Chapter Twenty-Eight
AITHNE
The next morning, Aithne ate alone, plotting her strategy. Eventually, Carth was going to need to head to the Sith Academy with her. If they were going to get Dustil out, they'd need Carth. If they were going to get in the academy to begin with, one of them was going to have to pretend to be a Sith, and of everyone on Ebon Hawk, Aithne was the single best prospect to play the part. Jolee was too old, Bastila too recognizable, and Aithne didn't trust that Juhani could pretend to be fallen without a risk. Besides. She wanted Juhani on Mission and Zaalbar. Aithne was still young enough to fit the Sith's recruitment profile, and since this whole thing had started she'd about shouted herself hoarse insisting she hadn't fought in the wars—that she wasn't exactly the kind of cowardly Jedi deserter or fallen Jedi the Sith were looking for. She didn't think the Sith would have difficulty believing the same thing all the Jedi, Carth Onasi, and Canderous Ordo already thought. The problem would be keeping them from seeing whoever their bounty hunters actually thought she was.
Her research back on Dantooine hadn't turned up anything helpful as to how Darth Revan's memories were dripping into her head. After the fifth time some Jedi archivist had asked her why she needed access to that particular section of the records, Aithne had given up looking rather than raise suspicions about her even higher among the Jedi. Instead, she'd gone looking for missing persons early on in the Mandalorian Wars—among the Revanchists and the Republic officers. She'd also looked at deserters from Revan's army after the fall of Malachor. If she couldn't find out how Revan was in her head—what dark necromancy or Force phenomenon was sending her Revan's memories and then feeding them to Bastila—she might at least be able to figure out what had sent the Sith into a panic when someone had drawn that sketch off Calo Nord's description of her on Taris. Or rather, who.
Bastila's proposal—that the Sith wanted her because she'd made a mockery of them on Taris—just wasn't good enough given the size of the bounty on her head. No. The Sith thought she was Somebody. Somebody with skills. Somebody who had fallen out with them at some point and probably wasn't about to come around to seeing things from their perspective. The Sith thought she was the reemergence of Somebody who, at some point, must have slipped through the cracks. Somebody to be afraid of.
The person she was looking for would be fairly specific, she knew. They would also have to be fairly obscure—someone not everyone would recognize, or else why not list her presumptive real name upon her bounty to help with identification? But the person the Sith thought she was had to have also been high-profile and competent enough back in the day to register as a serious threat now, with enough of a breach between them and the Revanchists at the start or at the turn of the war that the Sith now believed there was no chance she could serve them, like they hoped Bastila might.
There weren't a lot of people it could be, but still, the Mandalorian Wars and the conflicts since had been galactic scale, and once she started looking, there were more obscure but still very dangerous people who had dropped out of the fighting or otherwise gone missing than Aithne would have thought. She was able to rule out nonhumans quickly, as well as masculine-presenting Jedi and officers. But even when she got to human women within twenty years of her own age, there remained a handful of possibilities.
Arren Kae had been a Jedi master before the schism. A noted historian and teacher—there were rumors that perhaps she had been one of Revan's instructors before Revan came forward from the ranks, and afterward, she had become a celebrated warrior. But somewhere among all the records of the Mandalorian Wars, references to Arren Kae had vanished. There was no record of her death. She just . . . ceased to exist. As a Jedi master and a potential tutor to Revan, however, her sudden reemergence might present quite a threat.
Darden Leona would be a bigger one. She had publicly broken with Revan after Revan turned her eyes on the Republic. She had returned to the Jedi—and been exiled for her trouble. Since then, no one had heard a thing from her. No one knew where she was or what she was doing. But if the Sith thought Aithne was Leona—nearly everything would make sense. Leona had been the single best general of the Mandalorian Wars, after Revan. There were records of a few times she had quarreled with Malak over strategy, and she had been the one to preside over the masterstroke at Malachor V. She had bad blood with Malak. She was good. She was nearly as terrifying as Revan themself. Aithne was about the same age as Leona, and she could almost be convinced—except, unlike Arren Kae, there were numerous records of Darden Leona's appearance, and Aithne didn't look a thing like her. Darden Leona had been an incredibly petite woman with a much darker complexion, and she'd fought with a saberstaff.
There were three or four other Jedi, one or two Republic officers who'd lost their nerve or been dishonorably discharged. None of them seemed as likely as Leona or Kae, however. And Aithne kept being drawn to perhaps the least likely prospect of all.
Enough, she thought. There was no way to be certain of who the Sith thought she was, so there was no way to avoid looking like that person. What she actually needed to do was to try and inhabit Addison Bettler—except, Addison Bettler wasn't Force Sensitive. And the person they sent to the Sith Academy needed to be. Could she dare? A lot of the veterans of the Mandalorian Wars were fighting now. The Sith Academy was full of raw recruits. Did it have records like the Jedi Academy on Dantooine? It certainly wasn't nearly so old or established.
Aithne bit her lip. She closed her eyes. And then she stood.
She made Jolee wear the arm holsters from back on Kashyyyk. He'd been too obvious yesterday and attracted too much attention. She wanted to keep him with her, but she wanted to change his role—make him appear less like a fallen Jedi and more like a nobody. Keep all of the focus fixed on her.
Carth wouldn't be joining her until the very last minute, after they had a guaranteed in at the academy. As they left Dreshdae for the Sith Academy, there would be a brief window of opportunity as they transitioned from people who had seen them in the city to a population of students mostly unfamiliar. Carth could slip in unnoticed if he looked like a uniform part of her crew. They'd refitted the helmet she'd been wearing yesterday for him, and he and Canderous had worn similar black fiber armor this morning. Aithne planned to send Canderous, her ostensible second-in-command, back with some routine orders for her supposed crew of smugglers and thieves once she "joined" the academy. Canderous would pose as her trusted lieutenant, heading back to carry on the business—or, more likely, to steal it from under her—and Carth would be the lower-ranking thug meant to watch the well-to-do and wary "Addison's" back within the academy. Except, when she went to the academy, she wouldn't be Addison anymore.
Aithne threw her tray in the washer and grabbed the pack she'd prepared the night before. It was somewhat fuller than usual, and in a hidden compartment in the side seam was a double-bladed lightsaber, another relic from their Sith attackers back on Kashyyyk. The crystal within it was one she had picked up in the kinrath caves on Dantooine—a rare violet focusing crystal that did not have an affinity to the Dark or Light sides of the Force. Most Sith wielded sabers with bleeding crystals, or synthetically produced red ones. But the few Sith whose blades were not red wielded violet. Beside the double-bladed lightsaber was her own Consular's crystal, the one she had been given by Master Dorak on Dantooine, as well as two other supplementary crystals that had caught her attention in the kinrath caves, more light-attuned than the one she had placed inside the double-bladed lightsaber hilt. But no one would have to see those crystals. Until it was time.
"Ready to go, boys?" she called down the hall at Jolee and Canderous. Canderous checked the magazine inside his rifle. Jolee adjusted the sleeves of his civilian tunic—a similar shade to Canderous and Carth's fiber armor—and looked up at her. "I'm more ready than you are, lass," he muttered.
The three of them made their way down the ramp of Ebon Hawk and out into the city.
Just as Leni and Thaddeus had predicted, when Aithne, Jolee, and Canderous walked into the cantina they had visited the day before, Master Yuthura Ban was there. She was a tall, determined-looking Twi'lek with unusual purple coloring. Dressed staidly and even austerely in a simple Sith workaday uniform, she made her statement instead with extensive and elaborate tattoos framing her face and running in patterns down her lekku. Aithne took in a breath, crossed the floor, and sat down at the woman's table without being asked. Jolee and Canderous, as requested, took up bodyguard's positions behind her chair.
Ban's painted-on eyebrows shot up. Aithne couldn't tell if she was angry, impressed, or amused, but she was certainly surprised, and Aithne certainly had her attention.
"Is there something you need, human? Make it good, for I have little patience."
"You're Yuthura Ban," Aithne said. It was not a question.
"I am," replied Yuthura. "Obviously you have been told of me. Is it your desire, then, to train at the academy? Do you wish to become a Sith, human?" Already, she seemed to be losing interest, her face falling into more accustomed lines as she mentally called up the script she used with all Dreshdae's hopefuls.
"Look," Aithne said. "I've been out of it for a while, making my way on the fringes, trying to stay out of trouble. But after Taris?" She shook her head. "I didn't think the Sith would make it after the Jedi took Revan out. Now? I don't think the Republic's coming back. So I figure, it's time to figure out where the Sith are going. It's time to figure out if I need to throw in with the winners. So I flew here. I asked around. And they say you're the one to talk to. At least out here." She gestured around at the city in general. Threw a bit of a curved lip, as though she knew there were more important people within the academy. And throughout, she stretched out with the Force, making her presence felt. Letting Yuthura feel her presence.
Yuthura's eyebrows had risen back up toward her lekku. "What is your name?"
"We'll get to that in a minute. If I like you," Aithne said. "The port official has me listed as Addison Bettler. That's good for now."
"You've caught my interest," Yuthura said. "The Sith wield ultimate power, my friend. To be a Sith is to taste freedom and to know victory. Nothing is as glorious as bending the Force to your will." She reached out with the Force herself, probing at Aithne's aura. "I suspect you know this."
Aithne's shields were as firm as she had ever had them. She had needed every bit of the practice hiding from Bastila over the weeks for this: lying with everything that she was, leaving out her power to be grasped at, her fear and desperation to be gloated over, and locking every single altruistic, compassionate intention deep inside.
"I'm not out for glory," she said. "I'm out to survive. What I need you to convince me is that if I sign up, I'm not going to end up in a stack of bodies like those idiots who fought for Revan at the beginning or those third-rate hopefuls and student casualties piling up outside. Honestly, it's a mess."
"Shall I apologize for the weak?" Yuthura challenged her. "If you cannot clench your fist and know when the moment comes to strike, there is no place for you among us. If you are a coward, we do not want you. As for the hopefuls, they are free to leave. Those who are weak return home. If they ware both weak and foolish, they die—but it was their choice to come. Tell me: did you choose to return home, once upon a time?"
Aithne barked a laugh. "There was no home for me to return to," she answered. "For any of us."
Behind her, she could feel Jolee and Canderous fixed upon her. She hoped neither of them let anything they were feeling show upon their face. She didn't know whether she wanted them to believe her now or not. If they did, it would just make her act now that much more convincing. If they did, nothing she could say when they left Korriban would make a difference.
But Dustil was sixteen years old. She took her determination to get to him and layered it into the aura she was projecting.
"The Jedi were always inflexible," Yuthura ventured, eyes searching Aithne's face. "They burden themselves with tradition and with the protection of the weak and ungrateful. They are pitiful and misguided. If they spurned you, in the end, did they not weaken themselves all the more? It is their rigidity which has brought us to this pass. We must adapt, or we perish."
"So I've learned."
She felt that the short, cryptic responses to Yuthura's probing were working. The idea was to get Yuthura invested in her even before asking to train at the academy, to have her wild to learn Aithne's supposed secret identity, and hopefully ambitious to return this lost ronto to the herd.
"Have you been squandering your gifts all this time? Existing on the fringes of space?" Yuthura asked. "I can feel your power, friend. It makes you superior. It is the right of those of us who are so gifted to rule. How can any deny that? Yet the Jedi do so, and call us evil because we do not. Are you not tired of their moralizing, of the existence it has driven you to lead?"
It was time to give a little, or else Yuthura would begin to suspect her motives. If she didn't already. "It's true I could stand to see a few Master Jedi a little less self-satisfied," she admitted. "Nor is a pirate's life all they make it out to be in the holovids. What I don't know is if your people might be inclined to give me any better opportunities."
"Opportunities are not given," Yuthura told her, "They are taken! Just so does the sarkath beast dominate his jungle, by wiping out all resistance! The tuk'ata does not have her meals delivered—she must leap upon the squellbug for the kill! This is the way of the universe. If your gifts grant you superiority, then it is your will that grants you victory. What I do not know is if you have it."
The Sith had done well to make Ban their recruiter, Aithne thought. Yuthura was better with words than Canderous at his best. She was reasonable, persuasive. Passionate. She was inspiring, and Aithne could almost see the dozens of uniformed boys and girls at the academy who had no doubt been led to try to take their victory over the universe. They missed the other half of the equation. With sapience came a certain responsibility to rise above a primal mindset. If people were going to live together, there had to be some order. There had to be some protection for the weak. Otherwise, like Canderous had said, there would be no stability.
"And is that what Alek aims for now? The eradication of all resistance? Complete dominance of the jungle?" She saw Ban's eyes widen and felt her focus intensify. Unlike Revan, Malak's prior identity was widely documented, but it was scarcely remembered and even more scarcely referenced.
"We do not know him by that name," Yuthura answered her. "Malak is the strongest of us, and the strongest always rules." Her lips curved up, showing the tips of her canines. "At least until one who is stronger can take it from him. That is our way. Survival of the fittest. You are always on guard, always lean for the kill. We promote it, for through this the Sith are stronger. If you wish to survive—" her voice twisted into a derogatory emphasis on the word— "are you fit, Addison Bettler?"
Aithne raised an eyebrow, letting the silence stretch. Then she answered, "Liat Ser'rida. Would you like to see?"
Yuthura's expression shifted as keen interest moved to brief confusion. She didn't know that name. Aithne's stomach clenched in triumph. She'd felt that it might work. She'd known it. Not the person the Sith were looking for, but if Yuthura or anyone looked her up, all they'd find was a Revanchist.
The Force fights with me, as Bastila says.
Yuthura probed at her with the Force a second time, this time harder, pushing at her shields, trying to read her motivations. "Perhaps," she said. "Perhaps. Yet, there is something odd about you I cannot place. I sense your strength in the Force . . . Liat. I sense you have honed some of your abilities. I sense the fear within you. Anger as well. And yet . . ." she trailed off, searching Aithne's face. "I find it curious the Jedi would reject one with such power. They were not so desperate years ago as they are now, but still. Have they not sought you out since? Are you perhaps here to spy on us?" She laughed a little. "For all the good it would do. You could become a great Sith, Liat Ser'rida. But I do wonder if that is truly your desire."
Aithne was silent. Press too hard now, and she would lose. She had hinted at a complicated past, a history of conflict avoidance and a deep, hurtful rejection by the Jedi. It was plausible the persona she had created—the person who could become a Sith but would never be a threat—it was just plausible that that person might have a long-buried desire for revenge against the Jedi. It was plausible that after years of scraping and living by her wits on the fringes in the shadows, she might want to live at the top by her sword instead. Alternatively, she might be looking for community, belonging again in a community of Force users. Aithne had given Ban all she needed to supply half a dozen reasons for her, but there was no reason to suppose Liat Ser'rida, former Revanchist, Jedi exile, lost for years now in a life of crime and under a false name, would ever feel like sharing.
"No," Yuthura said finally, deciding. "No, my friend, I'll not be the one to bring you into our academy. You—you will have to prove your desire. If you can get one of the other Sith to accept you, give you a medallion, then perhaps. But otherwise . . . not today." She waved a hand at Aithne in dismissal. Aithne rose without a word, bowed, and left, Jolee and Canderous after her.
Aithne scowled at the floor. It made sense. It was smart. Yuthura could have imagined half a dozen reasons Liat Ser'rida might want to join the Sith. But she didn't have one real one. Why had Liat Ser'rida left the Revanchists? Why had the Jedi rejected her? Why spend years living apart from other Force Adepts, and why join now? Liat Ser'rida had power. If Ban searched her up—and Aithne wouldn't put it past her—Liat Ser'rida showed some promising traits for a future Sith. But here, right now, in front of Yuthura Ban, there was very little evidence to suggest a Sith's gumption in the persona Aithne had assumed. Better to demand a display than to risk letting in a Jedi operative.
But this was going to be annoying.
Jolee and Canderous were watching her. There was a new wariness in both of them. "So, Jetii, what next?" Canderous asked her.
Aithne flicked her eyes to him. Technically accurate, whether he was talking about Liat Ser'rida or Aithne Moran. But to Ordo, Aithne Moran had always been Aruetii, and she knew Canderous at the least was buying the story she had told. In a way, it was satisfying. But it also made her want to cry. "Now, Ordo, we pick a fight with some Sith."
Bastila wouldn't have approved of any of it. Had it been just a couple of days ago she'd given Aithne the lecture about the difference in the way the Jedi and the Sith did their killing? Not that the Sith were innocents, per se, but Aithne still had a feeling that picking a fight with Sith was not exactly the way Jedi were supposed to do things. Ever. Aggression wasn't their role within the Force.
Then again, she wasn't trying to be a Jedi. She was trying to be an ex-Jedi trying to be a Sith.
Technically, the five Sith did open up the confrontation. They were young, only recently admitted to the academy and fresh off a training session. Just learning to use the Force and intent on abusing their new powers to make someone suffer as they had suffered as hopefuls. The only thing was—Addison Bettler would've kept her head down. The Sith were more trouble than they were worth. Aithne Moran would've kept her head down. It was irresponsible and cruel to fight five individuals just out of their teens, drunk on power with only the very first idea of what they were doing. But when the Sith started bullying Liat Ser'rida, just rejected by Yuthura Ban, Liat Ser'rida bit back.
"You can leave or die," Aithne told them, after they'd taunted her suitably. Of course, the Sith couldn't reasonably turn down a fight with a woman who looked like a mere civilian. And anyway, they outnumbered Aithne and her friends five to three! Stupid to be afraid! It'd make them look weak! Canderous's first fight in weeks lasted all of forty seconds.
At the end of the fight, Aithne looked down at the sad bloody mess with distaste. "Search the bodies," she instructed Canderous in a dead voice. Canderous did so, coming up with a medallion. Aithne polished the medallion on her shirt sleeve, which fortunately had little blood on it. She'd stuck to Force incapacitation mostly, with Jolee, letting Canderous handle most of the actual violence. She nodded at Ordo.
"Right. That's it then. As agreed—you take the credits and the ship, and I take Judd and Natthias off your hands. You can send Card to meet me back in the cantina. I want to get this show underway." Aithne offered Canderous her hand, and he held out his in turn. They shook. "You're a good man, Ordo. Good luck."
Canderous scoffed. "I ain't gonna need it like you will, boss. Give me a wave next time you need something done right. Or maybe, don't." It was an abrupt return to the gruff mercenary of Taris, and as Ordo resituated his repeater over his shoulder and strode off toward the port, Aithne could think of several reasons for it. She liked only one. For a while, she and Canderous had been almost friends. Perhaps they still were. But maybe not.
Here, she'd used him like Davik. Canderous never minded a fight, but she'd used him as a heavy to take out some idiots in over their heads, and it wasn't worthy of his talents or his ambitions. It wasn't what he'd signed up for. In addition, she'd told a lie so good that, after all his doubts about her identity—doubts that he knew some of the rest of the crew shared—he had believed it, and any trust they had built up over the months might have just disappeared.
A high, anguished scream cut through Aithne's dark musings. She whirled. She was running toward the sound before she knew it.
She and Jolee emerged into a side street, not too far away from the Czerka outpost, and straight into a nightmare. A young man in a Sith uniform was standing over the body of a man in a Czerka uniform. A Twi'lek, also in uniform, stood nearby. And as the Twi'lek watched in horror, the Sith shot bolt after bolt of lightning into the other man, whose scream suddenly broke off and went silent. The Twi'lek screamed herself and fell to her knees, crying.
/No! No-no-no-no-no,/ she wept. /Sameen, no!/
The Sith laughed, high off the violence. "When you become a Sith, you can feel the power coursing through you! I—I—hahahahaha! Such power! I—" He turned to the Twi'lek, whose hands ceased fumbling at her coworker's clothes and froze. Her face turned to the man, to Aithne and Jolee, behind him.
/Help,/ she whispered. /Please. He—he's going to kill me. He will kill all of us!/
"What are you saying?! Who are you talking to?" the Sith demanded. He turned, saw Aithne and Jolee behind him. "Can I help you?" he sneered, then laughed.
Aithne felt cold all over. "You can stop," she said quietly.
The man laughed in her face. "Are you and your gramps going to make me, then? The Sith can do whatever they want!"
Aithne nodded, several times. She could swear there were rivers of ice running through her veins, but they burned like lava. "Not without consequence," she said. "The strongest rules."
The man's face changed, going from power-happy to furious as he processed the threat. His hand lifted. But it was too late. Aithne's hand had come up first. The murderer flew into a wall five meters back, hit with a sickening thud and crunch, and slid. He looked up, dazed and confused. And, as though she'd always known how, as if the Force itself had sizzled through the air to tell her, Aithne pulled apart the energies in the space between herself and the Sith and released a bolt of pure electric charge.
The Sith screamed, an echo of the same sound he had drawn from his victim less than a minute before.
Power rushed through Aithne. She could feel the burn at her fingertips, the charge that would take her too, if she let it, if she relaxed her control over any portion of the environment or the Force shield over her skin for a moment. The adrenaline climbed inside her—the high sapients inevitably got trying to do something so very, very dangerous, piled atop the satisfaction of seeing evil paid unto evil. Justice.
"Lass," Jolee murmured. Aithne ignored him.
The Twi'lek's eyes were wide. She was shaking.
"Addison," Jolee tried again.
Aithne shook her head, brushing him off. "Tell me when," she told the Czerka woman, shooting another bolt of lightning at the Czerka man's murderer. The Twi'lek's eyes flicked to her murdered coworker, to the writhing, screaming Sith. Her lips moved, but no sound came. She didn't budge. Aithne shot another bolt of lightning.
"Aithne!"
That was a new voice, and Aithne turned. A shot rang out, and the Sith collapsed to the floor, dead. Killed by a bullet through his right eye.
Carth holstered his blaster and strode up. She couldn't see his face behind the helmet, but she could feel his outrage, pulsing across their bond. "Aithne, what the hell's going on here?!" he demanded. "Canderous said you were on your way to the cantina."
"Liat," Aithne told him, quivering, keeping her voice low. "It's Liat now."
"And Liat tortures people to death?"
Aithne glanced over at the body of the Czerka worker. "I didn't do anything to him he hadn't done first to someone else," she said. "You," she told the Twi'lek woman. "What was it? Did your friend disagree with him over the price of something he wanted?"
/I—he bumped him, mistress. While we were going off of shift. Sameen didn't see him. I—oh, Sameen!/ Her hands flexed over her coworker's body once again, and her face crumpled. Aithne turned to Carth, gesturing at the pair of them—civilians coming off of the day's work. Innocents—even if they did work for Czerka.
Carth's helmet stayed pointed in her direction. "Don't do it like that, Aithne," he told her. His voice had dropped too, keeping her name lower than could be heard down the street past the Czerka storefront. "This guy wasn't like the Mandalorians in the Shadowlands. He wasn't in beskar; convection wasn't a tactic. You could've taken him with the point of the sword. You didn't have to do this."
Aithne looked from Sameen, who she'd never even talked to, back to the Sith. She felt the residue electricity in her fingers, that burning, cold rage inside her. It had been so . . . easy. So easy. She looked at Jolee. His face was grim, and worse, it was not surprised. From the old hermit, the only sense she had was . . . recognition.
Her stomach flipped. Her fingers flexed. And then she lost it.
Staggering three paces over to the side of the road, she braced herself on the tops of her knees and vomited. She purged her stomach until only bile came up, and then she snatched her canteen from the side of her pack, threw a gulp of water into her mouth, swished, and spat.
By the Czerka office, the Twi'lek's coworkers had begun to emerge. They were crowded around the bodies. One pale human male looked sideways at the Sith. He whispered to the others, and two men helped him pick up the corpse. To take away to an alley somewhere, away from where his presence in front of the office might inspire a friend to take revenge.
Aithne wiped the back of her eyes and stood straight. It was worse than it had been in the Shadowlands. Worse than the way she had been facing the Mandalorians. Korriban was worse too—a planet baked in the Dark Side, saturated with it instead of one small section of a forest. But that was no excuse. If she started killing with abandon every time the battlefield got dicey, never mind whether her victims all deserved it, there was no reason to suppose any of her protestations to Bastila that she was different from Revan's Jedi could hold water. She had no way of predicting what a war would turn her into, no way of telling she was any better than any of the Sith, and all the Jedi who had ever been afraid of her might be right.
"Come," Jolee told them, moving up. "We should leave this place."
Aithne nodded. She fumbled in her belt pouch, rummaging through her credit bars. She pulled out the payment for the spice from yesterday, all fifteen hundred credits of it. She walked it over to the Twi'lek and her remaining coworkers. Handed it to the woman. "Bury your friend," she told her. "And bury that we were here." A lot of names had been thrown around in the last five minutes. She didn't want "Aithne" getting back to the academy.
/Y-yes, mistress,/ the Twi'lek told her. /Th-thank you./
Aithne shook her head and walked with Carth and Jolee back toward the main street and the cantina. "Are you alright?" Carth asked her, when they had gone far enough away.
Aithne hesitated. "They called me arrogant, back on Dantooine," she said, keeping her voice low. "Thinking I didn't have to train. Bastila calls me arrogant." She jerked her head at Jolee. "He said I was overconfident, just a few days back. I—I'd assumed I wouldn't have trouble. That I could just . . . do the things I always had, just with the Force, and all this talk about my great power corrupting me was . . ." she trailed off. "But as I open up more to the Force, I feel more. It hurts, and I—it's not the way it was." She cleared her throat. She was thirsty, as if it had been her screaming instead of Sameen and the Sith. She brought her canteen back to her lips and swallowed the water instead of spitting it out this time.
"A heavy task for a padawan, sending them here," Jolee remarked. "The Dark Side is very powerful on this world, lass. I know your instinct now is to use it, to make it a disguise against our enemies, but any fear and anger you carry with you now will turn against you."
Aithne nodded. "Yeah," she said. It was all there was to say.
Carth was a head in a bucket for a minute. He looked exactly like the faceless thug he was supposed to, but she could see his face inside her mind. She could feel it, feel his concern. His worry. "Look. I appreciate what you're doing, and you're the best one to go undercover here. You are. And I know these Sith are animals, and it's hard to watch them do the things they do without wanting to treat them the same way. Just—stay you. There'll be . . . there'll be opportunities for justice. Without cruelty."
Aithne nodded again. She felt exhausted, remote.
"So. You want to brief me on Liat?" Carth suggested, quietly. "Canderous said something back at the ship . . ."
"Jedi docs weren't going to work," Aithne explained wearily. She barely moved her lips. But Carth needed to know. They both did. Any surprise at the change in plan could destroy them. "Addison Bettler's not a Force user, and we needed one. Someone they'd believe was ready to join the Sith. Someone they might want to join the Sith but wasn't about to draw too much attention. When you're operating undercover, it's best to go either with a name close enough to your own that you'll respond to it—or someone who already exists. Or . . . existed." She wiped her hands on her trousers, then continued.
"I want to get them away from me, from looking at anyone with a name like mine. And since it seems I sell experience pretty well . . ." she shrugged, keeping her eyes down as she felt a pang of both guilt and defiance from Carth over their bond. "I ran into a wall, looking for what Bastila and the Council are doing," she admitted. "So I started looking into who the Sith might think I am instead. Officers who dropped out when Revan went bad, deserters soon after Revan joined the war in the first place.
"Liat Ser'rida wasn't one of the better prospects," she went on. "She was big in the Revanchists before they joined up, but almost immediately after they mobilized, she's gone. Like she lost her nerve. It would make sense: she was a Jedi Guardian, but also trained as a historian and an archivist, and she seems to have preferred working as a Jedi scholar. Notes that her evaluators weren't too impressed with her lightsaber dueling when she passed her trials, though she did pass young, and she seems to have devoted her energies to theories and essays before the schism. She was reprimanded a few times for near heresy. She was a little hellraiser. And then she was a ghost. Far as I can tell, she died or bailed right out the gate, as soon as the war stopped being some shiny great idea and turned real. And the Sith can paint anything they want onto a ghost.
"I just . . . this morning, I kept looking over the names, trying to see who the Sith might be looking at when they see me. Liat was this little obscure person right there at the beginning. A loudmouth, but not much else. Probably wouldn't have even registered to me, except she was Searched out on the Rim and liked Jar'Kai. I knew, with all the important people who played major roles in the wars and then went missing, dropped out, or turned, odds were Malak and his people had forgotten all about Liat Ser'rida. But then I had this feeling—if I turn into Liat Ser'rida here, the Sith won't look for me to be anybody else."
Carth was silent for a moment. "So who do you think the Sith actually think you are?" he wanted to know then. "If you've researched it and all."
Aithne sighed. "No idea. Arren Kae? Maybe? I don't think they'd chase her like they'd chase Darden Leona, but honestly, there's no way anyone in the galaxy could take me for Darden Leona, even on a sketch from a guy with a head injury."
Carth chuckled, and Aithne gathered he'd seen or heard of General Leona and agreed with the assessment.
"There were a couple of Republic prospects," she said. "Rogue officers gone criminal and dishonorably discharged, that sort of thing."
"So you picked Liat Ser'rida, some no-name historian from the Rim," Carth mused. "The outside bet. A Revanchist no one's actually heard fought, but a borderline heretic and organizer in the schism whom the Sith might believe had left the Jedi."
"I just . . . had a feeling," Aithne said again. She couldn't put it any better than that.
They stared at the cantina across the street. Carth's helmet turned back to her. "Well. Let's see if it worked. Liat."
Yuthura was still stationed at her table in the back. When Aithne walked up, her lips twitched. "Back so soon?"
Aithne tossed the Sith medallion in front of her on the table. "You gave me a job," she answered.
Yuthura picked up the medallion and examined it, then looked back at Aithne and the others, taking in the flecks of blood still on Aithne and Jolee's clothes. "I did," she agreed. "See how you can perform, given the proper motivation? Very well. I will take you to the academy. We shall see if you are ready to join the ranks of the Sith. I have only one other question." Her slender fingers danced out, indicating Carth and Jolee. "You are giving up your smuggling days, I presume. Do you think you will require these companions?"
"Slaves," Aithne said coolly. "If the other pupils didn't bring their own, that's their lookout, isn't it?"
Yuthura smiled. "Indeed," she said. "And are you ready to go to the academy?"
Aithne shrugged. "Well. I did go to a little bit of trouble," she murmured.
Yuthura's smile widened. "Then let us leave," she said, rising from her seat and striding forward with a fluid grace. "The master of the academy awaits."
With Ban in the lead, Aithne and the others had no trouble gaining access to the Sith Academy. Aithne walked after the Twi'lek master into the building at the mouth of the valley. She was immediately struck by the differences between the Sith academy and the Jedi enclave on Dantooine. The enclave was pretty, with vegetation everywhere. The academy was stark—metal and concrete, purely functional. Lightsabers hummed through the walls, and you could hear the odd scream through the hallways. Aithne set her jaw, and behind her, she felt Bindo send a tendril of reassurance to her through the Force.
Ban led them to the center of the academy, where some sort of assembly was taking place. Aithne frowned. In the small crowd of faces gathered around a tall, tattooed man with yellow eyes, she picked out several Leni and Thaddeus had identified in the current class of rising Sith, several she had met as Addison Bettler the day before. Lashowe, Shaardan, and Mekel were all among them, and all three swept her a look, though none said anything.
"Greetings, prospective students," the man in the center was saying. He suddenly caught sight of Yuthura and the others and paused. "Ah. It appears we have a late entry," he said instead. "Who do you bring before me, Yuthura? A young human, bristling with the Force?"
Yuthura bowed. "A human that has had some training, it seems, Master Uthar. Very promising, I think."
Lashowe sneered at Aithne and Jolee. "I met these in the colony the other day," she said. "Which is the prospect? They are all common criminals. Petty thieves. Unworthy, if you ask me."
"La-Sow, was it?" Aithne said lazily. "I apologize if my bondservant got a little mouthy back in town. I'm trying to break him of it. But he has the most inconvenient since of humor. Can't help laughing when he sees something funny."
Lashowe fumed. Her face turned pink, and she opened her mouth to retort, but the master cut her off. "Silence, child. No one asked your opinion." He looked Aithne up and down. "Tell me, human, what do you know of the ways of the Sith? What preconceptions has your mind been polluted with?"
Aithne regarded him. She could already tell: Master Uthar was going to be as long-winded as Zhar at his finest. "Honestly? I've killed too many Sith to still have any preconceptions," she said.
A risk, saying that. But a calculated one, judging by the energies rising from the master. Uthar raised a tattooed brow. "Most impressive," he said. "If it is true. Those who were too weak to stand against you deserved their fate, so expect no retribution from us. There is much you can learn from the Sith, and we from you. The Jedi equate the Light with goodness and strength and the Dark with weakness and evil. That is their tradition, and it is truly no surprise that they cling to it for comfort. We, however, do not treat the Force as a burden." He was addressing the entire group again. "We treat it as a gift, a thing to be celebrated. We use it to acquire power over others . . . and why should we not? Because the Jedi say we should not? We are as the Force is meant to be. The Jedi would hide that from you. They would tell you the Dark Side is too quick, too easy, all so that they need never challenge the passions that lie within them."
Aithne disagreed. In actuality, her studies and her experience led her to believe the Jedi were the more likely to challenge their passions. It was part of their entire way to manage and calm them. The Sith, on the other hand, were ruled by them.
Uthar continued. "Joining with us means realizing your true potential. It means not stifling yourself solely for the sake of hide-bound shamans and their antiquated notions of order. Be what you were meant to be."
As Uthar defined his people, always in the negative, the Mandalorian name for the Sith rose to Aithne's mind. Dar Jetii. Literally: not-Jedi. Uthar could not express what the Sith were without reference to their opposite. Well. On the other hand, the Jedi Order did the same. Their entire Code laid out their take upon the galaxy in a series of negatives. She wondered if Jedi or Sith really knew who they were without the other.
"What say you, Lashowe?" Uthar was asking. "Are you ready to learn the secrets of the Dark Side? Dare you?"
Lashowe was eager to make up for her earlier set-down. "I dare, Master Uthar!" she exclaimed. "I am ready!"
Aithne regarded her. She wasn't. Too sensitive to the opinions of others, too hesitant to act on her own initiative, Lashowe was weak at her core. But Uthar was chucking. "Brash and fiery, as expected. Turn that passion to your advantage, child. What of you, Mekel? Are you ready?"
Aithne looked over the man she had hated so much yesterday, the one who killed hopefuls as a game. If she was to compete with these individuals, she might see if she could see some justice done on him. "I am, Master," he said. "More than ready."
"I sense much anger within you, young one," Master Uthar told him. "That is good. That will provide you power. And Shaardan . . . what of you?"
The strutting demonstrator. "I am always ready," Shaardan said in turn. But Uthar seemed to have Shaardan's measure.
"I see," he said, arms crossed. "You had best gather your wits for the trial ahead, boy, or you will not last." He looked at the next young man in line, a slender, quiet-looking human. He opened his mouth, then looked past the young man, as if he could think of nothing at all to say. Aithne assumed the young man must be Kel Algwinn. Seemed Uthar didn't think Kel was Sith material any more than Aithne's friends Thaddeus and Leni.
Instead, Uthar moved on to Aithne. "And you, young human? Does this interest you? Are you ready to learn more of what I speak?"
"Liat Ser'rida," Aithne said quietly, meeting the master's eye. "I'm ready."
Uthar blinked, then frowned. A quick sensation passed over Aithne—Master Uthar was much subtler in his probing than Master Yuthura. "Are you?" he repeated. "Liat Ser'rida, is it?"
Something clenched in Aithne's stomach—part recognition and part dread. She felt found out, and she lifted her chin, looking Uthar right in the face, standing her ground.
"I see your heart, Liat," Uthar told her. "I see the dark kernel that is there. If it is ready to sprout remains to be seen." He turned to the others, leaving Aithne troubled. "Now then," said Master Uthar. "All of you Sith recruits have shown a degree of facility with the Force. You all have the potential to become true Sith. Only one of you, however, will succeed. The one who succeeds will be admitted to the academy as a full Sith. All others must wait until next year and try again . . . if you survive. My pupil, Yuthura, shall be your teacher and master while you attempt to prove yourselves. Heed her words."
Yuthura stepped forward. "As Master Uthar said, none of you are a true Sith yet. For that to occur, one of you must do enough of worth . . . gain enough prestige . . . to be selected. What is an act of worth? You must learn that for yourselves. Remember that you are competitors here. Fight for your destiny, or go home."
Aithne observed her competitors. Their reactions would tell her how she was to approach them, and how she could eventually beat them. Kel looked down. Mekel and Lashowe looked delighted. Shaardan looked serious.
"If you wish to gain a lead over your competitors," Master Uthar said, "the first of you to learn the Code of the Sith and tell me of it will be rewarded. The rest is for you to discover. Welcome to the Dark Side, my children . . . your one chance at true greatness lies here."