Encampment

Handmaiden

We walked from the bunker. Ahead of us was a training circle. Men lounged, watching the two men that fought in full armor in the center. If I had been a Mandalorian I would have slapped them both. Their style was sloppy and their movements jerky.

The sergeant at the edge looked toward us. "This is not a zoo."

"The one on the left holds his hand too high on striking." Marai commented.

"And what does a puling Republic weakling know of that?"

Marai looked at him. "I am Marai Devos. I commanded part of the assault on this moon, and if I remember correctly, took this very fortress from the 4th Order."

They all looked at her. The sergeant stood with a fluid movement. "They were good men."

"Some of the best you had here. Cassus Fett left them to die."

He motioned, almost as if asking her if she wanted to dance. "Would you participate? Or will you merely watch and criticize?"

She looked at the men. The smallest was a full two meters tall, the largest a meter taller than she.

"I have not practiced in your way in decades."

"The rules are simple. No rest breaks, no weapons unless they are agreed to before hand. If you are Jedi no Jedi tricks. Simple."

She nodded, moving forward.

"Who will face her?" He asked. A forest of hands rose. He considered them, and pointed. "Davrel."

The man stood.

"Since you are out of practice to our ways, you may fight a recruit. No weapons. Hands and feet only."

She nodded.

He pointed at a box etched into the dirt to one side. "Until told to begin, stand there."

They squared off three and a half meters apart. "We have a match. Stations!" The warrior bowed. Marai returned it.

"Cha!" at the shout the man leaped into a run. Marai merely took a pace forward, and as he reached arm's length, she ducked, catching him around the waist, and flipping him up and over her. The man bounded back to his feet. Marai had moved so that they had almost traded places. She had her hands on her hips, considering him.

"Never assume an enemy is weak because they are small." She said. "A warrior's muscles slacken when he smiles."

The man moved forward, this time in a glide. There was a flurry of blows and blocks. Then suddenly the man was in the air again. He hit the ground, rolling to his feet. "Do not give in to anger. Uses it to fuel your arm, but with the calm of ice." He screamed and charged. Marai met him in another flurry. Then he was rolled across her hip, landing on his and she landed in the center of his chest, left hand pinning his shoulder, right hand raised as if to strike.

"Pa-cha!" She looked at the sergeant. Then moved up and away.

"The match goes to Devos. But she is only facing a recruit. A mere boy."

The young man she had bested stood. I could see his fury in his stance.

Marai stepped from the circle. "I hope to try another."

"In a few moments. Now, critiques?"

Every warrior spoke of what they had seen wrong. Almost all was directed at Davrel, and his fury was growing. The only real negative directed as Marai was that she wasn't aggressive enough.

"Who would stand in the circle against her this time?" He ignored Davrel's raised hand. "Kex."

The man Manda'lor had called the quartermaster was one of the shortest of them, but he was also as broad as his Manda'lor. "Training blades."

Marai was directed to a stand, and chose a blade. They had the weight and feel of a Mandalorian war blade, as I well knew. The Manda'lor have as much love of the fight as we Echani do.

Again they stood in their positions, and at the command, they went to engarde. For a long moment, there was stillness. Then the Mandalorian moved forward in a fast shuffle. Marai moved to the right, blade held out in her hand to the side. Then she seemed to decide, her left coming over to hold it as well.

Kex swung, shouting, and she parried him. There was a series of cuts too fast for the uninitiated to follow, and Kex leaped back, a stain of black on his armor. "Pa-cha!"

Marai lowered her blade then brought it back, checking it for damage before returning it to the rack. The sergeant gave her a grunt of approval. "I must call my ship. Perhaps later."

We walked away, and Marai took out her com link. "Atton?"

"Marai! Been worried. The orbital fighting has died down. That idiot Tobin opened a gundark's nest up there. They finally had to order it stopped from Onderon."

"How about the ship?"

"Still working. I'll have to take some systems offline including sensors and communications, so you won't be able to talk to us for a while. I know; you're crushed." I could picture his smile. "Will bring the com systems up at six hour intervals."

"Understood. Out."

The sunset, and the glorious moon that was Onderon rose. The two bodies are in actuality sister planets, both almost exactly the same size. Formed in one of those freak instances that planets sometimes go through. If they had been one mass, it would have been a gas giant. If they were farther apart, they would be separate worlds in different orbits. Instead they orbited each other in a dance 4 billion years old. Sometimes coming so close that their atmospheres merged.

The Mandalorians were a quiet people. I know they aren't that way all the time. They will enjoy a party as much as you or I. But we were a dampening influence. You don't show the face of pleasure or weakness to someone that might be your enemy later in life. The Echani know this.

Marai sat beside me, in the quiet corner we occupied. Bao-Dur was sullen, and I knew he was on the edge of fury. Too much had happened to him during the Mandalorian wars for him to be willing to relax around what used to be his enemies.

He knew he was sullen, and tried to lighten the mood. "You know General, you look like you were standing to close to the power generators."

"What do you mean?" She sipped from a bottle of tihaar. I had tasted it, and all I can say is it must be an acquired taste I had no interest in acquiring.

"You're almost glowing."

"It is the Force." She replied. "Those who draw it into themselves sometimes manifest it visually to the those sensitive to the Force."

"That explains it."

"What do you think of the situation now on Telos?"

"Bad." He said. "With Peragus destroyed, they will be without power before too long. It's worse because Czerka has their hook into it."

"Because of what they are doing."

He nodded staring at the fire. "The Republic government doesn't seem able to rein them in. If they would just let the Ithorians do what has to be done first, it could work out. But as long as they try to think of the corporate bottom line, Telos will remain dead."

"Perhaps what we did before leaving Citadel station will help." She told him of the files they had handed over to the local government. Of Lieutenant Grenn laughing in delight at ten years of hard prosecutions.

Bao-Dur sighed, shaking his head. "I'll believe it when I see it."

The night wore on, and Bao-Dur finally rolled over and went to sleep. But I couldn't bring myself to lie down, and Marai was deep in thought. I touched her on the shoulder. "You asked about my face."

"I understand it is something I need not know."

"No, this I feel I must tell you. I said that I honor the face of my mother. What I did not say was all of the Handmaidens are sisters in flesh as well. Including me."

"But you honor your mother's face." She replied contemplating it. "Then your mother was not theirs."

"Yes that is correct. I feel that I may trust you with this, so I will speak of it, if you wish to hear." She nodded. I sighed. "Though I share the blood of my father with them I was born of another. My father was Yusanis Rekavali Bai Echani."

"The General?" She looked at me with newfound respect. "I fought along side him in half a dozen campaigns. There was none better."

"Yusanis was one of the greatest Generals my world ever produced. When he left for that war, it was not lust for battle. His choice was for... a different reason.

"My father had met my mother a few years before. They found in each other a mate of body, movement and soul. When the war began, she went to fight. She felt it was her duty for other reasons. When she did, he went for the joy of being beside her, fighting the same enemies, their movement of blade and heart in the same rhythm."

"If your face is any indication, she was a very beautiful woman."

I looked away to hide my blush. "I never saw her face in truth. I was sent by my father to live with his family on Echana when I was still an infant. She never returned from that war. She died in the battle when Malachor V was shattered. Her body was never recovered.

"My father returned with his joy of battle washed away in his tears. He entered politics, where one's battles are fought with words instead of blades and guns. But I am told that the man that went to war, and the one I remember from when I was a child was different from the one that returned. He had emptiness within him. As if his heart had been ripped beating from his chest, and still he lived."

She poked the fire. "What happened after that?"

"He led the final defense of one of Echana's moon bases when Revan came against us. Even offered a chance for honorable surrender, he called upon his men to charge and they died to the last man. Revan herself assured that his body was returned for proper burial." I looked away. I could feel the tears in my eyes, and refused to show them to her.

"The problem is our society. The bonds and oaths are everything. A person that forswears an oath is never considered trustworthy again. But one that breaks a bond... That one is damned. My father went to war to be with the woman he loved. But she was not the one he had bonded with eight years before. My father violated his marriage bond to be with another, and I am the result of that. Both lives ruined. Mine to be lived in shame to show forever what happens when a bond is broken."

I took a ragged breath. This was harder than I thought. "Among the Echani, there is a saying. What your parents have done is carried in your blood. But what does that make me? My parents in their own ways were two stark warriors. They were both honorable people that died for what they believed in. Yet they both broke their oaths. He to his bond mate. They were both forsworn, so I must have that potential too. I have spent my entire life proving that I am a warrior, yet living down what they had done; that I am true to my oaths.

"When my sisters swore oaths to Atris, I was with them and swore the same oath. That I would never betray her wishes."

"You do what you must, as do we all." She said quietly. "I swore an oath to the Order, and it was they that said I had broken it. Did I?" She shrugged. "I do not want to believe that I did. But what if they were right? Am I now an abomination? Some thing they should hunt down and slay?"

I shook my head angrily. "I told you this for a reason. But before I go on, I ask that you never tell anyone of what has been said, or what must be said next."

"An oath easily given." She replied. "What you speak of to me is no one else's business."

I took another ragged breath. "When my father returned for the final time after the Mandalorian Wars, he moved as you do now. It was as if a vital part of him had been ripped away.

"He would not speak of what happened at Malachor. It was as if he wished to deny it and the only way to do so was never to speak of it. When I look upon you, I see the same thing, and in hearing of your suffering I see but a glimmer of what is my answer; the answer to a question that has dogged my heels throughout my life.

"I cannot believe that you are the monster that Atris paints you. I believe that like my father, you let your heart lead you into the slaughter, and both of you returned wounded. To look upon you, I feel the spirit of my father yet again."

"I appreciate that." She looked at me. "That you were willing to trust me enough to speak of it."

I waved it away, embarrassed. "Your words, both expressed, and in the duel with me speak the same, something I could never understand with Atris. I can understand your reason for not fighting her when you came to Telos, but it does not explain why she did not fight you. If you were what she said, only your death could have cleaned the stain of your honor from your name. I found that I can trust you, and I wished to explain how important that was to me."

"I know all of your other companions wonder why I am here. They may have their own explanations, but you deserve to know that it is not simple duty that made me hide aboard your ship. I wanted, no needed to be here with you. I had found part of my soul in you; touched by the words you gave to a callow young girl asking why the sky is blue.

"I have sworn an oath to Atris that I will not train as a Jedi, but my oath said nothing of learning to fight."

"I don't understand."

"Atris sees the entire Jedi order as flawed, like a seam in the matrix of a sword blade which makes it beautiful but weak. Something so fundamental that it cannot be corrected, merely melted down and started over."

"So you and your sisters..."

"We were to shield ourselves against the Force until the day she sees the last of the Jedi fall. Only then were we to be released from the oaths, only then could we learn from the only Jedi remaining."

She looked at me calmly. "You have tested me in your way, seen me fight against the Mandalorian, what do you think of me?"

"That is why we speak now. I watched your stance and your movements when you came to our Academy. I saw the differences between what they were before you spoke with Atris and what they were after. There are echoes as I said of my father. But there is something more. Strength of will like none I have ever seen and resilience that transcends the flesh.

"Among my people a duel is not just training. It is the closest two children can come to the bonds of later life. It is the closest the unmarried can ever come to the joys of matrimony. For those bonded to others, it is the only permissible way to show their inner selves to anyone other than their bond-mate.

I have learned so much from you, and yet I know there is still more that you can teach me. Every moment, every instant teaches me."

"As you teach me." She said with a chuckle. "A good teacher also learns from her students."

"I must refuse to accept Atris' characterization of you. She said that you stared into the heart of war, and that sight drove you mad. That is why you were cut off from the Force long before the Council stripped you. But I see that you made a choice, and live with the consequences of it. As my father and my mother did.

"I cannot be taught the ways of the Jedi by you. My oath forbids it. But in any other way, please, teach me. You have become more important to me than any person I have ever met.

"I want to be your shield arm, to share the joys and pain of battle as long as there are enemies to face. You are Shaki-Sheniri, War leader. You are one that it is an honor to serve, a pleasure to support, and worthy of the deaths of those that follow in your footsteps."

"No, I am just-"

"Do not tell me what I can see. Your stance, your manner, your way all shouts to the Echani spirit. Please." I dropped to one knee, looking at the ground. "Take my oath as your servant. Let me be by your side. Please."

"I cannot take an oath of servitude." I looked up stricken. "I have no servants, no serfs, no slaves. I may lead, but I am no one's master. But swear to me that by our blood, by our blades, by our lives, we shall be sisters not of flesh but of battle until battle is done, or we die, together. Swear that oath and I will answer it. Together. Not one above and one below or one ahead and one behind. But side by side."

I wanted to carol with joy! It was the oldest oath known to the Echani, the oath sworn by Echana herself to our planet when our people first came. "You honor me." I whispered. Then in that same whisper, I repeated the oath, and she took my hands, and repeated them to me.

By our blood.

By our blades.

By our lives.

Sisters not of flesh but of battle.

Until battle is done.

Or we die.

Together.

Trap

Visas

It was so easy. To those with sight, night is the time to sleep. To rest.

To one such as me, it was time to hunt.

I had stood, hidden by both foliage and the Force from the eyes of the two within the ship. When the sun set, they moved, but slower, then slower still. Finally I knew they slept. I walked to the hatch that led into one of the secret compartments, bridged the security system, and attached the lock breaker. It hummed, then the hatch hissed open. It was made to be silent. A customs officer could be sitting at the table in the mess hall, and not hear it. A man standing by the ramp would not hear it. To me it was a tocsin screaming in the night.

I climbed into the compartment, and closed the hatch. Then I reached up. My master had the plans of this ship. It had been a smuggling vessel longer than I had been alive, and the compartments were secret only if they did not know the Ebon Hawk by name.

I opened the inner hatch. Two of them; one slept behind me about five meters, the other five meters ahead. I stalked silently along the passageway, and stood over the man. He rolled in his sleep, and for a moment I thought he would awaken. I took the mister and sprayed him in the face. His eyes opened, and he was trying to stand and attack when it took affect. He fell, and I caught him, laying him back down. I dealt with the woman, and went into the mess hall. I set the misting bottle on the table along with the hypo sprays of antidote. I had no grudge against either of them, and my master had not ordered their deaths, so they were perfectly safe. From me.

This was where I would die, and I found that the most soothing feeling I'd had since my planet and people died. My master was worried about this woman. He would never admit it, for to admit weakness would spell his doom.

But he had needed me to find her for him. He needed his blind girl to seek out this menace, for he could not see her as I could with no eyes.

I moved the man into the same berthing area as the woman then I knelt on the soft tiles over the cold metal of the deck. She would be my master if we fought, this I knew. She would fight me, and I would give my all to defeat her. But in my heart I knew she would defeat me. She would kill me, and free me from this slavery called life.

So all I had to do was wait.

The Trap closes

Marai

I found myself watching the battle circle, idly playing with the com link. Atton was overdue for his call. I was worried, but not overly so.

Maybe he had forgotten to activate the com system again. Maybe... Maybe he had set it to receive. "Marai to Ebon Hawk." I called. No reply.

I repeated it. On the third, there was a click. The voice was female, a sloe eyed voice that spoke of soft pillows, and warmth in her arms. I was moving even before I heard the words. "They are here, Exile. But they cannot come to you. You must come for them. Soon. Before I do what I must." I felt a cold presence there, and thought of Kreia, of Atton in her hands.

The Handmaiden saw me, and ran to my side. We stalked through the camp, and grown Mandalorian warriors moved aside. The guard captain saw us, and there was a guide before we got to the gate. Our channel had not been encrypted, and Manda'lor had ordered it. There was a path shorter than we had trod the day before. We could be back to our ship in three hours instead of seven.

We moved through the jungle. Death surrounded by the givers of death, and all of us moving through the womb of death that is a jungle. There were no large animals in our path, and only that saved them from slaughter, for nothing would slow or stay us.

It felt like forever, but less than three hours later, I could look through the foliage at the bow of the ship. I knelt, scanning it. The interrupter plates were up, so the turrets were not active. No hum of the main guns activated. She might have been a model in a diorama for all the life I saw.

Then the ramp came down. They knew we were here.

"Stay here." I ordered the Mandalorians. I stepped from the brush, and waited. There was no purr of motor, not spinning of turrets. The chin gun was still in it's housing. I felt the Handmaiden move up behind me.

We stalked forward, up the ramp into the ship. I signaled, and she moved through the mess hall into the port berthing area. She came back as I looked at the mister bottle and the vials of antidote. She signaled. Two of ours. Looked asleep. Drugged.

I pointed at the bottle, and her eyes widened. Together we moved to the starboard berth. We came down the passageway, until we could look into the compartment.

She knelt there, meditating. There was a wrap around hood that covered her head from the bridge of her nose over the opalescent black of her waist length hair. Her bee-stung lips were full, inviting. She turned her head, and I could tell that she was watching me even through that thick cloth. Then she came to her feet. I motioned for the Handmaiden to wait, and stepped forward.

"At last." The woman whispered. That same voice that would put a man in mind of the gentler things two people can do. Then a beam of scarlet red light sprang from her hand. "Come give me what I need." She said louder.

Then she attacked. I blocked frantically. There was no thought of defense in her style. It was pure attack, and even if you struck around her blade of fiery light, it would by only by putting your life in peril.

I suddenly felt another presence, and I found myself trying to find it in the room as if it were a real person. The woman's attack faltered, and I struck out.

Revan had tried for years to teach me the Fybylka cut, the fly cutter in the Echani tongue. It is an insult to you enemy. A cut so light that it only broke the skin, leaving a mark to see because you are not worthy of dying quickly.

The second blade blocked her cut for a split second, even as the first sheared through the lightsaber behind the focusing lens.

She stopped as if she didn't believe it, then she grunted as I kicked her into the wall.

She collapsed bonelessly, and I stood over her. "As I foresaw. My weapon shattered, my life in your hands." She came to her knees with some effort then linked her hands behind her back, kneeling forward until her head was bare centimeters from the deck. "The end of my life as I have wished for so long. He wanted your life, but it is a good trade to give my life for yours."

I backed away. "I am not going to kill you."

She looked up, and I could hear the plea in her voice. "But you must! My death is fated on this day, and better at your hands even in sorrow than at his less gentle touch."

"I will not kill a helpless opponent."

Now it was no longer a plea. She was begging abjectly. "But you are superior as I felt. I am nothing before you and death is what I deserve. By the grace and mercy of all the gods, end this for me. I beg you."

Then I felt her master's displeasure. She shrieked like a damned soul, clutching at her throat.

I threw aside the sword, catching her hands. I could feel the black evil stench of something, and reached out as my hand boiled with light.

"If you want her come in person!" I shrieked. The evil faltered, then suddenly we were in the room alone. The young woman was draped like a corpse across my knees.

Atton took one look at her when he woke, then gently lifted the hood just an inch. For some reason, I got the image of a young boy flushed with puberty trying to look up a girl's skirt.

"All right, that explains it. She's a Miraluka. I'd only heard about them. I didn't even think there were any left in the Galaxy."

"What is a Miraluka?" I asked.

"Pretty secret race. Human or at least close enough to breed. Their race was born on a planet called Katharr. The sun is so brutal there that the entire race moved underground long before the Republic even existed. They live in caves, and the last four generations have been born completely without optic nerves. Some of them became Jedi when they were still common. They can do what someone called shadow see. They see the world without light and without eyes somehow.

"They are all pretty tough too, if this one is any indication. It must be hard as hell to kill one."

"What do you mean?"

"Well we have bruises in the chest and back from your kick, but those are just the most recent injuries. Both arms and legs have been broken at least once each. Slashes everywhere on her and some big ones on the abdomen that looks like she went three rounds with a food processor."

"I have never even heard of them. How rare are they?"

"Since their planet died? They are an endangered species."

"Their planet died?"

"Yeah. Katharr is about half way between Dantooine and Onderon along the mid rim. One week it's a thriving society of a billion and a half. A week later a ship comes in, and every Miraluka and animal native to the planet was dead."

An entire planet's people dead. I shivered. "Maybe she knows what happened."

"She should, after all it was her people." Atton looked down at her, and there was something. Pity warred with suspicion. "Maybe they saw it through the Force somehow, but she was the only one who fled it."

"You said that before. 'Shadow seeing' you called it. How could they see through the Force?"

"From what I heard, they claim to see on a higher plane than normal humans. They are said to be able to see all of the Force around them, and beyond them. Makes me nervous."

"I doubt it would be the same as an X-ray machine, Atton. Besides, it's not like others haven't seen your equipment before." He looked at me, then blushed. "Is she going to be all right?"

"If these scars are any indication, anything that didn't gut her is survivable."

"Let me know if her condition changes. I have to return to the Mandalorian encampment." I looked at that face. She should have been happy, surrounded by family and children, loved by someone. Instead, she was almost as scarred as that maniac aboard Harbinger. "I will not let anyone harm you again." I whispered.

The Handmaiden stood in the passageway. She is a threat to us."

"What would you have me do? Kill her out of hand?" I asked.

"No. Not even that we interrogate her. But her fighting style is Sith. She was trained by the enemy of all that wish to live free."

"Sister of battle, I fight to protect the weak and helpless. Enemy or not what does it say of me that I would strike her down when she is unarmed or unconscious?"

She shook her head. "It is understandable that you would give mercy, but we cannot give her too much. Her movements should be restricted. She should not walk free unescorted."

I looked at her, then called Atton. It only took a few minutes to rig up a portable shield generator and seal the door. "See, I can learn."

"Slowly." I looked at her but she gave me such a sweet and innocent look that I wanted to spank her. Then she dropped her eye in a slow wink. "But before we go perhaps you would be ready for the second tier?"

We went back to the cargo bay and closed the hatch. She stripped, but this time down to bare flesh. The average person is embarrassed in most societies by casual nudity. She stood as if clothes were merely for comfort in colder temperatures. "You are allowed a weapon. sword, dagger, stun baton. Would you have one?"

I shook my head. I stripped down as well, and we faced each other. She flowed toward me, and we fought. She had been holding back the first time, I could feel it; I would not have been able to match her if she had come at me in this way before.

Somewhere I found the speed to keep up with her. Again I was anticipating her moves, and reacting to them, but this time it was as if I were a split second off. Not far enough to land any blows, but enough that she was able to change her attack even as I reacted to it.

She backed away, and I paused. She merely stood there looking at me. "You are doing well, and you pick up this style with ease. However you are still telegraphing your parries. This you must learn to avoid. The ocean does not ask where the stone is as it crashes on the shore. It merely flows around when it does."

We went at it again, and this time I had no problems keeping up with her. That ended when it was her pinned with me on her back. She began to get dressed again.

"Why is it so important to you that I learn this style of the art?" I asked.

"As I said when we spoke of Atris, truth is in the battle. You have taught me the truth of your own soul. Now I must teach you the truth of mine."