A/N: Welcome back. As I'm sure you've guessed by now, we're veering wildly off-canon right now: the GenoHaradan have a much bigger part to play beyond the missions in my immensely weird vision of KOTOR.

Care to guess what Hulas might really want with all the stuff he had Revan bring back from the assassinations?

Let me know what you think!

Anyway, without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: urgh.


"Where are we supposed to go now, Tarrah?"

Tarrah sighed, gritted her teeth, and tried with all her might not to scream.

Right now, the Ebon Hawk was floating aimlessly in space somewhere around the ruins of Taris, lurking in the shadow of the ruined city world as the crew tried to think of what to do next – even as they grappled with everything that had happened all those weeks ago.

The promised broadcast from the GenoHaradan Overseers had never arrived, and Tarrah never got her chance to explain anything to her crew – not in their entirety, at any rate.

Instead, scant minutes after they had jumped away from Manaan, the Leviathan had wrenched them out of hyperspace and dragged them helplessly into its clutches. After that, things had gotten predictably complicated: with everyone on the team facing capture, Jolee and Canderous had stepped up to break the others out of the cellblock through masterful trickery, the former bluffing his out of captivity through calculated use of the old Jedi mind trick, the latter playing dead and catching the Sith troops by surprise. Sadly, no GenoHaradan assassins were around to help them, otherwise the whole operation might have been over with much sooner.

By the time the two had broken the rest of the team out and gone to rescue Tarrah, Carth, and Bastila from the interrogation room, the three of them had already been tortured at length. Admiral Karath had even briefly dragged Juhani into the mix to loosen Tarrah's tongue, but none of them had cracked, not even when Karath had lost his temper. In the end, though, their time on the Leviathan had ended with Tarrah learning a lot more than the Sith had intended… though given what it had cost, she was doubted the knowledge was worth the suffering.

In order of appearance:

She'd learned that the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine was gone, bombed to rubble from orbit, with the planet itself having suffered Force only knew how much damage, and now there was nowhere else in the galaxy that could remotely be called safe.

She'd learned that the Sith still didn't know what she was after, which meant that Malak wasn't trying to protect or destroy the remaining piece of the Star Map, so she at least had that on her side.

And last but certainly not least, thanks to both Karath and Malak, she'd learned that…

…it was almost impossible to believe, but it was true: she was Darth Revan – had always been Darth Revan, even though the only memories she had left of that time of her life were fragmentary at best and might never fully return. And worse still, it meant that her entire life up until the moment she'd woken up on the Endar Spire had been nothing more than a lie: her life on Deralia, her parents, her years of experience as a smuggler, the plea bargain, all of it was just a tall tale whipped up by the Jedi Council, both to hide all memory of Darth Revan and to explain her skills.

Was that how they'd thought of her – as a criminal being offered a second chance?

What had they been planning on doing with her if the mission had been a success?

Had there been plans to kill her if she'd remembered too much?

Had Bastila been ordered to assassinate her or worse if she became Darth Revan again?

What would becoming Darth Reven mean, if that really was her fate? Would remembering her true self mean losing her false memories, bit by bit or all at once? Would it mean losing everything about herself? How much of her current identity had really belonged to Revan? Would losing Tarrah Vend's identity mean losing her morality, her knowledge, her loves? If she became Darth Revan, would she no longer care about Juhani anymore?

Tarrah ground the heels of her hands against her forehead and let out a strangled growl of mingled dread and rage. In the end, it seemed that all she'd gained from their stay aboard the Leviathan was questions, and so many of them couldn't be answered right now, because she'd learned the truth too late.

And what had all that knowledge cost her?

Bastila, for one thing. She'd stayed behind to cover their escape, somehow trusting Tarrah to finish the mission more than she trusted herself.

Tarrah's faith in herself for another, and probably her sanity.

The relationships she'd had with most of the crew.

True, nobody had turned on her after the news of her true identity had reached them, but she could tell at once that everyone looked at her differently now: Carth had retreated back behind his familiar wall of distrust, Mission was shy with her again, Zaalbar's respect was now heavily veiled with caution, Canderous now regarded her as a hero of legend, the droids now seemed to expect violent orders to arrive at any moment, and even Jolee – who'd apparently suspected this all along – was watching her in uncharacteristic silence as he waited to see which way the winds would blow. And Juhani? Juhani was silent, brooding, and withdrawn; she hadn't said a single word since the truth had emerged, but Tarrah could already tell that the affection she'd shown scant hours ago was gone, hidden behind a veil of caution and… fear?

So, to sum up: Bastila, her own self-belief, her sanity, and every friendship she'd forged since she'd woken up on the Endar Spire.

Not a price worth paying. Frankly, she'd have been happier being ignorant.

What was she supposed to do now?

They'd spent the last eighteen days since their escape flitting wildly from planet to planet, hoping to shake off any potential pursuers along the way as they tried to think of what to do next. It had been uphill work, and they'd had to flee in the opposite direction every time a Sith warship appeared in the distance, and they'd been shot at several times by Sith fighters before they'd finally shaken them off, but it seemed they were finally safe.

So, what now?

Yes, she knew that there was still one piece of the Star Map waiting for them, but now they were even more defenceless than ever before: their one island of safety in an increasingly Sith-dominated galaxy was gone, the hyperspace lanes to Coruscant and other key Republic worlds were constantly menaced by the Sith fleet, so there was no chance of finding another safe harbour or getting any backup… and with the way the Sith were advancing across the cosmos, there might not even be a Republic to save by the time they found the last piece.

It seemed that the only course open to them was to simply throw caution to the wind and head straight for Korriban – and hope that Malak hadn't warned the entire Sith Academy that his former master might be paying a visit. On the one hand, the metalmouthed bastard knew they were after the Star Map fragments and would be anxious to make sure that nobody else could track them down, but on the other, Malak might not know their precise locations: Revan's memories only showed Malak tagging along on the visit to the first fragment back on Dantooine, so there was a chance that he hadn't followed his master to all of them – which might explain why there'd been no Sith presence in the Dune Sea, the Shadowlands, and the Hrakert Rift.

All the same, Tarrah put their odds of sneaking into the Sith Academy unseen at barely 50/50, and their odds of surviving significantly lower.

And then, just as she was honestly starting to think there was no hope, she remembered that she still had once last trick left up her sleeve. After all, just because her missions with Hulas were over didn't mean that the spylink had stopped working, was it?

She turned to Carth. "Take us back to Manaan," she ordered.

"What? Why?"

"Does it matter?

"You'd better believe it matters! That was where everything started going wrong for us! Don't give me that look, you know this entire mission went downhill there, and I know it was when you started going on those long, mysterious walks through the wilderness, too."

"Look, it'll make sense when we get there!"

Carth thumped the control panel in front of him. "No!" he snapped. "It'll make sense now or never, Tarrah: what have you been hiding from us? Why have you been wandering off on almost every single planet we've visited since our first stop on Manaan? And what in hell do you hope to find on Manaan other than seawater, Selkath, and Sith?!"

"Nice alliteration."

"SHUT UP, JOLEE!"

Tarrah winced and took a deep breath. "I found some allies in Ahto City," she began. "Well, I met a representative of them in Ahto City, and he promised to get the entire organization on my side if I'd do a few favours for them. I didn't sense anything dishonest about the missions, so I agreed. Now, we should have gotten a call from them during out last hyperspace jump, but the Leviathan must have gotten in the way, so the only thing for it is to head right back to Manaan and hope that their rep is still in town while I buzz his comm channel; it's a bit less covert than they'd like, but right now, we need backup."

"Uh-huh. And what kind of allies are these?"

"Assassins."

"Assassins? You made a deal with an Assassins' Guild? When the hell were you going to tell us that?"

"Hopefully never! Any more stupid questions?"

Carth threw up his hands. "And that's who we're supposed to be getting help from?" he burst out. "A bunch of assassins? You really trust them to hold up their end of the bargain?"

"I'd be lying if I said yes," Tarrah admitted. "But right now, we're out of options: we desperately need help, and with the Republic faring as badly as it is right now, we need someone who isn't bogged down on every single front. We need someone who can operate behind enemy lines, uncover information, sabotage enemy infrastructure, maybe even plant bombs in the Star Forge if need be. And right now, the guild is the only prospect we've got left… unless you've got any better ideas."

For a moment, it looked as if Carth was going to continue arguing, but then he closed his eyes and seemed to sag. "Alright," he said at last. "Aright. We'll go to Manaan, then. But I'm warning you…"

He didn't finish his sentence, but Tarrah could already tell he was worrying about more than just assassins; the thought of Darth Revan being in their midst clearly hadn't left him in the slightest, nor had it left him any more trusting than he'd been before. All the same, Tarrah couldn't help but feel a faint stab of pain at the look of open suspicion in Carth's eyes.

"You can relax," she shot back, before she could stop herself. "If I was planning to betray the Republic, the last place I'd dare try would be on Manaan. You can wait until we're on Korriban until you start worrying about my loyalties. I mean, that would be where a deranged former Sith Lord would try to retake power, right?"

"I wasn't even suggesting-"

"Can we get going, please? Before we get ambushed again?"

Carth wearily began punching in coordinates, but Tarrah didn't feel any better for it. She hadn't meant to snap, and certainly hadn't meant to raise her voice, and even though her composure was on the verge of cracking, that was hardly an excuse to start lashing out.

She forced herself to focus on regaining her equilibrium, on attuning herself to the Living Force, doing her best to push aside the thoughts of what might happen to her identity if and when she remembered everything. And when all else failed, she told herself that in a few hours, all the secrecy would be worthwhile.

And if she let her mind wander far enough, she could almost believe that was true.


As soon as they arrived in orbit over Manaan, Tarrah made for the spylink and began hastily rewiring it as fast as possible.

"What happened to meeting your friends in Ahto City?" Carth demanded.

"I'm improvising! I didn't contact them, they contacted me, and I don't have the slightest clue where their representative might be hiding, so if I want to get word to him, I'm going to have to rewire this thing so I can send messages instead of receiving them… and hopefully, there'll be a way of tracing the last caller address."

"And if there's not?"

"Then we're screwed."

"How do you know if this assassin's even in Ahto City?"

"I don't! Okay? Now just shut up for a minute while I try to get this damn thing to work: I'm good with machines, but this might require a minor miracle even by my standards. T3, could you get over here for just a second?"

It took about an hour of swearing, burnt fingers, failed attempts to access the spylink's code receiver, and even a couple of attempted self-destructs before the two of them could get the thing in a cooperative mood. Obviously the GenoHaradan hadn't intended their spylinks to be reverse-engineered, and only Jedi reflexes had been enough to prevent the link from blowing itself to pieces. So far, the only thing she had to go on was a built-in register of recent broadcasting addresses, and while it wasn't possible to pinpoint exactly where Hulas had been transmitting from, she could still contact him if he was in Ahto City. If she couldn't, they were officially hosed.

For a moment, she considered redirecting the call to her datapad as always, but then thought better of it: now that all the secrets were creeping out into the open, she might as well share this one with the rest of the crew. So, she redirected the feed from the datapad to the holoprojector in the main hold, and allowed the crew to observe, albeit from the shadows – just in case Hulas got snippy about sharing GenoHaradan secrets with outsiders.

Muttering a few ancient and suitably obscene words, she tapped in the address code, hit the call button, and waited to see if Hulas was still in Ahto City. For fifteen heartstopping seconds, there was no response, but then the spylink let out an obliging whirr, and an override kicked in: maybe this was the GenoHaradan's way of making sure that their operatives couldn't ignore messages, or maybe it was just something Hulas had set up just to make his calls as intrusive as possible – either way, reversing the feed made the override work in her favour.

A moment later, the hologram sparked to life, giving her another look at the shabby little room where Hulas had been broadcasting from. Though Hulas wasn't sitting at the desk this time around, it was clear that the room was still occupied, for the walls were now hopelessly clustered with about a dozen items that hadn't been there beforehand: blueprints and schematics on film printout, holograms of constantly updated graphs and charts, an actual parchment document (recently signed), and even a datapad hanging from the wall like a framed portrait.

One or two of these decorations caught Tarrah's eye, and she leaned forward for a closer look: the most intriguing of them was a design for a space station, of the kind used for secure biological experiments in the furthest reaches of the galaxy, well away from conventionally habitable worlds.

Next to it was a stellar chart, directing traffic around a visibly different space installation, this one in orbit around Yavin Prime. Having bought several things from the resident of this station, Tarrah knew the place well enough, but why would Hulas be taking an interest in Suvam Tam's work? Why was he directing traffic through such an obscure star system?

And then, before she could devote any further thought to that question, there was a hiss of conversation from offscreen:

"They've been dealt with, I promise you! The perpetrators are no longer our concern. Now, I want this first transport en route to our facility on the double, and I want a fresh shipload of operatives arriving every week until we have a full security complement. Should take you at least three months."

There was a pause, and then Hulas sighed loudly.

"I know they're spread out; you don't need to tell me. Look, I've given you leave to gather them together on my behalf, so start arranging rendezvouses. And while we're about it, why are you taking so much time to arrange my transportation off-planet? Your shuttle should have arrived two weeks ago!"

Another pause.

"Fair enough. With the potential threat to the kolto, the Selkath are understandably jumpy. If we're facing that much scrutiny, we can ignore the docks and make do with the drop-off point on the lower levels. I'll meet your operative there, standard time, standard precautions. Now, please don't make me wait any longer, Senni: it's been hard enough just trying to manage my affairs from this rathole of an apartment. The last thing I want is to spend another day in the company of these seabound vermin. Oh, and one more thing: don't bother me again until I contact you. The last of our experts from Khomm should be arriving in Antenora today, and I'll be expecting their call. Goodbye."

There was a muffled beep of a commlink being disconnected, followed by a sharp intake of breath as Hulas belatedly realized his other comm channel was open.

"How long has that been active?! Sweet merciful-"

A moment later, Hulas appeared in full view of the camera, his skin so pale with shock it was almost pear-shaded. "Ah! Da- Tarrah Vend!" he stammered. "Er, so good to see you. Um, did your meeting with the Overseers go well?"

"They never contacted me, Hulas. Everything's gone to hell, and I desperately need GenoHaradan assistance."

"Well, er, I'm sorry to hear that, but the Overseers are currently experiencing difficulties of their own – which might be why they didn't contact you, come to think of it. If you'll just give me a few more days to-"

"No!" snapped Tarrah. "We are currently being hunted by the Sith, Hulas; we need your assistance, or this alliance is officially dead in the water. You're the only way we can strike back against the Sith, and we're the only way the Sith can be stopped. Do I need to make the stakes any clearer for you, or do you trust that I've judged the situation accurately?!"

"We need more time, Jedi Tarrah: the Overseers have been caught off-guard by this latest move by the Sith just as badly as you – they need at least a few hours to assess the state of their affairs! The Araneid recommends a financial accord, the Phasmid wants to remain hidden until such time as we have become invisible, the Reduvius wants to assassinate as many leaders as possible, and the Vespid just wants to turn the entire situation into a galaxy-spanning melee regardless of whether they allow you to participate in GenoHaradan affairs. It's a very complicated-"

"Oh, for the love of all the demiurges, what do they need to decide?! If the Overseers don't help us, they'll be right in the firing line if and when the Sith take the Coruscant, and no matter how secret they might think they are, they won't be able to hide in a Galaxy when all their means of profiting have been squashed. Do I need to make this clear to you? The GenoHaradan have been secretly upholding the Republic from behind the scenes for millennia; assuming this is true, and not just typical secret society hot air, it means you'll be first against the wall when the Sith take Coruscant!"

For the first time in a while, Hulas' face registered genuine irritation. "If you have any sense left at all, I'd listen very carefully, Revan-"

His eyes widened, and Hulas clapped a hand to his mouth he belatedly realized what he'd just said, as if hoping he could somehow force the word back into his mouth – but too late, too late.

Tarrah's eyes narrowed. "And how exactly do you know that?" she said, icily.

There was an uncomfortable pause, as Hulas coughed, spluttered, and tried vainly to look nonchalant. "My friend, you know as well as I do that, as is our nature, we have observers everywhere: with all the surveillance devices and concealed operatives I have in the Sith fleet, overhearing the discussion you had with Darth Malak was child's play!"

"Then why didn't you save us?"

"…I beg your pardon?"

"You said you had operatives aboard the fleet. You know how vital our mission is. You know our goal is to stop the Sith once and for all. You gave me that kriffing quintet of missions because I needed to earn the Overseers' trust for an anti-Sith push, and after all those missions, I'd say that I'd more than earned it. So, you tell me, Hulas: why didn't you send anyone to break us out of the Leviathan's brig?"

The Rodian froze, suddenly left without an answer for the first time since he and Tarrah had met, glistening black eyes swivelling this way and that in frenzied anxiety.

And in that moment, revelation split Tarrah's mind in two.

It was as if she was seeing things clearly at last, as if she'd been looking at the world through a pane of filth-coated glass for months on end and only just been allowed to clear away enough of the dirt to see the world as it truly was. Or perhaps it was more like she'd been looking at the world through a peephole, and it was only now that someone had kicked the door down and she could finally see what lay beyond in its entirety. Beforehand, she had trusted in her Force-guided intuition to tell her that the GenoHaradan was real, that Hulas was being honest about the necessity of the mission, and that the targets she'd been sent after were indeed threats to the Republic, but that had only been a facet of the truth too small to contain Hulas' lies. Only now, with clue after clue after clue stacking up one after the other, did she see the big, terrible picture.

How could she have not recognized the awful reality of the situation after all this time? How could she have not understood then what she understood now? The evidence had been staring her in the face time and again, so many tiny facets of the truth all but parading themselves before her eyes in more and more ludicrously blatant forms, but it hadn't been until now that the full implications had trickled into place. She didn't know if this was her own mind finally unearthing the truth of what the GenoHaradan was up to, or if the Force itself had guided her to this revelation. Either way, the frustration and outrage were simply too great for her to silence.

"Maybe I should rephrase that," she hissed. "Are the Overseers even alive?"

Hulas said nothing.

"There's four GenoHaradan Overseers, aren't there, Hulas? The Araneid, the Vespid, the Reduvius, and the Phasmid: a treasurer, a security chief, a leading assassin, and a spymaster. And you sent me after a rich con artist who could bring in credits from one end of the galaxy to the next, a brute with a private link to mercenaries that even the Bounty Hunter's Guild can't control, and a shapeshifting assassin with a career that'd be impossible for any other killer. Call me crazy, Hulas, but the Overseers just happen to sound a tiny bit like they'd match the targets you've given me… and by an astonishing coincidence, the one being who orchestrated their deaths is someone who just so happens to know everyone everywhere. Isn't that right, Phasmid?"

Once again, Hulas said nothing, but his proboscis was already twisting itself into a furious snarl. On the periphery of the screen, his hand began snaking towards a control panel.

"Be honest with me," said Tarrah, her voice as cold as the depths of space and about half as lively. "Did the GenoHaradan Overseers really fail to call me because the Leviathan got in the way, or was it because one of them staged a coup with me as the muscle? Did the Sith just happen to catch us right after I finished doing your dirty work, or did you tell Saul Karath exactly where to find me?"

If anything, the Rodian looked even angrier. "I won't apologize for what I had to do achieve victory," he growled.

"What you "had" to do? Hulas, the Sith are going to kill you! If you side with Malak, you'll survive only until they work out that the GenoHaradan has been supporting the Republic – and then he'll realize he can't trust you and dice you up like a barve at the slaughter! He barely tolerates traitors to the Republic! Do you think he'll want to keep around a traitor to an assassin's guild?"

"He won't care about that," hissed the Phasmid. "Not when I show him the New GenoHaradan I built on the bones of the old, not when he understands how useful it can be to the Sith. But then," he added, "Maybe it'll sweeten the deal a little further once he learns that I helped eliminate his greatest enemy."

He reached just out of shot and thumped a button on his control panel.

A moment later, the spylink let out a high-pitched ringing siren that left the entire crew clamping their hands down over their ears; then, shipboard comms rattled to life, sending Carth sprinting towards the cockpit… and then, just as Tarrah thought it was all over, she sensed something in the starboard quarters beginning to heat up, followed closely by something in the engine room, and something next to the cockpit, and-

"Goodbye, Darth Revan," said Hulas, his proboscis once again twisted into a smirk. "Have the decency to die this time!"

And with that, he signed off – but by then, everyone was in motion and too busy to pay attention anyway: Carth was on his way to the cockpit, Tarrah was headed to the cargo hold, Mission, Zaalbar, and Juhani were busy with the comms system, and everyone else was busy hanging on for dear life as the Ebon Hawk suddenly took off at a speed that left their stomachs hovering in space behind them.

"Sith's blood, Onasi!" Canderous roared. "Why the hell did we need to take off so quickly?"

"We're broadcasting our location!" Carth hollered back. "Whatever he did hijacked our communication system: we're now transmitting our exact coordinates to any receiver in medium range!"

"And how far is that?" Juhani called, as she struggled to disconnect the spylink from the comm circuitry.

"Oh, just about everywhere in this star system – including all those Sith on Manaan!"

With one almighty wrench, Juhani ripped the device free of the Ebon Hawk's comm hub, flung it to the floor, and immediately stomped it into scrap metal, finally silencing the deafening blare of sirens.

"Nicely done," said Mission, "but it's too late now! Every Sith in Ahto City already knows where we are by now!"

"Well, at least we're not being bothered by annoying noises anymore! Carth, get us out of here!"

"Something's wrong with the hyperdrive – pressure on the circuitry, I think! Whatever it is, it's going to take us a few minutes to make the jump to hyperspace!"

"Then keep us moving until then! Tarrah, did you hear any of that, or-"

But Tarrah was only aware of the carnage outside the cargo hold in the most distant sense, working things out through intuition if she could bring herself to pay attention at all: she was busy tearing up removable deck panels, following Force-driven instincts to something concealed just below her. A moment later, another one of the Ebon Hawk's hidden compartments had been uncovered, along with its current occupant: a small cannister equipped with a timer, wired quite expertly into the Hawk's energy conduits.

Juhani arrived moments later.

"That is-"

"Yep," said Tarrah grimly. "Hulas had one of his agents sneak aboard and drop off the stasis capsule a little while ago; he must have had the bastard plant explosives here as well, just in case selling us to the Sith didn't pay off… and it's not the only one either. I can sense others: one in the engine room, the other close to the cockpit near the navicomputer. Might explain why we're taking so much time going to hyperspace."

"How long do we have?"

Without saying a word, Tarrah flicked on the timer's viewscreen – and was immediately rewarded with a countdown of less than a minute and a half.

Tarrah instinctively reached for an obscenity, found that nothing in her lexicon of contemporary expletives could convey her feelings, and in a moment of pure desperation, fell back on the third-oldest and most obscure bits of bad language she knew of.

"Shit," she whispered.

Then, adrenaline set in.

"MISSION, ZAALBAR! THERE'S A BOMB ON THE HYPERDRIVE! I'M GOING TO NEED YOU TO DEAL WITH IT NOW! T3, 47, GET TO THE NAVICOMPUTER ON THE DOUBLE – THERE'S ANOTHER BOMB IN THE COMMS HUB!"

As the four of them began clattering across the ship towards the waiting explosives, Tarrah shoved the timer aside and made for the cluster of wires connecting the bomb to the Ebon Hawk's energy conduits, frantically zeroing in on any mechanism that could arrest the countdown.

"No computer control input," she hissed, as she furiously unravelled the wires. "No port for computer spikes. All the wires painted over so it's impossible to know which one to cut. Simple. Foolproof. Deadly. Only a few hundred explosives experts in the Republic would know how to deal with this kind of bomb. Just got to hope that three experts from outside the Republic know how."

"Can we not just throw the bombs into space?"

"No, no, they're wired into the ship itself; if I disconnect them, they'll go off. At best, we'll be left crippled in space while the Sith send their ships after us, and at worst, we'll all be dead of a hull breach."

Muttering a few more archaic expletives, Tarrah focussed all her attention on the bomb in front of her, frantically searching for the right connection to disrupt the trigger mechanism; she couldn't easily recognize the weak spots, but she had enough Force-guided intuition to find her way through the guts of the damn thing. It should have been easy, should have been child's play, Pure Pazaak, even…

But she couldn't concentrate.

Her mind was tangled in knots, bound up by link after link of calamity: she could see what was holding her back – the horrifying revelation of who she really was, the nightmare of forgetting everything and losing her identity, the realization of just how badly she'd screwed up the GenoHaradan business, and even loss of trust the crew had suffered – but she didn't know how to free herself from the cloying web of anxieties. All she could do was fumble blindly across the mass of seemingly identical wires, trying vainly to find one that looked to be a bit better protected than the others, trying to see through the haze of spraypaint coating the cables, all to no avail.

Almost hyperventilating, Tarrah looked up at the timer and realized with a thrill of horror than there were now fifty seconds left before detonation, and if she cut the wrong wire now, the detonator would trigger automatically. She turned to Juhani, opening her mouth to tell her to get as far from the bomb as possible, that if Mission and the droids were successful in defusing their own explosives, she'd at least spare herself from a horrible death, but the words wouldn't come out.

And in that that moment, Tarrah realized she was going to die.

She was going to die because she'd screwed up everything she'd touched, put her trust in the wrong people, and chosen to risk everything including Dark Side corruption just for a shortcut to victory… and worse still, she'd dragged down everyone else along with her. She'd gotten Bastila captured and condemned the rest of her friends to death, either in the bomb blast or the Sith attack that was bound to follow. Everyone she'd befriended, everyone who'd trusted her to lead them, everyone she loved was going to die horribly, and that was the best possible outcome; the Sith could take them prisoner, and Tarrah's heart sank a little further as she thought of Juhani being tortured into accepting the Dark Side for a second time, knowing that it would all be her fault.

Her eyes filled with tears-

And then, she felt a warm hand on her shoulder, and looked up with a start to see that Juhani was kneeling next to her, arms gently encircling her. "It's alright, Tarrah," she whispered. "You can do this. I'm right here with you: whatever happens next, you won't be alone."

It was as if the words alone cut through every single knot in her brain. The entire universe seemed to disintegrate around her: the stars, the planet, the Sith, the GenoHaradan, Tarrah's monumental failures, even the looming threat of her own identity, it all fell apart and blew away on the breeze. In their place, there was nothing but Tarrah, Juhani, and the bomb… and the purest focus that Tarrah had ever known.

Reaching out with her senses, she could see how each component of the bomb fit together, which wires connected the explosive to the trigger, how the wires connected the bomb to the energy conduit, how it could all fall apart with the right application of force.

And so, with thirty seconds to go, she plucked a single wire from the bomb and gave it a sharp yank. There was a muffled fizzing, a sharp smell of burnt electronics, and then the timer went blank. There was a pause, and then, just as Tarrah was starting to wonder if she'd made a mistake, she reached out and ripped the entire bomb out of its housing, neatly disconnecting it from the conduit.

Juhani almost jumped in surprise, but no explosion followed.

"Okay," said Tarrah, suddenly realizing she could breathe again. "That's one less thing to worry about. Mission, T3, how are you going?"

"Just deactivated my one!"

A triumphant series of beeps confirmed that T3 had finished dealing with his bomb.

"Wonderful! We're at least no longer in danger of blowing ourselves to pieces! Carth, how soon can we go to hyperspace?"

There was a bilious curse from the cockpit, followed by a ragged cheer. "We're clear to begin calculating the jump anytime!" said Carth over the commlink. "Just give us a destination – and quickly! We've got four Sith cruisers on intercept trajectory and they're almost within firing range!"

"Wait a minute," said Mission, "Where are we going to go?! The Sith are looking for us everywhere, and we've just about run out of safe places to hide!"

Tarrah's mind raced as she frantically considered all the hyperspace lanes that the Sith would have bothered to interdict. "Dantooine!" she said at last. "That's the one place where the Sith won't look for us while we get our bearings!"

"How is that safe?! They're probably occupying what's left of the place!"

"I know, but it's the one place that the Sith won't be looking for us! They won't expect us to be crazy enough to come back there!"

"But it's probably still on fire!"

"It's all we've got, dammit! Now, everyone not already hanging onto dear life, get ready for the jump to hyperspace!"

"Too late!" Carth shouted. "The cruisers just opened fire! BRACE FOR IMPACT!"

A moment later, the Ebon Hawk trembled and quaked as a barrage of turbolaser fire erupted against its shields, its shield generators groaning in protest as they struggled to withstand the onslaught. Another round of tremors shook the ship as the second cruiser's attack hit home, and a thick cloud of smoke began to billow from the vents as systems began to overload and delicate internal mechanisms began to fail.

And then, just as Tarrah was about to start shouting orders again, there was a colossal explosion from somewhere worrying close by, and the entire ship was flipped a full three hundred and sixty degrees by the shockwave. Suddenly finding herself airborne in a void lit only by emergency lights, Tarrah flailed wildly for a grip on the deckplates as she tumbled helplessly through free-fall, trying desperately to orient herself away from the cloud of debris now erupting across the sleeping quarters. She had just enough time to consider levitating before her uninterrupted trajectory sent her crashing headfirst into the starboard bulkhead, dealing her a stunning blow to the skull; bouncing off the wall, she tumbled for another second or two, before gravity reasserted itself and sent her plummeting back down to the deck – face-first.

By some miracle, Juhani managed to arrest her plunge at the last minute, so she only managed to burst her bottom lip on the deckplates instead of fracturing her jaw, but it was cold comfort considering that the damage that both she and the ship had just sustained. She could smell smoke in the air, and not just from overloaded vents: the Ebon Hawk was on fire.

"Torpedo," Tarrah gasped, tasting blood in her mouth. "Must have been a glancing shot or we'd all be dead."

She tried to get to her feet, but Juhani almost immediately dragged her back down, and frankly, that was the only thing that had kept her from crashing forward onto her face again as the first inklings of pain began hammering into her brain.

"Coordinates locked in!" Carth bellowed from the cockpit. "All hands brace for the jump to hyperspace – and hang on, it's going to a rough one!"

And no sooner had he finished speaking, the Ebon Hawk let out a tortured groan as the hyperdrive roared to life, catapulting the smuggling vessel out of Manaan airspace and leaving their stomachs roughly half a mile behind them. Next thing they knew, they were passing into the glowing depths of the hyperspace lanes, shifting away from the seats of galactic power, heading once more into obscurity.

Please, Tarrah thought. Let there be something left for us to save. Let there be a tiny bit of safety where we can catch our breath.

Her eyelids fluttered, her head spinning as the adrenaline that had been keeping her animate finally wore off and the head trauma kicked in. Everything that had happened since their abduction by the Leviathan was finally catching up with her, and though she tried to stay conscious – if only for the sake of her skull – unconsciousness could no longer be kept at bay.

Let there be safety, she thought, as darkness closed in around her. Let there be shelter…


A/N: Up next... feel free to guess and let me know what you think will happen!