So here we are. I have been posting biweekly SWTOR chapters plus bonuses since last November, for a total of 225,000 words. I have traced eight character classes from backstory through Acts 1 and 2 and across Voss in Act 3, and I hit the most dramatic pre-Corellian plot.
I’ve had a great time. Now I’m going on hiatus until I’ve recharged my reserves a bit. My friends will tell you I'm a finisher. I have plot notes through Knights of the Eternal Throne. Reimagining it for the full cast should be fun…
…at a later time.
Thank you for your time and affirmation. I like to think the game gets extra resonance when we read about these characters in new chapters.
If you like my writing and you’re curious about other projects, I do have an Archive of Our Own profile featuring, among other things,
my original traumatized SWTOR Trooper and his girlfriend Elara Dorne,
a Dragon Age: Inquisition Regency AU with a Cousland/Trevelyan pairing,
the sobriety journey of the Disco Elysium protagonist with some non-romantic intimacy,
an Emmrich Volkarin romance with a former sex worker,
a Blackwall/Butcher of Kirkwall romance about facing the world with what you've done when you can't fix it,
a trilogy of novelizations from Pillars of Eternity involving a lady and her dog, and
scraps from a Nameless One who is utterly horrified by what he finds in Planescape: Torment.
None of the SWTOR stories on AO3 are canonical to GWE. They predate GWE by quite a lot.
Wynston hit a button. The recording blinked. “I told you once I would go to my grave loving you. And now that it’s here…” Quinn whirled and stomped for the door. “Please,” Ruth said behind him, “believe whatever makes it easier.”
Quinn stopped and threw back his head. His eyes were closed. A few seconds were hallowed by the unwilling priest. And, for the first time, Wynston understood that when Quinn refused to speak of love, he was refusing to speak of something real and shattering, independent of affection or trust. This was her returning love, her devastating gift: permission to lie to himself, if that would help. The gesture betrayed itself with shocking tenderness.
Ruth opened her mouth again. Wynston jabbed to skip. The recording blinked again. “Larr Gith. Take care of everyone. I trust you.”
“Wait, is that it?” said Larr. "Not even a 'thanks for being amazing'?"
“Tebbith, is there consciousness after death? What if what kills you is something inside your own mind? Will it exit the room with me? Or will it stay in this living body when I am gone?” Ruth's face spasmed. “I don't want to die. I don't want to die some monster's pawn. Please, help Quinn watch over my son. Mine and his. He knows you're the teacher I trust most. Because you've taught me. Be brave. You're extraordinary. Vette, I didn't apologize enough..."
It was hard for the Light Red to pass in military zones. The sleek pink yacht simply wasn’t something that could blend in or be easily explained. An automated station designed purely to hand out transponder codes…well, Ruth would have to chance it.
She walked ahead of Quinn onto the station, and he directed her with quiet words. The risk had to be hers; if something opened fire on him he had no way to block it. She gladly took on that risk herself.
They walked into a large round room, pretty far from the Light Red’s airlock. He passed in front of her, took a few paces, and turned around.
“Quinn? Do you see a terminal I don’t?”
He tilted his head back just enough to look down his nose. “Ruth. For over a year I have known that if you do not change it is my fate to watch you die. And for almost as long, I have known that it will likely be by my hand. Baras is my true master. And your time is up.”
The words jumbled in her head. She seized the first ones. “Malavai. He's a serial killer driven by paranoia. He tears down as much as he builds, you know that.”
“His vision is the Empire,” Quinn said fiercely. “Rule through strength, my lord, not compromise. The Emperor is an absentee landlord and his chosen Wrath has not—my lord, you grasp so little relative to your reach. I have tried to guide you, and it wasn’t enough.” If durasteel could feel pain, his face would stand explained. It was hard to pity metal. “Unlike you, I follow my orders in the spirit in which they are given. You are here to die.”
“No." His face was determined, but he always deferred to her. "I don’t believe you. You got an offer, but you don’t have to take it, we can still win, we can be better than this.”
“What is your ‘better’?” Frustration edged his voice. “Time and again you have allowed problems to pass out of your reach. Enemies, Ruth, not innocents. Why?”
She wasn’t used to talking about this with anyone but Jaesa, there in hiding where the Empire’s authorities wouldn’t hear. “Life." Didn’t it all add up to that? "Life creates the Force, sustains it. I cannot diminish it every time I run into a disagreement.”
“Yet the Empire lives on those who do.” He stopped as if waiting for her rebuttal. She was too confused to give him one. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
“This room was built to my specifications,” he said, and touched a control on his wrist. Doors opened all around the chamber. Some held turrets. Two held six-legged war droids with scorpion-like tails, each unit carrying three blasters. “You will never know how hard I fought to prevent this exact scenario.”
She assessed. Of course she assessed. Her tactics were already laid out. “Quinn, stop it. Stop it. Stop this. I love you.”
“You can't talk this through.”
The droids raised their tails and fired at Ruth from a wide angle.
She activated her sabers midair. The droid she attacked skittered out of its alcove, swerving clear of her swings over and over again. With three blasters mounted, it could keep her under pressure without ever having to stay in melee range. He knew exactly how to get to her.
Baras is my true master. Impossible. Crossfire sailed in. The droid was hard to press and it had a twin at her back. Unlike you, unlike you, I am unlike you. She Force lifted one of the droids and smashed it into the other. She wasn’t just a pair of lightsabers. She used her feelings, she always used her feelings, he had always given her such feelings. She launched herself at one of the wall turrets, whirling her sabers in midair to deflect the maelstrom of blaster fire. At the moment of impact, she plunged both sabers into the turret and heard it shriek in coming apart.
She turned around. Quinn was sighting down his sidearm. It only looked like he was staring into her eyes. His face was a white mask.
When one crumpled droid raised one blaster-wielding tail, she crushed it with one closing hand. There was fear in her, subsiding, already giving way to something warmer and redder. He had lied to her.
No.
He had fucked her, eagerly, over and over.
That couldn't mean nothing.
He hadn't thought her soft when she helped him deal with Moff Broysc.
He had used her. And used her, and used her. For a paycheck, professional advancement, his thrills, his petty confessions—never the big one—for a meal ticket, for the warm glow of adoring support. She had given him everything and he had taken it without ever telling her his attentions hinged on something more.
He knew. He knew, all this time, what his decision would be. And he'd touched her anyway.
The droids were flattened, the turrets destroyed. Quinn still shot at her.
She ripped the blaster from his hand and smashed it against the floor. She hoisted him against the far wall with the Force, pinning him there by his throat. It was a classic pose, the Sith and the fool.
The fools, together.
In the new inferno of feeling something whispered for her attention. Something small, something…inside.
When she dropped Quinn, he crumpled on the floor. She dragged her focus back outside and stalked up to where he lay on his side, torso heaving.
She had to choose what to do with him. And she could not kill him yet. Her heart reported that bitterly. She could not kill him yet.
“I could send you back to Baras now,” she said. “Naked, maybe. Do you want to see your master again?” His breath whistled. She kicked his ribs. “Answer me when I speak.”
“No, my lord.” He twisted to face upward at her. “Let me stay.”
She kicked his ribs. “It's inappropriate for a man in your position to make jokes.”
“I can help you,” he croaked.
She stooped and raised him once more, this time with a hand around his throat. She brought him up eye to eye while his boots drummed on the floor. “I do wonder one thing, my love. Was it good for you?”
“My lord…”
“Yes or no.”
“Beyond dreams.”
“You aren't entitled to dreams anymore. You will learn before I get bored of this.” She tossed him aside. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists and bled, surely she was bleeding. “Get up. Get up.”
She marched him back to the Light Red.
Her crew was waiting in a haze of tension when she walked into the holo room. “Quinn is Baras's man. I'm storing him until Baras is resolved. Pierce, please make sure he doesn't get himself or any communication out. Lock him in his quarters, break the holo, and don't tell me anything he says or does. I want him lucid and with all his parts attached. Beyond that, I don't care.” She felt the twin surges of fear and vicious delight. She rounded on Quinn. “If you think that's the harsh part, you truly underestimated me.”
Vette said, “Can we talk about this more?”
Pierce said, “What’s to talk about? He’s a moron and she’s free to choose her own way. Congratulations, I say.”
Jaesa said, “Ruth. What can we do?”
“Get us to Corellia. I have things to do. If anyone interrupts me for anything less than the Emperor’s will, I will cut off a body part of my choice.”
Somehow, she got back to her quarters. Quinn’s light footprint was a hideous oppression. She gathered up his spare uniform, his blaster cleaning kit, the sheet they had stained and laughed about. She threw it all out into the hallway and stepped back in and fell to her knees on the floor. She leaned over, choking on something, unable to cry.
She directed her attention to the thing that had stopped her. Something deep inside, something foreign and possessed.
She wanted to reel back, but the rush of horror only illuminated the new life more brightly. A mere week ago she would have been glad of it, but now she only wanted to distance herself from her womb, as far as she could.
Quinn had done one last thing to her. And in that moment, she hated them both with all her heart.
*
Ruth answered the door when Vette knocked. Vette was trying not to think about what had happened to the ship, when it seemed all the pink sections had started to bleed. Ruth looked deadly tired after six hours’ solitude.
“Ruth, Emperor’s will, don’t cut my parts off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, there's—"
Thud from Quinn’s quarters.
“—The Hand on the holo.”
“Yes,” said Ruth. Thud. “The actual reason for being here.”
Thud. The worst part was, there were no voices. Pierce wasn't presenting a path toward not getting beaten, and Quinn was taking it in total silence.
Ruth went to stand before the Servants. “Wrath,” said Servant One.
“The Wrath is unleashed,” quavered Servant Two.
Thud.
Vette edged toward Jaesa. “Should we…?”
“Be quiet!” Ruth shouted. Vette had never known her to shout, except to cross distances. “Destroy Baras's pawns and help Darth Vowrawn. Nothing has changed.”
Thud
Ruth’s lip curled. “Jaesa, tell him to stop. It's annoying.”
“And…evil…?” Vette offered. She was as pissed off at Quinn as the next person, but whatever was going on in there was torture. Ruth had never given Pierce free rein. Ever. It would have been horrifying.
It was horrifying.
Ruth rounded on her. “Are you in or out?”
“I'm in. You know that. Let's go get some spies.”
*
Jaesa watched the door to Ruth’s quarters. The pile of Quinn’s belongings lay just outside.
She boxed them up and put them in a storage closet. Then she waited by the door.
Pierce left Quinn’s quarters. His knuckles were bloody, and he looked satisfied. “Always wanted to do that,” he said.
“Ruth always stopped you,” Vette said. “Because she’s not a psychopath.”
“I don’t think any of us knows what she is,” said Pierce. “But we’re going to find out.”
“Who’s piloting this ship?” Vette scampered off.
Ruth didn’t emerge until they were on the ground. Coronet City was bombed halfway to ground level. Jaesa’s heart ached, looking at the pointless destruction. She knew that if this red-eyed, dry-cheeked, jaw-clenching woman were feeling like herself, her heart would ache, too.
Ruth stalked off the ship without looking at anybody. Jaesa followed, and Pierce too.
“We have a couple of ‘Jedi’ spies to find,” Ruth said without looking at anyone.
*
There were seven Jedi in the room along with a scattering of Republic guards. Everyone turned when Ruth entered. She signaled for Jaesa and Pierce to stay by the doorway while she walked a little ways in and permitted the Jedi to surround her.
“What is this?” asked one of the Jedi, his clothes and bearing suggesting leadership of some degree. “Sith, stop where you are. You’re badly outnumbered.”
She spoke to the room in general. “Darth Baras’s spy—identify yourself so you don’t die with these Jedi.”
“Are you suggesting that one of us is Sith?” said the Jedi leader.
“A pathetic trick,” said another Jedi. “She’s in over her head, and so she makes a desperate play to destabilize us.”
Ruth had intelligence that one of Baras’s deep cover agents was such a Jedi and was leading this party into a trap designed to pit the Jedi against some of Baras’s Imperial enemies. The agent’s entire purpose seemed to be tipping off and leading the Jedi like that: practically Baras’s personal strike force against his own rivals. That had to go as part of Ruth’s bid to cut his support before striking at him. “Last chance, my fellow Sith. Speak now or die with your pretend brethren.”
“Hold. I must speak.” A middle-aged brunette stepped forward and bowed slightly to Ruth. “You’re becoming a legend among us, my friend. I am thankful you’ve given me a chance to save myself.”
The Jedi leader struggled for words. “Master Injaye…?”
Injaye smiled. “All these years, right under your nose. I was to lead you to your deaths today. Instead I’ll watch my new friend destroy you.”
Ruth’s voice transformed, suddenly thick with something Jaesa didn’t recognize. “You really won’t, traitor. Did you think I was here to save you?” Ruth drew her saber; a murmur ran around the room, but the Jedi did not move to intercept. “You chose the wrong master. I’ll be sure to let him know you failed.”
Too late Injaye went for her weapon. Ruth struck her down before she could raise a defense.
Jaesa had clearly missed the moment where she could have been useful. The Jedi leader spoke. “She was leading us into a suicide mission, then. We’d be walking to our deaths if not for you.”
“Spare me your gratitude,” Ruth said. “It sickens me you couldn’t see her for what she was. Have you Jedi ever gotten anything right?”
“I think it would be best for us to part in peace. Now,” said the leader.
“We should arrest her,” said another. “Whether she saved us or not, she’s a Sith Lord, and no friend of ours.”
“Blind! Arrogant! You have no idea what you’re fighting!”
One Jedi raised his saber. Ruth charged.
“Master, no!” shouted Jaesa, starting forward.
Pierce barred her path with one arm. “Let her go,” he said quietly.
Some Jedi were standing back, Force throwing things in Ruth’s direction.
“But they aren’t–”
“She finally figured out we’re at war,” said Pierce. “And she needs to fight. Let her go.”
Ruth’s frenzy commanded Jaesa's attention. She had always sought peace with Jedi. Now darkness visibly curled around her as she battered down the defenses of her opponents and dealt savagely powerful killing blows. The ugly pained fury Jaesa knew from lesser Sith’s expressions looked utterly out of place on her face.
She could have negotiated. They could have been useful against common enemies. She didn’t have to make it slaughter.
Pierce, prompted by Jaesa didn’t know what, readied his blaster rifle. “Go on in. I’ll trim the edges. You let her do what she needs after.”
Jaesa nodded and pushed into a rapid sprint toward the battle. There was no question of survivors. She could just end it faster.
*
Darth Vowrawn gushed when Ruth rescued him from Baras’s agents. A member of the Dark Council. Maybe once she would have called him an ally. Now he was one more possible death to track, in possession of a few pieces she might be able to move.
From now on, it would always be like that. Red clouds billowed and washed through her all the time. She kept waiting for Quinn to get back to his customary spot behind her left shoulder.
He never would. Not ever again.
She already knew she was going to investigate this possible Entity location. She called Darth Vowrawn, arranged the rendezvous, and hit the road.
With Vowrawn and her crew she entered a broad, relatively squat building in Corellia’s government district. She descended with them into a sub-basement, where they found an enormous hall, lavishly draped yet bare of furniture.
In a column of red light hovered a woman’s figure, an image that absorbed the light and released nothing but a velvety heat of Dark Side energy.
“Is she not beautiful?” Vowrawn said happily.
“I’ve never sensed anything like it,” Ruth admitted.
The answering voice seemed to rasp from multiple directions at once. “Come closer. You are here to aid. Baras knows. I cannot resist.” Her captor sensed that so soon? “I am bound. Every extraction pains. If you fail, he will punish me. For welcoming you.”
Yes, well, that happened to everyone. It was Vowrawn who spoke. “Don’t fear, Entity,” said the Pureblood. “The trial is over. I know the incantation. Now it is a simple matter.”
“No. You do not understand. We are not alone.”
Ruth and Vowrawn turned in unison toward the newcomer they sensed. A big man, seemingly more cybernetics than flesh, but something of his ruined face was familiar.
He extended a hand and Vowrawn simply crumpled under a cloud of red painful even to Force sense.
“At last,” said the cyborg, and the voice was that of Baras’s old apprentice Lord Draahg. “I’ve caught up to you again. I told you, I cannot be killed.”
She didn’t know how he was back. She had killed him weeks ago, after he had announced Baras’s displeasure with her. She couldn’t let fear cloud her senses now. Sheer returning arrogance seemed to be the way to go. “Are you not tired of failing yet?”
“Pain sustains me,” he said thickly. “I ate of suffering as you watched me burn. I drank of anguish as Baras rebuilt me. My eyes are no longer flesh. I see in a new way now. And the sight of you sickens and delights me.”
“Hm. I can return half of that.”
“In minutes the great Darth Vowrawn and his hard-won knowledge will disintegrate. Then the Entity will forever be in Baras’s control.”
“Truth,” grated the Entity. “The death field is powered by the machinery of Draahg’s.”
“But I’m forgetting myself,” added Draahg. His face twisted and puckered around the dark cybernetics when he smiled. “Your father sends his regards. I must say, he didn’t put up a very impressive fight.”
Ruth's heart seized up. By arrogance alone the statement might just have been a taunting lie, but she felt truth in it, the truth that had robbed her of her father the day before she had come to this forsaken planet.
Combat preparation was not a breath, not a focus. It was red.
Draahg laughed when she raced in to meet him. She deflected his first push of raw Force energy without thinking and was dimly aware of something collapsing some ways to one side as a result. She swung into battle at Force-enhanced speed, observing a couple of very slight stiff elements in the big cyborg’s motions.
She found out quickly enough that his raw power more than made up for that weakness.
Everything blurred. He struck at her. He struck at her friends. He struck because she hadn’t stopped him the first time. And although she fought back, he was bigger than she, and he hated as much.
“You fight better than the old man did. I was honestly embarrassed I had to fight that. You're pretty good, apprentice.”
Apprentice? Enough. “My name is Ruth Niral. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
Somewhere after she knocked him away from Pierce and closed to lock him down, he suddenly reached in and grappled with her. When he saw the look on her face he laughed aloud.
She went for the eyes.
Not even the savagery of the Force pushback that flattened her friends could stop her when she went in for the kill. She swept, struck, knocked him to his knees, kicked him to the ground, struck again. She felt it with her whole being when Lord Draahg died.
Before he fell she lopped off his head. Then followed where it rolled and sliced it in half. She returned to dismember the cyborg corpse, hacking piece from piece until a junk vendor would find nothing to salvage. She picked up the small leather lightsaber hilt he’d had at his belt. Her father’s lightsaber.
Still it hurt. Still she raged. She fell to her knees by his smoking, malformed boots, and held her sabers pointing backwards at her sides, and screamed. She screamed for what she had failed to protect and what she had failed to calculate. She screamed because once, they had worked together, and now he was just another man who wanted to hurt her, and she’d won. Wasn’t that great. She won.
She was folded over, crying in shuddering peals. There were people at her side, hands on her back. Vette. Jaesa. They didn't understand. But at least she had torn away another of Baras’s tools.
“Oh, Wrath,” called Vowrawn, “don’t cool down just yet. That connection will be necessary; I’ll require your assistance to complete the ritual.”
Of course. The Dark Side and its continued demands were waiting. The crew would not understand it, but it was necessary. She surged with something that felt like shame. She turned away from Jaesa and stalked over to contribute whatever it was Vowrawn needed to release the Entity and push the mission onward.
*
Ruth hadn’t been to Dromund Kaas since before she lost Baras’s good graces. Now she stalked the retail district, looking for something necessary.
“Okay,” said Vette, “black, classic. I get it. Why are we still looking? You can only wear one suit of armor at a time.”
Ruth ignored her. She had discovered that Vette didn’t actually need encouragement to babble. Once, it had been charming. Now Ruth wondered what thoughts festered under the chatter. A slave learned to hide faces.
She saw it in a huge red showroom that had a dozen elaborate Sith outfits on contorted mannequins in the front window.
She walked in and a saleswoman presented herself immediately. “My lord.”
“The mask,” Ruth said. “The plain mask.” She pointed at the mannequin.
“Ah, an excellent choice. Hidden vents along the jaw and under the nose for easy breathing, and the eyes have circumferential screening to allow peripheral vision without revealing too much of the face beneath.”
“I want it now. How much?”
Vette made a tiny sigh when she saw the mask the saleswoman presented. It was smooth, black, featureless, with a black cowl that would totally hide Ruth’s hair and neck.
“Ruth, you’re not trying to scare children. Are you?”
“They tell me my expression always shows. Not anymore. This is worthy of the Emperor’s Wrath.” At the mention of the rank, the saleswoman nearly dropped the mask before recovering to test its fit. It clipped on perfectly.
Ruth paid and stalked out into the drizzly day. Vette followed. “Do you feel badass enough yet?”
“Why are you following me?”
Vette’s cheek twitched in surprise. “Because Baras’s people might come at us anywhere?”
“That’s a dangerous thing to care about.”
“But I do.”
Ruth was confused and angry and grateful that now nobody could see that. “What did you do on Voss while I was getting fucked in the Dark Heart?”
“I told you. Odd jobs in Gormak land.”
“And who paid you for it?”
“I was fighting the Gormak threat against the Voss.”
“And who paid you for it?”
Vette bit her lip. “The Republic’s ambassador.”
“And did you think I wouldn’t notice, or that I wouldn’t care?”
“You would’ve done it with me. There is no future in playing by the Empire’s rules. You always knew that. It hasn’t changed just because one guy is an asshole.”
“I think you’d better go back to your ship.”
“When Baras is dead? I will. Ruth, he hurt me, too.”
“Revenge. I suppose.” Ruth walked on.
*
Jaesa stayed on the Light Red and prayed that Vette could ease Ruth’s mood. Ruth had been cold and snappish for all of Corellia, and now she was preparing to face Baras on Korriban.
Jaesa just hoped she and Vette could bring Ruth back from the edge first.
She had hesitated ever since it happened. But Ruth was out now, and Jaesa did have the unlock code for Quinn’s quarters. She knocked and let herself in.
Pierce had made good on his promise to remove Quinn’s things. The walls were bare, the furniture was gone, a metal plate had been bolted over the holoprojector. There was nothing here but a kneeling man with spacers locking his wrists a few inches apart.
Quinn’s hair was greasy and unkempt, his beard ragged and shot with gray. His uniform was wrinkled and slightly off center. Cuts and bruises decorated his face, his neck, his wrists.
Nothing about his eyes had changed. “I don’t want your compassion,” he said hoarsely.
What, had he been waiting to say that? “I wasn’t planning on bringing it.”
“Oh? Are you ready to gloat yet?” he said.
As if she could take pleasure in a symptom of Ruth’s newfound cruelty. “How could you? She loves you.”
“Love doesn't win wars, girl. Ah, I enjoy not having to call you ‘milord.’ I gave her a thousand chances to truly commit to Baras's service. And every time, she chose you. Your weakness, your sentiment.”
“She had those strengths before she ever met me.”
“She could have been great! Her power, her drive, her courage." His voice broke. "Her beauty. If her loyalty and her self-interest had kept up...Jaesa, why did you drive her against Baras? A loyal apprentice could have lasted years, decades. You took that from her. From me. Had she not risen high enough? Did you have to bring her childish crusade to the fore?”
“Childish? No. You hate me because I walk her path, rather than her walking yours.”
“Hate implies caring.”
No remorse. “How can you be so dismissive? You supported her. You married her. Obviously something about her pleased you, just not her principles.”
“She was nearly great. If she could only ignore this menagerie she composed, she could have been a Sith to make planets tremble. Instead of a girl I couldn't save.”
“You could have saved her! By not shooting at her! By believing in her the way she believed in you!”
“You understand nothing. The one thing you could have done to help her, you never bothered. Where was your inner sensing?”
The question stabbed her. “I saw darkness in you. She said you'd been brought up that way, and that she could show you a better way to live. That you would come around if she proved herself.”
“Then we were working at cross purposes all this time.” His mouth worked a few seconds longer, speaking nothing.
“Why did you pretend to love her?”
His eyes sparked. “I do love her. More than I've ever loved anything. I know her strengths and flaws intimately, I have supported the former and compensated for the latter since before you knew her. I have always wanted the best for her.”
“Then why did you provide you?” The core question, the only real question. Why was this the thing he had chosen to give her?
“Answer me one more thing, Jaesa. Is she stronger? Is she harder?”
As if that would redeem anything. Jaesa set her jaw and wished her eyes could shoot lasers. “I'll tell Pierce I'm done here.”
That, at least, seemed to shake him. On this awful, awful board, it was the only move she had against him.
And Ruth, these days, was fixated on the board.
*
It was a little early, but if Ruth couldn’t give commands to the Army, she would just come back after Baras’s death and make it an order. She was fully prepared to lean into being the Emperor’s Wrath. Being so important, smart people would steer clear.
Highly ranked Army officers had offices in the Citadel. Baras was busy on Korriban. Ruth could walk where she wanted.
Pierce walked behind her to her right. He smiled at her mask as easily as he had always smiled to her face.
“General.”
“Lieutenant. Lord Niral here has been singing your praises. You've come a long way since Taris. Apparently all it took was the right Sith.” He paused as if hoping one of them would volunteer more details. “Per her command, I am promoting you to the rank of Captain, effective immediately.”
“Milord. Sir. Thank you.”
“Lord. I hand him over to you.”
“Pierce, you should celebrate. Tell me where you want to go to meet your friends.”
The soldier smirked. “Oh, I'll bring them in.”
“Acknowledged. Thank you, General. Dismissed.”
“Milord.”
Back on the ship Pierce stopped at her bedroom door, stood aside, and showed his teeth. “Any other captain's duties?”
A frantic passion, she because she was nineteen and in love for the first time, he because, she could only imagine, he already knew it would have to end. “No.” Never again. “And if you let anyone believe we have, I will castrate you. Take anyone, anywhere, I don’t care, but not me. Understood?”
Milord,” he said calmly. “At your service.”
*
Baras named himself ‘Voice of the Emperor’ before the Dark Council, and no one stopped him. But then he tried to get them to quash the ‘Emperor’s Wrath,’ and no one moved. It seemed that he would have to prove his case.
Ruth wore her new black mask, and new segmented black armor. She felt like a bug that got around by curling into a wheel and rolling, lightless, abject.
But angry.
Baras drew one red lightsaber and took up a guard that seemed to swim in darkness. He wasn’t here for saber technique. He was here to crush her with the Dark Side.
Well, she had a few weeks’ practice turning that to her own advantage.
She fought for herself. For her father, who was dead. For her dreams, which were stupid. For Vette, who was in the employ of the Republic. For Jaesa, who conspired with Light Side Sith like there was a point to rebellion. For Pierce, who would ride her as long as she was going up. For Quinn, whom she had loved.
Baras locked his saber against hers and began to gather energy with his free hand. “Do you feel your grip on life slipping, apprentice?” It was what he had said on Voss. Only…now Ruth felt the warm glow of hatred. She had never been stronger.
Life? What was life? Her grip on hatred was firmer than ever. She cut through his mounting energy and parted her sabers until one of them crackled off the tip of his and pressed the attack. She fought because nobody else would for her, not ever again. She fought because Baras chose her and that would be the mistake that blotted him out of history.
She fought because she had no choice, and even if she had, she would be here now.
“I am so turned on,” Darth Scythia said dryly from her high seat. Ravage chuckled.
A single direct hit from Baras would cut Ruth in two. She knew this, and she stayed moving, trying to block with one saber while stabbing with the other. Her husband, her father...he had taken everything from her except a stupid yacht and two baby friends. The least she could do was stab him, bear him down, and slice his throat.
She did. With the saber from Korriban, and the saber her father had died wielding. The beginning and end of her wandering path. The justice Baras deserved.
Ruth looked up at the watching Darths. “The Emperor has put down the impostor,” she said. “I am his Wrath.” And she would be great at it, because she understood this master. Yes, she would defend the Empire, like always. She would never transcend the chain of command. So she might as well perform it. With this master, and no other. “Not even you can stand on a lie before him.”
Darth Marr, foremost of the people she had once thought she could undermine, stood, rested a hand on his chest, and half bowed. The other Dark Councilors followed, even Scythia. Not because Ruth was a reformer or the pioneer of a better way, but because she was stronger than even the most arrogant of rebels.
Ruth nodded and walked out. She was tired of this.
*
Ruth stood alone in the Light Red’s side lounge. For the sixth time she put on her featureless black mask, this time to stay. She was not here to exchange emotions.
A knock came. Quiet, uneven. Jaesa, conducting the prisoner.
“Come,” Ruth barked.
Quinn walked in.
He was in a clean uniform. Unbruised, faultless posture, neat hair. He had shaved, and slightly scented—what did he think this was going to be?
He bowed silently, and took up parade rest with his hands behind his back, and stared at her.
“I've signed your transfer,” she said. “A recommendation will follow. I realize that because I hurt you you're going to call me a threat to the Empire and come after me, sooner or later. I give you your freedom anyway. Maybe this time you'll be wise.”
Then she silenced herself. What would he say after a month in the makeshift brig?
“My lord, if I offered to serve you in truth? Knowing all that we are together—"
“I'd spit in your eye.” Of course he hadn’t apologized. Then again, why would he? He'd been right. Only hard people survived. “You will never be with me again.”
“Then why am I here, my lord?”
“One question.”
Quinn didn’t move.
“Did you speak a word to Darth Baras about my father?”
He looked hunted, but his voice was level. “Why do you think I avoided meeting him for so long? I told Baras he should save your father for last. That he wasn't significant. That no one would miss him. I lied, to both sides, when I was too far in for it to matter. And for all that, I didn't save him. Yes. I spoke of your father to Baras. Do what you will.”
Ruth quivered with the darkness. She should have killed him already. But a more vicious kind of vengeance came to mind. Something to punish him for longer than a lightsaber's cut.
“The thing is,” she said coldly. “my father will never know his grandchild.” Some sick cosmic humor stretched her mouth. “Congratulations.”
“I know,” he rasped.
Her enjoyment curdled. “You what?”
“It's a boy. A son. He will live at least to age twelve.”
“How are you…”
“My lord, what did the Voss show you? Did it come true?”
Her head spun. “The words Baras taunted me with…”
“Our son was just learning what happened between us. He was very upset with me.”
Why would her son be talking to Quinn? “Was I alive?”
“I don't know.”
“How convenient for you.” She tried to stop, and couldn't. She was grateful for the mask. “What did he look like?”
“Like me. Something of your eyes, the width of your jaw.”
“Where were you?”
“I don't know.”
She reached up and across. Not to touch, but to grip his collar with the Force. “You must have seen something.”
“He was in clothing like your sparring gear.”
“Was he…like me, then?”
“I would infer as much. I don't know. He held no weapon.”
She squeezed. “I want more. There has to be more!”
He choked and struggled, but there were no more words. Nauseous, she let him drop on his heels. She stared past him while he recovered. “What did I name him?”
“I don't know.”
“Noted.” She forced herself to cool down. “Well, there's only one thing left to say.”
He spoke rapidly. “You have truly come into your own. You must understand that I have always lo—"
She choked him harder that time. “My son won't know what a father is until he goes to school and discovers that all the other children have one.” That time he dropped to his knees. She told him what he should know, when he asked why she kept her child away. “You arrogant fool. I love you. I'll go to my grave loving you. And for that above all I will never forgive you.” From his knees he stared into her eyes, fierce and still maddeningly untamed. “Dismissed.”
He stood stiffly, bowed deeply, and walked out into custody. They would send him on his way, free, and she would tend…a son. Her son. A boy who looked like his father.
Unless Quinn was lying, which he so easily did. He now knew the only advantage he had left: his sponsorship of her child. And the fact that she would listen to him if it was about that.
Yes, he had better go far away. She needed to be alone.
Chapter 44. Farewell to Autumn (All classes, mostly individually)
Sixth and final chapter of Out of the Autumn Planet
Galaxy Without End
*
Wynston walked with Ruth through what passed for the orbital station. They rounded a corner toward the Ministry of Corrections II when Wynston jerked back and flattened himself against a wall out of view from the airlock.
Ruth eyed him, then backed up to face him. “What’s wrong? Who is that woman?”
His sister. The helmetless Mandalorian was his kid sister. His mind felt like he’d just jabbed it with adrenaline and wood alcohol. “I need you to take my holo for access to the Ministry. Fly it out of here. I’ll give you rendezvous coordinates so your crew can take me to the same place. Then we trade.”
“But why?”
“Because she can’t know what ship belongs to me. Promise me, Ruth. Tell her anything, tell her it’s your ship and you got it from a shady dealer. Say anything except that I’m here.”
*
The butterflies in Calline’s stomach were thrantas. Each one big enough to crush her, and all of them flapping manically. She held her helmet under her arm because she wanted her brother to see her, recognize her, not just a suit of armor.
Blizz started saying something. Calline honestly had no idea what. “Sh,” she said, and returned to waiting.
Two people walked around the corner.
Human, one in Imperial uniform, the other carrying two lightsabers. Calline’s tension twisted and failed to lessen.
The shorter Human, the one with the lightsabers, took in Calline’s crew with a glance. “I didn’t order a Mandalorian,” she said in a starched Dromund Kaas accent. “If you’re coming after me you’ll need reinforcements.”
“No quarrel,” Calline said. “Know the owner of this ship?”
“I do. She’s me. I bought it fairly two years ago. Did you want something from it?” She sounded like she was about to get impatient.
“I was told this belongs to a man named Wynston.” Calline called up the image Hunter had given her.
The Sith squinted at it. “Is that a Zeltron? I don’t know him. Her? He’s pretty. But he doesn’t own this ship.”
Calline looked at Mako. Mako glowered back. “I can’t confirm anything with the Voss HoloNet embargo.”
“Sith. If you see this man, if you know how to contact him. I will pay.”
“She is the only living Grand Champion of the Great Hunt,” Torian said firmly. “She can provide many services to one who helps her find Wynston.”
Calline felt a little odd, being played up when she was basically begging. But she let it happen.
“I don’t truck with bounty hunters,” the Sith said. “Leave your frequency, and the frequencies of your crew. I’ll notify you if there’s anything worth reporting. Until then, kindly leave my ship alone.”
Calline stayed put, waiting for this woman to prove ownership by actually getting on board. The Sith gave Calline a curt nod and walked right past her to the airlock. It opened, letting both strangers on. Half a minute later Calline heard the engines starting outside.
Calline’s knees gave out from too much strain. Nothing. She had a face, a name, a location, a vehicle, and it all came to nothing.
“Can we holo Hunter back?” she said miserably.
“The frequency deleted itself before he finished the call,” said Mako. “I’m sorry, Calline.”
The silver ship clicked away from the airlock and Calline could hear it going. Going. Going.
“Something stinks,” she said.
“Agreed,” said Mako. “Once we reach the HoloNet I’ll look up the registration on that ship. Bet you anything it’s not that woman.”
“So close,” said Calline. “So close.”
Mako touched her arm. “I know. We have his name now. We have what he looks like. We’ll get another lead.”
*
Ruth made the rendezvous with the Light Red. Wynston and Ruth traded ships.
“Be careful,” he said, and hugged her. “I miss you already.”
Ruth could be gracious after their awkward talk, as long as he had the sense not to bring it up again. She hugged him back, then passed through the airlock’s tunnel to her own ship.
Where a golden Voss figure nearly scared her back out the airlock.
“One among you plots against you,” intoned Madaga-Ru, whom she had helped back on Voss. “The debt is paid.”
“Er,” she said. “Thank you?” He was already dissipating into thin air.
Ruth thought about her previous Voss vision. The one about Baras winning. Did these things come true? Did she have to take them seriously?
Vette and Jaesa were safe as houses. Quinn was Quinn, and he wouldn't hurt her. Pierce had his frustrations about her mercies and her XO, and would gladly blackmail his way into a better gig. She would watch him carefully.
It was all under control.
*
Quinn gave up on the droid programming. It wasn’t going to get any better. He could describe Ruth’s entire progress, the growth in her power and resolve, the fine web of her friends and supporters, the bizarre departures into lines of altruism at the absolute worst times…he could stuff it into equations and run simulations and wonder whether the physical droids would be in the right place at the right time. Stars, it was better than waiting for a chance to shoot her in the back of the head. The droid idea was a good-faith effort, and it gave him time.
Just a little more time.
Maybe her latest accomplishments would weigh in her favor, and he thought about phrasing.
Something distracted him.
Prior to today, he had never seen her kneel. Not even to the Dark Council. She had bowed, and stood her ground. But the thing in the Dark Heart had gotten her submission. Instantly and without qualification. And, having seen it, he couldn’t unsee it.
That sloshed into the Voss shrine’s vision. That fully fictional vision. For Quinn’s son to yell at Quinn, Quinn had to be alive. For over a decade. And Ruth, too. So…they both lived, somehow. If there were any truth in it.
There couldn’t be. The Voss knew nothing.
There was a shot to counteract contraceptives. Ruth had offered the idea when they were married, and he had said, no, we should be careful until things are settled.
Now he took both shots, one for him and one for her, and went to her.
She was in the bedroom, stretching. She always said she was meditating in these forms, and in some way maybe she was. She had a gentle glow about her, just at the edge of perception. He felt safe here.
Or would, without the sting of reality.
“They’re using you,” he said hopelessly.
Ruth straightened. “Baras used me and threw me aside. So will the Hand. That’s what Sith do. I will use them right back until I’m strong enough to hold my own position. Emperor’s Wrath sounds fine. If I have to beat the entire old guard to death with their own lightsabers…I will. We could have children who grow up without developing stab wounds in the back.”
“About that.”
“Yes?”
He hefted the shots. “I can’t see any more reason to wait.”
Two shots. Simple things. One vision, completely impossible. He ought to ignore it. But he went through with it, and then clasped her waist and kissed her. His mind raced ahead; it always did, every time, without fail. He thought about what they had seen and what he wanted and what she would play along with.
“Kneel,” he murmured, and with a playful smile she did it, trailing her hot touch down. She would obey that word for him and for a living god, and the god didn’t get what followed. “Wait. Stop.” He swept her up and strode to the bed. More than once before they had made something just by being together. This was no different, except that it couldn’t come true.
He couldn’t run away, he couldn’t sign on to her quixotic crusade, he couldn’t sabotage the Empire’s greatest strategist, he couldn’t lose on purpose, he could barely imagine winning on purpose, he couldn’t he couldn’t he couldn’t…for these last minutes he could live ignorant of everything but her passion.
*
“Well done. Well done!” Jannik wrung his hands. “You saved their city, their civilization!”
Vette looked modest. “My account is wide open.”
“A reward. Of course. Aren't you happy the Republic will gain an alliance with the Voss?”
“I'm a lot happier with a paycheck.”
The droid seemed to be overwhelmed with the need to speak. “Sir! An alliance with these complex beings will surely bring them into the fold of the Republic, to everyone's benefit!”
Jannik grinned. “I like his thinking.”
Fade rested a hand on a cocked hip. “Nice distraction, citizen.”
“I think it could use some work,” Vette said. Corso nearly choked on something, probably the fact that they still had deactivated implants in their faces from the previous distraction. “Now, I’m going to go get professional medical attention, because even deactivated, this implant sucks.”
Corso touched the purple and gray implant at his temple, the mirror image of Risha’s and Bowdaar’s and Vette’s. “Nice that they’re turned off, but they’re still…here. We can get a reputable surgeon, right?”
“We’ll be going back to Coruscant,” said Fade. “I am taking zero chances with these things.”
“Right there with you. Only, separate, because you’ve got Classified thoughts to think. We aren’t so bad as a team, huh?”
“The cream of the Republic! And independent contractors,” Forex allowed graciously.
“Aw,” said Vette. “Thanks.”
*
A faker with invented prophecies, if Talos was right about the wreckage in the Dark Heart. Scythia hummed with energy. First the Wrath fighting a dark entity like nothing Scythia had ever known—one that had nearly killed her while she sought to identify the empty Mystic’s robes—and now this, somebody else manipulating the entire planet through Mystic prophecies. Currents ran deep, here in the Nightmare Lands. Scythia had never felt more alive.
So when she verified that the Voss and the Gormak had once been one people…all she had to do was tell the Voss Three, and then dangle it over them to extract any concession she wanted. They would never admit to the world that their bitter enemies had once been like them. That they were still, on some level, much like their bitter enemies. They spoke briefly of allying with the Republic in gratitude for the destruction of the Gormak cannon. Scythia easily talked them out of that mistake.
Scythia hummed happily. A planet in her pocket? Yes please.
*
The Ebon Crock floated through hyperspace. It was good to have her engines for company. Vette curled up on a sofa in the holo room and read a comic book.
“Vette?” Bowdaar sounded…concerned.
She set the book aside. “Yeah, what's up?”
“I must admit to something.”
It sounded serious. Vette sat up. “What's wrong?”
Bowdaar was carrying a tray from the kitchen. He approached her and held it low for her to see.
A fluffy sock. Six energy puddings. A plasma cell. A ball of string. Random things, tiny things.
“What is this?”
Bowdaar spoke haltingly. “I was not permitted to own things. I fought back by stealing. By making caches that were out of the Hutts’ control. I do not want to go on doing that. This is what I stole. I'm sorry.”
“I can't punish you for what you did to survive. I was wondering about the sock, though. Listen…next time we land, let's find you a chest. A big ol’ chest with a lock. You'll get the only key. You can put things that belong to you in the chest and no one will be able to take it. Just, not my socks. Sound good?”
“Very good.” He set the tray aside. “Thank you. For many things.”
*
Larr knelt on the cold tiled floor. Before her, purple vines crawled obscenely out of a gash in the floor. It…smoked…in the Force. It was wrong.
And three days earlier, before her will crystallized around the Emperor, she probably would have volunteered to sacrifice herself killing it. If nothing else, it would have made her feel.
But things were so much greater than that now. She had the agony of a year’s memory. She had motivation. She had a direction.
She was going to win.
The commando Tala-Reh stood beside Larr. “This is the Mystic’s vision. I go now.”
“You’re a class act,” said Larr. “Really. They’ll know your name.”
“Do your people write poems?”
Larr caught Teb’s eye and jerked her head toward the Voss.
“We do,” said Tebbith, “and gather those of other nations. Your name will not fall.”
“Unimportant. Yet…comforting. Be well, outsiders.” She walked into the dark then.
Larr watched. Lord Scourge watched her. She hasn't said anything of substance to him since before the Shrine. The purple undulated, and faded. The gash seemed to sigh.
“Tala-Reh?” Maybe she didn't have to pay. Maybe everybody won this time.
But the bruises of history gave the lie to that.
Larr stood up and stretched. “There it is,” she said. “The Jedi will know her name.”
Lord Scourge crossed his arms over his chest and looked skeptical. “Do the Jedi track everyone who dies in darkness?”
“Someone should,” Tebbith said.
“I know the next step,” said Larr. “I'm going to kill the Emperor, and you, Scourge, are going to help me.”
His arms tightened and his red eyes flared. “What did you see in the Shrine that changed your feelings?”
The Voss had fixed her memory, had restored every hideous deed she had done under the Emperor's control. That's what changed.
“I met one of the Emperor's lackeys. She was a brat and she wouldn't listen to me. I need to make sure he doesn't attract any more lackeys.”
“As you say.” It was true, from a certain point of view, but his doubt was palpable.
While they were returning to their individual speeders outside the Dark Heart, Doc took Larr’s arm and led her a little ways into a creepy hollow under a twisted tree.
“You’re looking beautiful today,” he opened. “But something happened that had nothing to do with Wrath Lite. What is it?”
She was strong enough to live with this alone and smart enough not to. “There? At the Shrine? The thing they healed was my memory.”
His jaw dropped. In a motion that seemed unconscious, he leaned in and clasped her shoulders. “Stars. Larr, I didn’t know.”
“Teb can’t know. Promise me?”
“I promise. Just tell me what else I can do.”
“Run around healing people who don’t deserve it. Kiss me a lot. We’ll figure out the rest.”
He kissed her, quick and soft. “Works for me. Let’s go foil the Emperor some more.”
“You with me?”
“You betcha.”
*
Nadia pulled Tebbith aside before he could get on his speeder. She brought him to the shadow of a boulder and glared at a nearby vorantikus until it started wandering in the opposite direction. Then she turned back to Tebbith.
“Can you tell me what happened at the Shrine?” she said. “Because you and Larr aren’t okay.”
“I’m all right,” said Tebbith.
“No. You’re not.”
“Do you ever get into trouble by knowing too much?”
She smiled. “Constantly.”
“I took the healing of the Voss Mystics.”
“And why was that bad?”
“Because they healed the scars I grew over what I did. There is nothing standing between me and my choices. Every detail in my memory is perfect and clear.” He looked into her eyes. “You can’t make that better. Please don’t try.”
She couldn’t fix it, but she knew darn well he could ease any pain he put his mind to. “You can endure it,” she said. “I promise, you can. And we’re not going to give up on you. I promise that.”
“Please, don’t tell Larr about this. I will live with it, and you will remind me what to strive towards.”
“As long as you don’t give up.”
“No. How could I?”
She squeezed his arm. “I still have so much to learn.” Not from a failed Jedi, not from an assassin. From a person who was trying so hard.
*
No new movements from Hunter, but Wynston had already identified a pair of pop culture references Hunter had made while describing plans. If Wynston could figure out the next reference, he would have a clue. Somewhere, if he searched well enough.
“Ahem,” Kaliyo said from the doorway.
“Not now,” he muttered.
“Uh. Wynston. Listen.”
He looked up. “What is it?”
“If you couldn’t kill him at midnight, you won’t be able to kill him at three AM. Just come sleep.”
He almost dismissed her out of hand. Something in her silver eyes, though, shook assumptions he had made for a long time. He was so busy running, he had half forgotten that she was keeping pace. He let his shoulders drop. “I haven’t been fair to you, Kaliyo. Just a moment while I clean this up. Would you rather go straight to sleep?”
“Yeah,” she said. “That’ll work.”
Was he in such bad shape that she pitied him? Or was something else going on? He sighed, trying not to fall into another problem’s spiral. He just had to close this up, and maybe kiss her a little bit. Maybe.
*
“Implants?” Tare said over the holo. He looked disbelieving. “What did they do?”
“Cause pain,” said Fade. “If there were extra functions, Jorgan and Vik didn’t experience them.”
“Amazing. And your contractor said they used them for arena fights?”
“Just cranked up the hurt any time they did something other than fight each other.”
“I see. But they’re off now. Your people are intact.”
“None the worse for wear, except irritable about it.”
“Can you get me one of those implants?”
“Absolutely not, little brother.”
Tare sighed. “Yeah, that’s probably for the best.”
“If I ever try to invest in mind control technologies, please punch me in the face.”
“Wait, I need a reason to do that?”
“If you’re justified I might just stop what I’m doing.”
“As if, big sister.”
*
It was on an orbital station, a quiet one populated only by passive droids, that Colran Niral found the rebuilt cyborg known as Lord Draahg.
“Stand aside, little man.” Draahg kept walking towards his own ship.
“I can’t do that. You’re going out there to harm my daughter.”
Draahg did a double take, then smiled widely, his skin puckering around the new cybernetics and the still only half-closed wounds beneath. “Lord Niral! Have you come here to be forgotten as she will be?”
Colran ignored that. “Darth Baras keeps his weapons well-hidden,” he said. “But I’m an inquisitive kind of person. I could at least find you. She defeated you once; you should have accepted her mercy.”
Draahg’s only reply was drawing his lightsaber.
Colran stood, slender and straight, dwarfed by the cyborg and unarmed. “It isn’t too late to turn aside,” he said.
“Oh, it is too late. For you.” Draahg activated and charged.
Colran stepped aside, Force pushing enough to keep Draahg off balance before he could arrest his charge. “Gentlemen,” he shouted.
From out the nearest corridor came a number of guards with blasters. They wore light armor with the livery of House Niral.
“Why bring an audience to your own death?” asked Draahg, walking toward Colran with all the inevitability of nightfall.
“They are my guardsmen and my friends. They’re what Ruth and I have that you don’t.” Colran lifted a hand, calmly deflected Draahg’s first swing, shot a stream of bright white force at the cyborg with his other hand. He raised his voice again. “If the fight turns against me, kill us both.”
“That sacrifice will be fruitless. I cannot die.” The red cybernetics that had replaced his eyes flared, and with a manic grin he leaped past Colran into the blaster fire of his guards. “Your slaves won’t blow us up anyway,” he called. “That isn’t how this ends.”
The first hint of distress flickered across Colran’s face. “Stop!” He flung more Force energy at the cyborg, lashing a cry of pain out of him. A few blaster shots from the other guards found their mark. Draahg snarled, cut down the nearest guard, deflected several bolts into another. When Colran’s attack intensified into near-paralyzing strength, Draahg stopped, tensed, growled, and suddenly flung the Force stream away in a burst of red shadow.
As Draahg continued his march Colran finally drew his lightsaber, activating a bright blue blade and running to attack the cyborg’s back. Draahg spun with a casual grace, throwing out a hand to Force throw the last three guards against the wall at backbreaking speed. He batted Colran’s attack aside and flurried into his own assault.
“So much for your friends,” announced Draahg. “You’ve already failed. Perhaps you’ll take some pride in knowing that your daughter will follow in your footsteps.”
Colran dodged some swings at speed, knocked the others aside in brilliant flashes of energy. He did not seek to match his physical strength against Draahg’s, trying instead to slip attacks around the bigger man’s guard while defending himself using nimbleness and Force power alone.
But the cybernetic enhancements made Draahg faster than he looked, and the raw dark power around him could fling its own counterattacks, and even a father’s love wasn’t enough against the strength Draahg wielded. The onslaught of brutality wore down the long quiet practice of peace, further and further, until one hard downswing sliced through Colran’s shoulder and bore him to the ground.
Even then he attempted another Force attack. Draahg simply kicked the fresh shoulder wound and then inflicted a matching one on the other side, cutting until Colran gasped and dropped the last of his effort.
Colran shook his head as he stared up at the cyborg. “There are still four who will do anything to keep you from her.”
“Oh, no,” laughed Draahg. “There are three.”
Draahg waited for Colran’s face to fully blossom into horror before he struck the final blow.
*
Quinn held Ruth close, cradling her face against his neck, tangling his limbs in a way that would make it impossible to sleep. He tried to turn away from the Voss vision and could not. There was no way Ruth could survive the coming weeks, much less the duration of a pregnancy. Failure to face that fact wouldn’t make it any more probable.
He could not reconcile the facts and that one, dangerous fantasy. There had to be an angle he hadn’t seen yet. And maybe, just maybe, the person controlling that angle might be the person right in front of him. He could think of no way she could fit back into the proper order of things; maybe, if he asked her, she would devise a solution, a way of settling matters with the proper authorities, of keeping the Empire’s rudder intact on a heading its strongest servant could maintain. Maybe she would see, in her strange way, some solution he had not. Maybe, maybe, that vision, their child, still had a chance. Maybe he could trust her for once, believe in her instead of at her.
“Ruth, I must—”
She stiffened. She pulled away, and her blue eyes were huge as she stared past him. She whispered, “My father is dead.”
For the first time, Quinn couldn't suppress a lance of hatred for Darth Baras.
There would be no solution. The vision turned to wishful dust, and Corellia drew closer.
Pierce wasn’t in the Temple when Wynston and his people got out. A Voss told her he had walked downhill.
Even the people who seemed happy about their visions didn’t talk much about them. That was fine by Kaliyo. The futures of boring do-gooders must be as boring as their presents.
Quinn didn’t look at her. She treasured that. Saying he would off Ruth for a promotion seemed to have hit him right in the balls. He would probably be trying to hide the woodchipper if she ran into him later that day.
They all landed in Voss-Ka. Feeling energized and contrary, Kaliyo walked out of the alien district and along a cliff’s edge. Voss-Ka stood on a steep mountain, their best protection from the seriously tech-savvy Gormak. The fall was something she’d love to see.
Something rumbled, not far away. Kaliyo sprinted.
Only to find Ruth’s big cutie, Lieutenant Pierce, looking over the brown stone’s edge. He pulled a thermal detonator from his belt, clicked it, and dropped it.
Kaliyo strolled up alongside. “Fighting Gormak?”
Pierce scoffed. “I’ll fight when milord wants to use me. So, right after she understands that we can’t all hold hands here.“
“Is that how it usually goes?”
“Often enough. Milord does make some great enemies.”
“Show you something?”
“Oh, but we’ve barely met.” Somehow he got Ruth’s voice down in five words.
She pulled one of her thermistor specials from her pack. She held it in front of Pierce. “Do the honors?”
“Grayscale…” He reached out. “You have taste.” With one expert movement, dexterous for such a big man, he activated the detonator.
She tossed it off the cliff.
Together they peered down where the detonator bounced and clanged. Kaliyo kept her eyes open so the white flash would dazzle her. It was being alive. The rumble under her feet was joyous. A chunk of the mountainside slid, cracked, and fell away.
“Wynston buys those for you, does he?”
“He doesn’t even ask me to account for them anymore.” Her friends the revolutionaries benefited from that.
“If Wynston can teach Ruth that attitude…”
“I can slip a suggestion mid-coitus. That’s where he does most of his listening.”
Pierce sized her up. “Buy you a drink?”
“Anyplace but where we’re supposed to be.”
*
In the evening, Wynston made it almost to the battered Imperial shuttle’s landing pad before it touched down.
Kaliyo and Pierce stumbled out, laughing raucously.
Oh, so Kaliyo was in a punishing mood.
The pair rambled down and gave Wynston arrogant grins.
“So you rank above her hand,” Wynston said. “That puts you in a not particularly small league. I hope you’re up on your shots.”
“Why, are you carrying something?”
Kaliyo snickered.
“Kaliyo, the ship is a restricted zone.”
“Yeah, he restricted me.” Both of them chortled.
“Do what you want to whom you want. But don't do it on the Ministry of Corrections II. Now, I need the ship for actual ship things.”
Kaliyo stared. Probably wondering when he would act upset. He wouldn't give her the satisfaction. Pierce would, it seemed. It would be funny, but laughing would get him a knife in the ribs.
This really was becoming a problem. What was he supposed to do, turn into the lovestruck swain? Kaliyo and he had only two modes, and that was fucking each other and fucking with each other. Was there any other way out of this?
Let her act out. He still paid her.
*
Larr Gith and Tebbith took their friends back to the Voss near the Shrine’s entrance. Larr took the lead. “We finished your trials. Please, heal my friend.”
The Voss looked at one another. They were wearing only slightly overcomplicated robes, so probably low-ranking paper-pushers. “The trials are not currency. You have seen. Go in peace.”
“No. You have to heal my friend.”
Tebbith looked pained. “Larr, we don’t have to do this.”
“What does it take? What can we do?”
The smartest-looking Voss said, “A young Mystic has been attacked. Give life for life. Then you will be healed.”
“Let me pay,” Tebbith and Larr said firmly.
“I’ll do this, Larr.”
“I go where he goes.”
They passed through three high square rooms, each offset slightly from the last. The architect must have been on one hell of a bender. But they came into a room that had two beds and no other furnishings. A Voss lay on one of the beds, eyes open. Larr could sense her pain, and a little sour fear. It was odd, after recent days, to feel something so cross-culturally recognizable.
Three Voss attendants nodded at the Jedi’s guide, who nodded in return and left.
“Come,” said the tallest Voss. “Sit. You will lend life to Jaden-Ko?”
“Let me do it,” said Larr.
“The price and the boon are one.” The Voss turned to Tebbith, who had already obediently sat down. “Close your eyes.”
A yellow glow came up around the three Voss healers. This place really used about one-tenth of the Twi’lek eye’s visible light range. She felt it in the Force, a stirring with a…a texture. She was no theorist, that was Teb’s line, but she did feel a growing curiosity while the glow extended to Teb on one side and this Jaden-Ko on the other.
Teb took a sharp breath in. His jaw clenched. Larr calculated how quickly she could stab all three healers.
“The poison runs deep,” one of the three concentrating healers said. Teb’s breath was coming in hard gasps.
Larr grabbed his hand. “You get both or neither,” she said, even while the Force fabric wrapped around her inner core and pulled. The yellow glow felt like a thousand butterfly kisses as it spread over her, but the grip beneath was not gentle at all.
She hung in there, putting her focus into the banked fire that was Tebbith’s life. If they took too much she would stop them.
But the Force relaxed, and Tebbith opened his eyes. “No,” he muttered. “No. Heal my friend. Please. Be gentle.”
“Teb, what happened?” But the healers were already extending their light to her.
For a timeless time, she was suspended in light. Memory and fear faded. She allowed the light brush of Voss attention. Smoothing, filling, repairing. She could be different. She wasn’t afraid.
Then it poured in, like an ocean realizing it had somewhere to be.
Larr Gith jerked back, gasping. The Voss folded their hands and looked at her.
And she? The holes in her memory of the year in the Emperor’s control had filled in. She remembered everything.
“No,” she spat, and pressed her palm to her mouth to keep from screaming. Tears ran from her eyes over the backs of her fingers. For a year she had done the Emperor’s bidding. Now she knew exactly how far she’d gone, and who she’d hurt, and what she deserved.
She remembered the man next to her. She hugged Tebbith, hard. “It’s okay. They fixed it. It’s all okay.”
“Yes,” he moaned, staring into space. “It’s better now.”
“And, Teb? I’m going to kill the Emperor.”
He held onto her hand, hard.
*
A day passed in errands, simple until Bas-Ton went into the field alone and got himself killed. Every trail Wynston was on led into the sacred Dark Heart, and the man who could have gotten him in was dead.
Yana-Ton and Phi-Ton considered the matter solemnly. It was obvious they would not just sneak him into their holy site.
Yana-Ton summarized. “You must enter the Dark Heart. Only a Voss may enter. You must become Voss.”
Wynston thought of makeup, prosthetics, disguises. “Of course.”
“You know?” said Phi-Ton to his sister.
“Yes,” said Yana-Ton. “I will.”
Wynston volunteered, “I have materials—”
“We will wed tonight.”
Wynston stopped. “What?”
“It is our way,” she said. “Be my husband. You will be free to go to the Dark Heart. Your mission will be completed. Then you will go.”
He could butter her up. He could make it the game. He could tactfully decline to talk about the future. But she was so direct, so calm…he had to make sure she understood what a terrible idea this was. “Yana-Ton, I can’t marry you. I’m leaving after this. I don’t know whether I’ll ever come back.”
“I know. Your plan is clear. This thing must be.”
Hunter haunted him. The Star Cabal. Tracery across the galaxy. An enemy that needed putting down. And Wynston had been married before for less reason than this. “I have no reward for you.”
“I have a duty. Come. It can be arranged tonight.”
Her brother was present. Three officiants. A ritual he memorized in a flash of studying, motions he didn’t understand but stepped through. This was this woman’s wedding, the only one she would get until he sent her his death certificate later on. Was this a culture where girls dreamed about their weddings from the age of four?
They walked out together.
“Is it done?” he said quietly.
“There is still the Rite of Ardor,” she said, leading him down the quiet streets where the day’s heat had bled away. “It is not required. A Voss’s passions are suppressed until marriage. The Rite releases them.”
“And outside marriage? Still suppressed?”
“Yes.”
So she could have nothing or one night. He reached for her hand. “Show me,” he said softly. “I’m yours tonight.”
He had a lot of experience, most of it one night at a time. He could find something she’d like.
*
In the morning, Yana-Ton walked the party to the small long-range shuttles.
(The vorantiki abominations are venomous, Quinn said. I have a stim that will counter its effects.
Should Wynston and Vector get one?
They’re covered by their standard Intelligence injections.)
Vector was there. Ruth was there.
Quinn was there.
“This is invite-only,” Wynston said mildly. “There are cultural sensitivities.”
“You get one,” Ruth said, nodding toward Vector. “And you got us permission. I got us the physical key. I get one.”
Yana-Ton said to Ruth, “Outsider. Protect him where I cannot.”
“I intend to,” Ruth said. Wynston ached at the look on her face. She knew about Kaliyo; she would have to know about Yana-Ton. Never possessive, Ruth. It was as if she had him on a different level.
He wondered whether he could ever alienate her. It would be so, so much safer if he did.
The entrance to the Nightmare Lands was blocked, but Ruth said she had found a talisman to get them in. Legally they were covered by Wynston’s new Voss status. All systems were go.
Vector and Quinn traveled in the first shuttle. Wynston and Ruth trailed, at her prompting. She tilted her head and regarded him with mild approval. “Yesterday I couldn’t go to the Dark Heart because it’s off limits to non-Voss. Then this morning you bring me to the shuttle and everything’s settled. That’s good, even for you. How did you manage it?”
“I’m married.”
Ruth’s jaw dropped. “Kaliyo?”
“Nothing so reckless. I got approval to enter the Dark Heart by becoming Voss, which could only be done through marriage.”
“Yana-Ton. Back there, the one who likes you.”
He smiled crookedly. “One and the same.”
“Wynston, that’s…” She was clearly struggling to smile supportively and think at the same time… “what happens after?”
“I leave. In time I send a convincing death notification. She’s free. But today? Today I can bring a small team into the Dark Heart, to pursue my inquiries. And you yours.”
“How does she feel about all this?”
“What does one ever feel about duty? For what it’s worth, I gave her one night, and it seemed to go well.”
“One night with you matters. I’m sure she didn’t ask for testimonials, but it’s true.”
She was sincere, and luminous. He smiled at her.
*
Ruth saw the change in Wynston’s red eyes.
He looked out the window at the streaming Voss scenery, then looked at her. “Ruth,” he said, “there’s something I should say. I only consider it because I care for you. Deeply. Quinn’s under a lot of strain, I think his outburst at the vision tablets proved that.”
“I know. I'm doing my best, but…rebellion isn't easy for him.”
“I need you to consider something, no matter how painful it may be. Are you sure he doesn't have some level of contact with Darth Baras?”
For a second, Ruth was too angry to speak. “…You are so far out of line. He burned that bridge. He's with me.”
“Love bombing you. I should know, I've done it a hundred times before.”
“Like you with Yana-Ton?”
“Yana-Ton understands the nature of our arrangement. And if she offered up her life in front of me, I would bloody stop her.”
Referring to her offer in the vision trials. “Quinn was skeptical of the vision's power. I don't blame him.” Her defenses ran at full speed. “If Quinn wanted to hurt me, why would he have waited so long?”
“I haven't left you alone with him, barring sleep. When you find the right person, Ruth, you would drag yourself through every crime imaginable to get one more day before the price is assessed. But you do pay the price.”
“And this isn't about Kaliyo?” she snapped.
That finally got a flinch. “Kaliyo and I have been around the block so many times, we know the cost of every parking spot. We're balanced. Unhinged, but balanced.”
She brought up her chin and gave it her best command voice. “Quinn balances me. I'm not a child and I don't need you watching over me. He loves me. He spent ten years waiting for me. We've talked about Baras and we know what the future is going to be. Don't interfere.”
He wasn’t blinking. “You could be right. Quinn could be hopelessly in love, you do have impossible effects on men. Maybe this is nothing. But maybe you need an ally. If I cared for you less, I would shut up.”
Why was he still staring at her? “Is this just jealousy?”
He didn't turn a hair. “He can't take away one iota of what you've given me. Or what makes you special to me, which only partially overlaps with what you have or haven't given. I don't like him, but that's on his own merits. One more offer, Ruth, from the bottom of my heart. Come with me. Leave the track you're on. I'll help you, as soon as this mission is resolved I'll help you.”
“Do I replace Kaliyo? She's more dangerous than Quinn.”
“Yes, but she's obvious.”
“Does she make you happy?”
“Oh, Ruth.” For a second he was looking through her. “It's complicated.”
Too complicated for a girl-child to understand. She wanted to slap him. “It's criminal.”
“I'll regret it. But I have chosen not to end it yet. Every day I wake up and I choose not to end it. I'll fight for her, Ruth. Even knowing how incompatible our priorities are.”
“Quinn and I are compatible. I won't go with you. Don't patronize me again.”
They stared out. The countryside was getting darker. Soon they would have to land before the tangle of the Nightmare Lands set in. Ruth stared out the window, her brow furrowed and her small expressive mouth turned down.
How bad was it? Wynston said, “Will the Force still bring us together?”
“I don't know.”
“Do you want it to?”
“I don't know.”
“I want it to. I know I crossed a line and you know why I did it.”
“Please shut up.”
They went on in silence.
*
Quinn and Vector sat in the tiny shuttle.
Quinn glared past Vector. What Vector was watching was anybody’s guess.
The last time they had all met, Vector’s Killik ilk had nearly gotten Ruth killed. “She has grown stronger than you can imagine,” he said stiffly. “As you saw yesterday.”
“Yet your aura has not changed one particle.”
Aura? The Killik monstrosities’ senses. Quinn’s stomach roiled. If he got this close only to be done in by a walking, blabbing insect…
He could kill Vector right here, if only Ruth didn’t count him a friend. With friends like these…
Thoughts splintered. He had to focus on the day: giving the “antivenom” poison time to work, and stopping Ruth before she found the Emperor’s Voice. Any other goal was wishful thinking. He could waste her time indefinitely in the Nightmare Lands, temporizing for some opportunity to arise to cut the knot he found himself bound by. He could drag her around there indefinitely. But she couldn’t leave.
Surely his aura must have changed since the wistful silences of Alderaan. Nothing felt the same.
*
Kaliyo stalked the hallways of the Ministry of Corrections II. Wynston’s affection for anything with tits was back after months away, and it pissed Kaliyo off.
He was trying to make her jealous. Obviously. Taking Ruth and not Kaliyo to go fuck the Shining Man over. Cutting her out of the job—the job!—in favor of that milksop girl.
Well, Kaliyo would get the last laugh. Her Brentaal anarchists already had a steady supply of credits and tech from Kaliyo’s inventory—or would, if Wynston cared enough to keep inventory. He trusted his crew to manage themselves. He took them for granted. Well, someday she would tell him. She’d show them all.
*
The Nightmare Lands were a kind of torture. The black land, the corrupted monsters, the gray miasma clinging to everything it touched…none of that mattered at all. But Quinn was running out of chances to stop Ruth. If she succeeded in freeing the Emperor’s Voice, Baras’s cause would take a heavy blow.
Only, he couldn’t get her away from that Chiss and that insect.
He walked between them like a religious chaperone. He pretended to take readings on his holo while he guided them into cave after pointless cave. If he could just keep her busy long enough, an answer would present itself. If nothing else he would have that look in her eyes just a few moments longer.
The poison “antivenom” was very simple. It would work broadly across a dozen organs, weakening tissue to the point where a solid bruise would cause internal rupturing. Just a bad hit in battle.
Here, he thought. A blaster bolt to the tenuous grip of a boulder over a narrow path. Here, a shot in the back while she battled three hulking monsters. Here, replacing her canteen with the noisome sludge between fouled banks, down toward the center of the Dark Heart.
He saved her life a hundred times while they walked, purely by being too much a coward to ignore Wynston’s presence and just act.
They came upon an overgrown building, and Wynston stopped by a battered door. “Cave will have to wait. I have business in here. Ruth? I’ll be back within the hour. Vector, stay with her.”
“That’s not necessary,” Ruth said loudly. “Go with Wynston. He may need you.”
“Be careful, Ruth.” The Chiss made the words heavy.
But Ruth just sat on a twisted stump and seemed to relax, staring out at the world like it was a fine thing. A thing that contained Wynston and Quinn. She might be the only person who liked both of them. Her judgment, while useful, was very poor.
“Malavai?” she said.
“My lord?”
“This is going to be hard. Something that can imprison the Emperor’s Voice? I don’t even know what that would look like.”
“Entities keep attempting to engage you in physical combat. It is their ongoing, catastrophic failure in risk assessment. Ruth, we don’t need the agent and his Killik. What we must do, we must do for a Lord of the Sith, not some politician or Intelligence lackey that can be bought or poisoned. We should hurry. My map is still vague, we have ground to cover.”
“He’s already bailed me out once on this planet. I like our chances with him better.”
“Then let me say one more thing, while we have privacy.”
Her eyes seemed to take on a soft glow. “I guess this is as private as we get. What is it?”
“When I spoke of marriage to you, you spoke of children to me.”
A corner of her small mouth turned up. “I did. I think you didn’t want the risk.”
“That risk will never be at a level that’s reasonable to assume.” And for anyone else, anywhere else, that would be the end of it. “You have never, in all my time with you, shrunk back from assuming the risks you want.”
“Does that mean we can…consider it?”
The vision tore at him. Voss lied. Ruth would not survive the next nine months. And even if she did, he wouldn’t be with her. Setting up the small necessary steps to bring that stupid fictional scene about was an act beyond desperation.
But here, so close to the final resolution of his triangle, desperate acts seemed as reasonable as anything else.
He faced her. “More than consider, my lord.”
Wynston and Vector emerged from the grove looking, if anything, even more put-together than they had going in. “That’s settled,” the Chiss said. “Vector, let’s assist our friend and then depart. There’s no further business in Voss-Ka.”
Wynston absolutely had a problem with Quinn. Fine, this wasn’t the place. He had fallbacks. Maybe the Voice would be freed, but other measures would at least…would at least…
Stop her.
They found another ruined building and Ruth led them inside. Troubling visions came into contact with her lightsabers and puffed away.
Around a corner, a yellow glow welled up within the unnaturally cut walls.
Words shriveled in his throat.
Ruth’s spectral guide had not prepared Quinn for the Voice of the Emperor: a large Voss in blue and orange, pacing an oval in the floor with all the energy of the wild mawvorr outside. It was different from the other Voss. Its pinpoint-patterned eyes sent a frigid worm into his gut.
“Wrath,” said the Voss.
Ruth dropped to one knee and bowed her head. Quinn followed her.
“Who is this?” said Wynston.
“The manifestation of my lord Emperor,” Ruth said calmly. Somehow she was more certain than ever. “He is the Empire, Wynston.”
“I know who’s signing my paychecks,” Wynston muttered, and knelt beside her.
“I am the Voice of the Emperor,” the sepulchral voice said. “Darth Baras has trapped me here. The beast known as Sel-Makor has imprisoned me in this form. You must defeat me, and release my essence do that I may take a new Voice.”
“Master.” Ruth drew and activated her sabers and took a balanced stance, watching for her commander’s cue with all the simplicity of her loyalty. She was ready for her path. She was not entertaining even the idea that this incomprehensible new challenge could kill her. She was resolute. She was powerful. She was beautiful. She was everything Quinn wanted, except right.
(I love you. And if I could die for you here in the trackless bowels of a benighted planet it would once again be better than the plan I made alone. But I won’t have to die for you, my dearest, not here. I know your strength.
And I follow, for a little longer.)
The Voss fell under Ruth’s lightsabers. Its clothes rippled and collapsed over nothing, leaving not a trace of flesh. Whatever the Emperor’s Voice really was, it was gone. It had done nothing concrete for anyone. Just like all the other tools the Emperor reputedly had.
Ruth settled her lightsabers and hugged herself. “It’s done,” she said in a small voice. Suddenly it was very obvious that she was smaller than a man, smaller even than the hound she purported to be.
“Ruth?” said Wynston.
“That was a Dark Side presence such as I’ve never felt,” she said. “I…I have to plan. I have to be stronger than I thought I was. It could wipe me away if it tried…I…” Her eyes strayed to Quinn. He saw the resolve snapping into place. “I will be the Wrath. It’s still all the opportunity it was half an hour ago.”
“You won’t lose yourself easily,” Wynston said.
Shut up, you cyanotic blowhard.
*
Temple tried not to think about Wynston. And Ruth, and Kaliyo, and Yana-Ton. What did it say that he tumbled into bed with all of them and addressed Temple only from the chin up?
The Star Cabal was the real problem, she knew that. Her supervisor’s sexual proclivities were not the important part.
But then… the other part. If Ruth kept secrets from the Sith, could she train Temple to develop her powers? She wasn’t close enough to ask. Maybe, if they met in a happier time. Maybe.
A Light Side Sith, contending against the Dark Council. Knowing her might be very dangerous, but Wynston’s entire crew trusted her. Maybe this was an opportunity to Temple to make her gift count for something.
So she felt strange with her assignment. She would do it, but…keeping secrets from the person she hoped could keep her secret?
Wynston knew what he was doing. She was ready to test her skills.
Wynston’s orders had been urgent. Use the key he provided to get onto Ruth Niral’s ship and find a certain type of holocall record from the system logs. The ship’s records went back years, but she was only after one caller. Quinn made calls nearly every day, some several minutes long, but it was with military offices, logistics and supplies. Nobody directly befitting a Sith’s personal attaché in normal times, but exactly the kind of things one might call in if one had lost personal access to official channels. If you lived on a ship, you did what you had to to maintain that ship. Whatever Wynston wanted her to find, it wasn’t here.
She got out of there, mentally preparing the report. Wynston’s concern for Ruth was a puzzle. His usual interest in women faded within three days. So this person…this very powerful person…was an aberration. Temple observed, looking for the pattern. She still had so much to learn.
*
Vector was outside the cave when Quinn and the others emerged. Vector was hovering a few feet off the ground, clawing at his neck.
And a short Mirialan in a heavily cutout black robe was staring at him.
She looked past Vector and Quinn and settled on Ruth. “Oh, it's you.” Her hand dropped. So did Vector. “What is Ruth Niral doing in this wasteland?”
Ruth was tense. An effect of the poison, or something she knew about the Mirialan? “Listening to monsters. What is Lord Scythia doing?”
“Learning from monsters. Your pet here wouldn’t tell me who you were talking to, all the way down there.”
“Vector doesn’t know, Scythia. You’ve tortured him for nothing.”
“But you know. And your other pets know.” Scythia directed her bright green eyes to Quinn. “I can protect you, you know. This amateur can’t. Tell me what you found in the Dark Heart, and you can go home, safe. This I pledge. And Scythia doesn’t go back on her word.”
Wynston had activated a stealth field. Quinn’s skin prickled, wondering where he was going.
“I don’t need your permission to leave,” Ruth said. “Why don’t you keep our relationship at its current level, and part ways here?”
“Baras’s new nemesis is creeping around caves on a barely discovered planet, and I will know why.” The Sith started walking as if to pass Ruth into the cave.
And Ruth shot out one arm at the Sith’s neck level. “Leave it,” she snapped.
The Sith shoved out one arm too, and zapped Ruth with an arc of purple Force. Ruth growled deep in her throat, the way she always did when she had disappointed herself. Then her sabers were out. They began a sparring pattern Quinn had seen in other times that Ruth fought near-peers.
Where was Wynston? Quinn could shoot Ruth in the back now, but Wynston would kill him, escape to publicize Quinn’s betrayal, or both. Quinn grasped his blaster and watched the lean Human bring her lightsabers to bear against the small but explosive alien.
A lanky robed Kaleesh labored out of the brush nearby and engaged a standing Vector. Two opponents. One solid hit on Ruth might kill her outright. Force lightning’s chances were unknown. Where was Wynston?
Quinn tried to stop shaking. His every instinct told him to put Scythia down like a mad akk hound and take Ruth’s hand and get out of here. But the time for the guidance of instinct was over.
He decided to practice. If Wynston was watching, well, Quinn could smooth anything over with Ruth. He practiced taking a firm stance and aiming his blaster at the back of Ruth’s head.
It was so simple. Hardly an effort at all. In fact, he could keep a steady aim at her while she swung and battled Scythia’s lightning in a battle of equals. Easy.
A blaster bolt came out from behind a rock by the cave’s entrance. It took Scythia in her side.
She shrieked as if ruptured. “Hold! Hold!”
Ruth, the fool, the dancer, did. “I’m really trying not to depopulate the alien district,” she said sharply.
“Have your secrets, Ruth Niral.” She put up her hands and backed away. “I want no more of this.”
“Mutual,” Ruth said. “I act on the Emperor’s authority. Remember that.”
“As if the Emperor cares about…hmm.” Scythia cast a smile at the cave’s entrance. “Never you mind. Farewell.”
Her Kaleesh was standing over Vector, who was on one knee, head bowed. Wynston blinked back into existence and ran over. “Vector! What’s the damage?”
“It would have been worse if he had a lightsaber.”
Wynston knelt and examined. “Bloody hell. I can’t fix this.”
“The Shrine of Healing can,” Ruth said firmly. “I can carry him back out to the shuttle.”
“He doesn’t have that kind of time. There’s a small ship near here. I can drop you two directly off at the Shrine.”
“They won’t—”
“I don’t care what they won’t like.” He was already walking.
Ruth swept Vector up. He was an awkward load but she didn’t seem to be struggling. Wynston waited, glaring, until Quinn fell in behind Ruth, and then followed him. Stars. Quinn was never going to be alone with her again.
He just wanted it over. He just wanted to stop assessing scenes for the fastest way to eliminate her. He just wanted a solution, or an end to waiting.
The vision had lied. There would be no child. There was no way they would couple again.
There was a light hopper behind a ruined building, and Wynston herded everyone inside before taking it up. He piloted through the dark haze of the Nightmare Lands with grim focus. The Killik said nothing.
“Quinn,” Ruth said, “help me with his chest. He took an electrostaff hit.” Quinn complied. Vector would need some ribs set before this was done, but Quinn could at least stop the bleeding.
And Ruth? He knew nothing that could counteract the poison he had injected. The more time passed, the smaller an injury would do her in.
Wynston dropped them less than a hundred yards from the Shrine’s entrance, and withdrew.
Ruth carried Vector as a graceless but steady armload. “My friend needs help,” she said generally. A Voss in elaborate robes pointed her further in. Quinn followed, wondering.
They got to a room with two Mystics and two beds, both of them empty. The Mystics looked up.
One said, “They are both dying.”
“What?” said Ruth.
“Come. We will heal.”
And they would do it. Of course. After hours of waiting…they would just lift the entire thing. Her damned compassion had saved her again. He didn’t have time for this.
“Will you give life for the healing?” one Mystic said.
Ruth caught Quinn’s wrist as she sat on one bed. “No need. I’m feeling fine, just take whatever you need from me.”
He waited by her side while the Mystics laid hands on her hair and surrounded her in golden radiance. Her big blue eyes closed. He knew exactly how her dark bristly lashes felt against his skin. He knew every note her breath could play when it wasn’t taking full deep unhurt draughts like this. It wasn’t fair, that she could be this incarnation and he could not stop her.
“The poison ran deep,” one Mystic intoned.
Ruth opened her eyes. “I had the antivenom shot, I guess the wounds I took from those vorantiki were worse than I thought.”
The other Mystic cocked her head. “Vorantiki are not venomous.”
No. Trust. Trust. Trust. Quinn addressed Ruth. “They are no doubt concerned about vaccines.”
Ruth frowned. “But it was an antivenom, not a vaccine.”
“They don’t seem like that either, my lord. It’s offworlder technology in either case.”
“True. Vector? Is Vector…?”
“Feeling better,” the Killik reported, sitting up. “We owe you a debt.”
“I think you just experienced what I did on your homeworld, the last time one of us got ripped up. We must be even.” They shared a smile.
And returned to Wynston’s landing site, where Vector, finally, bowed out.
*
Kaliyo had talked them into a bar in the alien district. The seediest bar on Voss, it was white and clean and well tended by polite Togrutan staff.
Kaliyo said, “Wynston and Ruth go way back. Why, they met on Dromund Kaas.”
“We visited her father there a few months ago,” said Jaesa.
“Well, Daddy wasn’t involved in the previous run. Wynston ran into her doing some Sith shit and dragged her straight back to his hotel. Vette and I had no idea where they’d went. Found out the morning after when Darth Jadus called on him. He went commando to that meeting because they couldn’t find his underpants.”
Pierce crowed.
Temple squirmed. “He doesn’t do that as much anymore…does he? I mean, a one-night stand?”
“Tell you what, before Taris he did it practically every planet we visited, sometimes twice. Pretty much any species with enough holes to pour booze and insert rod. That’s Cipher Nine.” Her silver eyes ran over Ruth’s crew. “Oops.”
“She was waiting for Captain Quinn for as long as I’ve known her,” said Jaesa.
“She did have a life before she met him,” said Vette.
“Funny to think about her getting swept away by a guy with a fake name.”
“She’s Ruth, but she was, what, eighteen? when all this happened,” said Pierce. “Just about everyone has someone at eighteen that they won’t admit to down the road.”
Temple squeaked. “I don’t.”
Pierce chuckled.
“See,” said Vette, “most of us get that out of our systems with just one, Pierce.”
Jaesa just blushed.
Pierce said to Kaliyo, “What Jaesa really wants to know is about your Vector.”
“That’s not necessary!”
Kaliyo guffawed. “Bugboy finally gets some love! What do you need to know about him? I think all his parts are still human, but you would have the entire Oroboro Nest peeking in on everything you’re doing.”
Jaesa swallowed. “He’s not married? Or some even stranger Imperial thing?”
“Oh,” said Kaliyo. “Ensign-ma’am, are Imps strange?”
Temple, who was not yet proficient in misleading body language, went rigidly upright. “I’m not going to gossip about my team’s second in command.”
“We could gossip about daddy issues some more.”
“Vector’s not married,” Temple gushed hurriedly. “Many people of his rank in the Diplomatic Service have a spouse in another branch, but never Vector. Obviously his Joiner status…complicates things.”
“We could keep in touch?” said Jaesa. “I mean, not live holo obviously if you’re on missions, but…over the Holonet. That wouldn’t be wrong, would it?”
“You’ll be in an Imperial Intelligence database, too,” Kaliyo said cheerfully.
“Oh, wait,” said Pierce. “You already are.”
“And he’s smart, too. Why didn’t Ruth have you a year and a half ago?”
“Was busy contemplating my own ass in the mirror on Taris. You’re much better off with me today.”
“Oh, yeah? Maybe we could keep in touch.”
“You and the blue boy…?”
“If it were any more open we’d fall out opposite sides. Ignore him.”
*
Wynston holoed to call his crew back to the Ministry. Then, they separated.
*
Minutes dragged while Ruth finalized local business. Quinn made a change to his droid simulator, then undid it. Where was she? Would Wynston suggest Quinn’s real agenda? The alien was blinded by Ruth’s excessive favor; he was focused on his mission; he had a new woman; maybe that would be enough to keep him away. Maybe.
Quinn hadn’t run out of options, only of time. He activated the next attempt. It would be over soon.
General Garza sent Fade back to Voss with one mission: destroy the Gormak cannon threatening Voss-Ka.
Well, she sent Havoc back to Voss. Fade hadn’t been there to begin with, as she’d been serving time for dereliction of duty at the time. Well, the squad was back together, and there was a superweapon to stop. It felt as good as prepping to attack the Gauntlet.
Jorgan led her off the shuttle into a crisp morning lit by a fat orange glow on the horizon. “Sir. You have the packet with Dorne’s report from the last time we were here. There’s something else we need to do first, some…where else. It’s a walk, but they seem to allow soldiers in without any paperwork.”
Fade looked him over. There was strain at his jaw, at the tension of his hands. “You’re not usually mysterious, Captain.”
Jorgan gestured toward the local-transit shuttle pad. “The Voss have a kind of initiation ceremony. Part of it is…well, you’d have to see, sir. They show you things. Things that might happen.”
“Like a fortune teller?”
“Like full color and sound in your head. I still don’t know what to make of it. You might get something useful out of it.”
Maybe. Or, if it messed with heads, it could be dangerous. Voss might not even realize it was dangerous to outsiders. “You look like whatever you saw bothered you.”
“I’m hoping to get some context. Maybe a second round will make it make more sense.”
“Okay. Did the others see anything?”
Vik snorted. “Not going through somebody else’s puppet show.”
Forex’s eyes dimmed. “I saw nothing to report, sir. The Voss hypnosis has no effect on my advanced circuitry.”
Dorne said only, “I was injured and didn’t have the chance.”
“Yuun saw something of a future on a planet the Republic knows nothing of. Another sign would be welcome.”
“All right. Jorgan. Tell the nice pilot droid where to go. I’ll follow your lead.”
They stopped at a little way station studded with tents. The Voss mostly ignored Fade and her squad as they left the shuttle. Jorgan started out front. “This way. They might try to saddle us with a pilgrim.”
But they didn’t. Apparently the path was purified enough. The land had a boring color palette but a certain flair in arrangement and form. Fade hiked, and shot anything that moved. Vik suggested that this was allowed and even recommended for anything that wasn’t a Voss.
Even these Gormak.
The Shrine of Healing reminded Fade of Coruscant. Buildings in the Senate district were all huge and impressive. She thought about breaking into the classified Republic Archives with her brother. Learning about commanders gone bad in the history of Havoc.
Someday, someone would be looking up why Fade stopped commanding Havoc Squad for a few months. They would learn it was because she tossed a mission in order to save one person. If Fade really believed that was wrong, something might snap, and she wasn’t ready for that.
Jorgan led the squad through a brown stone maze to where four Voss sat cross-legged on the floor. They looked up at Fade. “Outsider,” one said, and Fade had the queasy feeling that the others were saying it too, silently, without previous coordination. “Do you wish to take the Trials?”
“Yes,” Fade said firmly.
“I know what to say once we’re in,” said Jorgan.
The speaker gestured toward a pair of huge stone doors standing ajar. “The way is open.”
Jorgan gave Fade a nod, and she took the lead. She walked through the gap between giant doors. Behind her she heard a faint sproinging noise.
She pivoted. Jorgan was reeling away from her, back toward the seated Voss. “Jorgan?” she said.
A Voss who hadn’t spoken earlier looked up. “The Trials occur once. Outsiders do not summon more visions.”
Jorgan stroked his jaw. “Do you guys print cheat sheets?”
All four Voss looked at one another. One said, “We do not cheat.”
“Forget it.”
“Dorne?” said Fade. “You up?”
Dorne looked to Jorgan. “We might find something helpful for you, Captain. Be careful.”
“Remember. Mystics are infallible, Interpreters are not, and you’ll be facing waves of beasts. Dorne, let Fade talk. That way you’re free for first aid.”
That got Fade’s attention. “What?”
“Go,” said all four Voss, and Fade went further in, Dorne following close.
*
The vision room was separate from the trial rooms. Two great tablets covered in dense square writing stood on one side of the chamber. Jorgan paced the far end, wondering whether Fade was in trouble.
He wondered whether his vision would come true.
A lean Human woman on the holo. “I want more time,” she said in a hard voice with a quivering edge to it. Her eyes locked on his, a blue that wasn’t washed out. “You are kind and brave and clever and responsible and sweet and funny and so, so good, and by the time love came up, the only thing I got to say to you was goodbye. I want you to get over what we could have had, because it isn’t going to happen now. I’m carting around a god and I don’t have the power to make it happen.” She punched her thigh. Her words fell hard and fast like a hailstorm. “Fall in love again. Love her like you don't know what tomorrow will do to you. We never do. Goodbye, Aric Jorgan.” For a second, before the image cut, her lips were small and full and…and what? The moment slipped away.
Urgency. Desire. Frustration. The casual linking of “love” and “again”. Who was she? When was she? Was this just a hallucination the Voss induced through their golden spirit journey?
Jorgan paced. Yuun was doing something with a datapad in the corner. Vik had stretched out beside Jorgan’s pacing space for a nap. Forex stood still processing mission parameters for the cannon op. There was a Voss in the corner but she didn’t enforce any kind of protocol.
Fade and Dorne staggered in looking like they’d been through a hurricane. Jorgan reached for his blaster. “Sir!”
The Voss in the corner swung a laser gaze at him. “Outsiders will not interfere.”
Fade touched a finger to her lips and went to the tablets.
*
“I feel I need to impress on you,” said the unfamiliar Lieutenant, “that you can stop these assassin droids now. You can destroy the lot. It’ll be your last chance to do it.”
Fade looked up, past the nervous Lieutenant. In the next room, huge and low-ceilinged, rank after rank of droid stood ready. And she had saved them from destruction, or rather, made the choice her own.
“Bring me one,” she said.
*
"Wait up!" Elara turned and saw Jorgan carrying two collapsible chairs. "There's more every week,” he said, grinning. “Odessen's going to run out of places to put 'em."
Elara was just looking forward to the music. There was something about the music. "Aric, where is your uniform?"
He didn’t answer.
*
Fade opened her eyes. “That meant nothing to me.”
Jorgan was pacing. “See anyone you recognized?”
“No. A strange LT. Some hunter-killer droids. When is that supposed to happen?”
“Even distant futures may appear,” a Voss said unhelpfully.
“But all will come to pass,” said another.
Jorgan leaned back on his heels. “Waste of time, sir. I’m sorry.”
“What did you see that bothered you so much?”
He still didn’t meet her eye. “A woman told me we couldn't be in love. I don't know anything else. Not who she is, not how I know her.”
“Was she pretty?”
How to describe that longing? “Nothing wrong with her.”
Fade grinned. “Way better than HK droids. I’ll keep an eye out.”
*
The Imperial ambassador wasn’t in his office. Quietly, not quite guiltily, Vette drifted over to the Republic embassy.
Ambassador Jannik had a tiny waiting room staffed only by a rounded protocol droid named M-4RG. It said, “Do you have an appointment?”
Vette sighed. “Does anyone, really?”
“Yes,” Forge said primly, but ruined the schoolmarm effect with a crisp, “Go in.”
Ambassador Jannik stood in an office no bigger than the Imp embassy. He was cute, as Humans went, young for his role. Vette smiled sunnily at him.
“Captain Vette,” he said without a trace of surprise. “I get reports of every offworlder who comes down. What does an associate of an up and coming Sith want from the Republic?”
“What do I want? Ruth isn't here to help the Empire win. And I'm not here to help the Republic lose. I need to profitably kill some time near the entrance to the Nightmare Lands.”
Jannik looked like she’d just suggested practicing on a drum set in the Voss government seat. “Tell me you're not trying to get in.”
“That's covered. I want something constructive to do nearby. Maybe something a little valuable?”
“Havoc Squad is taking on a giant cannon the Gormak savages have built. It threatens Voss-Ka. I could arrange a small payment if you assisted them.”
Vette looked at Jannik. Jannik looked at Vette.
“So,” Risha supplied, “you’re hurting for labor.”
“Desperately. Will you take the job?”
“Sure,” Vette said graciously. “I think everybody wants Voss-Ka to be safe. Well, everybody but Gormak.”
They caught up with a squad in white and orange at the shuttle pad. It was five people and a comically large war droid.
“Gormak lands?” Vette said brightly.
One of the shorter armored figures popped off her helmet. She was a Rattataki, black and gray, with a line of piercings in her ear’s cartilage that would hold a gorgeous row of earrings if she weren’t on the job. “That region isn’t safe for civilians,” she said gruffly.
“Ambassador Jannik deputized us.”
Corso added, “We’re here to help.”
The war droid bobbed enthusiastically. “Thank you for your laudable efforts, citizen!”
“Help do what?” the Rattataki said flatly.
“We can fight,” Bowdaar said. “And Vette has out-negotiated Hutts.”
“Yours was easy,” Vette pointed out.
“It counts,” Bowdaar said graciously.
“We’re not negotiating,” the Rattataki said. “Name’s Fade. When we hit the Gormak guards, you shit or get off the pot.”
“Sir!” The droid’s eyes glowed manically. “With private security we are even more certain to prevail against the dastardly enemies of our allies the Voss!”
They loaded up into the taxi shuttle. Inside there were just two benches against opposite walls. The two teams each took a side. The droid curled up as much as it could by the door.
The second tallest figure in armor pulled off his helmet to reveal a red-brown Cathar with striking yellow eyes. “Brings me back to those walkers on Ord Mantell.”
Vette perked up. “You served on Ord Mantell?”
“Seven years, prior to the Havoc transfer. You know it?”
“I’m from there,” said Corso. “Thought you looked familiar. I had a job in Fort Garnik for a while.”
“I know. You didn’t always have those scars.”
Vette followed up. “I tried running blasters to ol’ Ordy a few months back. Didn’t go so hot.”
The Cathar scoffed. “The last thing that planet needs is more blasters. And you went from that to this? What possessed you to tag along on a Republic op on a planet you shouldn’t know about?”
“I’m still seeing all the ways I can do new things,” Vette said. “A friend led me here. She ran off to the Nightmare Lands and closed the door behind her. So suddenly my social card is clear.”
Bowdaar shifted. “What can you tell us about this cannon?”
The middling-height figure spoke in a crisp Dromund Kaas accent, not too far off from Ruth’s. “Havoc first identified it during an operation some weeks ago. It’s sophisticated, well powered, very large, and trained on Voss-Ka. We must destroy it with no chance of repair.”
Fade picked up. “Destroying the cannon is easy. I need to get in and destroy the plans. It would help if we had a distraction.”
The smallest figure spoke in an incomprehensible chitter. Fade added, “We’ll find you a secondary target on our way downrange.”
“Can I circle back to the Dromund Kaas accent? My best friend is from Dromund Kaas. Are you serving in the Republic armed forces now?”
“That’s correct,” the figure said.
“Is it, uh. Was it…hard, adapting to life in the Republic? Did people get pissed off at you for being associated with the Empire for a completely unspecified period of time, possibly a couple of years?”
“Reactions vary,” she said. “I’ve found a support structure within the Republic. I wouldn’t go back.”
Fade relaxed back. “If this op is ever declassified, you’ll be a bona fide Republic war hero. There’s something to adapt to.”
Corso sat up straighter. “This is classified?”
The shuttle brought them down to a small walled camp where a dozen Voss in the layered armor of commandos were milling around. Vette hung back while Fade talked about whatever soldiers talk about. She peered out the walls at another orange and gold fantasyscape. Half a dozen mawvorrs were gathered around a possible carcass, gnawing on bones.
Fade and her squad came up, now all helmeted, and a Voss in an open-faced uniform followed them. “Our local commando,” Fade said shortly. “Erin-El.” The commando nodded. “I’m taking the squad for the cannon and the plans. Erin-El will be with you, taking down a Gormak attempt at independent space travel.”
So they took up speeders and looked down a wide bare corridor that might someday be a road, down into the Gormak lands.
“Not legally Gormak lands,” Vette clarified. “Gormak can’t hold property by Voss law.”
“Then where do they live?” said Corso.
“Probably in the shelter of their biggest weapon…oh wait.” Vette shrugged. “No good place for ’em.”
Then they moved.
They approached a complex of huge, curving tent covers with no sides. The place was completely lousy with supply cases and construction equipment built for very tall Weequay or very fat Voss. It was just about the right scale for the Gormak. Vette sometimes hated being short.
Fade and her squad peeled off on a southward road, pointing blasters in all directions in kind of an electrum hedgehog as they went. Vette pointed herself to the west.
“So I guess we break stuff,” she said.
Erin-El checked his blaster rifle and said, “You’re all outsiders! Where are you from? How many other planets are there? Are all outsiders different shapes? Is the Empire very angry? Why don’t you have armor? Can we compare blasters? Have you ever been to hy-per-space?”
“Oh, boy, kid.” Vette exchanged grins with her crew. “Let’s talk and break things.”
*
Fade slipped from stone to shadow to stone, doing her best to avoid line of sight with the Gormak who were so busy at work under their stretched tarps. Exactly what they were up to, she didn’t know, but it was destined to end with a smoking hole in Voss-Ka unless she did something.
Someone was moving in front of her. Fade sped up, still careful. That was…a Voss. Definitely a Voss, hoodless, blue, stripey and speckled. Lost, surely, terribly lost. The Gormak would eat her alive if they saw her. What was she even doing? Fade broke into a trot. “Hey! Hey!”
The Voss wanderer slowed. “Yes?” she said without a hint of surprise.
“Hello. I'm Fade. What are you doing, so far into Gormak territory?”
She seemed relaxed. “I seek a carving necessary to become a Mystic.”
“You're more likely to get killed.”
“No one has seen this,” the Voss said coolly. “And I must find this carving.”
“And you don’t mind if the Gormak just blot you out on the way?” No response. The demands of the trials echoed in her head. “Why do none of you care? These are lives! This is your life! It’s the only one you’re ever going to have! How does your civilization survive if you don't protect the individual?”
Yuun stepped forward. “There is a middle path. Do we help her?”
Fade hadn’t realized she was tearing up. She swiped her forearm across her eyes. “No. Let her be Voss, if that’s so important.”
The Gormak cannon hung over the landscape, anchored just past the midpoint, pointing far out of Gormak lands and up the sacred mountain—as if any Voss mountain weren’t sacred—at the Voss on whom so much depended. Fade rounded up her party in its ominous shade.
“Yuun, Dorne, Forex, and I will take those caves thataway. Forex, is your heat mapper working?”
“Fully up to spec and calibrated, sir!”
“Good. I haven’t seen a Gormak mainframe computer out here, and it stands to reason they would keep their data in some kind of shelter. It’s these canopies or a cave. Vik, Jorgan, I want you to rig the entire base of this structure to blow. We’ll move in and destroy the mechanism once it’s at ground level. With or without the amateur distraction.”
A low rumble rose somewhere to the west.
“I think that’s with,” Vik said happily, and started strolling to examine the dispositions.
Fade led her subteam further south into a tumbling land where cave entrances seemed to yawn in every shadow. “Tell me if they’re toasting anything back here,” Fade said. She tried to tell herself this whole rugged waste didn’t bother her.
“I detect nothing yet, sir.” Forex took the terrain with completely unfair agility. “The Gormak cannot hide their nefarious activities from us for long. With the strength of the Republic we will—there.”
Forex’s eyes turned red on the last word. He pivoted toward an arch of rocks and began a balanced rampage. Two Gormak came out shooting and Forex fired two rockets with nothing but a businesslike whistle.
Fade, Dorne, and Yuun backed him up.
Inside the cave were more Gormak, who yelled in a language Fade didn’t know and tried to defend a blinking mainframe set deep into the rock. “Yuun?” Fade called. “Anything?”
Yuun picked out a console and began pulling up things in a strange script. “Yuun sees files with no record of copying or backup.”
“Great! Let’s light it up.”
*
It went wrong.
Jorgan felt queasy even as the stim brought him back to consciousness. The pain in his head was stunning, focused on his temple.
He had been in the sunlight, setting detonite charges. The back of his head still hurt from whatever had taken him here…well, by the Gormak.
Was he a prisoner? He was in…a room. A cave, densely populated with tables and crates of electronic equipment.
Six Gormak. And Tanno Vik, sitting in a chair—like Jorgan, yes, he was in a chair—while one of the Gormak injected him.
There was a purple and silver mass on Vik’s temple. It had blinking red lights. It—
Jorgan reached for his temple and a cold chain stopped his hand from getting all the way up.
Vik perked up and explored the limits of his chains a lot faster, with a lot more power. The Gormak talked among themselves and watched. Vik did not manage to burst free.
“What have you done?” said Jorgan.
“Arena,” said one Gormak, and they all laughed. “Offworlders fight good.”
Another Gormak grinned. “Bring more offworlders, get extra nice cage!”
All of them laughed.
*
Erin-El stopped to catch his breath. He and Vette’s crew had penetrated deep into a sprawling Gormak complex, finally finding themselves in a conduit-stabbed spaceship half the size of an Imperial frigate.
“I will sabotage. Stay here.” He vanished around a corner.
Which gave Vette some space to think. “Guys?” she said. “Can we discuss?”
Risha thumbed her sniper rifle and eyed the door. “Are you about to go all touchy feely over strangers? We talked about this.”
“You talked about this. I piloted the Hydian Way, flawlessly, I might add. That was a tricky conversation.”
“And one that didn't stick. All right, who are we defending now?”
“Why are we stopping these people from space travel? Because the Voss told us to? What gives them the right?”
Risha scoffed. “Have you ever met a Gormak who wasn't firing a blaster at us?”
Corso sailed in. “Vette's right. We've only heard from one side of a war. The Gormak might not even be like this if they had their freedom.”
“Did you see the part where they’re trying to blow a city off the map? The reason we’re here?”
“So we take it away before we leave them alone,” said Vette.
“Offworlders stupid,” said a large Gormak behind Bowdaar.
The battle was fierce but brief. Gormak bound the party’s hands behind their backs and marched them off the would-be spaceship and to a round clearing outside a duracrete-reinforced cave. Then they held them down.
*
Fade, Dorne, Forex, and Yuun zeroed in on Jorgan and Vik’s location. There were Gormak to clear, like very angry flies. And just as the last fell, Jorgan and Vik and Turo-Da folded in sync, grabbing at their heads with crabbed hands.
Forex looked around, but he didn’t report any insight.
“Jorgan,” Fade yelled, offering him an arm. “Can you walk?”
Jorgan grasped her forearm hard enough to hurt. Elara guided him after Fade, who had Vik locked around her waist while they staggered toward cover.
Fade freed up an arm and managed to get a holo out. Elara watched, but Fade didn’t bring up an image. She just pointed toward a formation of standing rocks and helped Vik stumble toward it.
Elara and Fade let Vik and Jorgan drop. The two men bent over their knees and clutched the implants at their temples. Elara pulled a shot of numbing agent. It wouldn’t help much if the implants penetrated to their brains, but in a less extreme case, maybe it would do something. Meanwhile, Forex stalked to the nearest standing stones and began scanning something.
“Dorne?” said Fade. “Do you know how these work?”
“Not at all.”
“Can you remove them?”
“I won’t risk it unless you order me to.”
“No. No.” Fade paced, glaring through the gaps between stones. Her jaw looked ready to crack itself in two.
Elara dosed both struggling men. “I’m sorry, Major. It’s the most I can do until we reach a proper medcenter.”
“I hate splitting the party,” Fade spat. “I hate it.”
“We are a team, sir. You didn’t leave them undefended.”
“I hate splitting the party outside medcenters,” she fumed. “From now on we stick together, next to the anesthesiologist’s station.” Jorgan let out a strangled grunt and Fade flinched. “If those civilians don’t haul jets…”
Tanno Vik had backed up to a standing rock and covered the implant in one meaty hand, staring out at the Gormak countryside. Elara though she saw tears running down his face, but he didn’t cry out or grumble. “Major. Nothing incoming.”
*
Gormak surrounded the circle where Bowdaar and his friends stood. Most were armed. All were rowdy. Vette and the others—Erin-El was nowhere to be seen—were prodded to the middle of the circle and unbound. Their things lay in a messy pile near the cave entrance. The metal thing at Bowdaar’s temple prickled and warmed up. They had nothing here, except those implants. The crowd seemed happy about it.
Definitely an arena. Definitely a problem. Definitely happening now.
Bowdaar roared. “No. Not again.”
“They outnumber us,” Vette said. “We kill some animals, we find an out, we go home.”
A pudgy Gormak—Bowdaar, from long habit, titled him “beastmaster”—raised a remote of some kind and made a loud clicking noise. Bowdaar charged him and stopped halfway, poleaxed by pain from the machine in his face.
Half a dozen mawvorr sporting blinking implants in their temples bounded out of the cave and went wild.
Bowdaar rejoined the crew. A Twi’lek and two Humans; apart from Vette’s teeth they had no natural weapons. He had to protect them until and opening came to finish the path to the beastmaster.
Corso was staring. “Get behind me, Captain.” His hands were moving around his unemptied pockets.
Vette was taking off her jacket. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“Get behind me. Risha, you too.”
“You can’t pet them into submission,” Risha said. She was wrapping the upper half of her long jacket around her forearm, leaving a little cape dangling.
“Wasn’t planning on it.” Corso talked quickly but distantly, staring at the oncoming beasts. “Ever see a kath hound run mad, Captain? It doesn’t understand why it’s hurting or how to make it stop. You’ve just got to put it down before it hurts someone. Stay clear.” He pulled his belt off just in time to give a charging mawvorr a face full of high-speed leather.
Nervy, for a soft-skinned Human. Bowdaar roared and picked the second charging animal off its feet. It flailed and twisted while he hurled it at the next, and strode forward to snap the neck of a fourth. The surviving mawvorr hesitated and backed up, and Bowdaar could see the moment when the implants in their temples activated and they regrouped to attack rather than take the pain.
He was sorry. They were dumb animals, and tools of his enemy, but they deserved better than to be ripped to pieces by a stranger who would give them no thought tomorrow.
Bowdaar, a fiercely whipping Corso, a tangling Risha, and a throat-kicking Vette cleared the animals, to raucous applause. Vette watched while the Gormak cleared the dead away. “Boy, I’m glad Ruth isn’t watching.”
Risha shot her a Look. “Does she like animals? Or hate you?”
The next round from the cave was three Gormak, implant-studded, prodded with spears.
“Oh, no,” said Vette. “No. Fuck this.”
“I can handle them,” Bowdaar said honestly. It made him curl up and scream on the inside, but he knew what to do. Three burly prisoners was just the kind of thing Drooga would spring on him.
Vette came up alongside him. Her jacket was still tightly wrapped around her forearm, as if she expected them to bite. “Hey,” she yelled. “Can you understand me?” Her implant flared and she staggered to one side. “Kark it!”
The crowd was getting bored. “Fight! Fight!”
Vette half recovered. “Listen to me! The guy with the controller is right over there! Bowdaar, push. We’ll be with you. Gormak, come on, if we all charge…”
“Too many,” one of the implanted Gormak barked.
A louder yell only registered as a restive crowd, but the explosion was harder to explain.
Bowdaar chanced a look away from the three slave Gormak. One of the stands had fallen over, spilling onlookers everywhere. Erin-El walked calmly out of the dust and threw two plasma grenades at the next stand.
All the combatants had turned to stare. As Bowdaar watched, the three slave Gormak began to run toward the highest Gormak seat.
Then yelled in obvious pain, their implants sparking.
The mistake their master made was, Bowdaar could see the remote he was using.
Bowdaar didn’t say a word. He didn’t interfere with Erin-El’s raid or Vette’s support. He stalked directly for the beastmaster, claws raised. The Gormak had the arrogance to try to stare him down. Bowdaar lacerated the hand that held the remote. He swept the remote off the ground and let the beastmaster fall, howling.
Bowdaar bent over him. “Where are the others?” he bellowed. “Where?”
“Bowdaar,” Vette howled while she and Corso scrabbled at their stolen gear, “we need to jet!”
The weeping beastmaster was gesturing. With some effort he whimpered, “Squeeze. Opens all.”
Bowdaar did. A thin cheer rose from the cave. The three gladiators in the arena went straight for the highest stand. Seconds later, Gormak with unlit implants started to charge out from the cave, fighting.
No need to dwell on it. Bowdaar snapped the beastmaster’s neck, then swung into a rapid lope after Vette and the others.
They fled the smoking mess that had been an arena. Erin-El followed Vette with slower movements and longer strides. Risha was pulling out a holo, looking as unruffled at a dead sprint as a lady might at a dinner party. “Here,” she said, pressing the holo into Vette’s hand while its image flickered into a blue glow. Corso was obviously trying to look in every direction at once without letting the women out of his reach.
“Get me a location,” Vette said loudly. The holo display turned into a map. “Thanks, bye!”
She led them around Gormak structures and along the ragged mountainous edge. Corso yelled what Bowdaar was thinking: “I don’t like the look of that cluster.”
“They’re here,” Vette yelled back.
And they all staggered to a halt in a rough circle of standing stones. Fade’s squad was here: Jorgan and Vik looking uncommonly twinkly, Fade and Dorne still helmeted, Forex bobbing restlessly.
“Fade,” Bowdaar said urgently. “Were they captured?”
“We freed them,” Fade spat.
Bowdaar squeezed his remote again. There were two disturbing clicking sounds. The implants didn’t loosen, but the lights on them fell dark. Jorgan and Vik slumped to the ground with quiet, ragged exhalations.
“We freed the others as well,” Bowdaar said. He wanted to set the remote on fire, cleanse it until nobody could tell the horrible things it had been used for.
But, in case another implant showed up, he kept it.
Vette put a hand on his bloody forearm. "You okay, big guy?"
"For a hundred years, I went back into the cage after." Bowdaar rolled his shoulders. "This is better." It wasn’t a “yes,” but she seemed satisfied.
Sticking together, they went back to the Cannon and got the job done.
*
“Erin-El? That spaceship is damaged and the cannon’s gone. Is your mission satisfied?”
Erin-El appeared to vibrate on the edge of another question. “It will suffice.”
“Okay. Everybody?”
“We’ll have the physical implants removed when we return to Coruscant,” Dorne said. “We did everything right, Fade, you know that.”
“And I’ll feel great about it when these are scar-free.”
“I’d like to be off this rock,” Vik said loudly.
“Civilian?” said Fade. “Vette?”
“We’re in a few distinct and more or less healthy pieces. And I’m getting paid, so that’s a plus. Corso? Bowdaar? Risha? We good with how things turned out?”
Corso cut a look at the Voss. “I wouldn’t have minded ruining that space program a little harder in retrospect.”
“Mm. Fair.”
They left Voss behind.
*
Vette coordinated with Ruth. She had her business in the Nightmare Lands and it wasn’t certain whether she would return to Voss-Ka. Vette meant to get to Coruscant for some implant removal, then meet Ruth on Corellia. A quick journey and an easy meeting. Vette piloted the Ebon Crock herself.
Have there been any horrible consequences to well-intentioned choices your OC made? How did they cope with that?
for Calline:
What is your OC petty about?
for Tebbith:
What does your OC lie about?
and for Larr:
What does your OC's love interest dislike about them?
Is your OC ever wrong? Big ways? Small ways? About what? (trick question, i know she is perfect and the answer is clearly never, no, no and nothing)
ooOOooh!
Ruth: Ruth quietly and determinedly peeled Dolgis off "alpha monster" Vemrin on Korriban. Separate the tyrant from his tools, etc., etc. She liked him, and he got used to her (certainly didn't mind her physical protection), but when the rubber hit the road Vemrin cheerfully forced the issue and made sure Ruth fought Dolgis first. She didn't draw any conclusions from this until post-Quinncident, but really, the experience was part of the reason she was so grateful to meet Jaesa. A potential enemy converted out of the jaws of fate, someone on whom kindness worked.
Calline: With difficult clients, Calline has been known to pilfer objects from their possession. She always deducts the value from her final bill, so it's barely stealing at all, and she makes sure Gault obfuscates the bill as much as possible. If Rube Goldberg and Andy Dufresne had a financial-crimes baby, that'd be Gault's receipts. Very few clients ever puzzle out how their final total came about or why it's just a few credits less than originally quoted.
Blizz maintains the "stolen from annoying people" collection.
Tebbith: That's funny timing, because Teb just found something he'll lie to Larr about. To people in general he will talk around his needs and usually refuse to admit he has any. Larr gets the full story, until the time they fought through the Shrine of Healing to get help for one another, and the Voss "healed" him by ripping off the psychological scar tissue surrounding his bad decision bender. He sees it all clearly now. And he can't let Larr know that she fought to get him "healing" that had that effect.
Larr: I have to be careful here, because Larr/Doc evolves over time. Eventually he will get tired of her parties and parades, well before she does. He likes her, a lot, but he does want to return to the good fight well before she does. That, and she keeps scaring his exes out of town, which feels a little unsporting.
Larr II: Flawless, forever. I wish. Far in the future, she's going to overestimate her ability to handle leadership in a no-win situation, and people are going to die. Her tendency to take charge just cannot deal with the realities of a scenario where Being Wonderful isn't enough. But she doesn't know that yet!
A red lightsaber swung out of nowhere, swinging parallel to the ground in a wide arc, striking the insane Voss, and then curved back behind Larr.
That wasn’t Lord Scourge. Lord Scourge was back at the entrance.
Larr Gith focused on cutting down the last of the attackers with the help of a startling number of blasters and several more red lightsaber swings.
And Larr Gith turned around.
Two Human women stood there blocking the path back into the Shrine proper, and two Human men in Imperial uniforms. The foremost woman deactivated two red lightsabers. “Are you all right?” she said in a voice far more mature and commanding than her face.
The healers had gone insane. The Sith had gotten to the healers. There was no shelter for Larr Gith, no solution, no magic cure for her pain. But she had to keep it together in front of these outsiders.
“All fine here,” Larr said. “Thanks for the help.”
The lead Human said, “I had hoped to speak with these Mystics. I was here for…wait. Jaesa. Were we supposed to go right or left back there?”
“Guard said left,” the taller man said.
“Then why did you let me go this way?” the leader said.
“Sounded like it was more fun up here,” the taller man said cheerfully. The other man looked pained.
Tebbith stepped forward. “I can’t criticize your timing. On Voss, our respective sides are at a truce. Go in peace.”
Larr studied the sheer amount of weaponry around these Sith-and-Imps. “Can we pacify a little more definitively than that? I'm counting two Sith and two Imps, even if the Sith are baby faced.”
The shorter man went ramrod-straight. “You will respect the Emperor's Wrath!”
Things were quiet.
“That's not possible,” Larr Gith said. “We have—"
“Her predecessor,” said Tebbith.
“Stars.” Larr hadn’t even thought about what the Emperor would do once he lost his Wrath. “Sith? You're working for a monster.”
“I know that,” the leader said calmly. Her big blue eyes and small pouty mouth were like a doll’s. “I serve the Empire.”
“Well, know it harder! Do you know why the last Wrath quit?”
That seemed to get to her. In fact, all four of them tensed. “Quit? He didn't die?”
“He bounced, because the Emperor is trying to wipe out planets! He wants to eat the galaxy! He broke the Wrath. Burned out his emotions. Stretched him out for three hundred years, a slave. The Emperor doesn't care about the Empire. He wants to burn it all.”
The shorter Imperial spoke in a stuffy, hard voice. “Jedi lie, my lord.”
“What do you know about Jedi?” Larr said reasonably.
The Imperial’s lip curled. “I know she killed the first one I ever trapped,” he said proudly.
Larr looked at Tebbith. “I can't let the Wrath go.”
Tebbith raised a hand halfway. “Larr, the truce…”
“It's this or leave a weapon in the Emperor's hands. I served the Emperor once. Maybe I can free someone else.”
The leader insisted, “I'm here by choice.”
Is that what she believed? And if it really was… “Then I have to stop you.”
The tactical assessment formed while Larr stared this skinny woman down. The Force-blinds were by and large distributed around the walls, having been slammed there by the insane Mystics. Kira was holding her green double lightsaber funny. Nadia trembled in place with her white-purple double blade. Tebbith looked like he was staring into the abyss, and held his deactivated lightsaber with white knuckles.
Oh. This wouldn’t be trivial. But she had to try.
“Teb, get our people up. Kira, on the good-looking one. Nadia, disarm the soldiers. You, Sith. You’re mine.”
“Wait,” said Kira. “Who’s the good-looking one?”
“No, the shorter one with the round face. I’ve got Skimbones.”
Skimbones’s full dark eyebrows rose. “Is that some kind of battle taunt?”
Everybody stared at everybody, except Tebbith, who was moving to help Tharan.
“Let my people leave,” Skimbones said.
“My lord, we won’t leave you,” said the shorter Imperial.
“And I can’t let the Wrath go,” said Larr Gith, and jumped.
Skimbones wielded two blood-red sabers that beat on Larr’s blue and green with a force wildly out of proportion to her musculature. She was noticeably shorter than Larr Gith, unhealthily leaner, with big eyes and a…a…a light about her while she moved. Larr wasn’t fighting a Sith. She was fighting something else that just happened to wear dark red and get eye-fucked by Imperials. They squared off and rushed at each other three or four times, not quite like Jedi trainees, maybe like Sith trainees. Maybe like something else. Larr was not in familiar territory here.
Skimbones spun one full circle and began a repetitive series of overhead strokes, apparently hoping to win by power what she wasn’t getting through finesse. Larr blocked a couple of times and realized she would much rather not be facing that. She spun Skimbones around and began a dexterous assault. Skimbones met every attack, pressed every opening. Things were going on elsewhere on this battlefield and they didn’t matter. Locking Skimbones’ blue doll eyes and meeting her where she struck was all Larr had the capacity for.
“Have you considered,” she yelled, “quitting the Wrath gig?”
“I can’t. For a hundred reasons. Have you considered saving your crew by backing off?”
“You’re outnumbered.”
“But I can outlast you.”
“If it were just us two? I might be worried. Probably not.” Larr overswung and Skimbones almost took her arm off at the elbow. “Manners, woman!”
“You're not even trying to kill me,” Skimbones growled.
“Well, you're not trying to kill me.” She’d had chances for grievous bodily harm. She avoided them as busily as Larr did.
“I just want to leave,” Skimbones said. “I can do that without a mound of corpses, if you'll just let me.”
“I can't let you go. You need to come with me to see the truth of the Emperor.”
“Jedi say ‘Emperor bad.’ Consider me warned.”
“Stubborn!”
“Preachy!” They circled and re-engaged.
She was fast, and tough, and focused. Larr went on the offensive. “Betcha that figure brings all the boys to the yard.”
Skimbones took on an akk hound look. Larr knew it well. The evildoer was desperate and about to try a different approach. “Right, like your lekku? Very plump after processing, huh?”
Rude! “These are natural!”
Their world crackled as Kira approached. “Everything okay, boss?”
“Can we wipe that look off her face with a lightsaber?”
“Okayy, no more exertion for you today.” Kira lowered her own saber. “Sith, just surrender.”
Skimbones shifted from Makashi to Juyo form to face two as if she was ready for both. “Do I have to fight all of you?”
Kira frowned, staring, and made the aside: “She's not…dark, Larr.”
“But she's bitchy.”
Kira shrugged. “Sith, if your title were Jedi I would ask to learn from you. But it's not and I won't. Give up.”
Skimbones shifted, looking at Kira and Larr with equal interest. She raised her voice. “Jaesa, are the others out?”
“Not exactly,” Jaesa reported.
Skimbones drew one arm back and froze, straining. Tebbith called out. “Larr, I have her. Disarm her.”
Something hit Larr’s back, low on her neck. There was a new wave of blaster fire as Larr expanded her awareness back to the considerable battlefield.
Skimbones had brought friends. A Chiss, a Human-ish, a Rattataki, and a third Imperial soldier. Larr and Tebbith’s crews had recovered enough to wave weapons. Everything froze around Skimbones, and around Larr, as her head spun and she gently slid down.
*
Everyone noticed when Larr Gith passed out.
“Roll call,” Ruth said in a clarion tone. “Quinn? Jaesa?” She listened for short responses. “Pierce? Wynston? Vector? Kaliyo? Temple? Any wounds?”
“I can assist,” said an improbably handsome Human in stylish leather. “Tell me that was a sleeping dart.”
“It was,” said Wynston. “I missed the start here, but I don’t intend to break the Voss ceasefire. I want to leave with Ruth and our friends. I have medical supplies for our people. The offer is appreciated, Balmorra.” The accent had been unmistakable.
Ruth felt Quinn’s eyes leaving her. And zeroing in on the man in leather. Something flashed between them that reeked of hatred. Quinn hadn’t lowered his blaster. Now he redirected it slightly.
“Don’t,” Ruth said. “We have to go.”
The tall Zabrak had never lifted a weapon. He spoke to Ruth with gentle tones. “I sense no darkness in you. Come with me. We are fighting for this world. For every world. We are on the side of light.”
Typical Jedi…and yet layered, textured to the core. “I sense darkness in you. And your ally. For that, you can live. Stay out of the fight and we may meet again, as friends.”
“Master,” Jaesa said, “they wear darkness like a full-body sunburn. It's peeling off in flakes. The flesh beneath may heal, but it's tender.”
The Zabrak looked…intent. “What do you see, that makes you say that?”
“Only my gift,” Jaesa said. “I wish you well.”
“I wish you a good life. Sith, if you call yourself that? Go in peace. Remember that we declined to fight to the death.”
“Trust me,” Ruth said. “It's the thing I'll remember most.”
*
Ruth needed more guidance.
Larr Gith needed more guidance.
Wynston needed more guidance.
Tebbith needed more guidance.
Vette was still in a hole in the ground helping a would-be Mystic find her path.
Four of these people, with their crews, ended up in a green antechamber full of Voss attendants.
“I’m not going in there,” Tharan said. “It’s absurd.” A few others agreed.
“I can pay for healing,” Larr repeated. “I offer you kolto. Or some useful tech.”
The Voss was unreadable. “You do not buy healing. What you must do, the vision will show. The trials are open. Go.”
Larr Gith walked in, moving stiffly.
“The trials are open,” said one to Ruth. “Go.”
“Wait,” said Ruth, “can I get a different one?”
*
The Mystic Trials, it seemed, had an oral element. Quinn stood at the back of the crowd, watching for any motion toward a weapon. Violence in the Trials would be a diplomatic catastrophe, which didn’t bother Quinn that much, and might lead to summary execution, which did concern Quinn. The Voss were capable of anything. Building up some goodwill prior to a second try at orbital bombardment would be good.
Jedi Larr Gith. Jedi Kira. Doc, from Balmorra. Jedi Tebbith. Jedi Nadia. Zenith. Lieutenant, from his uniform, Iresso. Anarchist Wynston. Kaliyo. Vector. Ensign, from her uniform, Temple. And Ruth with Jaesa. Then, Quinn himself. Watching them all.
Three Voss figures stood in this golden world, talking like the offworlders were Mystics, the authorities of this planet.
“You. Mystic. You saw that Voss will fight Voss, and a new age of prosperity will begin. We split into two sides, and we fight.”
“That's batshit,” Larr Gith said. She did love the sound of her own voice. It was amazing that slinky green dress hadn’t fallen off of her while she’d dueled Ruth. At least when Ruth was alluring in action, it wasn’t conscious.
“It is as it must be,” said Vector. “Let them fight.”
“You understand,” the Voss said.
Another said, “You are no Mystic. Your vision did not come to pass.”
There was a pause.
Larr Gith said, “So one of us is the Mystic?”
“Yes,” Tebbith said.
Larr tossed her lekku. “Not my fault. Mystics are always right.”
“You understand.”
The third Voss said, “Your vision is clear. A Mystic must die to save the Voss.”
The room went silent.
“Is this still theoretical?” Larr Gith said, sounding like a nervous child.
These trials did kill people. Failing a test might wipe them all out. Succeeding…would that kill one? They could only pass by thinking like Mystics. And if a Mystic saw something…
Would this entire room be extinguished if a sacrifice failed to appear?
Ruth touched Quinn’s arm. When he turned to her she pushed up and kissed him, a brief and tender gesture and the first time she'd done it in public. “I have always loved you,” she whispered. “I will not let you die here.”
His heart crashed on and on like a boulder down a hill. She was going to the Voss. This was it. She might die, and it would be utterly out of his hands. The impossible situation would resolve. The torment of his happiness would be over.
“Take me,” she said, stepping out in front of everyone, facing the three spirit Voss. “I will die for your people.”
Wynston darted forward. “Bloody hell, woman, the galaxy needs you more.” He brushed her hand with his and stepped closer to the Voss. She grabbed his hand right back. He tugged it free while they inched past each other.
The Voss spoke in sequence: “You understand. Go in. Cleanse the core.”
“You understand. Go in. Cleanse the core.”
“You understand.” The Voss reached forward with one hand.
White energy blasted Ruth back through the crowd.
“No!” Quinn didn't recognize his own voice. His head said, let it happen let it happen. He wouldn’t have to plan anymore. He wouldn’t have to rehearse it. It could be over.
That oaf of a Jedi was already at her side. He reached for her forehead.
“Hands off, Jedi.” Quinn was fully willing to pistol whip a man half again his size.
Kira glared. “She's dying, you moron. Do you hate Jedi more than you love her?”
Larr Gith folded arms with green silk draped over them. “I mean, Imp. That tracks.”
“Where were you when they were selecting targets?” Wynston’s voice was quiet, but it cut through the crowd like a knife. Quinn opened his mouth, but something happened first.
A white-gold glow sprung up around both Sith and Jedi. When Quinn closed the distance his swinging blaster slipped off its surface.
Purple rose from Tebbith's fingertips. It spread into the white-gold like dye in water. Tebbith’s eyes flashed red.
Ruth sat up and shrieked like she was under torture.
Quinn punched again with his blaster. Nothing. Someone grabbed his upper arm with a strength that suggested wrenching his arm off might be the next move if he resisted. “Leave her,” Larr Gith said. “Leave it. He’ll pull through.”
Ruth took a convulsive breath and fell silent with her spine arched close to breaking. She stared at nothing and Quinn realized that he had no reference for this degree of pain. Not from her. He'd seen half her entrails spilled from her body and she hadn't seemed this hurt. “Is this how Jedi save lives?” Quinn spat. “Is this what you’re so proud of? Let her go!”
“Teb’s the best healer I’ve ever met. He can do this.”
“Not to mine, Jedi. Not to mine.” He aimed at Tebbith’s horned head
And an invisible force ripped the blaster from his hand and tossed it in the corner. He had nothing else to fight with.
Ruth’s spine relaxed, slightly. Tebbith raised his head, and the glow dissipated.
“She’ll be okay,” he said.
Larr knelt to hug Tebbith. “It’s okay. You’ll get there.”
Ruth had gone limp, neither golden nor purple. Quinn knelt at her side and guided her head to his chest. She shuddered and pressed herself to him, and he fanned his hand through her hair and held her until the whimper in her throat fell silent. It was almost done in front of him. But this wasn't the thing that killed her. Not in front of all these people. Could she guess why his heart was beating so hard? She hurt him at every point of contact and he never wanted to let go. Remember this, man. This is what it is, to mourn something you still possess utterly.
“Can you stand?” Tebbith said. Larr Gith had come to his shoulder, resting a hand.
Ruth gently pushed Quinn away and rose under her own power. “I'm all right. Are you?”
Tebbith seemed to hunch into his cheap brown robe. “I meant to use the right technique. The Jedi technique. I thought I could keep it under control.”
“I am grateful. And you will learn. Jaesa said you're healing. She knows things about people. Don't be discouraged.”
Larr smiled. “Listen to the Sith. This once. Just this once.”
Nadia, the little pale girl, coughed. “The trial, Master.”
Tebbith gave a full-body shudder. “Right. Let's go.”
Ruth just looked at Quinn. “I couldn't run the risk that they punish us all for refusing.”
“You can run risks using me,” Wynston said.
She grinned bravely at him. “Maybe next time. I wasn’t ready to watch you get blasted.”
“You’re sentimental.”
“You knew that. You knew that on Day One.”
Wynston chuckled with trademark arrogance. “Just so we’re clear.”
Quinn had won that rivalry. Completely. It still bothered him.
But Ruth moved on to the two lead Jedi, who seemed to be comforting one another with shoulder clasps. “Jedi. Jaesa, what you saw. Sunburns heal?”
Jaesa nodded. “I’m confident of that.”
Tebbith looked over. “Do you know when?”
“Everyone heals differently.”
“I see. Thank you.”
They fought heresies and monsters. Quinn had his hands full just keeping this mass of questionable characters safe. He wondered how much the Empire would pay to see a blaster bolt in Larr Gith’s back, or Tebbith’s. Not that the latter seemed to be on the Jedi path anyway. Nadia and Kira were young, as young as Ruth. They could still be dangerous.
But every time he looked at Ruth, he realized he only wanted to destroy what made her unhappy.
A huge golden monster stood in stasis, looming. Jaesa went to stand in front of it. “Look. It is aware…but it is not here.”
Something rippled through the room. Wynston rocketed out of nowhere to body check Jaesa out of the way as the monster swiped with a man-sized clawed hand.
“It kind of is,” Wynston clarified before spinning and drawing his blaster.
The Killik thing, Vector, helped Jaesa up. “Are you all right?”
“That was completely fair,” Jaesa said, and returned to the fight.
They spoke between fights. They were getting the shape of each other, a waste of time but perhaps necessary to present a united front against the Voss. Jaesa busily made herself a social center, as if she were ready to join a new strange team to augment her old one. Her charisma was a liability he would just as soon dispense with...but again, it was impossible to get any one person in trouble with this many witnesses.
“Did you know Nomen Karr? He was my Jedi master. He died defending me.”
Kira eyed her askance. “You were a Jedi? You're like six years old!”
A pair of spirit vorantiki leaping past the Jedi line distracted everyone. One of them bull rushed Quinn and sent a double swipe across his chest. He reeled backward, feeling parts of him take the stinging air when they shouldn’t be exposed. He fell. He couldn’t even think of what to shout.
Ruth was at his side the instant the vorantiki went down. “Quinn! Someone help, they hit Quinn!”
Balmorra ran to his side and did a double take when he saw Quinn's face. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he muttered as he began unwrapping supplies.
Quinn looked past him. “Is this a qualified doctor?”
“You thought ‘Doc’ was just a codename? Don't panic, officer, I know all kinds of medical facts. For instance, all this blood? Is supposed to be internal.”
Ruth kept her hands in her lap while she watched. “I owe you a debt,” she said softly. If she knew the terrorist from Balmorra like Quinn did, she wouldn’t be so fast to say it.
Balmorra blew some hair from his forehead. “For him? Bargain basement debt material. Still, next scary spirit quest? I'm calling you in.”
“I do keep doing those.”
Balmorra was smoothing down the last kolto patch. “There. We can talk about patterns of war crimes once we get out of the spookyworld.”
Did Ruth process that? She gave no sign. Larr Gith was approaching, eyeing Balmorra’s handiwork. Ruth stood. “Your man is kind.”
The Jedi brightened. “Mmm. Yeah.”
*
Vette and Corso and Bowdaar and Risha kind of helped the would-be Mystic. The poor woman got stabbed by a Sith, there in the middle of nowhere. Bowdaar carried her clear into the Shrine, to Voss who could help.
Vette turned away from the careful transfer, and looked around.
“What’s wrong?” Corso said.
“It’s a big temple. My treasure hunter senses are tingling. Let’s explore.”
They came to a hallway that must be high in the mountainside, though there were no windows. A single Voss stood in the way.
“Turn back, outsiders,” he said. “This way belongs to the dead until a Mystic arrives.”
“Yeah,” said Vette, “but I think someone’s chewing gum two stairways down.”
The Voss moved.
“Like taking candy from a baby,” Vette sighed. “Let’s see what they’re talking about.”
What they were talking about was a tangle of bodies. Voss, swathed in robes and hoods. There were scorch marks on the brown walls.
“Merciful stars,” Corso said. “This is horrible.”
Risha hung back. “They just left them here? Until a Mystic arrives, whenever that is?”
Corso was already kneeling by one body. Stretching it out straight, composing its arms over its chest.
Vette monitored while she helped. “This was more than two lightsabers. Unless they stood in line and waited for Ruth and Jaesa to get to them. Which, Voss. Who knows?”
Two Voss in commando uniforms ran in while Corso was composing the last body in its grisly row.
The Voss addressed one another. “Outsider rituals.” “You show respect. Your ways are strange. How is one repaid?”
Corso looked caught flat-footed. “I just did what was right. There's nothing to pay. Stop rolling your eyes, Captain.”
“I think we’re done,” said Vette. “Do you two know where the two kid Sith are?”
One guard said, “They take the Mystic Trials. Come, see the vision chamber.”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
The vision chamber happened to be a big room with two huge stone tablets in it. “Does this give visions?” Vette asked.
“Do you want it to?” Corso said.
“Yes. Yes, I do.” It sounded interesting, and who knew? Maybe Vette could get some of that spirit quest action that always got Ruth in a twist.
“It is for those who have passed the Trials,” said the Voss. “Meditating brings them visions. The last outsider attacked. It did nothing for her. It will do nothing for you.”
“Vette,” Risha said. “You have the ‘I’m’a do it anyway’ face.”
“Well,” said Vette, “I’m’a do it anyway.”
She knelt like she had seen Ruth do. She mumbled “Abracadabra, alakazam.”
And a vision came.
Vette
Vette looked in a mirror. She saw a small Mirialan woman in heavy makeup. And a shadowy bearded man leaned over her shoulder from behind. “I can grant you your youth, if you but serve me.”
Vette jerked away. “That wasn’t even mine! You guys are recycling visions! And I thought you could charge admission for this.”
The Voss just stared at her. So…kind of came out even on that one.
“Vette?” said Bowdaar. “You saw something?”
“Somebody’s leftovers.”
“Do you want to do the whole ritual?”
Vette shuddered. “Nah. Hand-me-downs are fine.”
Corso let out a sigh of relief that no one could miss. Risha, meanwhile, was probably drumming up business outside.
*
The party paused after another round of golden beasts. Quinn drew Ruth aside.
“My lord,” he whispered, “I have a report. The Twi’lek Jedi and sniper are the most dangerous of them, followed closely by the redhead. The striped girl is badly inexperienced with her lightsaber, and the horned one hesitates on every strike.”
“Quinn.”
“I can shake ‘Doc’s mental state if necessary; we have history. The only soldier they bothered to bring is obviously accustomed to cover and I think only luck would make him a deciding shot.”
“Quinn.”
“We don’t have to compromise this time.”
“Quinn. I’m not attacking them.” She studied his eyes and softened. “But things happen. If they attack us…I’ll take Larr Gith first. Watch the other Twi’lek.”
That was good sense. “As you wish.”
*
Ruth’s mixed party healed Voss and fought a Gormak to pass the trials. All of them came out together to the vision room.
Vette and her friends were already there.
“Did you win?” Vette said brightly.
“Well, we survived,” said Kaliyo. “Boringest theme park ever.”
“Meditate,” insisted a Voss. “In clarity you will receive a vision.”
*
Doc
Doc was on his way to the dance floor when he got the face full of high-speed open palm.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve!” piped the short Zeltron planted in his path.
He breathed out of his nose to make sure he still could after that hit. “Gladd!” he said. She was familiar to him. Very much so.
Larr Gith had hold of his hand, he realized. “Introductions?” the Jedi said. She smiled at Gladd in a way that made Doc reevaluate her possible relationship to the Dark Side.
Doc shook his head and Voss poured back in over the scene. Gladd? He’d thought she was ancient history. Well, young, attractive, ancient history. He didn’t look forward to experiencing that slap again.
Iresso
Felix Iresso looked at his hands. “I didn’t see anything,” he said. “It was just a blank. What does that mean? Do I not have a future?”
Jaesa
Jaesa had her arms full. Of girls, young, brown-haired, rambunctious, matched like paired figurines.
Someone said over them, “You can supervise construction, love, but please don’t build the expansion yourself. We still have childcare to deal with.”
Kaliyo
“The Spire is down,” said Ruth. “Kaliyo, we need to talk before you take on any more missions. At all.” In front of the whole room.
“Who said you’re in charge?” Kaliyo bristled, but it was all fading already.
Kira
Dromund Kaas. Kira hadn’t been there since she was a child. Now she paced the steps of the Dark Temple to end all Dark Temples, while lightning patrolled the terrain of clouds above.
It sucked. It was dark and sticky and evil, and something was stopping her from going inside. But, damn it, when the Jedi had cleared the Presence from inside, it would never hurt anyone ever again.
She patrolled, part of a team, and it was easy to be brave.
Larr Gith
Larr Gith was in someone’s arms. She was blind. Everything was cold.
“Can you see?” said a familiar voice. “Here.” The familiar warmth of Force healing washed through her.
She looked up, past the person holding her. A blurred but slender figure appeared in the doorway.
And Larr and the figure said, in unison, “You have got to be kidding me.”
Nadia
Sorrow hung around Tebbith like concealing fog. “I must keep my balance,” he said heavily. “I cannot choose the easy way again.”
“Then choose me,” she said. Not her body or her love, but her life, and the religion they had in common. It was this or lose him again, and she truly didn’t know what side he would come down on.
Quinn
A boy, looking much like Quinn had at age twelve or so, stared at him with huge, blue, accusing eyes. “If you knew, would you have tried to kill me?”
His son. His son. “No,” he said hoarsely. “No, no one could tell me…”
The image melted. Quinn stood still, though the world spun. This Voss lie was a child, his child and Ruth’s child, an impossibility, the most vicious of all imaginable falsehoods.
He felt nauseous.
Ruth
“Do you feel your grip on life slipping, apprentice?”
Ruth couldn’t move her arms under Baras’s obscured gaze. Was this what it was to fail? There were others watching, eyes in the dark, waiting impartially for a result. She struggled and loosed nothing but one tear.
Tebbith
Tebbith was in a crowd, a huge crowd. Most people were shorter than him. The energy was indescribable: these people were at a fever pitch of anticipation, and something else was going on.
A pretty Nautolan faced him and said loudly, “How does it feel to take on this epic responsibility?”
A few feet away, a couple of girls stopped and posed. “The Alliance loves you, Mr. President!”
Tebbith blinked slowly. “Are you talking to me?”
Temple
“Temple. Hazard.” Wynston was obviously addressing Temple and someone Temple didn’t know. “Please tell me I was overhearing your discussion of a completely generic romance novel that had nothing to do with the abomination about Quinn and myself that Junior was reading over the public address system yesterday.”
“Sir?” said Temple.
“Agent Temple requested a transcript,” said the other woman, "and since we recalled the full text as read aloud, we obliged.”
Temple giggled as the vision faded. She couldn’t help it. It was so rare to see Wynston off balance.
Vector
Vector felt a symphony of attention. He was more connected than ever. He was in the right place. And he was connected, oddly, to the small Chiss in front of him.
Wynston was out of uniform; he had the white shirt and harness he seemed to like. He seemed more centered, more motivated, than ever. They were in a good place together, Vector knew that.
Wynston said, “We're going to steal a ship. And then we're going to protect people with it. These are capital crimes in the Empire. Are you in?”
“Of course,” Vector said.
“You're a good man, you shouldn't be slumming it with me.” He smiled crookedly.
The vision faded. Vector was in a small room facing two stone tablets. He turned away. Maybe Wynston could make something of it.
Wynston
Hunter was on his knees, clutching a side wound. Wynston already treasured this vision.
But Hunter tilted his face up and said, “If this job was uglier than usual – well, it’s still the same cause you’ve always had, and still very much the same methods. You find the weak point. You break it. People die. The survivors have a better galaxy to live in. So everything today went perfectly.”
Wynston put his blaster to the kneeling Hunter’s hair. “Believe me, I don’t care.”
He tried to squeeze the trigger. He tried as hard as he could.
Zenith
The dark-skinned man had a utility coat that would make some of Zenith’s old resistance contacts weep with envy. He already knew the pockets were loaded with a mechanic’s must-haves.
And probably blasters.
The man wiped his hands on a greasy rag. “I was a soldier before I was a rebel. I guess a lifetime’s training might be working against me.” The man fixed Zenith with dark eyes that could stop a hovertank. “How do they run rebellions where you’re from?”
*
Ruth reeled away from the stone and found herself sitting down, hard. There was a new smell in the air, some kind of incense. She flexed her arms. She could move. She had her weapons. Baras was not here.
The world was no longer limned in gold. She was back where she needed to be, with a knowledge she didn’t want.
Vector swayed unsteadily a moment, but his face was all smiles. “The nest welcomes this insight!”
Temple giggled.
“I saw nothing,” Quinn grated, offering Ruth a hand up.
Kaliyo, for her part, stalked up to face Ruth nose to nose, though the Rattataki had the height advantage. “You controlling, holier-than-thou, karking bitch.”
Quinn did his best to loom. “My lord?”
“It’s okay. Kaliyo, I’m not after Wynston.”
“It’s not. Always. About. The guy. Look at Captain Kaas here. He’s going to feed you into a woodchipper the second—"
Quinn’s blaster was out, aimed at arm’s length. His whole face seemed to take part in a strained blink while he stared at Kaliyo.
Kaliyo stared down the barrel, grinning her lazy black-lipped grin. “—he sees a promotion in it.”
“Quinn!”
Quinn was still watching Kaliyo. “Mind your tongue before your betters.”
“Quinn, it’s just words. Lower your weapon.”
Gracelessly he did. “I wouldn’t presume to dictate your choice of company, my lord.”
She turned back to Kaliyo. “Imperials are better than you think.”
Kaliyo rolled her eyes. “They’re worse than you can believe.”
“Did you see that? In your vision?”
“Maybe it’s just all that insight from banging my own Imperial.” Something seemed to occur to her. “You didn’t still want him, did you?”
Jaesa was hugging herself with a private smile. “I’ll have daughters. Twins!” She looked up. “Ruth?”
Ruth tried to feel good for her. It didn’t work. “He had me at his mercy,” she reported.
Quinn shifted. “I won’t let that happen.”
“I was losing, Malavai. I wasn’t…I couldn’t…I tried everything, and I was losing.”
“We may yet avoid that confrontation.” Quinn scanned the party. “These are shadow figures on the wall. Primitive, and they could represent anything.”
“I agree,” Wynston said, to everyone’s surprise. “I need to talk to Bas-Ton. Soon.”
*
“Master Jedi,” said Lieutenant Iresso. “What does ‘blank’ mean?”
“The Voss might know,” Tebbith said gently. “The future is not an exact science. Perhaps all of us saw slight corruptions of the actual path.”
Nadia touched his arm. “No corruptions here. We have to stick together.”
Larr Gith stared past the walls. “Was I in fucking carbonite?”
“Take me as I am, or set me free. I will not change.”
Ruth Niral was a teenager when she left the shelter of her Light Side Sith father’s house and went to Korriban to learn how to function in the Empire. The plan? Use her vast natural talents for good, and make friends along the way.
“I have a place you can clean up and get a square meal. Where do you want to go after that?”
“…Want?”
“Yes. If you have a preference.”
Ruth operated with simple actions: help people, negotiate with people, compromise with people, beat the living shit out of anyone who wouldn’t listen to reason. It was that combination that brought her surprises like one Jaesa Willsaam. And more.
Ruth likes shaking Jedi assumptions and finding ways to build. The Empire tolerates it because her natural power is beyond any fair fight the galaxy has so far managed to furnish. She'll get big enough to push real change, she knows this. She just has to be good enough.
“Is that passion?"
"Yes."
"Will that increase your power if we go on…?"
"Yes. Quinn? Is this okay? If I’m scaring you I’m sorry, but this is how—”
Ruth matures a lot in her two years of traveling. She outgrows her unstable master. She gets a job in trust as the Emperor’s Wrath. She vindicates her father’s faith in her. She marries her adored XO. She earns a name far and wide—carried by the people she spared. On Voss she reaffirms and makes utterly unexpected connections. Everything’s looking up for her.
“…You are so far out of line. He burned that bridge. He's with me.”
It’s not all hugs and rainbows. She is dogmatic in her beliefs, undiscerning in her mercies. When people doubt her probable outcomes she tends to assume they’re criticizing her methods, and shuts it out. But everything she’s done so far works. How can that be bad?
*
Chapter 4. Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor (Ruth and Scythia handle Korriban; Proteulse is a jerk)
Chapter 5. Sith Warrior and Smuggler (Ruth and Vette on Korriban; meet Ruth's dad)
They killed the entire pack of mawvorrs, to raucous applause. Vette watched while the Gormak cleared the dead away. “Boy, I’m glad Ruth isn’t watching.”
Risha shot her a Look. “Does she like animals? Or hate you?”
Kira had reached out to Larr Gith and Tebbith. Belsavis was saved, but Lord Scourge was too much for one Jedi to deal with. That, and their next stop, Voss, had a famous Shrine of Healing that might work on spiritual wounds.
Kira had been imprisoned and tortured for a year. Larr Gith had done the imprisoning and torturing for a year, under the command of the Emperor. And Tebbith had conspired with Scythia to free Larr Gith, and gone far, far too far down the path of darkness before Larr freed herself anyway.
Yes. They wanted a Shrine of Healing. And Lord Fulminiss was on Voss for unknown business, which Kira intended to disrupt.
The Gnost-Dural and the Prodigy Burst flew in parallel. They had split up on gender lines: Tebbith, Qyzen Fess, Tharan, Zenith, and Doc opposite Larr Gith, Kira, Holiday, Nadia, and Lord Scourge.
It was impossible to convince Scourge to play along with the theme.
T7-01 had stayed with Larr, too. He acted like she might fly away at any time. Nobody really knew what they had subjected Teeseven to during his year on the Emperor’s station while he sat in the corner, plugged into the system. Nobody was eager to get into it. What talk therapy could benefit a droid?
“So what do you know about Voss?” Larr said, lounging on the curved holo room couch. She wore a layered brown tunic and leggings and close-fitting boots with low heels. It was practical, which shocked everyone, and it didn’t stand out in this crowd.
Scourge was, not for the first time, proving to be a little limited on relevant topics. “I heard of it the first time from your Jedi. I have never seen it. I could repeat what the Jedi told you, but I have nothing to add.”
On Tebbith’s ship, Rusk said, “Lord Scourge must have information on these Mystics. We can figure the rest out once we’re on the ground.”
Holiday twirled a lock of pink holographic hair in her pink holographic fingers. “The Mystics they spoke of. Are they prophets, or healers? Those are very different disciplines, according to current scientific understanding.”
On Tebbith’s ship, Tharan stroked his beard. “Are they prophets, or healers? Those are very different disciplines, according to current scientific understanding.”
“They might have more than that up their sleeves,” Kira suggested.
Tebbith said, “The Force works in mysterious ways. Perhaps we have abilities that they would consider arcane enigmas.”
“A chance for mutual benefit,” Nadia said. “Imagine, learning from one of these Mystics.”
Doc said, “Hey, let’s line up some of our gear. Maybe they don’t have kolto. I’d call that a fair trade for some of their healing.” He looked at Tebbith. “I mean, they do the ‘first, do no harm’ thing, right? Right? Nobody gets hurt at a Shrine of Healing?”
“They’re going to be different,” Kira said. “Not to rain on the parade, but we don’t know these people. If they made a full-scale Imperial invasion vanish, that’s a great start, but we have no information on what happens to small ships.”
Zenith snorted. “Even if they tried harming the Jedi, we still have blasters.”
Holiday’s twined lock stayed curled. She started twisting one on the other side of her face. “Tharan will have something they want. He can always calm somebody down with the right offer.”
Tharan frowned at Zenith. “I have a dozen pieces of exotechnology that they may find useful. Between me and Doc, we’ll have something to offer.”
*
There was no full-size orbital station, but a half-built superstructure hovered over the planet. The two Jedi ships docked and the two crews reunited around a man who told them the Republic cause in the city of Voss-Ka needed help, desperately.
“Nice that we have a Consular,” Zenith said dryly.
A Republic shuttle studded with point-defense cannons spirited the crews down into the yellowish glow of the planet.
Larr Gith stepped down from the windowless shuttle and found herself staring up from a mountain plateau to a jagged top. A city had been draped from mountaintop to the plateau’s knees. It was…orange-gold. And geometrical. And breathtakingly arranged. Far above, beyond the highest spire, a huge moon with a sweep of golden rings hung in the pale bronze sky.
She drifted across the landing pad. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“They really need to get some pamphlets printed,” Kira said at her side. “Just looking at this scenery makes me feel better.”
“The Emperor has ravaged a hundred worlds like this,” Scourge said behind them. “One begins to forget the details.”
Doc popped out. “Aaand, we don’t let him talk to the diplomatic personnel.”
Qyzen Fess, for one, didn’t seem enamored of the view. “They say this is the only city. Wilderness all around. We must watch our food supply.”
“Food?” said Nadia. “If it’s half as magical as the sights, I’ll be gaining weight.”
Tharan picked his way to the stone pavilion. “Do they have to do something to keep that moon from crashing into the planet?”
Zenith crossed his arms over his chest. “Every advanced economy supports at least one stupid thing.”
“They picked a humdinger,” said Iresso, staring upward.
Teeseven rolled out last. Ambassador = pavilion outside city // everyone = errands and place to rest?
“Very wise,” Tebbith said. It was becoming clear to Larr that Tebbith simply didn’t have the stamina he’d had before. Part of him was still eating his heart hollow.
“They’ve got to have a cantina,” she said firmly. “And some rooms to go with it. I’m sure they wouldn’t let us down to the surface if they didn’t have room.”
*
There was a closet on the Light Red that had been converted to a small private holoterminal, mostly so Ruth could make calls without risking any caller seeing the mess in her room.
Quinn did not use these for his reports to Baras. He used the one in Ruth’s room, when Ruth was busy elsewhere. Managing her without her knowledge had become a way of life. He wished she could know the pleasing order of her finding good solutions for the Empire while she walked the razor’s edge. Even now, in a deadly sweep of politics, she took his suggestions for Imperial interests.
He holoed in and gave his report to Darth Baras.
“Voss is a peculiarity, my lord. Frankly, the literature on it is lacking. This is an opportunity for a Sith with a strong arm and diplomatic guidance to make an impression for the Empire.”
Baras filled the image, filled the room, and listened with impatience. “A role you see my wayward apprentice filling.”
“It would be a complete sidetrack from opposing you, and a fitting use of her skills.”
“You realize we are already at war. You cannot find a use for her that I would accept. The moment you dread is a matter of when, not whether.”
That fact was going to get someone killed, soon. Whether that would be Baras, or Ruth, or Quinn himself, he had prioritized but not finalized. “My lord, she would return to the fold. Her precarious grasp on the darker side of Imperial affairs makes that a foregone conclusion. She would reconcile, if asked, because it would not occur to her to discount a direct offer.”
“I do not see the lisping idealist of a year ago, Captain. I see power. And power always tries to aggrandize itself. She is not so unique as to fail that impulse. I will not justify myself further to you and your…clandestine marriage.” He made the word disgusting. “Are you prepared to carry out any order I may give you?”
Slipping it into Imperial records after the ordeal of Belsavis had been a sentimental excess. Quinn felt sweat running down his spine. “Without stint or hesitation, my lord.”
“Good. Take today for your ‘impressions’ for the Empire. Your little family has so few tomorrows.”
Quinn removed all traces of the call, and planted a record of a long talk with Logistics HQ in its place. No one would doubt Quinn’s enthusiasm for getting the supplies right.
Ruth was in the mess, frowning at her holo. She looked up and put that aside to beam when Quinn entered. “How are things?”
Hopeless. The only way out was forward, if they could uncover an opportunity big enough to force a détente. “I believe we’re ready to descend to the planet.”
She nodded. She was a fair-skinned Human, ascetically lean, with short brown hair and big blue eyes. He knew her every taut muscle, her every hidden scar. Beneath the pretty girl was a woman who could call the Empire to heel, if she had the will.
Her good spirits faded. “I…I still haven’t been able to get my father on holo. I got a recording over the Holonet just a few hours ago.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
She clicked. Colran Niral appeared. He was narrowly built, with eyes and cheekbones very much like his daughter. Quinn had met him once, and briefly. He had been as kind as his child, except for about three seconds’ unimpressive threatening when no one else was looking.
“Ruth,” said the recording. “I have to go on a trip and I can’t tell you much about it. Just remember, you have friends, and I am one of them. With luck we see each other before this message ever has to get delivered. I love you dearly, and I’m proud of you.”
“That’s all,” Ruth said glumly. “He’s never disappeared like this. Ever.”
“Calling in favors against Baras?” Quinn suggested. That was a fool’s errand, but Colran had taught his daughter everything she knew about naivete.
“He can’t face Baras’s lieutenants. I’m not even sure he’s used his lightsaber since he got back to Imperial space, before I was born.”
Quinn’s mind whirled in an orderly fashion. Ruth’s assessment coincided with his own, as far as power went. “He could be keeping a potential point of vulnerability out of sight.”
She seemed to revive a little. “Maybe. If I could be sure about that I’d feel better about facing Baras. He’ll tear down any supporters I have using tomorrow’s targets as catspaws…maybe my father is just frustrating that by not being where he’s expected.”
Maybe. If Colran was out of Quinn’s reach, Quinn wouldn’t have to kill his wife’s beloved father. For that, at least, he was grateful.
“The planet awaits,” he suggested. And even Baras would have to acknowledge a successful statesman on a lush new planet. He would have to. And, if things were settled before Baras really got to butchering Ruth’s supports…
This would work. It had to.
She took his hand, and she loved him. Love in her clear mind was simple and elemental and impossible to calculate. She took his hand, and he wanted to vindicate it all for her.
But a future must be built, not intuited. He needed her to prove herself to Baras on an adult level to force a reconciliation. Because in every scale that mattered, Baras was still the one who made sense.
*
Wynston did not believe in the Force as an organized or benevolent principle. He believed in what he could talk his way into, and little else. Hunter’s ability to locate Wynston’s old enemies and lob them at him only seemed supernatural because Wynston didn’t have the resources Hunter did. It was all explainable.
Wynston could not account for Ruth Niral. They had run into each other time and again, each time deepening a bond of the sort he had avoided all his life.
When he was alone on Quesh, trapped in his mind, going rapidly crazy, she had consented to come with him on his quest to reverse the damage. She had asked no questions, made no demands. She had sat with him until the worst of it was past, and let him go.
Somehow that release made the bond stronger than ever.
So he felt unsurprised when a party of aliens, from a Voss perspective, clattered into the teahouse where he was laying plans.
He knew them. Three of them, anyway.
Their leader, Ruth Niral, had a face that kindled when excited. “Fancy meeting you here!” The fact that she knew and liked him had just been broadcast to Voss entire. At least she hadn’t yelled his name. She was never so endearing as when she was trying to be circumspect. She knew the paranoia field was important to him, and she was just, so, bad at it.
“Ruth. Old Alexis didn’t expect to see you again. Kaliyo’s on her way over. You remember Vector?”
“Our Alderaanian expert. It's good to see you again.”
The black-eyed Joiner nodded. “We are delighted to meet you while you have the power of speech.” Sure, they’d had two minutes’ conversation before the Killik battle that had put her in kolto for five weeks…but she wouldn’t mind a better start.
“Ensign Raina Temple. Raina, Ruth Niral.”
“My lord.”
“Ruth, please.”
She looked at Ruth and spoke to Wynston. “I didn't get briefed about you?”
“It never came up. Ruth is a good friend to me and to the Empire. Ruth, your…?”
“Vette and Captain Quinn, of course. Jaesa, my apprentice and friend. And this is Lieutenant Pierce, our very good heavy ordnance.”
Kaliyo spoke from the doorway. “That was the first interesting thing anybody's said all day. When do I get introduced?”
“Does this place serve drinks or not?” Pierce said idly.
“It is a teahouse,” Vector said, and even now Wynston wasn’t sure whether he was trying to annoy in the classiest way possible. “It serves tea.”
It was working. “My question stands, bugboy.”
Ruth gave him the slightest glare, and what was more, he knew it, and what was more, he thinned his lips and didn’t strike again. Ruth said, “If you want to find something back in the alien district.”
“Milord. Tell me when I have to hit something,” Pierce said, grinning, and strode out.
For a while the conversation was lost in frivolous nothings, a little about the Voss experience so far, a little about the Empire in safe and neutral terms. Wynston felt distanced from it. How close was he to getting Hunter here? How many more planets, how many more days?
Ruth knew he’d gone through something, but Ruth would give him her warm approval without ever asking him to perform okayness in return. It wasn’t just her general softness. He had seen her confront people, argue, fight, overrule, overpower. But she never did any of those things to him. She had dropped him for Quinn at the first opportunity, but she had never become unkind.
“I’ve been directed to the Shrine of Healing,” said Ruth. “There are supposedly visions to be had there.”
Wynston had heard something of it. “Do you think Force-blinds can benefit?”
“I’m not even sure non-Voss can benefit. I have to try, I need all the guidance I can get.”
And the Shining Man had been there, which meant Wynston had to go. “I’ve had a long day with other investigations. Perhaps tomorrow we can go out together?”
“I think that’s fine. Where are you staying?”
“Here, actually. The owner, Bas-Ton, is a friend.”
“Friends everywhere,” she said, eyes twinkling. “Why am I not surprised?”
A Voss came to them. Mostly red, tall as all Voss, slender, in those terribly interesting yet modest clothes. In some ways, Voss were not alien at all. Bipedal, one head per person. Her body could be very tall and very slender in almost any setting. The intricacies of her skin and her speckled eyes were more unusual. Her mind was practically incomprehensible. He found that he liked her, wanted to protect her from his deadly chase. An Imperial operative could leave cities in ruins in his path, and Wynston surely had. He wanted this one to work out better.
“Will you have tea?” she said.
“Yana-Ton, these are friends of mine from offworld. They’re not here for my question, but they’re authorized to know how to reach me and whether I’m in trouble.”
Yana-Ton nodded. “It must be as you say. Tea for both tables?”
“Yes, please.” Wynston watched her go, then turned to Ruth and confided, “I think she likes me.”
Ruth laughed a sweet, natural laugh. “Don’t you believe that about everyone?”
“Pretty women,” he deadpanned. “It’s a sixth sense, I swear.”
“He’s been trying to seduce her for a week,” Kaliyo volunteered. “So far he almost has eye contact.”
Wynston shrugged modestly. “They do things differently here.”
Kaliyo cackled and brushed her black nails against his forearm. He counted himself lucky that that was the worst of her territory-marking so far today. She had her uses in many dimensions, but when she decided to be a problem it would be catastrophic.
They drank tea. Kaliyo annoyed Quinn. Jaesa stared at Vector’s eyes and pretended not to. Vette nimbly chatted about Alderaanian topics they could both recognize. Temple tried to avoid drawing attention, and Wynston wished he could convince her that Ruth was not a legally compliant Sith. Ruth and Vette talked about Nar Shaddaa where Wynston could weigh in. It was busy. He felt some of the strain and desperation loosening from where it had calcified around his heart. He had to act normal, but with his friends there and also Kaliyo, he started to feel normal, too.
It was a late night, and a good one.
*
Corso was sitting up outside the alien hostel. He perked up when Vette got there. “All set with your friends?”
“You have got to stop worrying.” Vette looked around. “Then again, I don’t know when or whether these guys get spicy. Come on, tell me they have beds in the rooms here.”
Corso looked worried. “They must. Right?”
“Trust you to forget to check.” She grinned. “Come on in, they must have two beds free.”
*
“I find it difficult to believe that this is the best they could do,” Quinn said darkly.
Ruth looked around the shelter assignment back in the Alien District. There was a bed, narrow for two, extremely narrow for her spread-out sleeping preference, though it was beautiful in glossy folds of dark orange patterning. There was a narrow window overlooking an autumn-hued grove, and an orange and gray folding screen standing in one corner with the plumbing behind.
“I think it’s pretty,” she said. “And we don’t have time to trek back to the ship every night. Every minute on this planet matters.”
He sighed. “Oh?” He came to her and touched her shoulder with the backs of his knuckles. “We don’t seem to be coordinating with your ‘friends’…so what is this minute for?”
She still wasn’t used to him touching her without permission. She thought she might never be used to it, and that was delightful. Her problems dissolved in sparkles. They were secret newlyweds, but newlyweds nevertheless. “I mean, we could turn in right away, as we don’t know how long we’ll be on the road tomorrow…”
His hands wandered to her hips. Quietly, in one firm movement, he pulled her against him. “Is that your command?”
She looked up at him. He was under stress as bad as any of them, and yet here his attention was hers and hers alone. “Of course it isn’t,” she purred. “I’m up whenever you are.”
He looked, not at her, but over her shoulder into some undefined distance, maybe toward the teahouse. “I was jealous, once,” he murmured, and got back to her, hard and fierce.
*
“Kaliyo, where are we going?”
“Not far,” said Kaliyo. Her hand was on Wynston’s wrist and she had that energy about her, the thrilling stuff. Wandering around outside the alien district at night would almost certainly be a problem, but stopping her…why should he? He was on the trail, coming back to life.
Someday, she would cease to be useful. And she knew too much, far too much. She would undo him if he didn’t undo her first. Somehow, for a long procession of good reasons, he kept pushing that deadline back.
“Here.” Kaliyo firmed her grip and hauled Wynston into an alley between unusually square buildings. “Take off your pants.”
“Here? They have night patrols!”
“So they’ll get an alien anatomy lesson. You could set this entire planet’s standard for offworlders.” She pulled at his belt. “Come on.”
He peeled her hands off and she re-gripped and bit his lip, too hard for play. He tried to peel her off again.
She kept pulling. “Exactly who are you saving yourself for? Ruth? She moved on to a better Imperial, one a lee-tle bit more Human. Yana-Ton? I don’t think she knows what a penis is. Ruth Remix? Kinda baby-faced, but if you’re into that I could find a real big lollipop…”
Wynston gripped her hands where they had gotten his belt loose. “Stop it. I’m going back to the teahouse.”
Kaliyo backed off. “What is wrong with you? I thought you got the psychotic out of your system.”
He was so tired. “A man would have to be psychotic to turn you down, I’ll give you that. We’ll fuck when we both want. You know that, and I’ll make sure you enjoy it.”
“Yeah. Well, want more often, Blueballs.” She stomped off.
*
Larr Gith woke up entangled.
Doc was facing her, nose at her collarbone. He had one arm trapped under her and the other raised to rest between her lekku. It wasn't entirely clear to her which leg was whose.
The sunlight in the hostel window had a reddish cast even at whatever hour this was. Morning, for sure. Strange birds, or whatever animals they had here, twittered outside.
She soaked in the feelings. Warmth. Life. Stability. The Force, strained through cloth of gold, never far away. After a year of drowning against a black expanse of solid ice, it was so, so welcome.
She stiffened when the memory surfaced.
Doc stirred and looked up at her. His expression did something like lightning and he kissed her, not like last night, but like they were saying goodbye for nobody knew how long. He focused on her mouth but slid hands over her lekku, her back, her hip. He was tender with her, like she’d never hurt him. Knowing, she hoped, that she never would, not again.
Well, kind of. She pulled away and looked at her dress where she had tossed it last night. “I should go.”
*
Doc had not expected that. “What? Stay. I haven't soaked up enough of your gorgeousness yet.”
“No.”
“Larr?” He was trying hard to keep his voice jovial while he watched his good mood start to get dressed in preparation for leaving. “Come on, that was a nine at least.”
Larr Gith reached for her bra. She didn't make eye contact.
Damage control. Damage control. “I'm sensing a three. Why am I sensing a three? Was it too hot? You know I like the—”
“Doc.” She pulled her panties on and leaned over to kiss his arm. “It was an eleven. But I need some time alone.”
“Since when? Alone is bad. Alone is scary. People change their minds when they're alone. Larr…if I did something wrong, I don’t know what it is.”
Her expression went back to that place. That horrible, horrible place. “I thought I wouldn’t dream. I…hoped, I wouldn’t dream.”
“Was that what this was? Escapism? Because I can get behind that.” And for more trauma than just hers.
“It didn’t work!” Her honeyed contralto seemed to crackle. “You were—and my first—and you tell me, over and over, put the past behind me, and I tried, and I still dream!”
And he had been fighting her memories for as long as they’d been free. So of course they cropped up where he couldn’t help. “This is an excessively literal reading of your problem, but there are treatments to suppress dreaming. Not healthy in the long run, but for a localized issue…”
“What if we did all this plus that tonight?”
This beautiful woman in her underwear on his bed was really asking. If she was just looking for someone to help bang the feelings away, well, he’d just lucked out. It would be better if she were making progress. He kept it breezy to cover how desperately he wanted to fix everything. “I’ll do anything. As long as we do it facing toward the future. We’ll get there. Together, if you’ll let me.”
“Doc. We’ll do all kinds of things together if I let you.” Her voice had taken on a teasing note, and he wanted to give her that moment any time she hesitated from now until forever. “But I do have to get dressed before I eat.”
“Sure, sure. …Eleven?”
She laughed softly, a towering victory. One memory to place between Bad Mojo and now. “Yeah.”
*
Jaesa and Vector were the first to reach the teahouse in the morning. The sign out front had not yet been hung to indicate opening, but Yana-Ton let Jaesa in, and she sat opposite Vector and got a small, exquisite cup of tea.
Vector was a tall man, nicely shaped in Jaesa’s opinion, with dark slicked-back hair and…those eyes. Those flat, lusterless, black-on-black eyes.
He sat when she did, and smiled mildly. “Jaesa, we believe. Welcome to Voss.”
“It’s really a beautiful planet, isn’t it?”
He tilted his head. “Yes.” A pause, relaxed. “If we may be so bold…your accent is Alderaanian.“
"Your eyes are a Joiner’s.”
“Does this distress you?”
Jaesa gave it fair consideration. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a Joiner as… autonomous?… as you.”
“We are Dawn Herald for our nest. It requires some flexibility.”
“Were you… you know. Kidnapped? In some battle?”
“No. I chose this to enable understanding between the Nest and the Empire.”
“That was very brave,” she concluded, and thought about it. “I’m sorry. I spoke in ignorance.”
“There is a saying, to raise one’s forearms is a risk, but it is the only way to get new scents. It…” he smiled apologetically…“does not translate well.”
“I think I’m comforted.”
Vector smiled again. “Good. Now, you are Sith, are you not?”
“Well, I use the Force and I’m not a Jedi. Is that the same thing?”
“We don’t know. We have never met Sith as bright as you and your master.”
“It’s a day of surprises. —How do you know Ruth? She and I were never on Alderaan at the same time, so…”
“She knows Alexis. There was a situation with an Imperial ally, House Cortess. The nest sought to take them over the Empire’s objections. Ruth offered to help, so we fought together.”
“That’s a whole grateful family. So you’re a soldier?”
Vector laughed softly. “A diplomat by training.”
“Oh. Is that why you’re on Voss?” That brought up another question, which brought up more questions. “Why would Alexis be with you for that? What exactly does Alexis do?”
“You can tell her,” Alexis said from the doorway.
Jaesa looked over, startled. The Chiss was only a hair over Ruth’s height and weight, dressed in gray Kaasian business casual, well groomed, with his dark blue hair combed with a deep side part and his pale blue face pretty but devoid of distinguishing features. An average Imperial, unjustly placed below Ruth’s social stratum. He had an easy smile, cordial now while he looked at his associate and Jaesa.
Between the two of them, these people had zero visible pupils.
“We serve Imperial Intelligence,” Vector said.
Jaesa knew the reputation. Oh, she was being rude again, staring. Vector said, “Does that distress you more than the Joining?”
“Maybe my lack of life experience is showing,” she said.
“Not at all. Most people we meet have some reason to fear them. But we are not an informant or interrogator. We serve the Empire’s interests.”
“That’s a ‘we’ including me,” Alexis said calmly. “We aren’t here to assess compliance or remove anyone. When I mention Ruth in my reports I mention what she wants the Empire to know. In return, I’ve always had the impression she reports to the Sith what she wants them to know. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”
“She…she doesn’t always say everything about me to her superiors.”
“So you understand,” said Vector.
“Yes,” she said shyly. “Of course. And Ruth told me I can trust you. Um, not Kaliyo, but you two.”
Vector inclined his head. “We are flattered that she includes us.”
“Can I ask you two something?”
“Ask away,” said Alexis.
“Ruth trusts you, and you have experience…moving things discreetly.”
“I do. What do you want to move?”
“My parents. When I joined Ruth, they moved to Dromund Kaas as hostages. You see…Baras might harm them at any time to hurt me or Ruth. And you knowing about stealthy things…”
“Plenty of opportunities. We could sneak them off planet and set them up someplace neutral and pleasant until Baras is dealt with. Then, home. Alderaan, unless my ear for accents is shot.” Vector nodded.
“That'd be perfect.”
“Tell them to pack, without buying extra supplies. And leave the lights on. I can have a ship paid for in a few hours, and someone to get them to the spaceport.”
“I don't want to take up your time.”
Wynston gave a crooked smile. “Oh, yes you do. And you will. And your parents won't be under that sword. I'm really coming to enjoy undercutting senior Sith. And Ruth must want this, so it's good business.”
His confidence was infectious. “She only says good things about you.”
“I would laugh, but it's mutual. Well, we have a plan.”
Jaesa struggled through her considerations. “I can pay you.”
“My friend's apprentice is in trouble. And wants to stick it to the Dark Council. Why would I take credits for that?”
“Thank you.”
“Do you know what her father’s situation is?”
Another hard problem. “He’s been hard to find. I think Ruth knows he’s alive, but details? Nothing.”
“Interesting. I’ll check in with her before we leave. First, though, I have some people to move.”
Vector looked up. “Can we assist?”
“Prep for the Shining Man. But get Jaesa back to her people first. You’re on the ‘allowed to be walking around near here’ list.”
Vector accepted this with a fluid grace. Jaesa accepted it, too.
*
“Now,” said Ruth, “will we all fit in the shuttle to the base station?”
“No,” said Pierce, looking down his nose at Wynston, Kaliyo, and Vector.
“You stay in the city,” said Ruth. “We might have to make a quick retreat.”
“I’ll befriend the shuttle operators,” he said. “Maybe introduce them to some chemical compounds on the job. We’ll be best friends by the time you get back.”
“I like this guy,” said Kaliyo.
“Please don’t get anyone drunk and dead,” said Ruth.
“Milord.” He smiled sunnily. “I can fly if they can’t.”
“What are the odds grand theft shuttle is a crime here?” Kaliyo drawled.
“That was rhetorical,” Wynston clarified.
“No, it wasn’t,” said Kaliyo, narrowing her silver eyes while she grinned at Pierce.
“New plan,” said Ruth. “You stick with me.”
*
The shuttle was crowded. Ruth was trying to sit in Quinn’s lap, which might have eased the space problem, only he was having none of it. Jaesa and Pierce sat opposite the squirming couple. And Wynston and his crew faced Vette and her crew.
Corso Riggs never took his eyes off Ruth, except to cast Jaesa doubtful peeks.
Pierce chuckled at him. “You can blink, kid. She's not going to turn into anything terrible.”
Corso transferred his ire. “I don't know what an Imp thinks is terrible.”
Vette cleared her throat. “Easy, Corso. I don't want you to die here.”
Ruth gave up pushing Quinn. “We don't have to be best friends here. Vette, Wynston, my glue.”
Bowdaar looked skeptical, but he sounded conciliatory: “You freed Vette from slavery.”
“Judging from her attitude, there was nothing to free her from.”
Corso laughed.
It wasn’t just that. Ruth thought of Vette’s sister. “You know, Vette, you might get a bulk discount if you just free everyone you’ve met at once.”
“Well,” said Vette, “I am fabulously rich.”
Risha smirked. “For at least three more weeks, if you don't go on another spending spree.”
“How about half the slaves on Nar Shaddaa?” Vette suggested. “A quarter?”
Risha looked thoughtful. “It’d have to be a steep discount.”
Ruth looked at Quinn again. He was so steady, so thoughtful. Changing the rules hadn’t changed his skills or his dedication. And he wanted her as a renegade just as much as he’d wanted her when she was a cog in the machine. If he wanted to hurt her, he’d had a thousand opportunities. But all he ever did was grow closer.
Corso Riggs said, “If I had a girl who looked at me that way, I'd never let her go.” Quinn shot him a venomous look. “Just saying.”
“He got snuggly since I left,” said Vette. “Sort of.”
Risha was visibly holding something back. Ruth wasn’t sure she wanted to know what.
*
They disembarked at a little camp halfway up the mountain’s shoulder. The Shrine of Healing loomed over all, a few miles away. They were assigned a Voss and a serious charge to cleanse pilgrimage altars on the way. Corso studied the pilgrim and could read nothing about her expression. These people were strange. And they wanted altars purified.
“…with what?” said Ruth. Corso looked at her. She must be the most likely person to cleanse anything with more than a damp rag.
“You will know,” said the Voss. “It is necessary.”
So they set out together, steamrolling shacklaws and other monsters as they went.
Ruth slowed before a small pack of mawvorrs. “Those are cute,” she observed.
Everyone stared.
“Is Mr. Sneaks still alive?” Vette said skeptically. Corso knew the name. Ruth’s pet gizka, the villain of several Vette stories.
“Yes,” said Ruth. “Yes, he is.”
“So there’s no room in your life for a wild killing machine. Protect our Voss buddy here, Ruth. You can pet Mr. Sneaks when we get back.”
Their Voss reached an altar along the beaten path and knelt before it. “Purify it,” she said in her brushed-metal voice.
“Jaesa?” Ruth squeezed the other Sith's hand and let go. Together they took on a golden glow, too bright to look at for long. Their joint warmth felt like a gentle breeze.
And they changed. They weren't the pretty girls next door; they took on a grandeur, a classical beauty. Corso wanted to bask. He wanted to kneel.
This wasn't the Dark Side of the Force. It was pressing, redeeming the shadows around the altar. It wasn't the cool polish he thought of Jedi doing. It was warm and honest and when it faded Corso felt his hands clenching, as if to hold on.
“Thank you,” the Voss said, and knelt to meditate.
They reached two more altars, and in both cases Ruth and Jaesa managed to serenity their way into whatever cleansing the Voss needed. Then, suddenly, the Voss turned from the beaten path. They were in a tumbledown zone near the Shrine, full of broken buildings. Apparently the Shrine was the only building they maintained.
“I must leave the path,” she said, “and find a certain carving. It is necessary to become a Mystic.”
Mystic or not, it was dangerous. Corso spoke up from the back. “Miss, this whole area is full of Gormak. And I don't think they'll like us.”
“A Mystic has seen. I must find the carving.”
“A vision’s not worth your life.”
Vette stepped in. Corso had the feeling that she knew when he was ready to dig in. “We’ll help her, Corso. The Shrine sounds creepy anyway.” She looked to Ruth. “Catch up with you later?”
“He does know there might be more damsels in distress in the Shrine?”
Corso shook his head, watching the Voss walk away. “You handle what’s in front of you, or else what good are you?” He followed her.
*
Larr Gith and Tebbith, having cruised through the pilgrimage without opposition, came to the Shrine of Healing. Tebbith made some inquiries and they were allowed to walk through a grand, echoing, complicated complex. By the time they reached their last instruction, there was no Voss in sight.
But someone yelled, around the corner. Yelled? Shrieked.
Training kicked in. Larr put a hand on one lightsaber hilt. She could be scared, wounded, traumatized, but if somebody needed help, that came first.
She and Tebbith rounded the corner.
The room was a big cube with natural brown walls and at least a dozen Voss in complicated robes were standing like a demented mannequin collection, arms bent, posture twisted. One of them screamed and two followed.
Then they noticed Larr's friends.
“Hold on,” Larr called. “I'm here for healing.”
“Or Lord Fulminiss,” Kira added.
“Respected masters,” Tebbith began.
A Mystic shot one fist forward. The wave of Force took Larr off her feet.
The Voss wanted to fight to the death. Larr felt the Dark Side like a coating over their every motion. Something terrible had happened here. And she saw no way to fix it.
She tried to separate out threes and fours, manage them so her crew could fight. But they were tough, and they started knocking the non-Force sensitives with stopping blows.
A red lightsaber swung out of nowhere, swinging parallel to the ground in a wide arc, and curved back behind Larr.
Tebbith is a scholar and a kind person. The Jedi Consular might have stopped there if not for his friendship with the highly kinetic Larr Gith.
A Jedi since the age of three, Tebbith likes rules and rituals. He likes reading. He likes helping people, only, that had been academic until Larr Gith got into the mix.
She looked at him. She looked at the sky. She smiled. “You and me, we’re going to light up Coruscant.”
“While dealing with our responsibilities.”
“Your edification and my publicity. If that’s not our responsibility, whose is it?”
Tebbith accompanied Larr Gith on a whirlwind tour of the galaxy, saving plagued Jedi Masters and rescuing planets from technological terrors. Their careers were on the rise, and even when they weren’t on the same mission, they always came back to each other.
Until Larr Gith went to subdue the Emperor, and didn’t come back.
And Larr Gith was hurting, maybe dying, on the task Satele had set her on. A lifetime of patience, and training, and respect, and self-denial, stood against one struggling bond, and failed. He spat at Satele’s feet. “Good New Year, Master.” He made for the landing pads.
When the Jedi could not tell Tebbith where Larr Gith was, he went looking himself. He checked with all his allies. Then he started checking with his enemies. The information hoarder of the Empire, Lord Scythia, promised that she would share any information she got…on condition that Tebbith come to her in person to get each update.
Tebbith thought this was an easy thing to give.
Scythia played on his fears, filtered his inputs, and set about manipulating him into doing her bidding. It was a corrupt Jedi who assassinated Darth Zhorrid and tortured one of the Emperor’s mysterious Servants and murdered every authority in the dark Project: Noble Focus. He dug, and he dug, and he dug, trying to reach Larr Gith and never quite making it. When she came back—inspired by the memory of his friendship and totally unaffected by his real struggles—he gave up. He just gave up.
The Jedi, both incarnate and in holo, seemed to stab his raw skin with their eyes.
He went to his knees at the hall's center. "I surrender."
Since Larr Gith’s return, Tebbith has stayed in monastic retreat on Tython. Lightning still comes more naturally than levitation. Maybe, if he tries hard enough, he will remember what it was to be simple.
That's where he sits at the beginning of Out of the Autumn Planet.
*
Chapter 3. Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular (Tebbith and Larr Gith prepare themselves on Tython)
Chapter 8. Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular (Tebbith, Larr Gith, their companions, and Act 1)
Bonus, Life Day drabbles (BH Calline)(IA Wynston)(SW Ruth)(SI Scythia)(JK Larr Gith)(JC Tebbith)(SM Vette)(TR Fade)
Chapter 15. Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular (Uphrades, Angral, healing)
Chapter 26. Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, and Trooper (Pub Balmorra)
Chapter 27. Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, and Trooper (Quesh and Hoth)
Chapter 28. Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular, Sith Warrior, and Sith Inquisitor (reacting to Larr's capture)
Chapter 31. Jedi Consular, Sith Inquisitor, and Others (Jedi Knight End of Act 2)
Chapter 36. Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular (Beginning of Act 3; Belsavis)
Chapter 37. Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular (return to Tython; Nadia's Debt)
Chapter 37.1. All classes (the war)
Chapter 37.2. Jedi Consular (Nadia apologizes for 'that's what you do')
He tried to turn away from the Voss vision and could not. There was no way Ruth could survive the coming weeks, much less the duration of a pregnancy. Failure to face that fact wouldn’t make it any more probable.
He could not reconcile the facts and that one, dangerous fantasy. There had to be an angle he hadn’t seen yet. And maybe, just maybe, the person controlling that angle might be the person right in front of him. He could think of no way she could fit back into the proper order of things; maybe, if he asked her, she would devise a solution, a way of settling matters with the proper authorities. Maybe she would see, in her strange way, some solution he had not. Maybe, maybe, that vision, their child, still had a chance. Maybe he could trust her for once instead of trying to protect her half blinded by her radiance.
“Ruth, I must—”
She stiffened. Her blue eyes were huge as she stared past him. She whispered, “My father is dead.”
There would be no solution. The vision turned to wishful dust, and Corellia drew closer.
Voss. Voss. Mystics. Prophets. And, somewhere, a ritual that would keep Scythia’s bound ghosts from ripping her mind apart. She pushed the Epaggelia as hard as she dared and breezed through people babbling about diplomatic relations until she had a name.
She had to hunt down a Voss Mystic in the half-forested countryside, and that Mystic, an ordinary-looking fellow as streaky speckly aliens went, put her through dreamwalking exercises that threatened to turn her mind inside out.
In quick succession she had conversations with every ghost she’d eaten and half a dozen she hadn’t due to the person in question still being alive. Scythia clung to her resolve: a ritual that could limit her ghosts’ grasp on her mind, both waking and sleeping. She clung, and she crackled.
She staggered out of the yellow dreamscape into the hard gaze of her Voss guide. She hadn’t mastered the ghosts, but she could more easily separate them from her core consciousness, and that helped. “Is that all you know?” she said.
“You will find one in dreams who can bring you further.”
“And you? Who else knows how to do this?” she said.
“Only my acolytes,” said the Voss, not looking at the three younger Voss reading around the cave.
“Fine,” Scythia said. “Xalek. Khem.”
She swept the place clean. No one else would ever get that answer. She just needed to keep pushing. Someone fluent in dreamworld would be able to help her re-establish dominance.
The dead Voss had mentioned a Shrine of Healing, something that had Talos on high alert. Scythia returned to the embassy in Voss-Ka and was told in no uncertain terms that she had to get Voss permission to approach the Shrine. Something about how the Voss might blot out every Imperial representative in the system if she upset them.
Hungry, and a little put out, Scythia set out.
*
“Hey, Calline. Slow down.”
When Mako asked for something, Calline made it happen. In big ways and small. Here on the orange tiled path that wound through Voss-Ka’s alien district, Calline slowed, her helmeted head swinging back and forth at the crowd of hazily affiliated Humans and other aliens in this marketplace. Behind her, Torian, Mako, Blizz, T5-M7, and Gault slowed down, too.
Torian turned to Mako. “Something you want?”
“I’m not sure. If they sell Voss-themed rugs I might get one.” Mako looked at him and felt a need to hunch. “I need sensory input.”
“Uh,” Torian said. “What?”
“There's no live Holonet access here. I feel…naked. Naked and blind.”
Torian nodded thoughtfully, and clasped her shoulder, looking for all the world like he intended to provide necessary sensory input himself. “What would you look up if you had the access?”
“I don’t know. The weather. The weather on Hutta, too. Bounty boards. Headlines in nearby sectors. Stock tickers for all those corporations I mean to invest in once I'm rich. Cat videos. That's about the first ten minutes of the day.”
“Intellectual curiosity. I like that.”
Mako softened. “You like everything about me, it barely counts.”
Calline had turned back toward them. “Smart guy.”
Torian grinned. “Listen to the boss.”
“Stringy jewels have too much rugs,” Blizz opined. “No industrial fluids. Stupid planet.”
Calline dropped back and patted Teefive’s flat round head with its brave circle of green paint.
Then she turned back toward the embassy, and they walked the stone street between vendor tents and stacks of equipment crates where people were offloading stuff to the planet faster than they were actually unpacking.
“Did you notice something?” said Mako. “Every not-Voss here is an alien. Torian and I are aliens.”
Calline slapped her hip in shorthand for laughter.
Torian grinned. “So that’s what it’s like to get the stare.”
Because there were Voss in this district. They were tall and willowy and colorful, and Mako couldn’t read the expressions in their speckled eyes. But they sure weren’t acting like they were happy Calline and company were here.
Mako expected to see an embassy on the scale of Imperial showing off. Probably black, with spires and flying buttresses. Whatever those were. She tried to look up flying buttresses and didn’t get anything. It was horrible. But around them there were only cloth-hung merchant booths and bronzy-orange trees and the occasional low building with a spike of a three-story tower.
Calline led them to the Imperial ambassador to the Voss. His “embassy” was tiny. Apparently, whatever had happened with the Empire, the Voss ended with a four-hundred-square-foot outside-town-proper impression of their diplomatic relations.
Calline left Gault, Blizz, and the droid outside with firm instructions and two fidget spinners.
Ordinarily Mako would stand in the background and run lookups on every person, place, and thing a client mentioned. Here she was reduced to taking notes. To capture or kill: General Redrish, a Kuati female in the Republic armed services. It sounded like this was a political problem, not a question of crime or justice. Mako watched Calline’s mental gauge go from “neutral” to “capture alive.”
“Try not to smash anything,” the Ambassador concluded. “Our situation here is too precarious to permit butchery.”
Calline cocked her head and nodded. Mako looked at Torian, who looked at Mako. They were committed.
The ambassador didn’t read it. “Fine, fine, you’re dismissed. Look into that Shrine of Healing. Don’t return until you have General Redrish.”
Well, no time like the present. “Excuse me, Ambassador. Is there a way to connect to the Holonet here?”
He rolled his eyes. “Voss batches out-of-system traffic and releases it to specified drop-offs twice per day. We’ve had no luck getting live feeds anywhere in or out of the city.”
“How do I sign up for the batch release?”
His once-over lasted only a fraction of a second, and she knew he hadn’t missed her cybernetics. “I don’t expect you to do this blind. I’ll put you on the list, Miss…?”
“Mako. I appreciate it.”
“Quite,” he said, and waited for everyone to leave. Calline snapped around and walked out with the crisp assurance that said people should hire her because she was Busy With Important Things and Might Be More Available If You Show Some Credits.
Calline had a lot of walks. This one took them right out to where Gault and Teefive were manually battling over a fidget spinner.
*
On the shuttle pad, Calline stopped. She didn’t take off her helmet. It was obvious she had business on her mind, though Mako couldn’t decide who she was going to worry about first.
“Blizz.” Calline spoke quietly as she kneeled to face the Jawa. “Your rocket launcher? Stays on the ship.”
Blizz bobbed bodily. “But Blizz make launcher to fight! Boss in danger all the time!”
“We can’t be dangerous at them. I know, it’s weird. Trust me.” Her voice was low and urgent; when Blizz got her talking she always seemed to be in a hurry. “Rocket launcher stays on the ship. You scout anyway, right? You help out by finding when things are coming at us?”
“Scanner is basic basic. Blizz can do more.”
“I know. But this is about pretending we’re not dangerous. D’you know why?”
“No,” Blizz said petulantly.
“We pretend we’re not dangerous so we don’t scare the Voss. They’re our hosts. We have to make them comfortable. Understand?”
“They’re not the people paying us,” Gault murmured at no one.
“No understand,” Blizz said sourly. “But Blizz stay nice. Blizz no scare anybody. Boss no scare anybody. Nobody scared, no credits. Is bad business.”
Gault coughed. “She’s not wrong.”
“Hush,” Calline said sharply. “Ship, or harmless.”
“What do you know,” Gault drawled, “she does know the meaning of the word.”
Everyone stayed. That made Mako feel a little better about the whole planet.
*
The Voss at the little way station, halfway up a brown mountain, said that Calline’s team couldn’t go to the Shrine of Healing until they had purified themselves and helped other pilgrims make the dangerous journey up the mountain.
Blizz was walking in a small circle, waving her gloved hands in furious thought. “Boss need purifying? Blizz have helmet filters. Everybody put on helmets, pure!”
Calline mussed Blizz’s hood. “I’ll take one.”
“Me too,” Torian said seriously, lowering the helmet he’d been carrying under one arm. Blizz furnished the filter, as promised. Teefive beeped diffidently, “Fluid barbecue = pure?” and Blizz promptly pulled out a different filter to slide into Teefive’s extending tray.
An unusually tall male Voss ducked out of one of the tents scattered around the way station. “You seek the Shrine. The way is dangerous. You must purify the altars. I will meditate under your protection.”
Gault cast Calline a pleading look. Calline shrugged at him. The job was weird, but it got them closer to their objective. Calline historically had a highly calibrated sense of when to toe the line and when to get on with it. So far? The line was holding.
The Voss pointed unnecessarily uphill at the towering Shrine. Stars, a hundred Imperial embassies could fit in that structure with elbow room to spare. The Voss seemed to feel his role was done; he stood still while Calline’s team milled around.
Calline got impatient soon enough. She gestured invitation and started walking uphill.
“You’ll have to point out these altars,” Gault said. “Just let me know when we get close to one.” Mako didn’t want to know what he intended to do to them, but she couldn’t stop him until he tipped his hand.
She could admit that the landscape was pretty. “Do you think it’s always this golden,” she said, “or is it just autumn here?”
“Is ‘autumn’ a feast day?” the Voss said in a voice that seemed to be brushed with something soft. “The trees look like this until Prime, and regrow their leaves before Spiral. The grasses never change, but the flowers go through colors in the growing season. Are grass and trees not known among outsiders?”
Calline shrugged. “Iceberg.”
“I’ve seen them on a few planets,” said Mako. “They don’t look as nice as this. —I’m Mako. What’s your name?”
The Voss stood still, so long that Mako developed the distinct feeling she had done something offensive. But the team waited quietly, and the Voss finally said, “I am Ranet-Vo. The Eyes smile upon our meeting.”
Blizz jumped. “Eyes?”
“Metaphorical,” Calline said calmly. “Calline. This is Blizz.”
“I’m Torian,” Torian added.
“And my name’s Gault, but you can call me Rainmaker.”
“Don’t call him Rainmaker,” Mako clarified.
“Ugly!” Blizz yelped.
“Huh?” Mako drew her blaster just in time to see a clawed pyramid of flesh and spines probably eight feet high galloping over the nearest rise. The team fanned out around the beast. Torian put himself between the beast and the Voss before Mako needed to ask him to. He was good.
Under a hail of blaster fire, the beast faltered and fell over. Calline nudged the huge carcass with a toe. “Want it?” she said.
“The land will take its own,” Ranet-Vo said simply. “Come. The first altar is near.”
It stood in a circular meadow ringed by jutting brown rocks. The meadow had orange grass and flowers, and a wide, low stone structure covered in friezes that might be words in the Voss language.
“Cleanse the shrine,” Ranet-Vo said expectantly.
“Uh,” Calline said.
“Grease wipes?” Blizz said.
“Did they give us anything?” Torian said.
“Not even a hint,” Mako confirmed.
“You, uh…meditate?” Calline said hopefully.
“I cannot meditate until the shrine is cleansed,” Ranet-Vo said primly. “Toro-Shi said the outsiders will do this.”
Now that was an interesting bit of faith. Mako would love to know what else Toro-Shi said. “Is Toro-Shi one of your Mystics?”
“No.” Zero explanation.
Calline popped off her helmet. “We need to get to the Shrine,” she snapped. “Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo.”
“Ug-lee,” the Voss said distinctly, pointing over the ridge behind her. “Several.”
But the uglies mounting the ridge faltered when a horizontal stream of purple lightning ripped into them. Mako lowered her blaster and backed up with Calline to the altar, watching a strange procession coming toward them: another Voss pilgrim, and a petite Mirialan in lush black robes, and a tall, hulking monster studded with implants, and a Kaleesh with a bone mask and a black electrostave, and a small Human man trotting behind with a bulging satchel over one shoulder.
More Pilgrims, then. Mako figured a 50% chance that the monster was in charge, and 50% that the little Mirialan was. Maybe 2% on the Kaleesh, but his vibe wasn’t authoritative.
The Mirialan reached Calline’s party and gestured for the altar. “Meditate.”
Her Voss said, calmly, “It must be purified.”
Calline cleared her throat. “You purify?”
“What,” drawled the Mirialan, “blasters don’t do it? Stand clear.”
She raised her hands. Purple lightning began to spark a few meters overhead and strike down to the altar’s carved surface. A bolt at a time. Two. Six. But Mako didn’t look at the localized tempest. She looked at the Sith.
And the Sith was looking at Calline.
“Are you seeing this?” Mako whispered to Torian.
Torian nodded. “I can stop the big guy.”
“I’ll take Boneface.”
“Blizz can handle Skinny. Where’s Gault?”
“I…don’t know.”
The lightning spat and ended. “There,” the Mirialan said languidly, finally looking away from Calline, “is that pure enough for you?”
Calline’s Voss and the Mirialan’s Voss exchanged looks. They approached the altar together, and knelt.
The glow that rose around them was a rich gold lined in feathery purple. It bothered Mako at a level she couldn’t readily identify. But the Voss seemed perfectly happy to meditate and rise again.
The Mirialan swung her focus back to Calline. “I know you. The Grand Champion of the Great Hunt.”
Torian nodded. “That’s our Champion.”
“You cost me a great deal of effort during that competition. No matter. You’re going to the Shrine of Healing?”
Calline, helmeted, nodded.
“I trust you’ll remember who helped you. I am Lord Scythia. These are my retainers. It seems our Voss friends are satisfied. Shall we proceed?”
Uglies roamed the countryside, but the path didn’t get weird until they ran into Gormak. Gormak were broad where Voss were slender, brownscale where Voss were jewel toned, and, relative to Voss, very, very angry. Not a single one of them greeted the Voss party with anything but blaster rifles.
“Gormak,” Scythia called with an icy disdain. “Dispose of them.”
“Credits?” said Calline.
“Do you want Shrine access or not?”
Mako followed Calline’s lead, and Calline had no problem helping to clear them while Scythia roasted altar after altar.
Mako did wonder whether the Voss were going to get sick from the purple stuff. Somebody else ought to be doing the cleansing. Maybe a Jedi.
Torian caught up with Calline while the Voss loaded up more evil energy. “Gault?” he said.
“I know,” she said. “We’ll check in Voss-Ka.”
“He might be hurt in all this outdoors,” said Mako.
“Somehow,” said Calline, “I doubt it.”
*
Mako and her friends were allowed to walk right into the hulking Shrine. It forced her to wonder whether the purification rigmarole was just a kind of hazing.
Mako slowed in the big entry hall and drifted to a holoterminal built into a wall. Kind of a holoterminal. It, too, lacked HoloNet connectivity. Mako read three panels about Voss culture and Mystical activity. Scythia’s Human, the one with the satchel, took up a terminal next to Calline and started reading with small vocalizations like he was eating something delicious.
Mako sidled to one side, so as not to catch the weird.
“Mako.” Calline jerked her head toward the wide corridor that seemed to tunnel into Voss’s bedrock.
The surprising thing was, they caught up with General Redrish. The other perhaps less surprising thing was, the Voss wouldn’t let Calline take her.
“They haven’t taken the Trials,” Redrish said to her Voss buddies, almost smugly. “They have no hold on me.”
“I can Trial,” Calline said. “As good as you.”
Mako had to speak up. “Calline…”
“They respect Trials.”
Torian popped off his helmet and reasoned, “Gault will contact us if he’s in any real trouble.” Mako mostly believed him. But there seemed no way out; a Voss was already beckoning them toward…well, Trials.
Calline patted the droid’s head again. The exact language library wasn't really the point.
Two Voss in more elaborate than usual robes stopped them in the hallway. “Have you come for healing?”
Calline shook her head. “General Redrish.”
One Voss looked at Torian. “Your scars. We can heal them.”
Torian took that with aplomb. “Don’t want to. These are marks of honor.”
The Voss exchanged looks. “Outsider honor.”
“And you?” said the other to Mako. “Your face. We can restore it.”
Mako recoiled. “Restore what? These? They’re useful. They’re part of me.”
“Gormak abominations use these…implants.”
And the Voss clearly considered that abhorrent. “Well, ‘outsiders’ can use them for good.”
“They seek the Trials,” the first Voss said. “Many perish. May your path be seen.”
Torian pivoted to watch them go. “…Thanks?”
Together the party stopped outside a huge double stone door. Every surface in this Shrine was carved, and Mako’s mind itched with the idea that it was all writing. There were patterns, subtly different shapes, frequency variations. It could be somebody’s writing, just not that of anyone Mako had met before today.
Lord Scythia strolled up beside Calline’s party. “So we’re all impressing the Voss,” the Sith said languidly. “You’re handy. Let us continue.”
The doors swung open, revealing a wide, low chamber. The carvings here were even denser. A brazier stood in the center.
“Gather ‘round,” Scythia announced. “Be sure you’re clear of the doorway.”
She reached out, and the world flared into living gold.
*
Golden Voss spirit figures asked questions and Scythia’s small Human answered them with considerable side commentary on how interesting this exercise was. He didn’t hesitate until one Voss thundered that they, the listeners as a group, could not be a Mystic because a vision had failed to come to pass.
Talos gave that some thought. “A conundrum. A Mystic has a vision and it must be true. If their vision was demonstrably false, it follows that they cannot be a—"
“No,” Mako added, recalling her reading in the lobby. Eidetic memory: not just for the HoloNet. “The vision is always true. An Interpreter can be wrong.”
“An interesting distinction, and it solves our problem. Your interpreter is wrong, honored one.” The Voss figures accepted it, too. “Well done, miss!”
This Talos was an academic? “Can you tell what’s written all around these walls—I will worry about that at a more appropriate time.” The look on Scythia’s face prompted that swerve. The Sith wanted to move on.
The Voss questioners calmed down and let them pass. Everything after that was more in Calline’s idiom. Mako stayed a few feet to her right, catching heresies and abominations in blaster crossfire. Blizz mumbled something sad about her rocket launcher, but did manage a small blaster rifle with expertise. Torian fought alongside Scythia’s monster and did a shockingly good job of complementing the swings of the creature’s massive blade. The Kaleesh tended to hang back, balancing his black electrostave. Mako really didn’t like him.
Scythia seemed to have one Sith ability, and she used it on everything. Mako’s hair snapped and floated around her and if she was lucky that would be the only effect she’d get. She did wonder whether Calline would induce a full lightning strike if she grounded her armor. There were golden spirit uglies here, and things that Talos called vorantiki. The party made it through to a new room with a series of braziers. An injured Voss figure said they had to sacrifice to heal.
“Ah,” Scythia said. “Have fun with that.” She lined up with her retainers by the far door and watched.
“Spark lady rude!” said Blizz. “Build up fires. Blizz help.”
Insane. “We’re not going to risk ourselves so you can breeze out,” Mako said sharply.
Calline half raised a warning hand. Torian was sidling toward Mako as if to block any incoming lightning arcs.
Mako bit her tongue. They did not have the personnel or weaponry to take on a Sith in this…gold zone. And the Sith probably knew that, and that was annoying.
“Forget it,” she said, and lit the first brazier herself.
But the sacrifice was not of people or people’s lives. It was just the lives of more abominations blinking out of shadows. With Scythia’s forces out of the way, it was a familiar ride with familiar friends, and they had no problem charging up the holocron at the room’s center.
The hurt Voss figures flashed and rose. Good.
The far door opened, and Scythia minced through like she owned the place. Calline beckoned and brought her people through. Unlike the Sith, Calline made sure all her people were out before she moved herself.
In the doorway, something popped between Mako’s ears. The golden glow around her vanished. They were in a small room with a couple of tablets, also densely written.
A Voss in full Mystic robes nodded at the whole group. “You have passed the Trials. In clarity, a vision. Meditate upon these tablets.”
Mako looked at Calline, just to be sure. Calline took her helmet off, nodded at her team, and dropped to one knee in front of the tablets.
Just in case the vision was dizzy, Mako knelt too, before she closed her eyes.
*
Mako was trapped someplace cramped with a man much taller than her, possessed of cybernetics located by his eye like hers were, but very different in make. He spoke in a low, rapid tone. “You have to believe me. If she finds out you’re involved she’ll kill him. I can talk her down, but you have to trust me.”
And she hadn’t trusted him before. She knew him through someone else, a chain she didn’t feel ready to pull on. But he was obviously desperate for her confidence now.
Mako fell back into herself. That image was useless by itself. “Can I get a name…?”
*
Blizz looked up. And up, and up. She stood on a blob of land. Tall, wide-topped blobs of land stuck up in all directions around her.
And two were tilting, falling into a stream of lava. Blizz could tell the stream was rising, or else all the land was sinking at once. She was missing something, something terribly important.
Were her friends seeing this? “Calline?” she said doubtfully. A third blob was tilting. “Calline! Blizz stuck!”
But nothing answered until she snapped back to herself.
*
“For more than ten years, I have firmly not thought about what you must think of me.” The Chiss man smiled crookedly, leaning toward Calline. She knew that smile. “Should we agree on a starting pistol for fresh impressions?”
Calline jerked back. The scene vanished. The young man’s smile remained. She broke her fall with two hands behind her hips. She was having trouble breathing. It was…it was him. Grown up. She knew what he looked like as an adult. And if this vision was true, she was going to be in a room with him, talking with him, someday, before they got much older.
She had her brother’s face. She needed to learn how to draw. Immediately.
*
“Did you think this planet was a secret? Or rather, did you think one of your empowered women would be around to defend you? I don’t see any skirts for you to hide behind here.”
Torian surged forward, staff first, wondering why the woman had stones in her face.
“Champion doesn’t wear skirts,” he reported, but when she raised her hand he felt fear to his core.
*
The man had cybernetics on his face and a chunky red jacket that Scythia could absolutely have rocked if she’d found it first. He looked and sounded annoyed. “Her ‘master’ called. We're on our own. I hope you can fight as good as you talk.” Desperation wrapped around his irritation.
“Try me,” Scythia said dryly, but he was already fading.
*
Khem Val and Zash both felt the girl’s limp body in their arms. The setting was lush, green, forested, troubled by a wind that carried angular birds far above.
And when they said “Let it begin,” they heard it in both their voices.
Hope. Hope leaping higher than the need for revenge, though in the end, both would surely be indulged.
*
Talos sat in a beautiful library. It was carved from yellow stone. It had ceiling-high shelves, rank after rank. He felt at home here in a way he would have trouble expressing.
The door cracked open and a very tall brown Zabrak eased through. He smiled at Talos. “I found half an hour where three groups of people all think I'm busy with each other. Please. Tell me something good.”
Talos reached up toward a new holocron. “We got something really marvelous in this week…”
*
Xalek swung his black-purple double saber. He liked it very much. The scarred man with the yellow lightsaber facing him seemed less impressed.
This was the test, and Xalek already sensed he was going to fail it. That was no excuse to stop killing right now.
He charged, and could almost hear the clinical report of his demise.
*
Scythia snapped her fingers. “Report.”
“Oh, nothing specific,” Zash-in-Khem said airily. She sounded too happy about it by half.
“I have not run out of libraries in this galaxy,” Talos sighed.
“Do we have purple lightsabers?” Xalek said.
Scythia smiled a little. “We can.”
That was plainly the wrong thing to say. “Not yet,” he said levelly, and shut up.
Scythia looked at the squad that had cleared the last room without her. "You're useful to have around," she said.
"Yeah," said their leader. "Hire me anytime."
"That's not really what I do. But I'll keep it in mind."
Scythia moved on. She needed to tame her ghosts, and if that meant ripping up some dreams, she’d do it.
*
The General was gone.
Calline cleared her throat. “Everyone okay?”
“I learned nothing useful,” said Mako.
“Sith tricks,” said Torian. “I don’t believe it.”
Blizz ran over and hugged Calline’s leg.
Calline patted Blizz’s head, then turned toward T5, whose flat head was spinning with anxiety. The droid opened a holo.
“Where the hell have you been?” yelled the ambassador. “Your Devaronian…associate…is in jail!”
*
When Mako got back to Voss-Ka, she went with Calline to the ambassador, but he was too apoplectic to actually provide answers. Mako reached out for the HoloNet and got an abrupt, dizzying wave of information – too much to sort through in an emergency, but at least she had a recent chunk of HoloNet traffic to work on.
"Go with Torian," said Calline. "Get Redrish."
"You sure you want to face a Voss court with just Blizz and Teefive?"
"I clean up nice."
Calline pulled off her helmet and tracked down a Voss guard, who talked her in circles for about half a minute before giving up and directing her to a courier who could escort her to the alien district police.
*
When Scythia neared the unassuming rock in a cave deep in Gormak land, something shifted inside her.
She felt-saw them around her: everyone she had stolen and made her own.
Lord Ergast folded his hands over his stomach and started ranting in a loud even tone, like a wall of sound.
Darth Andru began a staccato declamation, tapping loudly around Ergast’s polemic.
Kalatosh Zavros laughed. He only laughed.
Horak-Mul threw back his head and roared.
The bedlam shivered her to her core. And Andronikos, who had always been there to pull her home, was gone. Because she had sold him back to his old friends rather than indulge his wayward habits. It was a bad deal, she saw that now. Too late.
The sound. It battered thoughts, threatened balance, it just went on and on. She was on the ground. She crawled toward the rock and laid a hand on it, slipping the rest of the way into the dream.
She felt-saw something new: a Gormak figure, tall, armored. Progress, if he could teach her just a little more. If he could just—shut—them—up—
*
Torian and Mako confronted General Redrish, and Torian’s borrowed carbonite spray trapped her.
“We could do this ourselves,” Mako said cheerfully.
“More fun with the team,” Torian said.
“I’m still going to admire you for it.”
He grinned. “Let’s see if they got kicked off planet yet.”
*
Calline’s escort brought her and her short, nervously quiet party out of the alien district and into a fat tower further up the brown mountain’s lap.
A Voss raised a hand, palm out. “You speak for the outsider, Galt.”
Calline hadn’t expected that. “Uh…”
“Come.”
They were herded into a big room hung with orange tapestries. There were benches, and two seats at the front, one big and high, the other more modest. Not totally unlike courthouses in Imperial space.
Well, Imperial courthouses didn't usually have a big silver blade suspended over the smaller seat.
Gault sat in the front row facing the two chairs. He twisted and flashed his teeth. “Boss! You can explain to these—"
“Silence, defendant.” It was the first square-shaped Voss Calline had seen. She didn’t like him.
Gault turned on the schmooze. “This is my representation, surely I'm entitled—"
“Outsiders are not entitled. Consider which chair, defendant.”
Gault swallowed and turned back toward the chairs.
“Kneel,” Square intoned. Calline noted the weaponry on the six Voss stationed around the room, and opted to take a knee. A Voss in intricate black robes walked in and took the big chair.
And Calline straightened, and walked up to sit beside Gault. “What’d he do?”
“Trivial supply and demand—”
“Muzzle him,” said the—it had to be the judge. Two Voss stepped out and came back with a black leather assembly. Gault shut up, staring wide-eyed. Calline made a small hand motion to stop him from fighting. The Voss efficiently applied a mouth covering and fastened it tightly behind his neck.
Calline did not tap her hip for laughter. It took almost all her strength, but she didn't. She did calculate whether she could light up this popsicle stand and roll out. The numbers were not in her favor.
The Voss exchanged looks. A Voss woman in the second row said, “He has testified. He wished to establish a ‘taxi’ service to the Shrine of Healing. The sacred mountain would weep.”
“Vehicles are forbidden there,” one of the muzzle Voss said, as if stating the obvious.
Maybe someone other than the defendant was needed. "Cultural mixup. He didn’t mean any harm.”
The woman said, “He made 'business.' He stole a shuttle. Offered passengers ‘some hooch for the road.’”
Calline looked at Gault. Gault shrugged miserably.
The judge raised his chin. “This is disregard for our ways. You must leave Voss. Do not return. We will not welcome your species again.” He nodded. “So it is said. Only a Mystic’s word will change.”
The two muzzle Voss came forward and released Gault. He kept his lips sealed while his eyes darted around the room.
Well, time to figure out the damage. Calline leaned in and whispered. “You clear anything?”
“Four hundred credits and a world of trauma.” Gault stood. “Let’s go get exiled, shall we?”
*
Calline got a holo on her way out of the courthouse. She stepped out of the thoroughfare and answered.
It was a Human, ruddy-faced, in an asymmetrical jacket. He waved cheerfully at her. “Calline? Grand Champion of the Great Hunt? You and I have a connection in common. What if I told you where to find your brother?”
Calline was grateful her jaw drop didn’t show through her armor. It was impossible. She had placed bounties, monitored Mako’s entire feed, for nearly two years, and gotten nothing but the last hour's vision. It couldn’t be this easy. Who was this person? What was the angle? “I’m listening.”
