A/N: We're back!
Read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Less than two kilometres from Sand People territory, Tarrah found the first body.
Whoever he was, he'd obviously been cruising around the Dune Sea on a badly maintained swoop bike when his attacker had surprised him: there were no sign of defensive wounds, no blood or hair under the fingernails, just colossal bruises, pulverized bones, and an oozing, pulpy mess where the victim's head had once been. From what little Tarrah could learn through her equipment, this unlucky bastard had once been human, heavily intoxicated at the time of death, and judging by the contorted muscles and the veins still flooded with adrenaline, he'd died very slowly and very painfully.
But it wasn't until Tarrah stumbled upon his Hunting Lodge membership card that she belatedly realized that this was none other than Tannis Venn.
The luckless fool had obviously decided to regain some of his lost prestige by bringing down one of the deadliest bounty hunters in the galaxy… but judging by the blaster pistol lying in the dirt some distance from the crash site and the broken fingers on his right hand, he'd found too late that Vorn Dasraad was out of his league. Frankly, Venn would have fared better if he'd tried to use his droids against the target, but with the droids out of commission and his wife having long since left for greener pastures, he'd have had more luck throwing stones.
Tarrah quietly promised herself to tell the Hunting Lodge he'd died a hero's death, and strode on, the Force speeding her across the dunes.
A few kilometres away, she stumbled upon a small hillock of at least eleven corpses, all of them Tusken Raiders, their robes and bandages stained a deep crimson. Only one of them had been armed with a rifle, and that had been shattered into chunks of useless scrap before being forcibly inserted into the unfortunate gunman's eye sockets. The rest had been impaled on their own Gaffi Sticks, likely after a very thorough beating with them beforehand; each weapon was so deeply buried in the bodies of the victims, Tarrah wouldn't have been able to remove them even via the Force without completely tearing the corpses to shreds. Deciding that the Sand People had been disgraced enough in death, she moved on.
Not too far from that mass grave, she found the reason for the massacre: three dead Banthas, horribly butchered, stripped of gargantuan lengths of flesh and left to bleed out on the dunes. With their reverence for Banthas, the Sand People would have likely regarded it as not only an act of purest cruelty but also a sacrilege.
Tarrah followed the trail of blood for another five kilometres, lightsabre at the ready. Then, halfway along the blood trail, a landspeeder had been left parked amidst the rolling dunes, a tripod-legged assault droid silently patrolling the area around it. Of the owner, there was no sign, but Tarrah could tell even from here that the landspeeder had been modified to accommodate a very large driver, and the droid was a match for the model depicted in Hulas' briefing video. This could only belong to Vorn Dasraad.
Question was, what the hell was she supposed to do now? The blood trail from the slaughtered banthas led far off into the distance, and she could hardly follow without the risk of running headlong into Vorn if he opted to return from the opposite direction. And if he opted to return from a different angle, she'd miss him entirely. But she gave it some thought, and though the future wasn't easy to predict, it didn't take the insight of a Jedi Master to tell her that Vorn would be back here sooner or later – after all, the speeder was his only transport home. The only downside, of course, was that a) she'd be left cooking in the sun until he finally got back, and b) there was no way of knowing how badly the odds would be stacked against her.
So, as a professional scoundrel, it fell to her to stack the deck in her favour.
First, she donned the GenoHaradan stealth unit and slipped into invisibility. Then, she crept up behind Vorn's patrolling assault droid, knocked it out with a bolt of electricity, and went about slicing it as quickly as possible before it recovered; it took some careful backtracking, but she was eventually able to reprogram it to automatically attack any Gamorrean that arrived within range of its weaponry, leaving it to politely ignore anything else that appeared it its sights.
Then, for good measure, she also planted a gas mine on the landspeeder, ready to detonate the moment the engines ignited. Somewhat excessive, but these approaches had worked well enough in the past, and if this Vorn was formidable as Hulas claimed, then it was better to be safe than sorry.
Then, she lay down in the sand, flattening herself into a supine position across the dunes, and then began slowly burying herself. It didn't take too much effort: all she had to do was lie there and will the sands to cover her, layering herself with shovelful after shovelful until the searing heat of the sand itself could no longer be felt. Deep beneath the uppermost layers of sand, Tatooine's barren earth was cool and dark, and though any moisture had long since dried up along with the morning dew, it was shelter enough to shield her from the sun. With the aid of a rebreather mask and a little Jedi technique to protect her from the weight of the sand, she could stay down here for hours on end, until nightfall if need be – however long it took until Vorn returned to his speeder.
Hopefully, Jedi technique would help her preserve water as well, because she wasn't prepared to start recycling just yet.
Perhaps an hour went by in total silence. Then, somewhere in the distance, she heard an ear-splitting howl rippling out across the dunes – a sound that she instantly recognized as the death-scream of a Krayt Dragon – and knew at once that the Red Tusk had claimed his prize. Then, reaching out with the Force towards the source of the noise, she sensed a Gamorrean striding back across the sand towards her, perhaps half an hour away. Given that she hadn't sensed anything that close by in the last few minutes, the Dragon must have been chased that far before Vorn had finally killed it, either driven from its lair through trickery or simply frightened into a blind flight across the desert… which, of course, only raised even more questions about Vorn's technique.
One way or another, he was heading this way.
So, Tarrah waited. Then, with about ten minutes left on the clock, she slipped out of the dunes and back into the comforting haze of invisibility that the GenoHaradan stealth unit conferred, and then retreated to one of the nearby hills to watch the moment when her target hit the first of the traps.
Minutes later, Vorn Dasraad lumbered into view, a giant of a Gamorrean clad from head to toe in deep crimson battle armour almost as battle-scarred as his face. Unlike other Gamorrean thugs and mercenaries, he didn't wear the traditional M'uhk'gfa of welded plates of scrap metal, but a proper set of blast-proof armour custom-built for his gigantic frame, and his helmet was a Barbute-style war helm with a Y-shaped slit. No plasteel covering for the slit, though, meaning that he still had enough Gamorrean honour to give his opponents a clear shot at his face… if they could land a shot; this helmet was as much a challenge as it was a defence. In one colossal fist, he held a decidedly non-traditional axe large enough to shear through a cliff-face, and his belt was studded with dozens upon dozens of knives, throwing discs, bludgeons, grenades, land mines, and Force only knew what else.
More alarmingly, he was also carrying a large chunk of Krayt Dragon bone slung over one shoulder; in a drawstring pouch at his belt, a gleaming lump indicated that Vorn had also claimed the grand prize of a Krayt Dragon on his hunt.
Ten heart-stopping seconds went by as Vorn crossed the threshold into the speeder's airspace. Then, he set his trophies aside and eyed the waiting assault droid with a look of curiosity – no, suspicion. As far as Tarrah could tell, the droid seemed no different than it had when she'd arrived on the scene… but with dawning horror, she realized that exactly was the point: it hadn't greeted Vorn the way it should have. Instead, it was still in patrol mode. And that was all an observant hunter needed to know that something was amiss.
Without saying a word, Vorn produced a handheld remote from his belt, pressed a couple of buttons, and watched with satisfaction as the assault droid slumped forward, deactivated. A moment later, it was rebooted and clattering back to his side as if Tarrah's sabotage had never existed.
Damn, she thought mildly.
Then, Vorn inspected his speeder. Within seconds, he found the gas mine attached to the engine, and with a dexterity that his sausage-sized fingers shouldn't have been capable of, disarmed it in a matter of seconds.
Well, kriff.
"I know you're out there," he grunted, his voice low and thoughtful. "I know every circuit in this droid, and I've been in this business too long not to notice a clumsy mine placed on my speeder. If you thought this was gonna be that easy, you made a big mistake." He eyed the surrounding area with glittering eyes. "I know you're no sniper, otherwise you'd have done me already. You're right nearby if you got any brains; any killer with brain and spine sticks around to confirm the kill… so, I'll give you another chance. If you really want me dead, step out and we'll settle this here and now."
Tarrah considered staying hidden for a moment, maybe even using her stealth unit to try for a sneak attack on Vorn… but then thought better of this: if Vorn was well-prepared enough to have countered her attempts on his life so far, then the Gamorrean bastard would probably be ready for any attempts at literally stabbing him in the back. So, the only sensible move would be to settle this in single combat.
So, pausing only to take a deep breath she probably didn't need, she deactivated the stealth unit and stepped into view, lightsabre at the ready.
Vorn eyed her appraisingly. "So, you got enough spine to show yourself," he rumbled. "Good enough, I suppose. You're GenoHaradan, then? You aren't dressed like GenoHaradan. I don't know any GenoHaradan who dresses like Jedi or holds a Jedi weapon. Maybe that should tell you something, eh?"
Tarrah hesitated. She'd no idea how Vorn could have possibly figured this out, but she needed to respond, if only to throw him off the scent for a little while.
"You had to know this would happen sooner or later, Vorn," she said at last. "Someone would want to bring you to justice for your crimes, and here I am."
The Gamorrean just chuckled swinishly. "You don't know, do you? How could you? I've got my crimes, but you've got yours." In the shadows of his helm, he winked. "You don't know yet, little Ga'h'roogra. But you will."
By now, Tarrah had quite an impressive library of alien languages under her belt, but this word briefly overwhelmed her: Ga'h'roogra was more slang than official word, and it took her a while to put together the root words long enough to make sense of it. But it wasn't until she realized that most Gamorreans didn't have an official word in their lexicon that accurately corresponded to "puppet" that she finally understood Vorn's meaning – partially, at any rate.
"If you surrender now," she said at last, "I'll make it easier on you."
Vorn just tutted disapprovingly. "You know as well as I do the GenoHaradan don't want you to bother with taking me alive, and you're only asking 'cause you want to know what I mean. But you know I won't tell, just as I know you won't give up. There's only one way to settle this, Honoured Matron: let's have some fun."
And for a moment, Tarrah sensed the deep, pulsating monstrosity at the heart of Vorn's being, the sure signs that the Dark Side had tainted him very early on, left its oozing, roiling corruption in place of potential. This wasn't the kind of thing any ordinary traumatic past could have wrought, but a pure, undiluted draught of the Dark Side's poison distilled into Vorn Dasraad's heart: it didn't rule him as it did so many Sith, but it had changed him forever, made him into a twisted, sadistic parody of what he might have been. For the briefest of moments, she saw the kind of Gamorrean that Vorn could have been had he not touched the Dark Side. And for the briefest of moments, she couldn't help but pity him.
Then he raised his axe and attacked, and the next thing she knew, all pity was gone.
Tarrah barely had enough to ignite her lightsabre before Vorn flung himself at her in a hurricane of deftly-calculated swings of his axe; to the untrained eye, it would have looked like a mad, undisciplined flurry of attacks, but in reality, each swing of the axe was a matter of tactics: here, a feint meant to focus her defences in the wrong direction, there a meteoric strike to drive her back, a brisk chop at knee-level that would leave her open to a sucker-punch to the face, a handful of sand to the eyes that left her vulnerable to a swing for the belly – there was brutal artistry and cunning in every strike, and all Tarrah could do was try to keep up with it.
At last, she fell back on the Force, drawing upon its power to predict the giant bounty hunter's actions against her better judgement, and in that moment, Vorn's assault droid roared to life.
Next thing she knew, the droid was pelting her with an uninterrupted barrage from every single weapon it had at its disposal: blaster cannons, flamethrowers, sonic grenade launchers, gas vents – all of them operating at once… and as bad luck would have it, droids couldn't be predicted through the Force.
All she could do was try to block Vorn with her lightsabre and block the incoming blaster fire with one hand, even as she darted frantically away from everything else, trying desperately to lead the hunter away from the droid.
For the next few desperate seconds, she just managed to stay out of reach, breath held tightly to escape the gas, her senses braced against the incoming sonic shockwaves, feet carrying her in a frantic dance just ahead of the roaring flames. Then, as the droid poised to reload, she lashed out with the Force, sending it crashing against the landspeeder's flank and tumbling helplessly over the hood, to land in a tangled heap of metallic limbs amidst the dunes. Buzzing furiously, its shields offline and its systems in disarray, it struggled to right itself, and in that moment, Tarrah flung herself at Vorn…
…just in time for a fist the size of a dinner plate to thunder in from the right and catch her square in the face. Only a last-second flex of the Force was enough to save her: had she been a nanosecond off the mark, the punch would have broken her neck, cracked her head open, and probably reduced her brain to a heap of well-tenderized jelly. As it was, the impact broke Tarrah's nose with a loud, meaty crunch, split her upper lip open, cracked something particularly fragile in her orbital ridge, and sent a white-holt bolt of pain shooting through her crown like a nail being driven into her skull.
Dazed, she wobbled on her feet for a few disoriented seconds, before crashing backwards into the sands, landing flat on her ass. For a split second, she was five years old again, skinned knees and all, blearily staring up at a particularly vicious-looking nine-year-old and bleating "you hit me" through a heavy nosebleed.
Then, past a haze of pain and disorientation, she saw Vorn raising his axe to strike, and suddenly reality came flooding back into place.
A second later, she was on her feet, lightsabre at the ready just in time to lock blades with the oncoming axe; Vorn roared and pressed the attack, pushing back at her with every cord of muscle in his hulking arms, trying to force her lightsabre away just long enough to land a killer blow. Unfortunately for him, Tarrah wasn't as easily dazed as his previous targets, and by then she was already healing herself through the Force. Bracing herself with all the power she could muster, she locked her feet in place and pushed right back at him, daring Vorn to struggle even harder and tire himself out.
Instead, Vorn reared back and brought his colossal skull rocketing in like the head of a flail, trying to headbutt her into submission, but this time, Tarrah was ready for the surprise attack; once again, she blocked the blow with the Force, leaving the Gamorrean jolting backwards as if he'd just tried to headbutt a brick wall, and in that split second of vulnerability, she hit him head-on with a wave of invisible energy that sent Vorn tumbling down the dune like a boulder.
Diving after him, Tarrah almost had a shot at his undefended throat, but as he rose to one knee, his hand shot to his belt with astonishing speed and came back with a cluster of throwing knives clutched between his fingers. Tarrah saw the storm of blades hurtling towards her and swatted them aside with the Force, but that distraction was all Vorn needed to lunge out of her path and ready a counterattack.
For twenty more seconds, the two of them lurched back and forth across the dunes, trading blows – a swing of a blade here, a bone-splintering jab of the fist there – and locked in stalemate: Vorn too strong and too stubborn to let anything short of a direct hit slow him down, Tarrah so alive with the Force that nothing seemed capable of slowing her down or even touching her, not even the few hooks and jabs that got past her defences.
Then, just when it seemed the clash couldn't go on a moment longer, the battered assault droid finally managed to reinitialize its systems and rose from the dunes less than four metres from Vorn.
Seeing the droid's flamethrower rattling to life once again, Tarrah reached out with all the Force she could command, seizing Vorn in an invisible fist and catapulting him to her left – directly into the path of the flamethrower.
Vorn had just enough time to let out a grunt of alarm before the jet of flame caught him square in the chest, instantly setting him ablaze from head to toe. Howling in pain, the Red Tusk lurched away, trying to pat himself out, to no avail. If he'd been thinking clearly, he would have used the sand to extinguish himself, but he was obviously in too much pain: even with his armour, the heat must have been agonizing – and his helm left enough of his eyes exposed anyway, which couldn't have helped.
The droid let out a shriek of alarm and belatedly shut down its flamethrower. As an afterthought, it produced a fire-extinguisher – only for Tarrah to hit it with all the electricity she could muster; with its shield long gone, the lightning instantly shot through the assault droid's body, reducing its internal mechanisms to a fused mass of molten wiring and useless processors. Suddenly no more than an elaborate heap of scrap metal, the droid sank to the ground with a thick plume of smoke billowing from under its chassis, beyond all hope of repair.
Still ablaze, Vorn let out a bellow louder than a Rancor and charged, all technique lost in a haze of pain and rage, axe wildly threshing the air in front of him, his fists a maelstrom of destructive power that, for all their might, couldn't hit a damn thing. Tarrah couldn't tell if the fire was already burning away his eyes or if he was just too angry to focus, and frankly, it didn't matter. All she had to do was stay out of reach, dance just ahead of the maelstrom, and wait.
At last, the frenzied bounty hunter raised his axe and brought it crashing down on where he thought his opponent was, and in that moment, Tarrah darted in from the left and brought her lightsabre around in a swift, deadly arc – slicing neatly through the giant Gamorrean's neck right between armour and helm.
Instantly, the desert went quiet as Vorn Dasraad's head tumbled to the sand, his berserk howling silenced at last. Four seconds later, the rest of the Red Tusk's body followed, crashing to the dunes with a muffled thunderclap, both body and head instantly smothered by the cloud of sand that followed the impact.
A long, echoing silence followed, broken only by the distant cries of desert beasts, as Tarrah sat down heavily in the sand next to Vorn's still-smouldering corpse.
Now that the battle was over and the power of the Force was no longer needed, her body was already feeling the effects of so much exertion in such a short space of time. She was tired, sunburned, out of breath, dotted with bruises that her Force Healing hadn't gotten to, she probably wasn't going to be moving for several minutes, and she didn't exactly feel anything positive about what she'd just done – or anything at all apart from weary relief… and yet…
She'd done it.
The Red Tusk was dead.
Her mission had been a success.
More importantly, she was now more than halfway to the finish line: Hulas had told her that there were three intermediary tasks she needed to complete to gain full GenoHaradan membership, and she'd just completed the second.
One more assassination. Just one more dirty job, and the secret guild would be on her side: open season would be declared on the Sith, and if the GenoHaradan were as good as Hulas claimed, then it might just be enough to help tip the balance in the Republic's favour. They still needed to find the remaining Star Maps, destroy the Star Forge, and kill Malak once and for all, but having the GenoHaradan on their side would make that half of the equation significantly easier. Fewer battles, less bloodshed, more reliable intel, more decisive victories, maybe even an end to civilian casualties altogether if they played their cards right.
All she had to do was kill just one more person.
Then why this rotten feeling? Why was it that, the more she thought about the situation, the more she felt as if she was slipping closer to a precipice?
And it wasn't due to the Dark Side – well, not just due to the Dark Side. The temptation was there, just on the periphery of her mind, unconsciously offering all the freedom from fear and pain it usually promised, but far subtler and much easier to overlook. But she could keep it at bay: as long as Juhani was waiting for her back on the Ebon Hawk, as long as she told herself time and again that she could always find self-control in the company of her friends and comrades, she could at least find sanctuary from the Dark Side
So why did she feel as if everything was about to go horribly wrong?
Tarrah shook her head. She'd needed to focus on the matter at hand, leave the vague premonitions of doom until she could recognize a valid source, and right now, that meant getting back to the Ebon Hawk with the GenoHaradan's latest prize in hand.
Staggering to her feet, she made for the parked landspeeder. It didn't take her too long to find the commlink that Hulas had told her about: it was a ridiculous-looking piece of equipment the size of an anvil, weighed down with all the hardware necessary for encrypting transmissions and broadcasting around the galaxy without being detected. Thankfully, it was still functional… and more importantly, so was Vorn's speeder, despite the battering it had taken over the course of the battle. Just as well, otherwise, Tarrah wouldn't have had the energy to hoof it back across the desert.
It took only a few minutes to hotwire the speeder's ignition, and after that, she was in motion once again, jetting back across the dunes towards Anchorhead.
This time, she didn't even make it as far as the couch: as soon as she'd made it up the Ebon Hawk's ramp, Tarrah stumbled, wobbled, and then tripped over a stray Gizka – and would have crashed facefirst to the deck if it Juhani hadn't been there to catch her.
Even so, Tarrah didn't remain conscious for much longer after that. Even if battle and travel hadn't left her fatigued to the point of collapse, she was also still aching from all the bruises she hadn't had time to heal, and though the worst of her other injuries were gone, the lingering pain they'd left had yet to fade… one of the reasons why the Jedi masters had recommended not using the power as a crutch, no doubt. As such, she was out cold not long after landing in Juhani's arms.
When she awoke, she was lying in bed, her tunic unfastened and her naked back exposed to the open air. Juhani was daubing her bruises with kolto, looking down at the purple-and-blue blemishes dotting her skin with undisguised concern.
"What did you do to yourself?" she demanded.
"Just… a tiny bit of trouble with the Sand People."
"You know as well as I do that Sand People would not give you this much trouble, not after the help you gave them. Whatever happened to you was something far worse, Tarrah."
"Well, if you know, feel free to tell me all about it. Right now, I'd be happy just to know the number of the speeder that ran me over."
"This isn't something that you can dismiss with humour! You're very badly bruised, you're dehydrated, you're on the verge of sunstroke, and you've been pushing your body further than can be healthy even for a Jedi." Juhani took a deep breath, before adding, "And I don't know what happened to you out there, but this isn't the first time you've left the ship on your own and returned in misery."
"Look, just because I came back a little worn-out doesn't mean that I'm in misery."
"Tarrah, ever since we made our way back to Manaan from Dantooine, something has been troubling you. You have been returning to this ship exhausted, worn-out, and desperate to share your troubles with me; do not pretend that nothing's wrong, because after our last two conversations, I wouldn't believe a word of it even if you weren't covered in bruises."
"I imagine it might have something to do with that appointment you were so anxious to keep when we first met," said Jolee.
Juhani and Tarrah spun around in astonishment (or at least tried to, in Tarrah's case); they hadn't even heard the old man enter.
"You've been showing the same signs of doubt and anxiety ever since then," he continued. "And you've been making the same disappearing acts as well: Manaan, Tatooine, Manaan again, Manaan again… and as your friend here noticed, you've always gotten back a little worse for wear every time. I can't tell exactly what you were up to out there, but I'd guess it'd be something you think will benefit this mission to the Star Forge… though I'm at a loss as to how you think that'll work if you're so worried and guilt-ridden about it."
"I'm sorry," snapped Tarrah, "am I allowed to have private conversations anymore, or can anyone butt in?"
Jolee rolled his eyes. "Please; you act as if people aboard aren't already spying on you. Bastila's listening to this conversation from the corridor, Carth will probably be eavesdropping over the commlink, and that adopted little sister of yours is likely snooping around with a stealth unit on and her ears at the ready for any juicy gossip you might let slip."
There was a pause, as Jolee's audience digested this.
"What? Why are you looking so shocked? Come on, Tarrah, don't tell me you didn't already know about all that. I mean, Bastila doesn't want her first student to turn to the Dark Side on her watch-"
"And Carth's been paranoid about me ever since we met, I know!" Tarrah grumbled. "I know all of that, but… what the hell do you mean, 'adopted little sister'? Who are you talking about?"
"Blue, short, spunky – ring any bells?"
"Mission?! You're calling Mission my adopted little sister?"
"Well, I can hardly call Zaalbar that, can I? Besides, she's practically arranging for the new family holos already."
"Look, Mission does not treat me like that, I don't treat her like that, so…" Tarrah hesitated, and the let out a low groan of exasperation. "And you've distracted me from talking about the lack of privacy!" she grumbled.
"Hey, you can get grouchy about open doorways any time you like, kiddo. Just remember that concerned friends cost nothing. But I'm pretty sure your sweetheart was already about to talk about that."
"Thank you, Jolee," said Juhani smoothly. "Now, as I was saying…"
Now it was the Cathar's turn to pause in mid-sentence, as she belatedly realized what the old Jedi had just said. "Sweethearts?" she echoed. To her credit, she didn't look flustered or even especially upset, but she did seem a tad surprised. "Sweethearts?"
"That's another thing that everyone else aboard already knows about," Jolee chuckled. "I'll leave you to it for now, but remember what I said, Tarrah: if whatever you're planning is really for the best, then why is it only making you feel worse? Reflect on that the next time you feel like listening to an old man ramble." He grinned impishly. "See you later, lovebirds."
And with that, he was gone, slipping back into the comforting shadows of the Ebon Hawk's corridors before anyone could so much as ask him another question.
In his absence, Juhani turned to her and whispered, "You have to admit, he does have a point: none of this seems to be doing you any good. Why continue with it?"
Tarrah wanted to lie, or at the very least to dismiss the whole matter as flippantly as possible, but something about the look of genuine concern in Juhani's eyes seemed to eat away at Tarrah's defences. She couldn't tell the whole truth just yet, but she could at least give her some idea of it, surely… and if Hulas had somehow managed to sneak a listening device aboard the ship, then there wasn't much she could do about that apart from keep the home truths to an appropriate minimum.
"Because it could mean the difference between victory and defeat for the Republic," said Tarrah at last. "Because we need every advantage that we can get… and because nobody else has to be deal with the cost of it but me. Isn't that enough?"
"No. It's not enough for me and it's certainly not enough for you: the secrecy of this is only making it worse for you, Tarrah. Why not let me in? I can help you, remember?"
And in that moment, Tarrah wanted nothing more than to confess, to tell her everything about the GenoHaradan and to hell with what Hulas wanted, to be as honest with Juhani as she'd been with her. But then reality set back in, and she knew she had to maintain at least some of the secrecy.
"I know you can," she said at last. "It's just that… you see, at the appointment that Jolee was talking about, I was warned that if I ever told anyone about the specifics of the mission or the… entity behind it, I'd never see them ever again, and any chance for the Republic to benefit would be lost forever."
"And how do you know they're telling the truth?"
"I've read them through the Force: I know that most of what I've been told is true, and I know that their interests align with the Republic's, so I can trust them… mostly."
Juhani's catlike eyes narrowed. "Mostly," she echoed.
"Let's just say that their contact is very good at keeping his emotions hidden. And yes, I know that their mission takes a lot out of me, but that's why I don't involve anyone else: accepting this job was my decision, Juhani. Nobody else should have to suffer for it."
Juhani almost looked as if she wanted to make a few sarcastic remarks of her own, but then thought better of it. Instead, she sighed and asked, "Just how long must you suffer for it, then?"
"Just one more mission. That's all. Then we can focus on the mission to the Star Forge and never have to deal with this sort of thing ever again."
"And being lovebirds?"
This briefly startled Tarrah into silence. She remembered Juhani kissing her on the cheek while helping her into bed back on Manaan, and she'd been comfortable with Juhani touching her naked back – more comfortable than she felt around most doctors, in fact. And yes, she had to admit that she took solace in Juhani's company, more than she did with anyone else on the ship. And yes, she had to admit that she'd found her thoughts straying towards Juhani more often than not, sometimes imagining her wearing something a little more revealing than Jedi robes, sometimes imagining those graceful hands gliding across her face, down her neck, helping Tarrah out of her robes and-
Suddenly, Tarrah found herself sitting up in bed, allowing her robes to fall back over as she stood and took a hesitant step towards Juhani. Was it her imagination, or had Juhani just taken a step towards her as well? Were the two of them drawing ever-so-slightly closer? Was it Juhani who was tiptoeing closer, or was it Tarrah? Were they about to try and explain their feelings for each other… or were they about to act on them?
Damn you, old man, Tarrah cursed silently. You just had to make us start thinking about this, didn't you?
She reached out towards Juhani, dimly aware that Juhani was reaching out to take her hand in hers-
And in that moment, there was loud thud from the corridor outside, followed by two female voices whispering obscenities at each other, one in impeccably accented Basic, the other in Twi'leki.
A moment later, two familiar figures tumbled into view, crashing hard against the bulkhead as they struggled to shove each other out of the way, one of them half-hidden by a faltering stealth field. There was an embarrassed pause, as Bastila and Mission belatedly realized that the couple they'd been spying on could now see them.
Mission recovered first, muttering a sheepish "Hi Tarrah!" before reactivating her stealth field and disappearing back down the corridor, leaving Bastila wilting in the proverbial spotlight.
For a moment or so, Bastila could only stand in silence, jaw flapping mutely as she visibly struggled to think of something to say, her legs tensed and ready to run. Her face was grey with panic, but Tarrah knew the look in her eyes only too well: she wanted to deliver a lecture, perhaps only for the sake of a return to familiar territory, but a lecture, nonetheless. You didn't have to be a Jedi to recognize that much.
At last, Bastila managed to work up the nerve to speak. "Y-you shouldn't… I mean, it's not a Jedi's place to… you've heard all about how we shouldn't form… You know the Code says…"
She trailed off.
Then, she too vanished, speeding off towards the opposite end of the ship as fast as the Force could carry her, unaware that the moment was already broken.
A/N: Up next - a plunge into eternal darkness...
