Lorash scrambled to reach the cargo bay, wriggling up the small ladder in only a few seconds and then stepping out onto the lowered door as Eso came running past her. There were only three crates left in the hangar, as he'd gotten all the rest.
"Seia, get in here!" Eso shouted over the radio.
Their sith hadn't even ignited her lightsaber yet, but she watched the oncoming hooded figure like a hawk.
"Give me the girl, rebel scum, and perhaps I will let you live." It wasn't the voice Lorash remembered from the bar on Hutta. The hood fell back to reveal a young human man with a shaved head, dark red tattoos in strange lettering across the left half of his face. He seemed older and more experienced than the zabrak, but not by much. "I am Dren Organa, apprentice to Szorda Zul."
Lorash realized then that he probably hadn't realized what Seia was. She also recognized that name, however. Few would hear the name of the Alderaanian royal house and not recognize it. Master Vori had spent time guarding Senator Bail Organa, though that was several years before fleeing the destruction of the Jedi Order.
Dren was the man's nephew, who had been taken from his home as a very young child to join the Jedi Order, at Vori's own recommendation. Apparently the boy was not as dead as everyone on Alderaan believed. Lorash knew that her master would be crushed at the knowledge that the young padawan had fallen to the Dark Side, whatever joy the knowledge that he had survived the massacres brought him.
Seia's lips curved into a smile. "You have mistaken your situation, apprentice," she rasped. "How much is the girl worth to you?"
Lorash's heart started to pound, but she forced herself to stay calm. She grabbed her staff, praying Seia would only step aside and not turn to join the other sith's side.
"Alive and whole, she is worth more to me than your life, mercenary."
Apparently his grasp of sense was not honed enough to realize what he was dealing with when he looked at Seia. Lorash wasn't certain if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
"Seia!" Eso shouted over the comms. "Get to the ship!" The engines were powering up rapidly, but their pilot was waiting.
"Give her to me or I'll have them shoot your ship out of the sky, mercenary," Dren said, face given a fiendish cast by the glow of his lightsaber.
Lorash gripped her beskar staff tightly and advanced out of the cargo hold. "Let them go. I'm right here."
"Lorash, get back in the ship!" Eso shouted over the comms. "Any promise he makes is a lie!"
The moment his gaze flicked towards Lorash, Seia made her move. She cleared the distance between her and Dren in a single, Force-empowered leap, her lightsaber smashing into his parry with enough force to send him flying. The stunned shock on his face as he rolled brought a wicked, contorted smile to the female sith's face.
Seia gave him no time to collect himself. She advanced swiftly enough that the blaster fire from the remaining storm troopers had to avert, for fear of striking their own ally. Her next lightsaber blow swung at his feet, but she kicked high savagely the moment he parried, hitting him so hard in the ribs that he staggered despite the armor under his robes.
Every motion Seia made was a savage attack, hounding him at every turn. If it wasn't a lightsaber strike powerful enough to almost dislocate his shoulder when he parried, it was a battering from her fist or limbs. Here in plain view, it became obvious how relentlessly brutal Seia was as a combatant. Even if his lightsaber techniques were perfect, she would beat him into the ground and then to death, never allowing him the opportunity to gain the upper hand or even his balance. He was undoubtedly a powerful sith warrior, but Seia was the Dark Side unleashed from its chain.
Lorash had never so acutely realized how gentle the sith was actually being with her. The two ribs Seia had cracked on her barely seemed the price of admission for true battle with Seia.
He finally saw an opening and tried to take it, swinging straight at Seia's head. Unfortunately for him, the opening was intentional. Seia parried effortlessly, springing her trap. There was a flash and a scream from Dren. Lorash saw his lightsaber, and his hand, go flying. He collapsed onto the concrete floor of the hangar.
A powerful rifle shot hit Seia in the chest, from a stormtrooper sniper who had angled around and felt free enough to attack now that his leader was writhing on the ground in agony.
Seia fell, but drove her lightsaber through Dren's leg as she did so. No doubt she had been aiming for his torso.
The second ion cannon on their ship flared to life, extinguishing the sniper with a single blast. Then gatling laser whirled to life, suppressing the rest of the stormtroopers so they couldn't take a shot at anyone else without risking their own demise.
Lorash threw her staff back into the cargo bay and sprinted for Seia just as the sith extinguished her lightsaber. The jedi padawan hooked her arms under the sith's and dragged her half to her feet, stumbling along as fast as she could back to the ship with Seia's mostly dead weight.
The moment they were both in the bay, the ship lifted off with a roar of fire still coming from its weapons, the cargo bay's door closing as they rocketed out into the sky and shot upwards. "Never again!" Eso shouted over the comms.
Lorash forced them up the stairs so they wouldn't be struck by unsecured cargo containers during evasive maneuvers, well aware that Eso would have to get through the defense grid with the care and precision of someone tap dancing across a floor made mostly of razor blades. They made it as far as the kitchen before Seia collapsed completely again. The sith was still conscious and snarling, but clearly in a terrible pain from the burns of blaster fire.
The jedi padawan undid Seia's armor where it hampered view of her wounds, discarding pieces haphazardly. Lorash was no expert, but the injuries looked terrible. She'd only ever tried to heal skinned knees and a twisted ankle with the Force before, but they had no medic and no medical kit nearby. Seia would die without some kind of help.
She knelt over Seia, hands hovering over the worst of the blaster wounds. She tried to find her calm, reaching for the place where she became one with the Force. "There is no emotion, there is peace—"
"Not now!" Seia snarled. Her rage lashed out blindly in the Force, emotions battering into Lorash's calm.
"Stop fighting me, Seia! You're going to die if you don't trust me."
The rage only intensified, the darkness drowning all of Lorash's senses. Seia's pain was too intense now for the sith to react with anything short of will and fury.
"Seia, I need you! Please!" Lorash pleaded.
The sith gripped her wrist in a crushing hold suddenly, pulling Lorash's hands to touch the wound to her chest itself. When the jedi looked into beskar eyes, they still seemed dark, but focused instead of wild. "Then do what you have to do," she rasped.
Lorash nodded unsteadily and focused herself in her calm, using the words of the Jedi Code to channel her will. Each line took her to a deeper place of calm, even as Seia's ragged breathing grew worse and worse, the grip on Lorash's wrist more and more bruising.
"There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force."
By the time the padawan reached the last line, she could feel the Force flowing around her as she never had before. She focused on Seia, not on the darkness of the hurricane inside of her, but on the sith herself. There was something indescribably wonderful in the sith's life force, brilliant and strong despite suffering that should have broken her a thousand times over. Whatever Seia was, whatever she had done, she was still a life precious to the Force. It wasn't right that she die now, full of anger and hatred. There were seeds of redemption in her, even if they were buried so deep they were almost inaccessible.
A sudden vision flashed before her eyes. She was small, maybe ten or elven years old, bending over a dying Seia as the sith lay on the ground with a blaster shot through her abdomen. They were alone in the darkness of a hut. She could feel the Force around her like a blanket, reassuring and warm, as she placed red-skinned hands over the wound. There was a slow, warm glow, and the wound began to mend...
The skin and muscle beneath Lorash's fingers slowly went from tortured red and burned black to fragile, newly healed pink. Ragged breathing again became even.
Lorash realized her eyes were dripping tears when she slumped back, utterly drained. She couldn't express her profound gratitude for the Force's answer to her plea.
Seia's grip on Lorash's now bruised wrist eased. "You should have let me die," she said harshly, forcing herself up.
"Because it's what you would have done?" Lorash said. She barely felt the sting of Seia's words, still overwhelmed by the fact that she'd achieved any kind of deep connection with the Force despite the fears and anxieties that had plagued her endlessly since she lost contact with Vori.
The sith's left arm was no longer armored, so she ripped the sleeve free and held it out to Lorash. Her grey eyes had lost nothing of her intensity and she stayed silent for a long moment to weigh her words. They seemed to slip out of their own volition. "That was the exact sort of foolishness I would have expected of Yaikâ."
"Yaikâ?" Lorash said, hands closing around the fabric. She used it to wipe away her tears.
"My apprentice," Seia said quietly. She looked down at her scarred hands, clenching them into fists. "Stupid boy." She took in a sudden, sharp breath and looked up at Lorash. "Never do that again. You have yourself and your precious master to think of."
"Would you tell me about him?" the jedi padawan asked more gently. She could feel the pain of a terrible loss radiating from Seia. Whatever Sith were supposed to think of their apprentices, it was clear that she still felt his loss with the depth of an ocean.
"He's dead. What more is there to know?" The sith's words were bitter.
"Maybe if you talked about him, it would help."
Seia looked towards her room. "I am going to clean up. Eso will want to have words with us about what happened and I would prefer not to smell like charred meat for the duration of his rant."
"Seia, I saw you through his eyes," Lorash admitted. "He healed you just like I did."
"Later," the sith snarled harshly, vanishing into her room.
Lorash sighed and looked down at the crumpled sleeve in her hands. She'd never heard of a sith being able to heal before. How had an apprentice to a monster like Seia accessed the Force with such calm? There was more to this, and to the sith herself, than met her assumptions.
A huge lurch rocked the ship, a sign they'd jumped successfully to hyperspace, and she heard feet rapidly approaching the mess in the kitchen. "Lorash, are you alright?" Eso asked with concern.
"Fine," Lorash said, scrubbing away the last of the tears. "So is Seia. She went to clean up. She's in a mood."
Eso sighed. "Seia? In a mood? Never ." He held out a hand to help Lorash up off the floor. "You, uh, sure you're okay?"
"It's hard to explain."
The mirialian looked uncertain at that, but nodded. He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "I'm glad we, uh, all made it. I saw that fight. Seia's a beast and a half, but I was sure that shot downed her."
"It's amazing what she can walk off," Lorash said, offering him a small smile. "Are we set for Alderaan?"
"We are. The weapons will probably be delivered, uh, to a different world, but the ugnaughts had a contact there we can coordinate with," Eso said, taking a seat at the table. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I wasn't expecting another sith."
Lorash joined him, trying to ignore her exhaustion. "I wasn't expecting one named Dren Organa. My master took him to be trained at the Jedi Temple years ago. Everyone assumed he was dead, like the rest of the padawans."
"Well, I think he'll probably survive his, uh, wounds. Probably be pretty cranky about them, too." Eso sighed deeply, hazel eyes fluttering closed. "I thought sith only ever had one apprentice. I figured we'd, uh, only have the zabrak to worry about."
"I don't know," Lorash admitted. "We'll have to ask Seia."
"We have time now," their pilot said. "Go get cleaned up and, uh, get some rest, Lorash. You and Seia could both use it."