do things differently. Correcting all the mistakes that she had made. Her mind immediately flashed back to Korriban, inside the Sith tomb where she had been haunted by visions of her past. The vision of Malak had asked her if she could do it all over again if she would.

Without hesitation she had said yes. That every decision she had made had made her the person that she was now. But now she knew better. That she did not like the person that she had become. And it was because of those decisions that had lead to the fall of the Jedi, the destruction of worlds, and the near fall of the Republic.

But she had fixed all that hadn't she? She had stabilized the Republic. Killed the Sith that threatened it. She had even reestablished a new Jedi council lead by her friends. And they would bring peace to the galaxy again.

But that was not all true. She had not fixed everything. There was still her. As long as she was alive she was a wound in the force. A wound that would send out echo's across the galaxy, those echo's having effects that would forever affect the people that they touched. The Council had told her that it was from her that the Sith had learned their new abilities. To feed on the force and others as she did naturally. And that it was in her that they saw the death of the force.

Meetra shook her head slapping her face a few times before getting out of bead. It was still early ship time, but there was no longer a since of day and night now that the ship was almost completely empty of passengers. Meetra threw on her dark green clothes leaving her black robe next to her bead, and walked toward the cockpit her boots thudding on the metal deck.

There was a hum as the astromech droid weald past her giving her no notice as it went on its way to the engine room to do some sort of repair that never seemed finished. She let her hand brush on the Droid's disk shape head as it past by. A gesture of appreciation for all his hard work.

She entered the cockpit not surprised to see the man sitting in the pilot seat starring out at the hyperspace tunnel around them.

"Bad dreams again hu?" the man asked her.

"You know there are more than enough bunks available now, you don't have to stay up here all the time." she sat in the copilot seat and joined him at staring at the blue tunnel that engulfed them.

"I'm used to it. don't think I could sleep in a bead now even if I wanted to. Besides," he gave a playful shrug, "this way when something bad happens, like it always does, I can respond a lot quicker. You didn't answer my question."

"That's because I am avoiding it."

Atton smiled daring a glace at her. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"Just some bad dreams nothing to worry about." she brushed his offer away resting her chin in the palm of her hand.

"Ah you can't do that anymore Meetra. See now that you have trained me to use the force I can tell when you are lying."

"Oh so that is my fault to then is it?" Meetra meant it as a joke but the look on Atton's face said that he did not take it that way. Atton had become far more serious the past few weeks. She knew that part of that came from the training that she was giving him. Teaching him to control his emotions and not let them poor out like he had done for so many years.

No matter how hard she tried Meetra still could not imagine that Atton once was a solder for the Sith charged with hunting down and turning Jedi to the dark side, and if he could not turn them then he would kill them. But at the same time it all made since.

But it was more then that she knew. While he still put up the façade of wise cracks and jokes something deep inside him had hardened. Meetra knew that Atton loved her, and in another life she might have been able to love him back, but she knew that, after learning how she created attachments to those around her then feed off them forcing them to her will, there could never be anything more then friendship between them. Meetra thought that maybe Atton knew this as well and that knowledge might be the source of his change. But nether of them seemed to be in any hurry to talk about it so the subject simply hung between them.

"I was going to wake you up soon anyway." Atton said changing the subject. "If the Nav computer is right then we should be dropping out of hyperspace soon. It's nice I must say," he smiled as if already laughing at his own joke, "this whole using a Nava computer to navigate is a welcome change not having to rely on that beeping trash compacter whenever we need to go somewhere. This must be how all pilots feel."

Meetra smiled in spite of herself. "well it helps when you find out that the person who voice locked the Nav Computer was actually Revan and that the Assassin droid that we have had traveling with us was actually built by Revan and in a rare bout of luck not only could the droid mimic Revan's voice but also knew the password." Meetra sighed.

"How would have thought that all that time running around the galaxy and finding off all those Sith and bounty hunters, the entire time we were in Revan's old ship and the droids onboard were actually his."

"Mandalore knew. Not that he told anyone. And I guess Kreia did as well." Meetra sighed. It was true that blasted nav computer had caused more grief then she cared to imagine but that was over now. Now they could follow Revan's path and find where he had disappeared to.

"So what do you think we will find when we get there?" Atton asked changing the subject off of Kreia.

"With our luck, a fleet of heavily armed mandalorians that have been ordered to shoot on sight and will then peruse us until we have killed them all."

"Well then I guess you should have brought Mandalore along after all. Darn" he snapped his fingers. "because you know how much I loved having him on board standing in the map room staring down the hall at the back of my head with that lifeless stair of his helmet. Probably planning new ways to kill me before I even knew he was there…"

Meetra slowly turned her head giving Atton a worried and confused look. "You really do spend too much time up here alone."

"Yeah probably."

Atton pressed a few buttons on the consol and the blue tunnel turned into white lines and then into blackness and stars.

In front of them loomed a brown world that looked devoid of all life.

Atton gasped at the sight of it cringing away grasping at his chest in pain.

"What's wrong?" Meetra asked.

"You can't feel that? That world. There is nothing there it just feels dead."

Meetra stretched out with the force at the world before her. She could feel what Atton was talking about but for some reason it did not have the effect that she would have thought it would. It felt like how she had felt for all the years she had wondered in her exile. This feeling was nothing new, but there was more to it then that. Unlike herself and the world of Malachor V that were wounds in the force acting almost like a vacuum, this was simply nothing. There was nothing to feel at all.

"Statement: I can see that we have dropped out of hyperspace. Growing anticipation: Dose this mean that I will soon get the opportunity to blast organic meat bags, Master?" Meetra held back a cringe at the sound of the assassin droid that had snuck up on both of them while they were focused on the planet. The rusted red droid was doing his normal scan of the room with his timed head movements.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but the ship sensors aren't picking up any kind of reading on the surface." Atton stated. "no life signs, no power signatures, nothing."

"What kind of habitation is it? From here it looks like a desert world." Meetra leaned forward as if that would somehow allow her to see something more then she already could.

"That's what I am saying." at looked at her. "I'm not picking up anything. There is no kind of life on that world."

"A dead world. We will have to use the enviro suits then."

"Actually there seems to be a stable atmosphere down there. it's a little thin but we should be fine."

"How is that possible? If there are no planets to make oxygen how can their be an atmosphere?

"Reminiscent: Master, I do think that I may remember this place." they both turned in their seats to look at HK-47 waiting for him to continue. "Explanation: If my memory banks are correct then I came here before with Revan. He said that this world was once a Sith world. That a sith lord had performed some sort of ritual here that drained all the force from the world into himself giving the Sith ermines power. Chiding Statement: At least that is what Revan believed to be the case though his memory problems were worse than mine."

"Grate just what we need another Sith that can feed on worlds." Atton sighed.

"Could it have been Darth Nihilus that Revan was talking about?" Meetra asked the droid.

"Answer: No Master Recitation: Revan said that whoever did this did it a long time ago, long before the Mandalorian wars and even before the war with Exar Kun. Clarification: Revan thought that it might have been as long ago as sometime during the Grate Hyperspace wars."

"Do you know where Revan went after here?" Meetra asked.

"Disappointed Answer: Master I am sorry I do not know. It was on this world that Revan whipped my memory core. Recitation: when I reactivated some time later the Ebon Hawk was already back in Republic space. Recollection: it was then that I tried to access the Nava computer to follow after Revan when that annoying T3 unit stopped me. Recitation: Our fight left me broken and the ship was sent adrift into space. Statement: I do not know what transpired after that, the next thing I remember is you reactivating me, Condescending Statement: and learning that you were my new master, with few memories of what had happened before that point."

Meetra rolled her eyes. She had come to accept that the Assassin droid despised her along with every other being he came in contact with, with the exception of Revan. Whenever he talked about Revan he had no condescension for him, no spite, he spoke of him as an equal and for HK that was a high complement.

"Then go ahead and take us in Atton." Meetra put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Let's see if we can find out where he went after this place."

"Alright but I got a bad feeling about this."

The ship landed inside what once looked to be the city square. It was more then large enough for them to land but they did have to wonder around to find out anything of importance. Meetra had thrown on her black robe and had fastened her double bladed lightsaber to her belt. Atton still had on his leather jacket that he always wore but he wore a brown robe over it that also hid his lightsaber.

They descended the loading ramp Meetra and Atton in front the two droids in the back. They scanned the area around them expecting some sort of defense system to activate, or some other unseemly horror to appear. The Hawk's sensors didn't read anything but they were not going to take the chance.

"So where are we heading?" Atton asked after they had walked a ways down the street.

"I'm looking for some kind of library or hall of records that may have some kind of record of what happened here or where they had gone after. If we can piece together a path then maybe we can follow it just like Revan did."

"Not saying that we won't, but what if we can't?"

Meetra paused. She honestly did not know. She was flying blind as it was. She had no idea where they were even going, or what they would find when they got there. She only knew that Revan, the most powerful Jedi, thought that the threat was so grate that he dared not take anyone with him for fear of their safety. And fear that they might become a burden or weakness.

Meetra would have thought that silly not to long ago. That it was people that traveled with a person that gave them strength, only to find out that the strength that she got from others was the kind that she got from feeding off them, unintentionally or otherwise. It was for that reason that she had left all her friends behind. She no longer wanted to be bending her friends to her will. But most of all she no longer wanted to be responsible for what happened to those who followed her.