Chapter Thirty-Three
DUSTIL
Dustil didn't sleep the night before he left the Sith. Four years he'd been a prisoner, so long he'd forgot he was one. The Sith had told him he'd been chosen—he and a few of the others—chosen for the strength they had inside them. They were superior to everyone on the whole surface of Telos, they'd said, the only ones worthy to serve the Sith, and perhaps, someday, to be among them. They were lucky to be so special, so singular.
Dustil had played their games for years. He'd kicked and he'd clawed, moving from one unpredictable, crazy master to another. Learning to read danger signs, how to be dangerous himself. He'd learned to keep his mouth shut and his eyes and ears open, to move fast and hard but never to give himself away. He'd learned to use his anger, his drive to stay alive—not just to live but to excel among a thousand people who would eviscerate him at any sign of weakness. He'd determined he wouldn't just be a Sith servant; he'd be a Sith. And one day, sooner than any of them thought, he'd be strong enough that no one would ever try to touch him again.
But somehow, it had all got twisted up inside his brain. He'd let himself forget that those first days on Korriban, he hadn't thought he was special or lucky to be chosen at all, that he'd wanted to kill the Sith for the fire he'd seen raining down on his homeworld, not be accepted as one of them. He'd stopped trying to just survive the masters and started trying to make them happy, stopped thinking about revenge as an act of justice on the Sith and started planning it as a way to climb the ranks. And eventually, he'd started thinking he was strong enough, good enough to be accepted. Eventually, he'd started thinking he'd won respect among the Sith, that he had friends. Family.
But the teachers he'd thought liked him now only thought of him as a weapon. If they were pleased with him, it was because he was deadly and driven, not because of who he was. And the friends he'd made along the way? They'd been slaughtered. Or run away. Or they would kill him the second they thought it gave them an advantage.
They'd call him a deserter now. Send out the hopefuls to kill him just like Thalia and the others. Dustil didn't think he'd merit anything like his father's formal bounty. He was a first-year Sith, untested in any real battle. If they figured out Dustil had run away with his father, maybe. But mostly, they would think he was weak. A failure and a fool just like the others.
How many of them could have survived over the years if the Sith had anything like sense or decency? The Sith were the real fools. A twelfth or less the strength they could have. And as for vengeance on them, Dustil couldn't think of a better way than helping out Bastila Shan the Jedi prodigy and the woman the Sith thought even deadlier than she was take down Darth Malak himself.
But his "friends" in the Sith academy—the ones he had left—would kill him in a flat second if they knew what he had up his sleeves. He could never come back. Dustil didn't ever want to come back. But . . . he didn't know. It had been all he'd known for four years. He'd been a different person back on Telos. A child.
When he heard some of the guys in the dorms down the row start moving, doors opening, Dustil figured it was time to get out of bed. He dressed in two minutes, gathered everything he'd set aside to take in a rucksack small enough to look like a bag for a day trip to the city, grabbed his last breakfast from the academy mess, and left the building.
He wore civs. It wasn't unusual for folks to do that whenever they wanted a little bit of fun in Dreshdae. Once you got past the initial high of being taken for study in the academy, you learned pretty quick that sometimes it was better not to be dressed out in town. Sometimes it was better if the shopkeepers and pretty girls weren't afraid for their life as soon as they saw you. Sometimes you wanted to buy a belt or a datapad and hear the bar news without civilians stammering. Sometimes you didn't want everyone to stay away.
Stars, how had he ever forgotten just what the Sith were?
The Twi'lek wasn't supposed to meet him at the docks for a few hours, so Dustil did his best to kill time looking like that was what he was doing, to avoid anyone seeing he had a knot in his stomach the size of a tooka. He went to a cinema to see a holo. Bullied the ticketer into giving him a discounted price. Grabbed an extra drink while he was there and took it down to the docks to watch the ships going and coming in. Bet on a derbit fight some thugs had going on. He said hello to some people he knew from the academy and explained he'd decided to take a little R&R. Sucker-punched one of the hopefuls who saw them talking and asked him for a medallion, then let one of his old instructors treat him a few credits for a drink.
He didn't head to the cantina until it made sense for him to be looking to buy some food there. He didn't stake it out, though he scanned the crowd for other Sith when he walked in. Dak Vesser, one of the workmen for the Sith archaeology team, permitted into the academy but not actually accepted into a training class yet, was the only one he saw. Dak wasn't quite a decade older than Dustil, and everyone knew he'd recently come from the Jedi. Not completely unheard of, especially in the upper ranks fighting in the war, veterans of the Mandalorian Wars, but the new ones often had to pull their weight doing odd jobs around the academy before they really got a shot. That Moran had been accepted so quickly into the competing class this year had been a statement of how much Master Yuthura believed in her—or how enthusiastic she was about using her. The academy didn't usually think ex-Jedi had the stuff.
Vesser wasn't really on anybody's scanners yet, and Dustil dismissed him pretty quick when he had a chance to look the guy over. It wasn't even lunch yet, and Dak was more than halfway gone. His eyes were bleary, he hadn't shaved in a couple of days, and everyone in his corner of the room was steering clear. He probably smelled pretty bad. He'd been one to drink when he'd first shown up, Dustil remembered, though he'd cleaned it up in the last few months. But it looked like Dak had had a relapse. He wouldn't be able to put up any kind of fight in his condition. Might not even be too aware of anything he saw.
Dustil ordered the daily special and a drink, extra ice. He sat at a table facing the door. He was there maybe twenty minutes before Mission Vao showed up.
He was glad his father'd told him what to look for, because Vao wasn't the kind of person he usually thought of when someone said "Twi'lek girl." She was skinny and covered up, and when she ordered her meal from the bartender, she spoke Basic with a Rim native accent.
Still, she was cute enough. Nice face. Pretty shade of blue. Along with the Basic, the tattooed-on eyebrows signaled human-friendly, but she looked dangerous too. She moved like she could use the blasters she carried, and her round gray eyes looked wide awake and alert to the whole cantina. When she saw Dustil, those eyes went even wider for a second, but then she snapped right into character. She turned away, like she was bored, then looked back over her shoulder at him, kinda sneaky but also like she halfway wanted to be caught. Like she was liking what she saw.
Nice performance, Dustil thought, without enthusiasm. In five seconds, he could see that this might work. It made sense that a guy might want to be the person this girl didn't size up and send to hell in a minute. That he might think he was dangerous getting close to a girl so obviously comfortable with her weapons.
Personally? He halfway wanted to get up and leave. Head straight on back to the academy. Or else try and beg for transport someplace else away from Father and Aithne Moran and whatever the hell they were up to.
Vao was a kid. Maybe a year or two younger than he was. And Father and Moran were trusting her to smuggle him onto their ship before they left? Why?
Dustil tried to relax his jaw. It was his best shot. He knew it was. Father and Moran had a ship. A crew. Word was, they'd taken out an entire Czerka outpost on Edean. They said they had a Wookiee; he'd heard about a Mandalorian. They could protect him and get him away. If he left Ebon Hawk and tried to make it on his own, he'd be all on his own. He didn't have the resources to get off Korriban in a hurry, not without bonding himself out to someone shady to do it, and he wasn't going to be a servant again. He wasn't going to be a slave.
Dustil signaled the bartender.
He used the money from his old Sith teacher to buy Mission Vao's drink. Asked this one be made without ice because it fit his character. He just hoped Vao would be smart enough not to drink it.
When the bartender served her and explained, Mission looked back over. Her acting was perfect. She curled her lip then hid a smile and tossed her lekku back. Then she swiped the drink off the counter and sashayed over without tasting a drop.
"You know if you wanted to introduce yourself, you could just say 'hi,'" she informed him. "What kinda loser drinks in the middle of the day, anyway?" She sniffed at his drink and scoffed. "Particularly some watered-down poodoo like that. You're pathetic."
At close range, Dustil felt even less like playing this game. Vao was probably only a few centimeters off from her full adult height, unless she'd hit it already, but you could see how young she was. She didn't wear any of the stuff on her face you saw on the waitresses or cantina dancers, or even on some of the Sith girls his age when they went into the city. And he could see her blasters—one on each hip, just like Father. The one on the left looked pretty new.
Keep it innocent. From me and not just Aithne. Dustil understood how the plan was supposed to work. He'd agreed as soon as Moran and Father had brought up they had a girl on their ship around his age that she'd be the ideal person to meet him in Dreshdae and get him back to that ship without arousing suspicion. But he didn't like it. Pretending he wanted to go off with this kid and spend a night on her ship somehow felt skeevier than actually doing it. Even if he'd felt remotely like befriending the girl from the second the old man had said what he'd said.
But Dustil took a sip of his drink. That was the next step in this farce, not to believe a word the girl said, because hey, she'd come over, hadn't she? "Hi," he said ironically.
Mission grinned. "The name's Mission Vao, and—" she looked over her shoulder, saw no one there, and fumbled. "and I'm in town a couple days stocking up my freighter. What's your name and story, kid?"
It was the first slip-up she'd made. She'd started looking for someone else, someone who was normally with her. The Wookiee or the Jedi, Dustil wondered? The hidden one that'd be following Mission in case she got into trouble or he got a little fresh? Neither of them could be here now, he understood. It had to look like it was just him and Mission. But he wondered where the Jedi was.
"Dustil," he told her. "Your freighter, is it? Sure it's not your daddy's? You're a little young to be spacing on your own."
The tone was right—aggressive teasing in the same lane she'd opened up for them—but the words were wrong. Too real. Too close.
And Vao's cheeks had turned violet. "I'm old enough," she parried. Her lekku twitched. Sensitive spot, Dustil gathered. "Freighter might as well be mine. The crew's useless without me."
"I'm sure. What do you do for them?" Part of him didn't want to hear it. Part of him really wanted to know. What kind of part did Father and Moran see him playing once he was aboard their ship? Stars, if he was headed right back to daycare, he was out the first rock they hit off Korriban.
Vao preened. "You're looking at the chief supplier and priceline negotiator for Ebon Hawk!" Mission cracked a smile then and stopped the crowing. "Least, they're letting me try it out while the boss does some higher-value negotiations for rare Korriban artifacts in the valley." That was her character, then—either here on Korriban in general or in this interaction with him. The captain's pet, a precocious little braggart, dangerously indulged but overall unimportant to her mistress's broader schemes.
"And your boss isn't worried you'll run into any trouble here in Dreshdae?" Dustil asked, letting his tone do the rest of the work.
The color rose in Vao's cheeks again, and her lekku twitched. She was uncomfortable with this, but she looked him up and down anyway. "Why? You know where any trouble is?"
"I might," Dustil said. "What do you say we get out of here and I can show you?"
"Buy me dinner first, space-for-brains," Mission retorted. "It'll soak up that drink you're trying to drown me in. We'll talk, and then if I still like you, we might see."
"I'm not hungry," Dustil said, gesturing to his own finished lunch. "I don't just want to sit here and watch you eat."
Vao raised her eyebrows. "What, and you can't manage seconds? You couldn't go for a dessert? Come on and keep me company, idiot." She slid into the chair opposite his. Dustil rolled his eyes.
"Fine. But you can buy me dessert."
"Deal," Mission said. They signaled the bartender. Vao ordered a burger and some fried vegetables, and Dustil ordered a blue milkshake, and they paid according to the negotiation.
"So. You think you got out of telling me about you with your 'little girl' joke, but I remember you never answered. Start talking, Dustil," Mission said.
Dustil pushed down his annoyance. This pushy princess routine she was running was getting real old real fast. "What? You can't handle a little mystery?"
"Some mystery!" Mission scoffed. "I can read you like a datapad, mister."
This he wanted to see. "Shoot."
Mission sat back, looking at him over the edge of her drink, which she still hadn't touched. "Alright, sure. You got your clothes from the Czerka outpost a few streets over, but they're a few months old. That plus your accent says you been here a while, but you aren't a local. You've been here a while, but you don't live here in town, 'cause if you did, you'd find something better than that mass-produced slave labor crap. Also, you're probably not exactly rolling in credits, 'cause the food here's dirt cheap, but you sent me the cheapest liquor on the cantina menu, and you weren't exactly happy to spring for dinner too. That means you want something from me, and pretty bad too.
"So. The accent. Outer Rim, like me, but not Korriban-local. Short on funds, so you probably didn't get here on your own. That says bondslave or capture, probably of one of these Sith who live here. Stop me if you need to." She said the last in the same casual tone as all the rest of it.
Dustil's fists clenched on the table. "No, you seem to be doing just fine without me," he said. "If I'm a slave, how'd I pay for dinner at all?"
Mission considered this. "Could've nicked it from your masters, but I don't think so," she decided. "You walk like you can handle yourself and you got some type of weapon concealed in your right sleeve, so I think you joined the Sith. Maybe as a soldier. Maybe as an assassin. Heck, maybe you trained as a full-blown magic-wielding whatever. Sith must pay something, or no one would stay. But they aren't what you expected. You didn't get what you wanted out of the deal. Sometimes you get tired. So, you dress up in the one civilian outfit you got and go and try and chat up some stranger. How am I doing?"
Dustil slid his lightsaber out of the wrist holster into his right hand and left it palm up on the table. "Full-blown magic-wielding whatever, at your service. Are you scared?"
"Do I look scared?" Vao asked him. "If you'd come at me wanting to prove your superiority over the whole damn galaxy by personally smashing me to a pulp, that'd be one thing. But you didn't. You bought me a drink." She sipped her first sip of the afternoon, winced, and put it down. Popped a vegetable chip into her mouth instead.
Dustil slipped his lightsaber back up his sleeve. Some of the people he knew would want to smash this kid. She had a big mouth and a swagger she hadn't earned. "You're pretty good. If no one told you about me beforehand. Dreshdae's a pretty small town. Sure you haven't been stalking me, Vao?" The way she'd run it down like she'd just seen him and known was impressive. He'd give her that much. But Moran had told her about him.
"Why? Would you be mad?" Vao asked. Dustil looked into the Twi'lek kid's eyes. Behind the surface-level flirtation, she was asking him a question: did he really want to leave? How did he feel about his father finally tracking him down?
Dustil dropped his gaze. "Maybe. Maybe not."
They left the cantina after Mission had finished eating. "Anyone following us?" Vao asked him.
"Your Jedi," he told her. "Can't see her, but I can sense her, and I can tell she's not one of mine."
"Dark Side, you mean," Mission said. She regarded him as they walked, an even more thorough gaze than she'd leveled at him in the cantina. "So. You're Carth's kid, huh?"
"Yeah."
"I figured he had had one, once. He never told any of us till we found out you were alive and here, but he's had this fatherly thing going ever since I met him. I figured if he didn't have a kid, he had to be the single bossiest man in the entire galaxy."
"Fathered you a bit, I gather," Dustil shot back.
Vao went purple again. "Hey, I ain't out to move in on your old man," she protested. "You can keep him, s'far as I'm concerned. Carth's a good guy, and he's my friend. I figure now that you're back, he might stop mollycoddling me so much. I can take care of myself."
"Huh. They wouldn't let you leave the ship without a Jedi escort," Dustil sneered.
"Because your buddies are murdering people all over the place out here!" Mission came back. "You know how many bodies and casual tortures I've seen since we docked here four days ago?"
"If they couldn't protect themselves—" Dustil started, then swore, viciously. "Sorry," he muttered.
Mission Vao walked with him several steps before she said anything. "You don't really think that, do you? That people who can't protect themselves deserve . . . whatever happens to them? You can't." Her voice was small.
Ever since Father and Moran had told him about Selene, ever since they'd shown up, Telos had been playing in his head. Like a broken holovid you couldn't get out of the projector. Like a holovid you couldn't switch off. Again and again and again, he saw the fire raining down on his homeworld, was dragged screaming into that Sith warrior's fighter. Again and again, he was kicked and stun-cuffed into silence, dumped in the dirt on Korriban after three weeks with two dozen other prisoners. He'd been nearly starving. He'd wished he had starved. And almost everyone who'd been there with him that day had died or been killed since.
Again and again, he made friends with Selene and some of the others. Locals from Dreshdae, some of the younger academy students. Again and again, he let them talk him into trying to follow the masters' advice, trying to break his chains. He challenged the masters to let him prove his strength, and he did it. He'd killed a friend in the tomb of Naga Sadow for his graduation. And they'd killed Selene.
"I don't know. It's what they told us. It's how I—forget it."
"Dustil—" Mission's voice was soft.
"I said forget it!"
Mission shot him a sideways glance, but she let it lie. "Alright. Ebon Hawk is up this way."
She led him out a door into one of the Dreshdae private hangars. Dustil looked up at his new home. She was a Dynamic-class freighter, white with red detailing suggesting a bird of prey on the nose and wings. She wasn't much to look at if you didn't know ships, but Dustil had studied them since he was old enough to know what his father did. Ebon Hawk would be able to fly.
A small noise behind them let him know their Jedi companion had finally decided to reveal herself. Dustil turned, halfway expecting to see Malak's most wanted, but the shadow Moran had warned him about turned out to be a Cathar instead. She was tall and powerful, dressed in simple, unornamented black robes. They mimicked the Sith, but the Cathar didn't feel like a Sith. Dustil sensed wariness and regret from her, but also a serenity and control more characteristic of the Jedi Order.
"Decided to join us, have you?"
"Dustil." The Cathar's voice was quiet and accented. She stepped forward, extending her hand. "It is good to meet you. I am Juhani."
Dustil shook her hand. He wasn't scared, but the feel of it still set his hair on end. It was strange, feeling the human shape of her hand covered in leathery pads and short, warm fur. "I . . . uh, I'm sorry," he said, apologizing for his inadvertent shudder. "You're the first Cathar I've ever met."
"We were never a far-ranging people," Juhani answered. "And we are rarer than ever in the galaxy, thanks to the Mandalorians. It is nothing. If I may: you look very like your father."
"Yeah. I'm getting that impression." Before Carth had dropped out of the sky a couple days ago, Dustil had actually forgot they'd used to say that. He'd forgot he did look like the old man. He'd used to look like his mother too, at least a little. When he'd been on Korriban a year or two, started forgetting what she looked like, he would stare at himself in the mirror and try to remember, try to find her face somewhere in his. More and more, he couldn't, though. When Carth had shown up, though, he could see himself in that face. He hated it. But Moran, Vao, now Juhani—the second they'd seen him, they'd been looking at someone else.
Mission was watching him. She put her hand out to touch his arm. "Come on, Dustil," she said. "Let's introduce you to the rest of the crew."
AITHNE
After a wash and a mending, Aithne was liking the shyrack cave robes more and more. Honestly, she knew she'd probably be better served in Addison Bettler's armor today, but she didn't want to wear it. She was sick of pretending. The robes she'd found in the shyrack caves were soft and strong. They were full of power that didn't feel like the Dark Side at all. And when she wore them, she didn't look like a Sith.
Aithne picked up her lightsaber. She'd switched out the crystal last night. The green crystal Dorak had given her back on Dantooine felt a little resentful, if she wasn't imagining things. Miffed she hadn't been using it these past few days. But it hummed reassuringly in her mind when she gripped the hilt of the saberstaff now, eager to get back to work.
For defense then. Not for murder, not for vengeance. Let's go.
Carth had had the bed last night. She looked at him there, at Jolee beside him on the floor. Both of them were still sleeping. Better to leave them that way, Aithne thought. She didn't want to deal with any more fussing from either of them. Quietly, she slipped from the room.
She found Uthar and Yuthura. She saw traces of a sleepless night across Yuthura's face, but Uthar seemed as placid as ever. The three of them made a silent journey to the valley, to the tomb of Naga Sadow. Uthar spoke to the Sith on guard, and the two of them stepped aside. Aithne followed the Sith masters into the one place she'd been trying to reach since her arrival on Korriban. It was as dark and dusty as any of the other tombs she'd visited. The same cobwebs and dangerous animal droppings everywhere, but a darkness ran through the heart of this place deeper than any she'd felt yet. She recognized this darkness, though. She'd felt it before on Dantooine and Kashyyyk.
Uthar and Yuthura stopped in the entry passage. "We have arrived to your final test, young Sith," he murmured. "You have earned the right to see if you shall become one of us."
"Indeed you have," Yuthura purred.
Wynn's eyes cut to Yuthura. "Is that a tone of mischief in your voice, dear Yuthura?" he asked. His voice was honey sweet and venomous. "You should know by now that no scheme is certain."
Yuthura's eyes glinted. "As should you, my master. But I was only agreeing. Should we not get on with the test?"
Uthar eyed Aithne, a new suspicion in his gaze. "Yes, of course. We are in the sacred tomb of Naga Sadow, child, the one discovered by Darth Malak and Darth Revan years ago. You are to follow in their footsteps and reach the ancient Star Map that lies deep within. There you will find a lightsaber, amongst other things. The lightsaber is for you, your initiation present. Return to us once you have it. For you, the test does not end there."
"I didn't think it would," Aithne muttered.
"Be very cautious, here," Yuthura warned her. "This tomb is like the others in this valley, and many of its old defenses remain active."
Aithne studied Yuthura. She wondered, was the Twi'lek warning her friend or the ally she required to strike down her rival?
"Do you understand what I have told you?" Uthar was asking. "Are you ready to begin?"
Aithne looked him over. She didn't give him the courtesy of a reply but instead headed off into the dark.
She was going to have to go to Tatooine next. There weren't any excuses left for Mission. But as Aithne cut down the third wraid, she thought how nice it would be if one of the Star Maps happened to be located on a lush resort world instead of the hind end of nowhere surrounded by unpleasant wasteland and hostiles. Manaan was probably the nicest worlds of the two leads remaining, but Manaan was going to be a political swamp, which wasn't a whole lot better.
The route through to where she guessed the burial chamber was supposed to be led through an acid spring, too wide to leap over even with the Force. Grumpy and irritated, Aithne moved to explore the corridors off the main passage for a workaround. There was some ancient Sith tech guarding a separate chamber for the Sith Lord's primary weapon in one. She ran into trouble when she went the other way.
The second she stepped out of the hallway into the cavernous chamber to the west of the main passage, she sensed the danger. Peering through the darkness, she saw them: not one but two hulking terentateks. In between her and the room she needed to search.
Alright. Break it down. Close quarters. The chamber was big, but not nearly as big as she needed to keep away from both beasts at once. She hadn't brought a gun powerful enough to take them on from a distance; Ordo's monster repeater was the only one they had on Ebon Hawk that might be able to do the job in time. Contain them, then. Control the battlefield.
How? Don't focus on what you don't have. What do you have?
Retreating out of the chamber and a good ways down the corridor, Aithne began to rummage through her pack and realized the Force had been good to her. Since Jolee had joined the team, when he went out with her, he took the medical pack she'd used to carry. As a consequence, when Mission wasn't with her, Aithne moved the demolitions and security gear over to her pack with the Star Forge datapad and other informational gear. She had about eight inactive and disabled mines in the main compartment of her backpack, ready to partition up any battlefield she needed. And tossed into the top was the sound-dampening stealth belt she'd used to deescalate things with the assassin droid in the tomb of Marka Ragnos the day before. She wasn't the best stealth operative. Could she sneak around in the dark corners of a room containing two Jedi-killing monsters long enough to set up the traps that would let her take them down alone?
Time to find out.
Aithne blessed the overpowering smell of death and dust all these Sith tombs had as she crept through the dark side of the terentateks' lair, moving as slowly as she could so as not to give off the slightest noise. She prayed, so far as she was able, sending her respects to the Force. Not that it'll do much good. The Force will do what the Force will do, and it'll favor what or who it's gonna favor, and it doesn't much care if you're out here trying to save the galaxy or take it over. You're good for your own sake, or you're not good at all.
Still. Please don't let them come for me before I'm finished setting this up.
She lined up traps on four or five lines of approach to a particularly hard-to-reach corner in the terentateks' chamber, and prayed additionally that multiple explosives going off at once wouldn't collapse the tomb on her.
It's been here for a couple thousand years. It'll be fine, right?
The corner—not completely coincidentally one of the strongest structural places in the room—she left free of mines for a three-and-a-half-meter radius. When she looked over everything and decided she'd done all she could, she laid her pack down a little ways away from her feet, opened the side pocket, and grabbed out two particular grenades.
She pulled the pin on the adhesive and lobbed it at the terentatek on the left. Pulled the pin on the plasma and threw it at the terentatek on the right. Then she took up a defensive stance and waited.
The whole tomb shook. Two terentateks roared in too confined a space, and Aithne set her teeth against the din. The smell of blood and burning flesh joined with the dust and bones. One terentatek stood raging against the sticky morass engulfing its feet and claws. It would tug its way free eventually. But Aithne would have a crucial half minute before it did.
The other terentatek was gushing blood out of several burning, oozing wounds upon its body, making its way toward her. It hit the minefield first.
The mines didn't stop it. It kept going, red eyes narrowed at her in rage and hatred; it had enough cunning to know she'd caused all of its pain. But the creature had cooked its feet before it reached her. Bleeding from a dozen wounds inflicted by the explosion of two separate frag mines, nearly mad, and smelling like the kinrath in the Shadowlands, it bore down on her.
Aithne was ready. With the double-bladed lightsaber extended, she adopted a form that would make her like a beast herself. Using the Force to strengthen her arms and legs, she met the terentatek power for power, ignoring the crashing and cascading dust that was the other terentatek, breaking free of the adhesive grenade and trying to find another path through the minefield to help its mate. There was no room for that one. The first took up the entire space in front of her. She'd blocked off the creatures' ability to flank her.
The rancid, venomous breath of the terentatek assaulted her. Teeth as long as her hand gnashed centimeters from her face and spittle flew into her hair. Aithne didn't back down. As the terentatek clawed for her vainly, she twitched her lightsaber, and the ends of the monster's claws went flying. It screamed and tried to ram her. With her own muscles screaming, Aithne shoved out with the Force. She couldn't shove it back. It was born and bred to resist attacks like that. But she could keep it at bay. She kicked out hard into the thing's putrid, bleeding underbelly and slashed it across the face, then down through its gut as it reeled, leaving the entrails burning and steaming away in the air of the tomb.
The creature fell toward her. With a second mighty kick, she forced it away and prepared to meet its mate.
The second terentatek hadn't been as hurt by the first grenade she'd hurled its way as the one she'd chosen to fight first. Adhesives didn't do anything like the damage that plasma grenades did. But as it had tried to find an avenue to her, maddened by its failure, by the screams and the scent of its mate's blood, it had stumbled into far more of Aithne's mines.
By this point, the second terentatek was a pathetic, tortured wreck. Half-blinded, one arm entirely blown off by a plasma mine, it was heaving, staggering around the tomb in devastation. Aithne almost considered leaving it, except for the fact that the thing would heal and go on to hunt Jedi all the more in the future. She vaulted the corpse of the first creature, and that was where she made her mistake.
As she moved out of the corner, she lost the ground advantage. Suddenly, the creature had room to maneuver. As she stepped, she saw its head turn, and that was all the warning she got.
The tail whipped out on a trajectory she was unprepared for. Aithne dodged the blow that would have clubbed her insensate to the ground. But she couldn't completely avoid one ripping spike. It tore through her robe sleeve, tore through the skin and muscle of her forearm. Aithne cried out. Instantly, her arm was on fire with pain. Throbbing and protesting at the punishment. Blood began to well up from the wound at once, dripping down her arm to the stone below.
Aithne grit her teeth and pushed back her rage. The last thing she needed was to lose control like the creature. Instead, she shifted to a more sideways stance and a vector that would have her fighting on the terentatek's blind side. Coming at it in a series of short runs and jabs, working mostly with her right hand and the double-bladed lightsaber, she was weaker than she had been against the first terentatek. The fight took longer. But if she was weaker, so was the second terentatek. She got a strike in on its inner leg, another tearing wound across from the blown-off extremity that made the terentatek howl. Its cry broke off back in its throat, dying off into a wounded gurgle.
Using the Force for springs, Aithne leapt up and drove her lightsaber down like a spear. She ripped it through the terentatek's heavy carcass off that second, ragged wound. She waited until she felt the life leave the monster's body before she turned her back.
Hissing, Aithne cradled her left arm. Her sleeve was black and wet with blood. She couldn't even see the wound beneath. That was possible even if the creature hadn't hit anything vital, she knew. Flesh wounds could bleed a lot. She didn't feel as though the terentatek had broken her arm, rather, she felt as though it had landed a glancing blow.
Now she wanted Jolee's medical pack, needed a shot of kolto to slow the bleeding, congeal the wound, bandages and tape to wrap it. She found a single basic medical pack in an interior pocket of her own pack—the kind with basic antiseptic and some small bandages. She would have to make do. Aithne dressed her wound as best she could. It was tricky to tie her bandage one-handed, to tie it tightly without turning it into a tourniquet. Breathing deep, Aithne reached out to the Force, trying to ignore the angry edge, and drew on her body's natural ability to heal itself.
The wound resisted. The terentatek's were anti-Jedi. Force resistant, creatures of black magic, even the injuries they inflicted were hard to heal. Slowly, she felt the blood loss through the wound begin to abate. But as the thinnest possible scab formed over the long, deep slice in her forearm, she felt a sick sullenness in the wound that lingered—severe bruising, but . . . but something else.
She had to get out of here.
Aithne made a cursory search of the terentatek nest. She found a third datapad dating from the Great Hunt, and in the bones and trash where the terentatek had been denning, there was something else. A crystal called to her hand. Aithne closed her bloody fingers over it, and it sang.
The crystal sang a song of light.
Peace, serenity, and righteousness emanated from the crystal in her hand. A warning as well: this crystal would refuse any act of Darkness. It would simply cease to function. Any Jedi who added this crystal to their saber was effectively creating their own leash. But for a Jedi committed to the Light, to defense, to protectiveness, and to standing against the Dark—it would blaze.
The crystal both called and challenged Aithne. It wasn't hers, it told her. She couldn't claim it. But she could earn it.
In the depths of Korriban, the crystal shone like a star, and its warmth, so different from the dry, resentful heat of the Sith homeworld, grounded and comforted her. Aithne slipped the crystal inside her pack, into the hidden compartment where she had kept her lightsaber to begin with.
She crossed to the room she had been trying to reach from the beginning, the secondary chamber she figured had to have a way across the acid spring blocking the way to the burial chamber. She was right. Nestled into secure compartments of two decorative obelisks in the center of the secondary chamber were two high-grade Sith-manufacture grenades, one that contained a flammable adhesive that would set everything it exploded upon alight, and another a high-grade propellant cooling agent, capable of freezing just about anything.
"That'll work," Aithne muttered. Ignoring the pain in her left arm, she made her way back to the main hallway. Keeping the fire grenade back for a rainy day, she pulled the pin and threw it into the acid pool blocking the way. She stepped back and held her arms over her face against the acrid steam, but after the steam cleared and she could look, the pool had frozen, sure enough. One more test. She assumed if she'd picked the fire grenade, she could have exploded the entire tomb. Proved herself too stupid to be a Sith.
Aithne limped over the frozen acid, grateful it had frozen in waves that gave traction to her boots. She opened the door into the primary burial chamber, and right across from the bones of Naga Sadow, just as she had suspected, was the triangular column of the third Star Map.
Pulling out the Star Map datapad from her pack, Aithne knelt by the column. It opened, and Aithne attached her datapad to the feed to download the information.
When it was done, she looked over the information, feeling a sense of bitter futility. She had three new landmark coordinates. Just three. A massive hole remained right in the middle of her datapad map. It seemed like a lot of work, so much pain and trouble for so little gain. Aithne consoled herself that for all she knew, without the three reference stars the Korriban map had just given her, it might prove impossible to find the Star Forge in the end.
Beside the Sith Lord's sarcophagus, there was a statue of some kneeling sycophant or other. In its outstretched hand it held the lightsaber Uthar had instructed her to bring back. Aithne looked it over. The hilt was black leather with ornate brown stitching forming evil letters in the ancient Sith tongue on it. When she put a single finger on it, she could feel the twisted, synthetic crystal inside. She left it where it was and left the chamber.
Uthar and Yuthura were waiting for her. Not at the entrance as they'd planned but on the frozen acid pool. Aithne took a quick catalog of her physical condition. She was exhausted. She felt her wound throbbing with every heartbeat. The skin around the injury felt hot. It was her nondominant arm, but with a double-bladed saber, that didn't matter much. She should've taken the Sith lightsaber, but even as she thought it, she felt a revulsion at the idea and knew she couldn't have done it.
Uthar glanced down at the double-bladed lightsaber she carried, a weapon she hadn't come into his academy with but a weapon he hadn't given her. "You have returned to us. But where is the lightsaber you were bade to fetch?"
"I decided it didn't suit me," Aithne answered, glancing at Yuthura. The Twi'lek woman was on edge, wary, but Aithne also sensed she was still hopeful, still waiting for her moment.
Uthar was watching her, probing, assessing. "No," he said. "Dear Yuthura, I believe we have both been played for fools here. This one has had her own objective from the moment she entered our academy.
"The day Yuthura brought you into our competition, I recognized the name you gave. It took me some hours to recall from where," Uthar said. "Many here at the academy do not know I was not among the Revanchists. I am one of the last survivors from Exar Kun's war for supremacy. When the Jedi triumphed over us, the Sith retreated to the edges of the galaxy to watch and wait and grow stronger. My master was among them, among the ones who plotted and manipulated, stoking Mandalore the Ultimate's desire for power and conquest to make war on your Republic. The chaos of that war and the ascendance of Revan and Malak opened the way for our return—the return of the True Sith. So, I was not there when Revan first split the Jedi and flew to war, nor was poor Yuthura. Yet I have studied the patterns of Revan and Malak's rise, the new wave of young Sith they have brought to be. Better than my apprentice, it seems."
Yuthura's lightsaber ignited. "Say what you mean at once, old fool," she snarled.
"Liat Ser'rida," Uthar replied, a cruel twist to his lips. "It was the very name she bore before she became the symbol of the Jedi Resistance to Mandalore. Before they began to call her after the movement she had founded, and she picked up the helm of the dissenter out of the ashes of Cathar."
Aithne went cold all over. Revan. Revan stalked her on every world, everywhere she went, every breath she took. She had felt drawn to Liat Ser'rida, the Guardian, the near-heretical historian who'd been a major organizer behind the Revanchists, then disappeared right at the start like a ghost. Because she became Revan. Why hadn't she thought of it?!
She'd been so sure Liat Ser'rida was a cipher, a dead end. She'd shown up to Korriban claiming to be the Dark Lord reborn.
Shock emanated from Yuthura, and Uthar smiled coldly. "I see neither of you were aware of the history. I had wondered whether you were an imbecile or a madwoman, lost in your own ambition, child. And now we see the truth. This is the woman you have trusted, Yuthura: a Jedi spy foolish enough to take the identity of the most notorious slaughtered Sith in recent years. By mistake."
"Who are you?" Yuthura demanded, moving so she faced off with Aithne.
Aithne stretched out for the shadow of any electrical impulses, a sign either of the Sith carried a comlink. When she saw they didn't, she reached back with the Force and crushed her own. "Aithne Moran," she answered.
"Possible," Uthar purred. "Possible. Lord Malak's most wanted opponent, combing the catacombs of Korriban for intelligence of the Sith. A fairly recent recruit to the Jedi Order, unaware of its history and consequence. Or perhaps it is just one more lie. In any event, you are a traitor. You have talent, child, but no wisdom. Not uncommon characteristics within this tomb, it seems. Come, Yuthura, we will destroy this pretender and forget any planned unpleasantness between us. For now."
Yuthura hesitated. Aithne saw it. She did not activate her lightsaber but appealed to the Twi'lek master. "I lied, Yuthura. To protect those under my command. I told you what truth I could. You can't say I didn't. And now you know the truth, you can't say I won't be willing to help you kill him. You know it's just a matter of time now. He'll eliminate you as soon as he can. So the question is whether you want to fight that fight with me, or without me."
Yuthura hesitated a moment more. Long enough. "With you. Help me kill him," she said.
Uthar's face hardened. "So. It is open treachery, is it?" he asked. He activated his own lightsaber, but even as he mustered his strength, he realized there was far less of it than he had thought. The poison Aithne had left in his room had done its work. "Ugh! No! My strength leaves me!"
Yuthara examined him. "You are weak, and the Force has abandoned you. We have made sure of it," she said, darting a grateful glance back at Aithne. She had begun to wonder if Aithne had followed through. Aithne wondered how far Yuthura would trust her in a moment. The truth was, they were all fighting wounded.
But Yuthura's support compensated for Aithne's own weak left side. Yuthura fought at her left, filling the gaps in Aithne's own defense as they pressed down on Wynn.
Uthar Wynn had spent his entire life sitting on the sidelines. His entire childhood, he had crouched at the edge of the galaxy, cowering with the remnants of the Sith. He had spent his entire adult life manipulating others to do his fighting for him. Now, poisoned, fighting off two younger Force users, he was soon overpowered. But as he fell back before Aithne's attack, he watched her emerald blade with a smile playing about his lips, taking pleasure in the cracks forming between Aithne and Yuthura through her deceit, even as they brought his death.
At last, Aithne cut his legs from under him and in the same moment, brought her blade around to remove his head. It went rolling across the frozen acid, yellow eyes still staring.
Yuthura straightened out over the body, looking back at Aithne with a mixture of fierce victory and wary gratitude. "Thank you. Uthar is finished, and a new order is brought to the academy. Yet now, we have the matter of your deception. You stand an enemy to the Sith."
Aithne admitted it. "I do. And while a bit of routine backstabbing is accepted among the Sith, you don't want it known that you've been associating with spies and traitors to get ahead."
"I don't," Yuthura confirmed in her turn. "What a shame you were not sincere in your intentions, as I was. We would have made a mighty partnership, and I believe what I said to you: you did have the makings of a great Sith, my friend." She raised her weapon, and that was when she first realized something was wrong. Her eyes flashed as she realized what Aithne had done.
"Better than you knew," Aithne murmured.
"You betrayed me! Not just the Sith—me!"
Aithne stood back a moment, lightsaber at the ready, refusing to make the first move. "You came to me for help with this," she answered. "If I used you to forward my own purposes here, it's no more than you did to me, and you began it. There was information I needed. You made it easy for me to get. But do you think I didn't know as soon as you drew me into your stupid little academy politics and I really started to play, that you would see I wasn't the brute-force pawn you wanted? You think I didn't know you planned to kill me too? Excuse me if I wanted to make murdering me a little bit harder for you."
Yuthura mustered the Force within her, trying to burn out the poison. But it had seeped through her pores over half an hour of her evening bath last night. It was well and truly in her system, and it would be days till she was free of it. "Damn you!" she roared. "I—I will destroy you for this. You—you will never leave here alive!"
Aithne brought up her lightsaber in the double-bladed variant of a Soresu block. Once again, she fell into the pattern of endurance, of resistance to the Dark. Once again, she made herself a wall for the ocean to crash against, a break for the fire to asphyxiate across. Her arm screamed every time she blocked Yuthura's strokes. She had begun to feel hot all over, to sweat. She delved deep into the Force to sustain her. She could outlast Yuthura. She could do that much.
The Twi'lek tried playing to her weak left side, tried to force her to expend strength she didn't have to spend defending on that quarter. Aithne simply gave way before her, dancing in a circle on the frozen acid, making Yuthura chase her, speed the poison more quickly through her body.
She refused to even meet Yuthura's aggression. She didn't hate the Twi'lek. She was doing what she'd been taught. Acting out of her rage was easy for her, controlling it, harnessing it—that was harder. Somewhere inside Yuthura Ban, there was a girl burning with the desire for justice, a woman who had wanted to free her kindred, a woman who had been stricken to learn she had forgotten that mission. Yuthura Ban wasn't any lazy, cowardly corruption at the heart of this place. And Aithne sensed she could be brought back. That she could have her own moment standing above her crimes lying in the dust of Korriban and say, "No more. Enough."
Just like Juhani before her, Yuthura began to pant and gasp eventually. Her strokes became wilder, less disciplined. Aithne let the first opening pass. The second and third and fourth as well. On the fifth, she kicked out beneath Yuthura's guard. The woman reeled back from her with a winded gasp. Aithne flicked her saber tip up and struck the hilt of Yuthura's saber from her hand, sending the red blade spinning end over end away to the ground. The frozen acid began to sizzle beneath it.
Aithne leveled her own saber at Yuthura's throat.
"I yield!" Yuthura cried, throwing up her hands. "Please! You are . . . too strong for me. I was a fool to think otherwise. I am . . . at your mercy." She was panting and gasping, sweating herself.
Aithne fought to control her own breathing, not to show just how much the fight had cost her. She withdrew her blade a hair's breadth. "You're assuming I possess it?" The words were a challenge.
Yuthura laughed softly, helplessly. "I think you do," she said. "Or . . . rather, I think you can. You are not yet lost to such things . . . as I am."
"You yourself said you still have compassion. Too much compassion for a Sith."
"You are a Jedi."
"Am I? After this?" Aithne demanded. "After everything I've done?"
Yuthura's face worked. Her eyes shone. "I do not know. I hope so. Please."
Aithne lowered her lightsaber another fraction from the ready position. "You could call down hundreds of Sith on me before nightfall. Sith from all over the planet. And if they didn't catch me, they could queue up behind me like a comet's tail across the galaxy. Why should I take that chance?"
Yuthura shook her head. "I . . . I do not know. I cannot tell you. I can . . . I cannot ask you to trust me. I will not . . . I will not even say it seems I could not—" she broke off.
"—It seems you could not trust me either?" Aithne finished. She deactivated her lightsaber and lowered her arms, biting back a wince and a groan. "You're wrong. I never wanted to kill you, and the poison you've been dosed with won't. It'll leave your system within a couple of days."
"I . . . I know. I recognize it, from lighter doses I took willingly earlier in my studies."
"It was just an insurance policy," Aithne explained, shifting. "I shouldn't have used it."
"No; in this, at least, you acted with some wisdom," Yuthura disagreed. "I felt . . . I felt I had to kill you. I felt there was no choice. You had . . . you had reminded me of a time before I became a Sith. I . . . I didn't want to think about that."
Aithne jerked her head, and Yuthura stood. The two of them walked away, off the acid pool. "Why?" she demanded.
Yuthura's lekku waved with her discomfort. "All the things I wanted to do, all the wrongs I wanted to right . . . I haven't done any of it. I would have accepted your enslavement of those men and allied with you anyway. It all just got farther and farther from my mind. All I've cared about is power . . . and myself." She looked back at Uthar's dismembered corpse on the slowly thawing pool, her burning lightsaber near it, and for the first time, Aithne saw something like regret cross her face. "This isn't the person I was," she murmured.
Aithne nodded. "I know. That's why you're not on the acid with him. Here are my terms, Yuthura: you want me to spare you? Leave that lightsaber to melt with Uthar. Leave the academy. Make your way back to Dreshdae, and get out. You don't have to go back to the Jedi. I couldn't care less about that. It's not the path for everyone. But you leave the Sith, and you spend some time thinking about how to reclaim that girl who wanted to free the slaves instead of killing her and everybody else in your rage against the galaxy."
Yuthura stared at her Sith lightsaber. "I think . . . I think you're right," she said after a long, long moment. "And it gives me peace. Maybe peace is what I need after all. The Jedi tried to show me that. I don't know if I can ever go back to them . . . but I can't stay here." She nodded, accepting Aithne's terms. "They will try to kill you, at the academy," she pointed out. "With Uthar dead, without me to explain, they will know you are a traitor. You're wounded—"
"You let me worry about that," Aithne told her. "One final test."
Yuthura gave her a slight but genuine smile. She began to walk away, but then she paused. "May I ask—why Revan? Why Liat Ser'rida? If you did not know—"
Aithne felt all her fear and anger and uncertainty crash in around her once again. Held at bay while she had focused on Yuthura's redemption, now all of it grappled for her attention once again. Why Revan, indeed, she wondered? Why was it always Revan?
She forced a smile. "I suppose it really was a mixture of idiocy, like Uthar said, and that I didn't have nearly enough time to switch the story once I got here and realized I'd need to be a Force Sensitive and not myself. It's really the stupidest Force-damned joke I could imagine, and all on me. Well. The Jedi keep telling me that me and Revan have a lot in common. Maybe I just felt drawn to the name."
"You know, I sensed you might be deceiving me on many fronts, but never about that," Yuthura mused. "Never about your name. I wondered whether you truly wished to join the Sith, whether you had truly fled the wars. But 'Liat Ser'rida' always felt true. In a way, it almost seems fitting. For a woman who could rule the galaxy to reject that path, instead claiming the name of the woman who surrendered her name to conquer."
"Please. You're good, but I also cheated to beat you, and beating you doesn't mean I could take on the galaxy."
"I think you could," Yuthura disagreed, smiling. "I truly believe you could. And whether you do or not, I sense that, beyond question, you have a destiny. I wish you well with it, my friend." She bowed, and there was only the faintest trace of mockery within the gesture. "May the Force be with you."
Aithne watched her go. "And also with you," she murmured. After a moment, she tightened the bandage on her arm and readied herself to follow.