StarDestroyer.Net BBS

This is a collaborative work between me and my friend Mike from several years ago. It started out as this thing: http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 79&start=0

I've finally gotten around to doing what I should have done a couple years ago: working through the whole thing, normalizing its tense and person, introducing facts in more logical order, and so on to turn it into a cohesive novella. I did the editing without the knowledge or consent of my co-writer, so I'm posting it afresh here and keeping the old one linked for posterity.

Neither of us really knows about the EU beyond the Thrawn Trillogy, so we made up our own. Please excuse any violations of established canon. Comments and criticism, as usual, are desired.











A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away....

STAR WARS
The Kindness Lie

In the chaos after the destruction of the second Death Star, two hostile governments emerged: the New Republic and the Imperial Remnant.

Over the following decades, their power became more entrenched, and their war raged on. Poverty spread. Whole planets burned under turbolaser fire. Crime rose where government could not spare its power; slavery grew rampant; petty dictators carried out their own purges on countless worlds. Trillions died.

A new order of Jedi arose and flourished. But a band of Jedi turned to a man named Tantiss and betrayed their pacifistic brethren, hoping to use the Dark Side to end the cycle of war. They were defeated at great cost, and their minds were consumed by hate. Greatest and most terrible of them all was Tracyn Chaelos, a Dark Jedi who had left his apprentice behind....









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The Monster
34 ABY - Eight Years Ago


I am a monster.

The words reverberated through the core of Tracyn's being, their truth painfully evident in the blood pooling at his feet. He didn't have to kill her, really - she was nothing to him, just a silly girl with the bad fortune to be caught in his path. But there she lay, nevertheless, her severed head lying neatly beside the rest of the body as if the stroke that had killed her had placed it there on purpose.

She could have come with him. He gave her that choice, that single, shining opportunity to join his cause. But someone within the Order got to her first, filled her head with big ideas and noble sentiments. Probably her dead Master, who had proven even easier to kill than she.

Pacifists are such fun that way, he thought. Spend a lifetime training yourself not to fight, then see how useful you are when Tracyn Chaelos shows up at your door.

About two blocks worth, judging by this fool. Hardly enough running time for a young, pretty apprentice to get a head start.

And she was pretty. He had never seen her before today, but she had a good body. Nicely shaped breasts, good hourglass figure, strong legs, all the right curves. He might have had the chance to explore them, had she joined them. Who was he kidding? She'd have been in his bed in about five minutes flat, if he'd ofered. Master Tantiss' followers dealt in passion and flame, and his very name evoked the burning, aching, joyous pain of fire searing flesh.

She would have been his, had she joined him.

Now she was dead. Pity. He could've used a good lay.

He knelt beside her, wiped his hands on her robe. The pool of blood was spreading over the durasteel deckplates, now, and he had to step carefully to keep it from reaching his boots. The girl wasn't the person he had come for, and he didn't intend to be at a disadvantage when he found his true mark.

When he had left his apprentice on Dairax to complete her mission alone, it had been meet with Tantiss and reason with him, warrior to warrior. He wondered, briefly, if she would see the truth in Master Tantiss' teachings as he had. Whether she would join him willingly - or struggle, like the girl at his feet. Tracyn put the thought from his mind. Carinna Versun would join him when he returned for her. Willing, or not.

The air was cold, but it did not bother him - already he could feel the heat and passion of bloodlust falling over his body, drenching his soul with its sanguine yearning. He'd already killed two Jedi today, plus a handful of their pathetic Rangers and other lackeys. Please. He had killed children that proved more of a challenge - and wasn't that sad? Give a normal human a gun and a uniform, give him armor and grenades, give him training and practice, and he was still just a normal human. And Tracyn had killed more of those than he could count.

There. The hairs on the back of Tracyn's neck and forearms went stiff as the slightest whisper in the Force passed across his senses. Aineias was here, now, and not far. Aineas did not want to fight him. He knew he would die. But he had no choice. He thought he could hide here, thought he could escape the fate of the other masters, thought he could just run away from it all. Typical Jedi sentiment.

There was a door in front of him. That wouldn't do, so he casually chopped it in half. Aineias was there, just through the other side, bathed in the soft blue glow of Tracyn's lightsaber blade.

“Traitor.”

Aineias always did have a way with words. Tracyn's lip twitched.

“Not here to talk.”

Aineias sneered, and a pair of purple blades extended from his closed fists. Tracyn almost laughed - he knew the winged fool liked to fight with both hands, but purple? Gaudiness becomes a Jedi not. He didn't laugh, though - not then, not yet. Laughter could throw his enemy off, but he didn't want to use it too early.

Make him desperate, he thought. Then rub it in their face. Tracyn smiled.

Aineias didn't strike first. That didn't surprise him - not because Aineias was a Jedi, but because he wasn't a fighter. Tantiss had sent a monster to kill a scholar, and the monster planned to enjoy it. Tracyn's blade came down hard across the Jedi's left hand weapon, a flare of white energy crackling where the swords met. The right hand blade was already whipping around to skewer him, and Tracyn obligingly parried it to the side. The Jedi laughed.

“This won’t last long, pup.”

He didn't think the Jedi Master had ever seen Tracyn fight. That was good, because Tracny had damned sure watched the holos of his practices duels. Aineias was out of his element here, enclosed and without terrain to work off of. And Tracyn's bladework was infinitely better. But he didn't show it. Not yet.

Another flurry of blows rained down on Tracyn. Aineias was moving faster, whirling the lightsabers more, trying to find the killing strike. If it had been Kintak, Tracyn would have made a move to disarm at least one of those blades. But in truth this wasn't much of a challenge. He wanted the winged Jedi to think he was winning, so here and there he slipped up - but only just a little, never enough to place himself in real danger.

Their blades locked and Aineias threw him forcefully backwards. He was leering, gloating as if he'd finished Tracyn off. Tracyn could feel the red mist at the corner of his eyes, just out of sight and mind, begging to take over. A Jedi would fight it. He embraced it.

The monster leered back.

Aineias drew back, ready to begin another series of strikes, ready to continue the dance. But he didn't dance like Tracyn did, and Tracyn was already getting bored by the music. All he could see was red. His weapon moved without being told, finding its way perfectly in between the whirling purple spheres of light, sinking deep into the soft flesh around Aineias' heart and then down, down, deeper, deeper. He did not register the expression on the Jedi's face, because Tracyn, the man, had checked out. Only the monster remained.

He was trying to say something, but the monster didn't liten. He couldn't. His blade came down on the Jedi, and he went to the floor. He struck again - and again, and again, and again, until the red mist faded from his eyes and only the mangled corpse of a Jedi Master remained. This must be how a butcher feels, he realized, as he saw that his clothes were stained with gore and his boots with blood. The stench of entrails and seared flesh burned his nostrils, while charred shreds of clothing and flesh littered the shiny deckplates. The monster's gaze fell on an arm, still clasping one of the lit purple lightsabers. He stared until the light went dark.

The monster smiled






Awake
41 ABY - One Year Ago


Tick, tock. Tock, tick.
Down and down,
Round and round,
Here where hate and fear abounds…

Tracyn's eyes opened, and he was, again, awake.

No—no, that was not right. His eyes could not open, for his body was still gripped in the cold sleep of a Jedi stasis field. But his mind knew where it was, at long last, and he was, again, awake.

Perhaps not for long? Lucidity came and went, rose with his hatred and fell with his despair, buffeted by the inexorable roar that is ISOLATION. Together, men can be horrified; but to be left alone, alone and awake? Sanity can endure only so much.

He had counted to ten million. One, two, three, four, one hundred, one thousand, one million, ten million! He had tried to name all the stars he knew, all the species, all the worlds. He had turned himself loose, for months or years at a time, to rage silently against his “merciful” tormentors.

And he had remembered.

My cousin’s skill was formidable: he turned my strike, leaving me open from sternum to skull. But Vash merely spun his lightsaber around in an elaborate disengagement, and I smiled as he again failed to kill me. He was still too focused on the flashy moves, still too eager to learn. He could not defeat me, not like this; not now, on Yavin, at the height of my power!

But even as I raised my sword to resume my attack, he lashed out in a blindingly fast counter. I barely had time to realize that his flourish was a setup before his blade had cleaved off my hand at the wrist. The shock opened me, just for a second, to his next attack; an impossibly powerful shockwave coursed through me, and then -

Darkness.

There was a trial, or so he had been told. Two votes to kill him outright—Tracyn's grandfather, and Master Triax—but the rest…

The rest were “merciful.”

Killing is not the Jedi way, they said.

We cannot do this, they said.

Imprison him, they said.

And so he was bound. Left awake, but paralyzed. Left to stew in his own hatred, or to rot in his own despair.

He had imagined their deaths - entertained furious, impotent fantasies of the shock and horror on their faces. He had raged at the darkness, fought bitterly to stay awake—to remain Tracyn, the man. He did not want to be an animal; it was enough to be a monster.

He had wondered. If Tantiss had not chosen him, if he had not felt that first rush of power when they murdered Skywalker, where would he be? If he had not tasted that primal delicacy, would he hold a seat on the Council today? Could he have been the one to strike the killing blow against Tantiss, instead of his grandfather?

LET ME OUT LET ME OUT LET ME OUT

He struggled against the silent, invisible tide that rose once again.

I will not despair.

I will not despair.

I will not despair.

He, Tracyn Chaelos, had not breathed for eight years. He had not tasted food - not experienced pain - not known a woman's touch. He had not felt the furious pleasure of victory, nor the sinking agony of defeat. He was empty.

He was alone.

A voice.

He did not know where they had hidden him - a barren asteroid, a dead moon, a cell at the bottom of the ocean? - but he could neither feel the Force nor the strength of his own hand. And yet -

“Release him.”

A hiss in his ear. The click of plasteel armor, and the tapping of keys.

“You will serve me, Tracyn Chaelos.”

His eyes opened - for real, this time - and immediately recoiled at the bright halogen light that illuminated his cell. With effort, he opened them again. He would not surrender the small gift that is sight, not again.

He did not recognize the man beside him, but his instinct was to destroy the red-armored Royal Guards that flanked the man. A low black hood concealed his face; his accent, however, was unmistakably Imperial.

"I am Emperor Ravenous, legal master of the galaxy. And you will serve me." He paused a dark twinkle in his eyes. "In time."

"Do you think so?" Tracyn said at length. Eight years of imprisonment deprives a man of fear.

"Yes," he said, smiling. "Yes, I do."

Tracyn felt himself smile.

He was free.

Tatters
27 February 42 ABY – Present Day


The night they came for her, she dreamed of him. Tracyn Chaelos was as she knew him, as she loved him. Teacher. Master. Mentor. Friend.

"When the match starts, he'll come. But you're faster. What do you do?"

"Strike; neutralize his initiative," Carinna said.

He nodded.

"He wants to beat you, knock you down again. I know that, you know that, he knows that. What do you want?"

She faltered. He hadn't asked her this before. Wasn't it obvious? "I want to win."

Her mentor grinned. The expression was dangerous on his lean face. "Yes. Want it. Want it with your whole self."

The Yavin daylight faded then, faded to dusky red, and a chill swept over her as the temperature plummeted. Tracyn's grin vanished. His robes changed color, turning to dull white that fluttered in the creaking wind. Her beautiful robes had turned into a horrible dirty grey smock.

"They're coming. They'll destroy you if they catch you. If you want to live, kill them all."

Tracyn Chaelos disappeared, dissolving into the white curtains over the barred window to the red-lit hall. She was shivering in her cot; the thin blanket provided by the Mind Ward was tangled around her waist and offered little warmth. It was dark; the cells' interior lights were only on during the day. The high warble of suppressed blasterfire reached her ears from down the hall.

They're coming, Carinna.

Great. Now she was hearing voices when she was awake. Had she moved her plate yesterday? Had the Force answered her call? Had she said she was Carinna Versun, Jedi Padawan, when they shot her full of truth drugs and dragged her off to the Blue Room again? It was hard to remember.

She rolled out of bed. The floor was ice on her feet and knees. One of the iron bedposts was loose. The top half was covered in rubber to keep the Patients from killing themselves on them, but the bottom in the cement was bare and sharp. She wiggled it. Yanked at it. Damn second screw was stuck tight under its rubber cover.

They're coming. If you want to live...

She shifted around and kicked it hard. It didn't budge, and now her foot hurt.

She remembered a more recent Tracyn, his warrior's face at peace. He knelt, barely breathing. She was beside him. She felt his warmth. "Reach deeper," was all he said. It was all he needed to say. She reached, but found nothing. She closed her eyes, emptied herself of herself, and reached as deep as she could. And there it was. There it was.

The bedpost clattered off the cell's far wall, trailing a puff of cement dust.

If you want to live...

Their footsteps were in the hall. No alarm had sounded. The post was in her hand, rubber grippy under her cold hand. They had found her. After - she counted on her fingers, gave up, and guessed - eight years? They had thought she was dead. Had left her bleeding and fevrish, dying on the street, where the police had found her and declared her insane. Now the faceless men in the steel masks were here to finish the job. She knew it. Knew it like she knew she was Carinna Versun. Damned to them, she was who she was!

What do you want, Carinna?

The post felt sickeningly right in her hand. Eight years since she'd held a blade, but her arm knew its craft. Her left hand trembled, but her right was firm. Her pulse pounded. The light vanished as someone blocked the window. She was on the right side of the door. The doorknob turned. Carinna's breath cought in her throat.

I want to win.

Kill them all.

The door opened. For one sick second Carinna thought she would freeze, and then she was upon them, mouth squeezed tight, eyes wild. Her skill was dulled by years of disuse, her body was tired and weak. But good training dies hard, and surprise was with her - and running through her was the power of the Force. Aye, her arm knew its craft, and her eye guided it well.

There were three men, with guns.

There was considerable mess.

Afterwards, after she crept down empty red-lit halls, through doors they'd forced, past the nocturnal wailing of the other inmates; after she saw the corpses of the Mind Ward night staff crumpled in their own blood; after she gunned down the man stationed to guard the entrance with his friend's own blaster; after she fled into the street and towards the undercity, where the penniless could hide and survive - after all that, she felt the guilt. Sick self-loathing assaulted her as she stared at the blaster in her hand, the blood on her smock. She felt sick but choked back the vomit when her body tried to throw away her dinner. She cried, and shook, and shook, and sobbed.

After several minutes, she felt better. Not okay - that would not come until much later. But better.

Several minutes later, she vanished through the permanent smog layer into the city's poor district. She wasn't safe, not yet. But she was alive, armed, and free. For the first time in a long time, Carinna Versun smiled.






Bloodstained
1 March


There is only one law in the undercity. Take what you can. Keep what you have. That is it. That is all.

Pemm was closing his shop as normal. The undercity wasn't a safe place but he took precautions, and he did alright down there. It wasn't like he could live uplevels, anyway. Believers weren't welcome there. He just wanted peace, just like everyone else. Down here he made good enough, and he had some peace, and he could draw his pictures without some Royal trooper taking a truncheon to his skull. Still, there were risks.

He had just closed the security door over the front entrance when he caught the whiff of blood on the breeze stirred by the fan in the middle of his shop. Must be from down the street, he thought. He went to secure the window cover and he was struggling with the latch when he felt someone looking at him; an unpleasant tingle between his shoulderblades. In the dim reflection on the corrugated steel, there she was.

Bloodstained. She was bloodstained. The big blaster she had pointed at him in a solid isosceles stance was speckled with red. There were flecks of dried gore in her hair, streaks of it covered the bright blotches of fever on her pale face. The smock hanging off her gaunt body had splotches of red-brown where blood had dried stiff against her skin. Even her eyes, dark, haunted, bloodshot. She was a corpse, a specter, a charnel spirit, a vengeful murdered ghost. He struggled to breathe. He was going to die.

"Please don't move," she said. Her voice was weak and high and somehow that made it worse. He took a breath. Her stench was on the air and he wondered how he hadn't noticed it earlier. She must have sneaked in hours ago and waited until she had him alone.

With that thought, some of his horror disappeared. Of course she had. The way she held that blaster, she was probably military or police. A special forces trooper could have bypassed his security. She was an escaped convict, or a deserter. Maybe a prisoner of war. Not a ghost.

He raised his hands slowly.

"I need food, money, medicine, clothing. You have them. I need them. I need them."

That may be, but he needed them, too. Without his wares, he might get by; but without the money, he'd lose the shop. And then he'd just be another homeless old scumslick on the streets of the undercity. Besides, someone this desperate might kill him anyway, to hide witnesses. Wrinkly old man Pemm might be, but he wasn't ready to die just yet. He steeled himself. His heart was pounding. His eyes found her neck and he noticed that her arteries, too, were pulsing fast under the deep shadow of grime. He took a slow step forward, trying to get close enough to contest the weapon.

She slipped her finger into the trigger-guard and tightened it over the trigger. Her hands were shaking but the barrel stayed fixed on his center of mass. "Please," she said.

So much for that.

As he complied with her wishes, he became gradually aware that she had no intention of shooting him. SpecOps she might be, and pretty fucked up by the look of her, but it was training, not bloodlust, that held the blaster's barrel over his centerline. It was silenced: she could have killed him as soon as he shut the door, and nobody would have known until the next day. She was desperately hungry; her voice rasped with thirst, and there was food and water in arms reach, but she kept her gun on him - why? Because she wanted to get clear of him before she put the gun away. Because she didn't want food bad enough to just kill him for it. When they came to the cash register he was confident enough to make his move.

Getting the shotgun from under the counter would be easy, but he needed her gun off of him first. Even if she didn't want to shoot, she might kill him if she thought he was going to kill her. He concentrated on the hard part.

That concentration probably saved his life.

He went over it over and over in his mind. He turned the key in the register. He didn't have a safe; he didn't keep any money here overnight, anyway. Pull the drawer, throw the drawer, sidestep right. Pull the drawer, throw the drawer, sidestep right. It creaked as it came out. Adrenalin pulsed through him in anticipation of what was coming, hot as blasterfire. There was a click as the wheels came off the rails. He pulled the drawer. He threw.

Before it left his hands, she was moving. Bills and coins sprayed from the cash drawer; she bent sideways, sidestepping to follow his own movement. She was faster than anyone he had ever seen. Faster than anyone could ever be. The drawer tumbled past her, missing her face by centimeters. She didn't even blink. She had expected it. Foreseen it. But her pistol wavered a little. Only a little, but a little was enough.

He had the shotgun in his hands before she had the gun back on him. She should have shot him when he threw the drawer, he thought. He could see from the widening of her eyes that she hadn't expected the weapon. If she had, he might have been a smoking corpse right then, before she had time to remember that she didn't want to pull the trigger. As is, she had a gun on his heart, and he had a gun on her feet.

He fixed her with a stare that he hoped was intimidating. He was glad for the counter between them: his hands were steady, but his knees were shaking. "You don't want to shoot me," he said.

She said nothing, but her eyes flickered to the door, and in that glance was all the answer he could ask for.

"I'm going to point this gun at you, but I don't want to shoot you, either. I need this money. I need this stuff."

Her finger tightened on the trigger, and for a long, long moment he was sure he had guessed wrong and he was going to die. But a tear formed in one bloodshot eye. She tried to blink it away, but it escaped her lashes and made its own new streak down her filthy cheek. She eased her finger off the trigger. He raised his weapon as she backed towards the door. She lowered her gun.

Should he kill her? He would try again, in her place. Maybe not immediately, but soon enough. She could get food and water and clothing from others, but he had the only medicine for miles, and she wouldn't make it miles in her condition. Desperate enough... he would kill someone if that was what it took. He fixed her back in his sights. He thought she knew that, too. She worked at the latch with mechanical determination, but she was trembling. He should kill her. He should kill her right now.

But he didn't.

In stead, he said, "Wait."

She turned.

He said, "Stay."

Everybody wants peace.

"Stay with me," he said. "I can help you."

She looked at him and he felt chills. All of a sudden he was sure she was looking through him.

She said, "Okay."






Water
1 March


Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink oh, water Force I'm back they got me they got me water Force its cold it's cold it hurts it's cold it's cold water flowing down my back, in droplets down my back. In a shower on my back. Shower, just a shower. It's a shower. I am safe.

She breathed. The air was cold and wet. Her head hurt. She had a fever. The little silver pill would help, but it needed ten minutes. Water drummed on the back of her neck. She turned and water stung her face. A little got in her nose and she started to panic again - but she made herself cough and breathe. It was a shower. Just a shower. She was safe here, and it was just a shower, and they couldn't hurt her any more, and the water was just water. It was cold and it was wet and it was making her clean.

She turned and scrubbed with the cloth he gave her, and the cloth rasped over her, and blood and water flowed, down her hair, down her neck, down her body... down the drain, down the drain, down the drain.

When the water ran clear and she coudln't smell the stench of blood any more, she wrung the blood and the grime from the rag. She tried to splash the water against the inside of the shower to get rid of the little red-brown-clear dropets clinging to the inside. Cold water, cold, cold. Numb, her fingers were numb; it was cold. She was shivering. She turned off the water. The water stopped.

She was cold but she went out of the stall into the tiny little bathroom. He had left a little bundle of cloth and on the top was a towel. She used it and she was dry again. The clothes were much too big, but they were clothes. He had left little lengths of cord, and she fumbled with them to tie the pant legs tight enough so she wouldn't trip over them. Her fingers were numb so they fluttered awkwardly like freezing birds with bad wings as the winter rains fell on Alba. On Alba? On Alba, her home.

She was feeling better, now. He had given her some water (warm water) and a silver pill that had made the fever fall. She could breathe better and her thoughts were not so muddy, but she still felt the ache in her head and in her bones and in her belly and she knew that he was dying. But he had drugs for that that, too. She knewthat when she came to take them. She smelled something hot and it smelled good, and she realized that she had been standing there in the cold and damp little room with the toilet on her left and the shower at her back. She had no shoes and he had her gun and the Force was far away. She went out to meet him. He thought he should have shot her, she could tell. She could feel it. But he hadn't. And he helped her, and he clothed her, and now, as she came out, he smiled.

He had his shotgun across his lap and she didn't see her blaster. She didn't see her smock, either. She never wanted to see that smock again. He was sitting at a table and he was pouring something thick and steaming from a plastic jug. He smiled and she remembered smiling and she smiled back. It tugged the corner of her mouth and her cheek twitched for a second and then she was smiling. It feelt good.

He beckoned, and she came.

He offered, and she ate.

He gave her a pill and water and explained that she needed to take the pills twice a day. They were expensive, so she mustn't go off the schedule and waste them.

She drank the water.

The water was good.






Needs
8 March


Rrrip. The paper sack tore, mostly missing the the dotted line and releasing a puff of drab-colored dust. She poured the contents into a wide metal bowl, which rang with a hissing, tinkling sound as the powder sifted into the water, turning a vivid earthy orange as the water activated dyes in the thickening slurry. Tiny patterns formed and vanished, twisting and spiraling in mad chaotic swirls. Carinna smiled, appreciating their transient beauty, even as her belly twisted hungrily. The box claimed to be "Royal Coruscant Goose Eggs" - though Carinna didn't think there were many royals on Coruscant, and if there were geese there, she had never seen them. They smelled like food, though, and by the Force she was hungry.

The stove creaked and fizzled as she turned it on, but the electric heating element under her pan flashed from dull black to glowing cherry red in under a second. She eased back the dial, stirred the mixture in the bowl until it was a uniform orange - though she felt that the swirling patterns were still there, just hidden to her sight.

Sssizzz, went the mixture on the pan. Saliva jumped to her mouth, making it ache wonderfully. She stirred it, frowning at the weakness in her arms. The only other sounds were the clattering thrum of the ventilation pump and the distant screech of repulsor-trains carrying uplevels workers to and from work, but something tingled in the back of her mind. She frowned, glancing about.

Nothing was amiss. The dilapidated apartment behind the shop was, if anything, more fortified than the shop itself: the windows were tiny and barred; the walls were reinforced with sandbags and corrugated steel; the floor was rust-stained, rough-laid cement. Pemm was out, and his cheerful young friend Gerar was not visiting today. She was alone. She looked at the door for a long moment, then turned back to her eggs. They were almost done. She turned off the stove, thought about getting a plate and making some toast as she had planned, and, as if in answer received an emphatic growl from her stomach.

She ate from the pan with the spoon she'd been stirring with, burning her lips on the mixture. For a second, she held the first bite in her mouth, feeling a reflexive twist of rejection. She had coughed up most the soup Pemm had given her on the day she met him, fever deep-set in her belly, in her bones. For days, it was the same: the fever robbed her body at the same time as it kept her from eating. But the pills had worked, and the fever was gone, and she had kept enough down that she wasn't starving and she could eat without fear. She noticed the taste of the eggs. She thought nothing had ever tasted so good before.

She was halfway through the pan and flushed with the heady rush of the body rewarding itself for eating when something made her look up again. A moment later she heard footsteps outside, and involuntarily tensed. Her eyes flickered to the the knife on the table, the stool beside her, the cane by the door, the still-hot cast-iron pan on the stove. Pemm's wizened face appeared in the tiny barred window. She breathed again. There was a rattle of keys. The door opened. Pemm was there. Gerar was not with him. The old man was pale under his dark skin, sweaty, breathing hard. There was great sadness on his face, and terror in his eyes.

"They know."

She waited, looking intently at him. Ice gripped her heart. Pemm would continue when he was ready, but she already suspected what he would say.

"They know you're alive, Carin. And -" he looked away. Carinna remembered that her gaze sometimes made him uncomfortable, and looked down at the eggs on her pan. She was still hungry, but she didn't feel like eating any more.

"They made a sweep, Carin. Wrong neighborhood - Fabian's district, nearer the Mind Ward. How did you know to come here? To my shop, when others were -" he squeezed his eyes shut, waving his hand in apology for his tangent.

Carinna waited. His next words thudded into her like physical things.

"They made a sweep. They took prisoners. They took Gerar."

A different ache assailed her mouth and throat as she felt the beginnings of tears. Hopes that had grown since her escape vanished in a moment as her fears came to fruition. She nodded. Hair fell over her eyes, but she didn't brush it away.

"Then they know," she said. She forced herself to straighten, to push her hair out of her vision. "You know what I have to do."

He looked at her with the same resolute valor he had shown on the violent day of their meeting. It was only a week ago, but it felt like an age.

"You'll need the pistol," he said at last.

"I'll need the pistol."






Run
9 March


There is little to compare with the sheer visceral power of a Y-Wing starfighter. All thruster and cockpit, the fighter is built from the start to be a dive-bomber, peerless for linear acceleration. Generations of pilots and mechanics have further modified their craft, stripping off armor and rerouting fuel lines, bringing the spaceship's mass down to that of a fighter half its size, and this one was characteristic of them all, although it had been stripped of its guns and torpedoes in the conversion from warship to rich man's toy. Carinna prayed it performed as well as she hoped when she picked it out as the craft she would steel. As well as she needed.

Ignoring the increasingly urgent orders from traffic control to explain herself, to power down immediately and wait for clearance, she ran a quick preflight on the unfamiliar controls. She had not flown a starfighter in eight years – since she had been imprisoned at the age of seventeen. And even then she had never operated a Y-Wing - but the layout was similar and she could feel, very faintly, the whisper of the Force as she ran her fingers over the controls. Her heart raced - and then Carinna froze as the man from traffic control cut off and was replaced by a hard female voice addressing her by name.

"Carinna Versun," she said without preamble. "I am Captain Morn. If you lift off, we will kill you."

Carinna tested the rudder controls, feeling where they stuck, where they slipped. She wobbled the flightstick. It was a little tight and would take strong force to control.

"I want to help you, miss Versun. We all just want to help you. But we can't let you go away in your condition. You might hurt someone, and you're bound to hurt yourself."

They knew her communications are open, she knew. This was a civilian bird; the computer would send a pingback after every received message to help communications tracking at near-c relative velocities. They know she was listening, even though she did not respond. She breathed deeply as Tracyn taught her, almost hearing his words in her ears, and she controlled her fear. She activated the shields and search radar, painting everything from horizon to horizon, doubtless setting off alarms all over the cityplex. She spun up the engines and felt their rumble build to a high steady scream just on the edge of hearing.

"Please, miss Versun. Do it for your loved ones, if not for yourself."

In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Emptiness and fullness. The repulsorlifts came on with a dull thump and the ship wobbled a little as it lifted off its landing struts.

"Please, Carinna!"

She slammed the throttle forward. Even through the powerful inertial compensators, she felt G-forces pushing her deep into the hard padding of the upright, forward-facing seat. She hauled back on the stick, feeling sudden adrenalin hit her. A mad smile penetrated her fear as she was flying again, flying a starfighter, unlimited by the constraints of conventional aircraft, freer than a bird, freer than the wind. In fifteen seconds she would be clear of the gravity well, and she had the jump to Coruscant already plotted in. She banked hard to starboard and the first turbolaser shot tore the air where she had been. She fought to control the fighter as she was buffeted by the turbulence of its passing. Her shields took the brunt of a bracketing shot that would have clipped her starboard engine, and she angled the deflectors to maximum aft. More shots slashed up at her as she juked and spun, lighting the night sky with lines of vivid crimson. Another shot, this one fired at a low angle from the widening horizon, glanced off the deflector screening the ship's belly. A row of green lights above her head turned red and she felt the ship's aerodynamics change as something tore away. Her smile was gone, and she breathed in short shallow gasps, Tracyn's lessons forgotten. She didn't have fifteen seconds.

More laserfire flashed around her. One struck when she was inverted and half the cockpit canopy went black. She tried to slam down on the left rudder pedal, but in stead of a sharp bank to port, she felt a flash of sudden pain from her leg. She ignored it. She was at 300 kilometers: above the Mesosphere, in almost pure vacuum, but still within the planet's gravity well, where a hyperspace jump carries a thirty percent chance of smashing the pilot flat in an inertial compensator overload, if the ship doesn't come apart entirely. Seven seconds had passed. Something deep within her screamed a warning.

Jump.

She struck the hyperspace controls and prepared to die.

---

Her tongue felt like a cotton sock. Something was choking her. Her ears rang. She was cold and hungry and thirsty and her leg was all wet. She opened her eyes and lifted a shaking arm to brush away the hair that had fallen in front of her face. Her fingers were sticky with half-dried blood.

Whatever cut her leg was out of it, now. The once-gray cloth of Pemm's pants was plastered over her leg and hip around a deep gash in her upper thigh. She found herself staring at it, not sure what to make of this unwelcome hole in her flesh. It wasn't bleeding any more except for a slow ooze, so she knew the arteries were fine, but she felt like she should do something about it anyway. She struggled out of the crash restraints, and found that she could breathe more freely. One of the straps was crushing her chest and restricting her lungs. Outside, the mottled blue light of hyperspace rushed past in an endless swirling tunnel. She could hear the ship creaking in rhythm with the slow cycle of its hyperdrive, and she wondered vaguely if the ship would survive translation back to realspace.

Remembering her intent with a start, she stripped off her jacket. Like everything else she was wearing, it used to be Pemm's; she had hacked off the ends of the sleeves so that her hands would stick out, but it was still huge on her too-thin body and it was easy to work her way free of it. She tied it tightly around the wound, though moving the leg made her dizzy with pain. By the ship's clock, she had been in hyperspace for two hours.

---

“My name is Jessica,” she tried to lie. “My name is Jessica and I am a banker's daughter and yes I'm a schizophrenic but I'm better now and you can let me go and -” but when she opened her mouth, of course, she told them the truth.

"I am Carinna Versun. I am a Jedi Padawan. I came here on a mission from the Jedi Council to-"

"No," he said patiently, his voice full of heartless compassion. "You're not."

The walls were blue. The walls were blue. The walls were blue.

She screamed when she woke up. The sound was strange, grating, inhuman from her raw throat. She didn't even notice that she was wetting herself until it was too late to try to fight it and urine turned her pants wet once again. She wanted to cry. She had packed something to urinate in, foreseeing this problem, but she had had to leave her bag behind.

---

A hard looking young man had stopped her as she approached the final landing pad. She could see the ship she was preparing to steal over his shoulder. She had staked out the shipyard and she had mugged the Y-Wing's owner, a gaudy young gentleman, as he left the secure area. She had sent the owner running in the other direction, in fear of her weapon.

"I'm going to have to see your identification," he said.

He was wearing a port authority uniform, but he didn't look like port authority's hired security guards. His hand was near his pistol. Hers was in the back waistband of her pants and she was holding her bag in her hands; there was no way she could get it in time. And he kept glancing past her as if waiting for backup to arrive. She reached for the Force, hoping against hope, and concentrated all her will on her next statement.

"You don't need to see my identification."

He looked puzzled, but resolute. She felt the beginnings of fear.

"Yes, ma'am, I do."

"Oh," she had said. "Well, I...." She seized upon an idea - probably not the best idea, but an idea nonetheless. "It's in here!" She hurled the bag with all her strength, straight at his face. He cursed and went down, and she sprinted past him. Leaving the bag. And her blanket. And her water. And her food.

---

She looked at the clock. She had been in hyperspace for seventeen hours. The journey to Coruscant is thirty-five. She shivered again, and her desire for warmth warred with her knowledge that turning up the cockpit heat would rob her body of more water than she had already lost. She was still staring absently at the thermostat when she drifted back into unconsciousness.




The Devil Baron of Dairax
11 March


Their sorrow rose to greet him, subtle and warm, tingling like a woman's touch at the base of his spine. It was bitter. It was sweet.

Down he went, into the dark. Tracyn Chaelos did not know what he would find, save one thing. One thing, one man, was all that mattered.

Imago.

Imago.

Imago.

Tracyn had followed Imago's trail through cities and underworlds, through record books and the tortured confessions of noblemen and whores who felt the cold tickle of his knife upon their flesh, between their legs, upon their noses and eyes. He smiled at the memories: hot blood over cold steel, and the music of their screams. Imago was wealthy and powerful, but he was careless. Tracyn's smile became a grin. Carelessness was his undoing.

Tracyn tracked him here, hiding the traces of his pursuit in freezers, in dumpsters, in alleys. There were some that he left, of course, to confuse his pursuers. He remember Jeanette, especially, how she pleaded as he carved her flesh. Rumors of a madman, a serial killer with a flare for the dramatic, were the smoke that hid his steps.

And here he was. The door to Imago's - palace? The bodies of twenty guards litter the stair, dead before they had a chance to scream. There was a place for artistry, he mused - but this... this was the place for revenge.

He paused a moment. The door had been white, once, but it was white no longer. A thousand handprints stained it red. They were small, frantic. They smelled of fear, of woman, of blood. Were Carinna's among them? Tracyn snarled, and his introspection died.

The force answered him as he screamed, striking forward with one open hand. The door creaked under his fingers for half a second and he left his own fingerprints on the bloody door - and then it was open, answering his scream with a wail of ripping durasteel, and he was granted his first view of Hell. For Hell it was - and an impostor claimed the devil's throne.

He spun without thinking: blasterbolts scorched the air where his head had been, and then his new lightsaber was in his hand, blazing bloody red, and he was among them. A man died screaming, split from groin to sternum. A woman twitched as he send bolt after deflected bolt into her smoking corpse. The dark side was in him and through him and Hell screamed his praises as he killed.

There were crosses to his left, and to his right, spreading out in a delta shape. The room was dim, lit only by the strobing flashes of blasterfire and the sullen glow of the lamps mounted on the high-vaulted ceiling, but by that faint light he saw a masterpiece of murder, a gallery of despair. Each crucifix was occupied. Some hung upside-down; some were spread-eagled; some hung in the T-shape once favored by the Mandalorians, long ago. Each was naked. Each was female. Each was beautiful, in the moment of anguish, in the bloody terror of death. Their souls lingered. Their hate and panic filled the stones, and the stench of their blood carried with it pain unimaginable. It was wine on his lips, perfume in his nostrils. He fought deeper, and already the floor ran red.

By now, alarms rang, and forces were mobilized. But this was no fortress, and he slew them all. He paused for a moment, motionless amidst the slaughtered dead, so close to one of the crucified that he could see every cut on her ruined belly. It is not a fortress, but what was it? Not a palace. A gallery? That was closer - Tracyn could feel Imago's artistry, a mirror of his own. But not quite right.

He stooped to the corpse at his feet. The guard's blaster was cunningly disguised in the body of a whip, and he was naked but for a plain metal mask that covered his face - which lolled unnaturally, dangling by a thin strip of flesh. Tracyn planted a boot on the corpse chest and grip its hair and pulled until the skin and muscle tore. He lifted its masked head to the lamplight - and he realized that the mask was not plain after all. It was covered with bloodied text, scratched in a thin spidery hand. A gentle stroke of his fingers brushed the blood from its surface, and he read the words without comprehension. Revelation dawned as the nonsense passed through his mind.

He was in a temple.

Back in the cities, they called Imago the Devil. The Devil-Baron of Dairax. Tracyn cursed himself for not understanding sooner. Imago wasn't mad - or, more precisely, he was mad, but his madness had a method. Imago meant to become a Sith. He had gotten his hands on some artifact, or some book of inane ravings, and he had conceived to conjure the Dark Side. Could it be done? There were rumors of chimeras forged by Sith sorcery, of people and animals twisted by the darkness. Dark Lord Ravenous had an expansive library, but Tracyn had not read any of it while he stayed with the Sith lord. Tracyn frowned. He shrugged, and tossed the head to the floor. He was Tracyn Chaelos, murderer, traitor, torturer, monster. He was a Dark Jedi. The Force was his servant - he smiled as he twisted the phrase - and here in this temple of terror and hate, it was a powerful servant indeed.

Something was – coming? Waiting? He could feel it as the revel of slaughter faded into the background power that throbbed from every broken corpse: there was humanity, and terror, but also a sullen animal hunger... a hunger so strong it momentarily drove out all other thought. Once again he recalled the rumors of the Sith, and he felt anticipation and dread, each emotion welcome, each emotion sweet. He cast about for the right path to take him deeper, submerging himself in the tangled flow of the Dark Side...

And he saw her. She was beside him, nailed to the cross. It was her face staring down at him, accusing him with dead eyes. The mad certainty of it clutched at his heart; it was her - her in the corner of his vision - her whose ribs were black with bruises not yet faded in death. He struggled as the red mist rose, as the Dark Side threatened to take him. A scream built from deep within him; his lightsaber was in his hand, burning red in the dark; a terrible, almost palpable whirlwind of power swirled up about him. He clenched his teeth and he looked.

Even gazing full on, he saw her, at first. The corpse had Carinna's hair, and it fell across her face just as he remembered it, partly obscuring eyes almost the same color of brown. She was the right height, the right build. He raised a hand, gently, almost reverently, and brushed aside her blood-stiffened hair.

An unfamiliar face screamed silently down at him, twisted in the moment of despair. He could take no pleasure in it. He clenched his fist and struck her bloody face, driving it back against the roods of her crucifix. He struck again and again, feeling faint surprise at the lack of blood as he crushed her nose, broke her teeth, snapped a cheekbone. Only when her face could no longer haunt him did he unclench his aching hand and leave her.

Still, he felt a nagging urge to check the other crosses. He suppressed it, damning himself for a fool. If her body was here, he would feel her. He strode onward, head down, jaw set, saber burning by his side. He was not here to find Carinna. He was here to avenge her.

He descended another stairwell, carved of stone, and even in his black mood he had to appreciate the subtle irony in placing the entryway highest and the centerpiece the depths. The source of the hunger lay behind a reinforced door. He could feel it. He let his fear become anger; he drew the force to him and plunged his lightsaber deep into the durasteel, sending a thought forward through the door.

“I am coming for you,” he murmured to the Hungerer. Then, in a moment of inspiration, he projected the thought deeper.

“I am coming for you, Imago.”

A crude rectangle glowed cherry red in the doorway where he had cut it. The skin of his hands was burned raw despite his efforts to redirect the volcanic heat of the slagging metal. Without the Force, he would have nothing left but charred bones. Tracyn hit the doorway with a hammer of will and the rectangle fell inwards. He followed it, his lightsaber at the ready and a smile on his lips.

His smile vanished as he saw what lay within. He stood in an empty hall, its cross-section a perfect square seven feet to a side. It extended as far as he could see. He felt the Hungerer, so near he had to resist the urge to glance over his shoulder, imagining hot, dank breath on the back of his neck... but he saw nothing. He heard nothing. He turned slowly, looking at the ceiling, the floor, the walls. They were bare metal, featureless but for a trail of bloodstains and bloody human footprints extending as far as the dim glow of his lightsaber could penetrate the darkness. He concentrated, breathing deeply, shutting down the lightsaber and reaching out with the Force. But there was nothing. Nothing but the stench of death and the inexorable feeling of the Hungerer's closeness. For the first time, the icy hand of doubt trailed down his spine. Lightsaber ready but unlit, he walked cautiously into the waiting dark.

He had walked for half a minute, and still he felt the Hungerer, somewhere just out of sight, just out of hearing. It occurred to him, suddenly, that he had not checked the solidity of the walls, or the ceiling just iniches over his head. Realization dawned before objective thought, and he ignited his lightsaber, stepping towards the wall on his right. He slashed hard, expecting resistance; the metal gave way like paper, peeling back unnaturally from his cut.

In the darkness, someone was weeping.

Run, said an insistent voice at the back of his mind. If you want live....

He ignored it, reaching out a hand to draw aside the metal. His fingers closed around the foil-thin surface...

And his heart stopped as someone else's fingers gripped his. Even in his shock, he reacted with the skills a lifetime of violence had taught him: he reversed the grip, clamping strong fingers around a thin wrist and heaved backwards. He thrust forwards with his sword. The "wall" tore as he dragged an emaciated body through and into his blade.

The human was so far gone that he could not tell its gender. It looked up at him with tears glimmering wetly in its eyes, seeming not to notice the meter of radiant death that was cooking its internal organs. Tracyn tore the saber free, ripping up through a collarbone that seemed barely covered by skin. The life vanished.

The Hungerer is here.

The sound was nothing he had ever heard. It was a shrieking like fingernails on slate, a moaning too deep to come from human mouths; a high, warbling whimper that is like a child but somehow wrong. They came in ones and twos and amalgams of twisting dozens, and the hungry feeling that Tracyn felt was suddenly so powerful that it drove him momentarily to his knees. It was a pain in the belly drawn up next to the spine; a bone-deep ache that made his legs heavy and his knees like water; a hollowness below his heart; a weakness behind his eyes; an all-consuming need to devour. The Dark Side billowed from them in waves as they staggered from all directions, unleashed, perhaps by Tracyn, perhaps by their master. Below and beyond their hunger was malice, hate, terror, fear, panic, despair. Tracyn cursed himself as he lashed out, forcing himself to his feet. He cleaved something in half - a woman fused with a man, front to front, in a hideous mockery of coitus, and then a phantom pang of hunger doubled him over and spots danced before his eyes. Again he cursed.

What lies beyond the gallery, Tracyn?

The masterpiece.

Their souls clung to them. The women crucified in the gallery were an appetizer, a demonstration of the beauty of pain, but they were lucky; Imago had let them die. Tortured souls rushed at him - fled towards him as though driven. A part of him – a part that he had imagined dead – felt sudden sorrow as he realized that they did not even mean to harm him. The lost and tortured souls crowded around him, groped at him, whimpered at him. Their hunger was unbearable but they did not tear at his flesh.

Tracyn gripped his lightsaber tightly. He was bleeding, bruised, struggling to breathe, and though they had not truly struck him, he would soon be dead, unless...

He found his footing.

He found the Force.

He killed them all.

Rippling power surged through him as he channeled the dark energies that Imago had used to bind and torture them in his own mad quest for power. They tumbled from him, cartwheeling through the air in a shamble of twisted, living bodies. He braced his feet wide, drew breath, and embraced Hell in all its glory. Where he had felt weakness, he felt power; where water, steel; where pity, hate. He roared laughter, feeling power such as he had never known suffuse every cell in his body.

He ran. Oh yes, he ran. He ran at them, that mass of ruined, pitiful humanity, dissecting them with hot delight. Only the thought that Carinna might be among them gave him pause - but he would feel her if she were here. No - she was long dead, murdered by the devil he sought. And so he smiled as he destroyed Imago's works, imagining the devil's power dimming with every slash and stab. He burst through them, feeling the path towards Imago like the pull of a riptide, and still they pursued him. Singletons fled towards him in comic-opera strides; some amalgams seemed more to roll or slither, so many bodies had been fused together under Imago's mad necromancy. Still more tore their way free of the walls; others dropped from the ceiling, only to be met by Tracyn's force-guided blade. He was damp with blood and other fluids; his feet tangled in intestines and he was nearly dragged to the floor, but he lurched up and ran on.

Imago's corridor of the damned fell away behind him, and, predictably, he came to another stairway.

Tracyn entered the devil's throne-room with a smile on his lips.

---

After the pitch darkness of the tunnels, the light was blinding. Tracyn burst through heavy golden gates and slammed them behind him, slaying Imago's naked guards with absent-minded detachment. His throneroom, Tracyn was sure, was a wonder, if he would just look at it. Single-minded as he was, he saw gold and red silk from the corners of his eyes; strange pillars and swirls of fire gouting from hidden depths. There were screams on the air, seeming to come from all directions: high, feminine, agonized. He knew the devil's workshops must lie around his throne, and part of him longed to see them.

But he had eyes only for Imago.

And Imago, for his part, had eyes only for him.

"You intrude on my domain, Jedi."

Imago was dressed in black robes of some sort of leather. Tracyn recognize them from a dusty picture Ravenous had displayed in the back of his library: he had modeled his attire on the clothing of Exar Kun. Imago jabbed a crooked finger at him, and hidden blaster cannons spat red fire. Buoyed up on waves of darkness, Tracyn deflected them with contemptuous ease, returning the bolts, not to Carinna's murderer, but into statues and artworks - ancient and priceless artifacts of the millennia-dead Sith Empire. He owed Lord Ravenous much for rescuing him from Jedi captivity, and the Sith Lord would treasure even one of these. Tracyn smiled.

He owed Imago more.

Tracyn sent the last bolts back to their source and was rewarded by an explosion of sparks as the weapons exploded. He could feel Imago's fear. He reached out with the Force. There were no more blasters. There were no more guards. There were lives, but they were all weak and afraid: more of Imago's victims, suffering as they spoke. Tracyn clipped his lightsaber to his belt and reached within his vest for the cold steel knife that rested just over his heart.

He felt Imago's power. Here at the center of his temple, he had channeled the Dark Side with scientific precision and artistic flare, all focused on himself. The victims' cries seemed superimposed with his name... Imago. Imago. Imago. He had found some small fraction of the power of the Sith. In a distant way, Tracyn was impressed. He had not known it could be done.

"Who are you?" Imago demanded.

"I am -" Tracyn paused, and chose the lie that he knew would hurt Imago the most. "I am Tracyn Chaelos. Dark Lord of the Sith."

Imago produced a weapon from his belt. Tracyn stifled a laugh as Imago ignited it: it was a lightsaber, doubtless purchased at some enormous price. The blade was purple, and Tracyn remembered the words of a younger, saner self.

"Gaudiness becomes a Dark Lord not," he said, stalking towards him.

Imago was brave, if mad. He held his ground, silent as Tracyn closed. His power buffeted him, but Tracyn formed his own into a protective shield, and he felt Imago's fear deepen as he realized, somewhere deep inside his blackened soul, that he was not the devil, that he did not command the Dark Side, not even in his own little Hell. Imago attacked and Tracyn stepped aside, letting the weapon sizzle inches from his face. Tracyn tried to feel anticipation, but now, with vengeance in his grasp, it felt like the road was too easy, like he was killing a rabid animal, not executing a man. Tracyn let Imago strike twice more before he intercepted his force-accelerated chop with a lightning grab of his wrist. Tracyn was a blur as he twisted Imago's arm, pivoted his body, planted his boot just above Imago's elbow. Tracyn waited until Imago realized what was about to happen before he stomped down, snapping the arm. The lightsaber deactivated as it tumbled to the floor, and Tracyn flung it away with a tendril of the Force. He hit Imago in the belly, folding him over. Before Imago had realized that Tracyn had moved, Tracyn was behind him, gripping his shoulders and slamming him to the floor. Tracyn knelt over him. At last, he drew the knife. He waited. He did not think Imago would beg, but he knew he would talk.

"Why?" Imago said at last.

Tracyn smiled. "I knew a girl once. Not like that, no, no. I loved her, and she was beautiful, but I never touched her. She was my apprentice. She was my sister, my daughter, my student, my friend."

He placed the knife with care, just between the appropriate ribs, and applied just enough pressure to push the razor tip through his clothing. Tracyn could feel its cold touch on Imago's skin.

"Her name was Carinna Versun. I left her in your palace on the planet. She was supposed to investigate the disappearances... the rumors of the disappearances of all the young girls."

"And I suppose," Imago said, "that you think I took her?"

Tracyn pushed the knife. It broke the skin. Imago winced, but he did not cry out. "I know that you took her, Baron. I want to know what you did."

Imago smiled, and Tracyn felt like he was looking at a mirror. "Why would I remember one girl? I'm sure she was nothing special. Perhaps I had her raped and crucified. Perhaps I made her into one of the things you killed on your way through the Corridor. Perhaps I raped your Carinna Versun myself?"

Tracyn restrained his anger. He was hiding something, and Tracyn would find it. If Imago thought he can escape his inquisition, he was sadly mistaken. He peeled back the eyelids from one eye with his left hand and held the knife in place with the Force. He brushed Imago's eyeball gently with his fingertip, and fought him back down as he bucked and writhed against the pain. Before Tracyn asked the question, he did it again, this time letting his fingernail scrape the sensitive jelly of Imago's eye.

"You will tell me what you know," Tracyn said, putting the weight of the Force behind his words.

Imago released a long, agonized sigh, but he smiled as he spoke again. Something was wrong. This was not as Tracyn had foreseen.

"Yes, Tracyn. Yes, I will."

He waited. Imago did not speak, and Tracyn's need to know overcame his pride.

"Tell me, damn you! Tell me!" Tracyn released his eye and pressed the knife down slowly, relishing, even then, the way Imago shuddered, just a touch, as the knife passed through tensed muscles and exploding nerve endings. He stopped the blade short of his heart. He could feel it pounding through the hilt of the knife. And the devil continued to smile.

"Carinna is alive, you fool," he said at last. The world stopped. Tracyn's thoughts swam. Imago twitched, then laughed, until the knife nicked one of his lungs and his laugh ended in a bloody wheeze.

"We found her... two days ago... but she escaped... left the planet. You... were a Jedi. They said... she said...."

He drove the knife through Imago's heart. The heart kept thundering for just a moment, even as it was skewered by the blade; his eyes bulged; his face contorted; his muscles spasmed uncontrollably, and his blood welled up over the knife and the hand that held it.

Tracyn's hand was badly burned, and Imago's blood was hot. It should hurt. It should burn. But he felt nothing. Tracyn rose. All around, but out of sight, women continued to scream. His body was bruised, bleeding. His muscles were beyond exhaustion, beyond collapse. But he felt nothing.

He felt nothing.





Interlude
14 March


Jedi Master Terrant Sarlin stood in the Jedi Academy's hangar bay, watching intently as Master Kintak's X-Wing entered. The battle-scarred starfighter descended heavily onto its landing struts and its engines grew silent.

A few moments after touching down, the hatch popped up, and the orange-haired pilot vaulted out of the cockpit onto the hangar deck and nodded a quick greeting to the nearest service workers. He was smiling pleasantly enough, too; but through the Force, the knight felt a slight, unsettling feeling emanating from the man.

"Take me to her, Master Sarlin."

"Yes, of course, Master Kintak." He forced a smile. Sarlin recognized the need to stow his usual lightheartedness; any news relating to Tracyn - especially since his escape - was bound to be of great personal interest to Kintak, as well as to his grandfather, Master Ses-Cae Desdina.

The two Masters walked with unusual haste towards the nearest bank of elevators. "I trust your trip to Yavin went well?"

"Quite well, actually," said Kintak. "I had a good spar with Master Tann. And Padawan Dréan did not take too badly to being left at the Praxeum. He seemed to understand that being left on his own is a sign of trust and respect. When he's ready to choose a master for himself and complete his training, it will be done."

"Good. He's a bright kid; I'm sure many of our apprentice-less members will be willing to take him on," Terrant said, watching the nearest door open with a hiss of air. "Was your spar with Master Tann recorded, by any chance?"

"It was," said Kintak. "He insists on keeping records of all training in order to capitalize from individual and collective experience. It's not a bad idea, actually." The Jedi entered an elevator, and as the door slid to a close behind them, locking them into privacy. Kintak's demeanor changed subtly, but the difference was impressive to the trained eye. His shoulders dropped slightly, and his eyes appeared beset by weariness. "And Terrant," he said, abandoning formality. "Sorry about being rude before. The thought of Tracyn loose has me on edge."

"Not a problem. We were all hoping that duel eight years ago was the last action he'd see. Wishful thinking. I fear things will be getting far worse very soon," Sarlin said as a second the lift signaled their arrival on Carinna Versun's floor.

"Indeed," said Kintak before they left the elevator and walked to her door. They paused for a long moment. He knocked on the door.

Carinna opened it. She smiled. "Master Kintak," she said, bowing first to him then to the other. "Master Sarlin."

Kintak nodded to Terrant. "Thank you, Master Sarlin," he said. "Please leave me with her for a short while."

"Of course," said Terrant, who nodded and left the two alone.

"Please sit down if you like," said Kintak to Carinna as he entered the room. "We have a lot of catching up to do."

She allowed Kintak to enter and shut the door behind him. She let him have the chair, seating herself on her bed.

As Kintak sat, he heard a sudden electric beep. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

Carinna half rose, glancing towards the microwave oven at the other end of the room. "Sorry, Master. I was making tea. Would you like some?"

"Yes, please," he said as she stood. "Master Sarlin told me you had a vision?"

She poured the steaming brew into two mugs of different sizes and carried them over. She shook her head. "I thought it was a vision, yes, but it was probably just a dream."

"Thank you," Kintak said taking a mug. He took a sip before continuing. "Having never had a vision in my life to date, I probably wouldn't be able to tell you if it was."

"Would you like me to tell you about it?"

"I would."

Carinna explained the dream and its circumstances, noting that she had recently been drugged and that she had heard blaster fire when she came fully awake. It was a memory, or mostly a memory, from early before Tracyn had taken her as his Padawan.

"He questioned me, to help me see that I was ready. He said, 'When the match starts, he'll come. But you're faster. What do you do?'; I said, 'Strike.' He said, 'He wants to beat you, knock you down again. What do you want?'; I said, 'I want to win.' He said that was good.

"Then - I was starting to wake up, and the cell got mixed up with Yavin - the light dimmed and became red like the hall light, and it got cold, and Tracyn's clothes were faded white like the curtains, and I was wearing the smock. He said, 'They're coming. They'll destroy you if they catch you. If you want to live, kill them all,' and then I woke up and heard the blaster fire.”

Kintak listened to the story intently. "Do you remember killing them?" he asked.

Carinna looked ill but nodded.

"I used the Force to break off part of the cot. They were metal but coated with rubber, except it was sharp on the end that went into the floor. Three were at the door and I killed them with the post. I took one of their guns and followed their path to the exit. They had forced the locks and killed the staff. I killed the forth one with the gun and got away."

Carinna's fingers were shaking a little but she managed to take a sip of tea.

"Indeed," said Kintak noticing her hands shaking and sipping his tea in sync with her. "That does not sound like a simple dream, although I'd rather not read too much into it just now. How long ago was this?"

"One month and... eleven days? Twelve days?"

"Thank you," he said taking another sip of tea. "That will be enough information for now. Tell me: Would you like to stay at the Temple? I imagine confinement on a space station can't be all too pleasant."

The Temple. Coruscant. A trillion sentient beings packed onto one world. She had read what Tracyn had done - what he was willing to do. She shook her head.

"No, master. If there's space here, I should stay away from those who can't defend themselves. Tracyn - the traitor will seek to come for me. I've read his file, and I knew him well." She paused. "I would like a job, though. I've worked on fighters and light craft - every hangar needs more mechanics. Or the library, if there's room?"

"You are right, of course. Best not to give him reason to land on Coruscant," Kintak said. He could feel her sincerity through the Force, and that and the presence of reason were enough for him. "And as you said: the station could always use another mechanic. As for the library, it doesn't compare to the Archives below us, but they might have some room for an evening librarian."

"Thank you," she smiled.

Kintak finished his tea, placed the empty mug on a small table, and thanked her again before standing. "Good bye, Padawan," he said, returning Carinna's smile. "And do avail yourself of the Mess. You look like you could use a few more decent meals."

And so the Jedi Master left; the interview was over.

Carinna appreciated the de facto invitation to leave her quarters, but after she shut the door for Kintak, she went back to her bed and sat on it, staring at something a thousand yards beyond the floor with her chin cupped in her hands. She remained there for a long time. At last she stood and went back to her desk. She put in the history file for 39 ABY and went back to work.

Wanting
16 March


On 12 March of the year 42 ABY, the hypercomm relay in high orbit over planet Alba went down unexpectedly for two hours. A dim hyperspace exit signature was tentatively recorded shortly after function resumed, but when the repair crew arrived, no traces of infiltration were found. Nevertheless, they followed standard procedure for possible compromise of the secure interstellar comms network - through which flowed not only personal communications, but also all of Alba's interstellar trade data. They reformatted the data storage; they flashed the BIOS; they ran careful tests for surviving spyware and malware.

Nobody thought to check the manual input dial on the to-/from- console. Not that it would matter. That system was self-contained, and to-/from- was easily hidden by the sender or receiver if privacy was desired.

---

One day later, on 13 March of the same year, a woman claiming the name Carinna Versun appeared in the Coruscant in a badly damaged Y-wing. She had been injured and was unable to give a cohesive report. She underwent Bacta therapy at the Jedi Academy under the care of Padawan Sirii and Master Terrant, after which she was interrogated by Master Terrant with Sirii standing by. She was placed under partial house arrest in the Jedi Academy in Coruscant until further interrogation by Master Kintak revealed her to be safe. The date was 14 March.

The next morning, a hypercall was placed from the Jedi Academy to planet Alba. Its duration was one minute, thirteen seconds; it was flagged and recorded for the intended recipient, who was unavailable to receive the call when it arrived. From: Carinna Versun; To: Marlow &/or Walter Versun, Kin of Sender.

---

The next outgoing message to Coruscant First Financial, Inc, which was sent twelve minutes after the termination of the Jedi Academy hypercall was sixty-three bytes larger than expected. The computer system stored the error, but it fell below the display threshold and no human saw it before the computer cleared its cache at the end of the hypercall. A few insidious lines of code tripped a flag on a larger and more potent program, gave it their information, and overwrote themselves. The program, inserted by a low-level tech who saw no harm in the benign single-use spyware, executed its function.

---

At 0715 Coruscant Meridian Time, one Tracyn Chaelos - Dark Jedi... murderer... traitor - received a simpletext message on his screen. It was in code, but he read it like Basic. It read,

Carinna Versun, from Jedi Academy (Coruscant), to Marlow &/or Walter Versun, Kin of Sender
15 March 42 ABY, 1933 CMT.

The murderer smiled.

---

As tradition and ironclad bureaucracy held, station time was the same as ship time, which was Coruscant Meridian the galaxy over. A century ago, when civil war had first set the galaxy aflame again after a millennium of peace, the Separatists scheduled their sorties and shifts around the time at the Republic Senate hall; the time on the Rebel fleet's order to launch for Endor matched the time on the clocks in the Emperor's dark palace; today, the New Republic and the Emperor put millions of soldiers each moment to the brutality of battle, unable to reconcile, unable to agree on anything - except, when aboardship or aboardstation, how to set their clocks.

On the Jedi Academy, it was 0912, and First Shift was well into its second quarter.

Jo banged the sealed hyperdrive unit with the flat of her hand, expressing the frustration that both women felt.

"Dammit, Koensayer. Had a perfectly good thing goin' with the mark five, ah? Reliable, easy to fix, plenty of operational life. So now they start shipping us this crap."

Carinna said nothing, but grimaced as she worked a screwdriver into the catch release to unbolt the oblong metal case. Koensayer had started building new starfighters around their patented Mark Six sealed-unit hyperdrive, supposedly ten percent more fuel efficient and a percent faster than the open-to-vacuum Mark Five. At least, they would be if the sealed unit would stay sealed. This one showed the flaw in that plan: little hairline cracks had already started spiderwebbing out from the aftward end.

With a grunt, Carinna forced the catch open at last. She stepped aside before Jo could try to simultaneously occupy the same space, laughing inwardly at her superior's singlemindedness when it came to the job.

"Nice," Jo said, not looking up as she fitted a ratchet and started in on the first bolt. "Clean break."

Shim and Vostormo and the droids were at work on the other side of the hangar, running postclamp on the seal between the Jedi Academy station and a cargo hauler that had just landed. It was an easy job, so Jo didn't bother supervising them. Carinna ran the electric breaker carefully along the seal as the deck chief popped loose the bolts, and between them they were soon balancing the massive top shell of the broken sealed unit on a clamp-on repulsor field - and both of them wishing they'd thought to keep a couple droids for their own project. This was heavy, nerve-wracking work - and too late to turn back now. The top shell had to weigh at least a hundred kilos, and though the precariously-balanced repulsor took most of that, that also meant that any significant imbalance could launch the plate in the tipped direction with enormous force before the repulsor's safety cut in. Which was long enough for it to land on one of them, or to utterly smash the fifty-thousand-credit hyperdrive they were disassembling.

It took almost five minutes to inch the top shell off the sealed unit and safely onto the floor. They were both sweating - and neither of them had noticed the little round droid that had floated up on them. Its primitive intelligence must have categorized their work as do-not-disturb, because it didn't speak until they looked up.

"Message for Carinna Versun, Occupant Code 88329P, automated, from hypercomm station.

Carinna's breath caught as the messenger droid paused, sorting its stack of input pins for the appropriate transcript.

"Incoming call, priority blue. Sender: Walter Versun, from Alba. Timestamp present; realtime standing by. Message ends. Return message?"

Carinna's face lit - not with happiness, exactly, but with inexpressible hope. Her brother was alive. Maybe her father, too. The news might be bad; the reunion might begin in recrimination, in anger. Walter had been fiery in his youth; she hoped he had mellowed with age and not soured. But her brother... he would love her, and she would love him, and everything would work out.

Even as she stammered her response, she realized how hollow that hope was - but she cast away her fear and let herself smile.

"I'll - I'll be right there." She turned towards the shift leader, who was already grinning her characteristic lopsided smile. "I mean, it's my -"

"Go talk to your family, Miss Refugee. What, you don't think I asked who you were before I took you in my crew?"

Carinna flashed a grin as she fled the hangar in pursuit of the repeating messenger droid. Jo watched her go, then sighed as she turned back to the sealed unit. The whole apparatus was coated in the gluey black residue of the atmosphere-safe coolant-lubricant Koensayer had started using under the assumption that their damned sealed unit could manage to hold the atmosphere in. Would've been an easier job with two people, Force take it. "Dammit, Koensayer," she muttered, working loose the first power leads. "Mark five worked just fine...."

---

"0921 | message begins | you will be billed 0.75 rc/m starting now" - the black background behind the message topping the screen dissolved to show the interior of one of the Academy's private comm booths and its occupant.

Tracyn had fancied he would be ready when he saw her. He had imagined their meeting a dozen times over the past weeks, since the moment where he wrung the truth of her survival from the black soul of the Governor of Dairax; indeed, his predictions for Carinna proved perfect. Her expression of hope and love and mingled glee and fear clung to her face for a moment as she saw him, only the sudden widening of her eyes slipping past her surprise to give immediate confirmation of her emotions as confusion became shock; color drained from her face as she recognized him; the smile that had danced on her lips vanished and she recoiled as if slapped. He had foreseen this. He had expected this.

He had not excepted the sudden strength of his need for her. The horror in her eyes and on her lips... perhaps the subtle elegance she displayed even shocked, even in her worksuit... he couldn't quite lay a finger on the cause, but as badly as he had wanted to get his apprentice back before, it was nothing to how much he wanted her at that moment.

He did not want her for her body; he could get other women easily, and what he wanted with her went much deeper than that. He didn't want her for her power, though he respected and cherished it as something he had once cultivated. He didn't want her for her mind, intelligent as it was.

He wanted Carinna.

And that's all there was to it.

They both fought to contain their emotions. Tracyn leered inwardly as he recognized his own techniques in his Padawan's self-collection, and let that leer escape as the fierce fatherly smile that had always been his to give her.

"Carinna," he said, honey on his harsh voice. "I know you are thinking about killing the transmission. Please don't."

He enjoyed the surprise on her face for a moment before continuing. "Don't worry. I'm not invading your thoughts. But you are my Padawan. I know you. You know me."

"I knew Tracyn Chaelos, my master and my friend. I know no murderer."

"Fair," he smiled. "But you still don't want to kill the comm. I don't know when we'll get to speak again. And I know you need the truth. What I can tell you, from my side."

"I don't - I -" she paused, struggling. At last she said, "Speak."

---

He paused, readying, she was sure, a prepared speech. His dark hair was shorter than she remembered it, but no less wild, and his tall, lanky body conveyed the same impossible, irrepressible power and physicality - but when she looked at his face, she had to repress again the urge to scream, to choke, to flee. There was a constant smile on his killers' lips where Tracyn had been sombre and steadfast; his face, always warlike, had turned cruel. His control was great, but the Force fed her senses and she knew him well. She could feel the subtle probing as he searched for gaps in her mind's defenses. She could read the cruelty of his eyes when his control wavered. She could feel his boiling hatred, the heat of his desire.

She cast aside her fear.

The murderer spoke.

"And I did nothing to your family, if you were afraid of that. One of them might even call you, later. I needed a way to find you, to contact you. To tell you the truth.

"We were both betrayed. The Jedi sent us to Dairax to do good, yes. But the Empire needed to be destroyed. They promised us we were galaxy's hope. They lied.

"You have read the histories. I see it in your eyes. You know what the Empire has done. What it is doing. They did nothing. Tantiss showed us the truth. War was upon us. We needed to fight.

"The Jedi sent us to Dairax - sent us into danger while they sat safe in their Temples and did nothing. Tantiss showed me the truth. He asked me to help him. You agreed. I left you. For that, I am sorry. You were young. You could not have known the risks of working solo. I should have. I failed you. I have done what I can to redeem myself for that. I will do more, if you let me. There is so much I can teach you. I love you, Carinna."

He spoke the truth, she knew. But only a fragment of it. I want you, said his eyes. I desire you. Yet even as she recoiled, she recognized a response in herself. He had been her master once; her mentor, her brother, her friend. She could not believe him, but she wished she could. She had loved him, once.

"We are at war, Carinna" he rasped, his smile dropping away. "In war, people die. The Jedi had to fall. We turned all that we could. We could have ended the war, Carinna. We could have made peace. The Jedi stood against that. They betrayed the peace they tought us to hope for. They were the enemy. We killed them. I killed them."

I reveled in their blood, said his eyes. I murdered them with joy.

"But we lost. And the war went on. The Jedi imprisoned me, even as they sent no missions to rescue you. They tortured me, as you were tortured. I found your file, on Dairax, after I killed them. Yes, I killed the ones who were guilty. Your work was not in vain."

She blinked. He paused, recognizing her surprise and relishing it.

"The Jedi have not told you, have they? Ask them what the government of Dairax was doing. They must have learned by now. Ask them what it was doing while they ignored your disappearance, while they chose to leave you for dead and treat your mission as worthless. When I was freed, I sought you. I found the trail you had left, and followed it to the ones who tried to murder you. I killed them. I cut them down in their own little Hell. I would have found you, but you were already gone. I never gave up on you, Carinna.

"Come back to me, Padawan. They call me a traitor, but the Jedi betrayed us. Let me resume your teaching. I will not leave you as I did once. You are my Padawan. I love you."

---

He saw her indecision, and dared to hope. Were they lies, what he said? He had never considered himself a liar, and they came easily enough. He smiled, projecting all his hope, all his unfettered desire.

---

The list was long. The list was cruel.

Names and faces. Names and faces. Names and faces of the murdered dead.

So many she had known. Jorum. Hass. Kyrin. Aineias. More, and more, names upon names.

So many he had killed in joy, knowing that he had betrayed them and joyous in his knowledge.

He had been lying, she knew. Lies of omission, perhaps, but false all the same. She had known from the beginning. If he had called her a week ago, he might perhaps have won her, but she knew the truth. The Jedi had not fought because there had been a chance for peace - a chance for peace without slaughter. She had struggled for it. Tracyn had struggled for it. The Tracyn she had known. The master she had known would not have called himself a monster; would not have thought it and known it and reveled in its truth; he would not have seen hell and loved its warmth; his feelings toward her would never be of desire.

She looked into his face and shuddered.

"I loved you, monster," she whispered. "I love Tracyn still."

His power was formidable, she knew; even from far away, he might kill her with a thought. She struck as he had taught her: quick, decisive, without projection or hesitation. She saw the hidden rage break over his features for a terrible half-moment as she acted - and then her finger stabbed home on the communicator switch, and the display dissolved to black.

---

Across the densely-packed Coruscant habitation block, plants withered; babies cried as if with colic; sentients shivered at the silent magnitude of Tracyn's wrath.

Before him, a single message blinked on the bottom of the dark viewscreen. It mocked him with its banality, with its promise of hope. It read,

message ends
Walter Versun, from Alba (Alba), to Carinna Versun, Kin of Sender.
16 March 42 ABY, 0932 CMT






Whispers in the Dark
3 April


It felt right, when he made the decision. He supposed he held by it. But as he watched her leave with Tracyn's lightsaber under her robes, Jedi Master Ses-Cae Desdina, grandfather and one-time master of Tracyn Chaelos, worried.

It was a link. A link to a past that should never have been, but nonetheless was – which should have destroyed her, but failed. He had seen it on her face the first time she took the weapon. He saw in that moment how she looked, for the first time, afraid.

Carinna took to his instruction with the ease he had expected. She knew the way of the sword, though her style, even now, mirrored his. Still, that meant her strikes were clean, her footwork, with a little coaching, straightforward but reliable. Her speed rivaled his own. Before long, she would be faster.

They had trained for two hours, drill after drill after drill, unrelenting except for momentary breaks for water. Before long, she would not need water. The Force flowed through her as he had helped her to remember, although sweat ran down her face and soaked her tunic and hair. She retained control of the weapon, although it was made for hands much larger than hers. She fought, even when sweat stung her eyes, even when her arms ached and tremble with the sustained effort and her body burned from the impact of practice bolts. She accepted the suffering and moved through it, welcomed it. She knows.

She would face Tracyn, when she was ready. If he could make her ready. He frowned, turning suddenly and striding out of the practice room so that the cleaning droids could do their work. When she could fight for hours and days without food, without water, without respite... when she could lose a limb, fight on, and triumph; when she could stare evil in the face and feel nothing but peace – then, would she be ready? He worried that she would not. He was an old, old man, and he had seen too much. He had a right to worry.

He know that she could make herself do it – that she would make herself do it. She believed she had no choice, and she was at peace with that knowledge. She had what he could not have given her: she saw her death or her damnation, and walked knowingly towards it, clinging all the while to hope. Hope. Not the Force, which might save her, if he... he shook his head.

She loved him. Tracyn Chaelos. She loved the man that he was when he wielded that sword for good, before its blue blade was tainted with murder, torture, hate. The man she hoped – did not believe, but nevertheless hoped – was in him still.

Master Desdina stopped suddenly, for something in his shriveled old soul had found what he dared not admit. In a way - not her way, but a way nonetheless - he loved Tracyn too.

---

When Carinna saw Jo approaching, she knew something was wrong. The deck chief had accepted Carinna into her crew of mechanics back when the official story was still that Carinna was a political refugee, but though she had been as shocked as the rest of her crew to learn the truth, Jo's restrained kindness had never wavered. Which made Jo's expression of stunned concern all the more ominous.

Carinna allowed herself to be drawn aside.

“Carinna,” Jo said.

“Jo?”

“You hafta see the news. It's -” Jo lifted her hands helplessly. “It's about what's been happening on Dairax is all I can say.”

The younger woman felt a prickling at the base of her sweat-damp neck. She nodded. “Okay.”

Jo led her to one of the station's three crew lounges, which was nearby; and, skirting a badly-worn sofa, she marched towards the holonet display. On the display, a blue-skinned, five-eyed commentator was excitedly recounting the morning's sports highlights. The room's other three occupants looked up as Jo tuned away from their broadcast and searched up the news report she wanted – but the deck chief all but growled at them, and they turned back to their card game without comment.

“You better sit down,” said Jo.

Carinna stiffened, but complied. She watched with interest that soon became horror as the improbably-symmetrical face of Coruscant News Network's Miranda Kal became superimposed over the skyline of Dairax's capital city. Carinna had nearly died over that skyline, and it was not one she would soon forget – but she barely recognized it. Pillars of smoke stained the sky, and fires raged unchecked in the poorer quarters. The snap and snarl of distant gunfire was audible in the moment of silence that accompanied Miranda's poised countdown to begin her report.

“I'm Miranda Kal, reporting live from Peerage City on Dairax, a mid-rim planet in the Galactic Northeast. Civil unrest broke out here three weeks ago, when planetary leader Baron Imago was reported dead, and there has been mass rioting, looting, and an attempted military coup. All attempts to impose order in the capital have failed, although there are large pockets of stability elsewhere on the planet. Today I have a special guest who claims to know how it all began, calling in from an undisclosed location under the condition that he remains anonymous.”

She reached one perfectly-manicured hand off-camera, adjusting something.

“Go ahead, sir,” she said.

The voice off camera was rasping and deep. “I killed Baron Imago.”

Carinna stiffened – not at the words, for she knew who had killed Imago, but at the unmistakable sound of his voice. She barely noticed when Jo took her hand and held it tight.

“He was a psychopath and a murderer. But that is not why I killed him. You have the files I sent you to buy this 'interview', Miranda; you can do a long report on them later.”

There was a pause, and Miranda drew breath to respond, but he cut her off.

“The real thing he was doing, the thing you'll have to take my word for, was that he was trying to become a Sith. He had found some sort of spellbook, I think, and thought that by focusing the Dark Side with enough torture – did you get the photographs, Miranda? I took them just for you, you know. He thought that he could get the Force to answer his call. But... that is not what I killed him. That's not why I'm here.”

Again there was a pause. Miranda drew breath, then winced, expecting subconsciously to be cut off again. At last, she asked the question he wanted.

“Why did you kill him?”

“I killed him for Carinna Versun, who I know is listening,” he said, his voice booming over the line. “I killed him to finish your work, Carinna, as you know; and I killed him to avenge you when I thought he had murdered you, too.”

“Enough!” said Miranda. “That's quite enough!”

He talked over her. “Our last meeting ended badly, Carinna, but there will be another. You will come to me, and I will welcome you.”

“Close the line! Dammit, Lars, close the line!”

“Believe in me, Carinna,” he said very quietly. “I will contact you again. Soon.”

There was a hiss of static, quickly muted. Miranda brushed back a stray tumble of hair that had escaped her thousand-credit haircut, subconsciously adjusting her clothing and her face back to their well-trained demeanor of mingled pleasantry and gravity. But Carinna, still gripping Jo's hand, still pale, still steadfast, saw what most would have missed: the glimmering beginnings of tears in the reporter's immaculately made-up eyes. And Carinna, unlike most, recognized the strength it took for her to smile, apologize professionally, and wish the Galaxy goodnight.






Before the Storm
10 May


Carinna knelt on the durasteel floor, as was her custom, in the minutes before her master arrived. Her new master - Ses-Cae Desdina, not Tracyn. Not Tracyn ever again. Her eyes were closed, but she could see the light by the warm yellow-red that seeped through her eyelids; she could smell the room's odd melange of odors: sweat, antiseptic spray, old oil and older metal. She knew its shape, not only from memory. In a dreamlike half-conscious way she could feel its corners; its high ceiling; its shape and its span; the warmth of walls she did not touch; the tumbling, chaotic-yet-regular twistings and flowings of air cycled through the practice room. The room was silent, soundproofed, but beyond her own soft breathing and the beat of her heart she could sense the sounds of passing feet in the corridor outside, the scrape of chairs in the room above her. The Force told her this and more, and she listened from a still place deep within her self, untouched by the outside world, where she was truly at peace.

For all its clarity and depth, it was a fragile peace. It was the center of a world gone mad, the heavy waiting silence before the breaking of an ocean wave. The future held one thing... one man. Tracyn. Tracyn Chaelos. Her former master dominated her future, stationary in the flow of time that pushed her inexorably towards a confrontation. He had contacted her many times, using news reports and private calls, and other, more sinister methods. Most recently, someone - she was sure it was him - had hypered into the system and lobbed a space-suited body at the Jedi Academy. When the Jedi recovered it, they found an already-autopsied cadaver, still tagged with the name of the morgue from which it had been stolen. The man's broad back had been cut hundreds of times with a sharp knife into a message ostensibly for her, requesting a chance to speak with her, demanding that she come alone, threatening evil if she did not. She did not forget. She could not forget. But she had reached deep, reached deeper, and found resolve, resilience, hope. Here, in this room, under this light, she found peace.

It was nearly time for Master Desdina to arrive when the light went out.

Before Carinna's conscious mind recognized the change in brightness, she was standing. Tracyn's lightsaber, her lightsaber, flew to her hand and a meter of actinic fire blazed from its broad emitter. She was already moving when the Force screamed its warning in the back of her mind, already reacting before she realized that there was a threat. There was a snap like breaking styrofoam, and then a blade of green light slammed against her lightsaber. Twice more she defended herself, half-blinded by the sudden change in light; she tried to riposte against the half-seen wielder of the green lightsaber, but her thrust was batted aside. She felt him close, faster than fast, and let the Force guide her.

She managed to avoid a broken rib, but his knee still hit with enough power to fold her over. A telekinetic hammer struck her as she focused on avoiding the next lightsaber strike, and again the Force saved her from broken bones as she slammed against the far wall. Sparks and spots danced madly in front of her eyes and she could barely breathe. Who was attacking her? Why? How? She cast aside her confusion and fought on, regaining her footing, launching attack after attack at her mystery assailant. He had clouded his presence in the Force, but his actions spoke clearly enough for his intent, and his power was self-evident.

You're faster, said Tracyn's voice in the back of her mind, and, though she feared the beast he had become, she knew it was true. Her blade was flickering lightning, propelled by technique, strength, natural skill, and the guiding hand of the living Force. Her opponent's style changed - and as he deflected another blow with a twisting disengagement that, just a week ago, would have torn her saber from her grip, she recognized him.

"Master Desdina," she said, feinting towards his face, voiding his return strike, slashing upwards at his groin.

The lights came back, and the haze that had blocked her mind's sight lifted. He deactivated his lightsaber. There was no trace of menace, no antagonism, no threat. She held her own weapon in a high guard, taking no chances, as the ancient Jedi Master removed the mask and cowl that had hidden his face. Desdina smiled, but his eyes were sad. She was surprised to discover that she felt no fear.

"You have learned much," he said.

She shut down her lightsaber, beginning to understand - not only the reason for his false attack, but also what he would say next. Of course I'm not ready, she wanted to say. I'll never be ready to face Tracyn. That isn't the point. That isn't the choice I have to make!

But she understood, too, that that would not change her Master's judgment - nor, indeed, the fact that he was probably right. She bowed, waiting for him to say the words she knew he would say.

"It will take a Jedi Knight to face Tracyn," he said. "And you're not one. Yet."







Something Breaks
14 May


Tracyn is close.

The thought was from the Force, but it mirrored what the Jedi Shadow already knew. Evil had a distinctive taste: heavy and bitter at first, but then ever more intoxicatingly powerful the deeper in she went. The Shadows were trained to sense it, to embrace it, in a way most other Jedi - or, for that matter, most other sapient beings - should never have to. Theirs was a hard life, but they were hard people. They knew the evil that men do. It was how they were able to fight it.

The Kuati sewer stretched out before her, thick with its own pungent reek in addition to the intangible one her soul could taste. Despite the stink, she could feel a hunger welling up in her belly - the same hunger I knew as a thirteen-year-old girl, listening to Master Tantiss back on Yavin IV. It was a familiar hunger. But it was not her own.

That was the first time she had seen Tracyn Chaelos. There were many details to pick out, on that day—the dead Jedi, the burning of the forest by Tantiss’ rogue allies, the scent of fear and panic that rippled through the children one after another. But the only thing that stayed with her was him. How he looked. How he stood. How the light of his weapon glinted against the cold green of his eyes, just before he killed her master. How he smiled when she offered to join him, instead of death.

How he hungered.

Tantiss desired something noble. That, she had never doubted. The methods he chose to pursue it were perhaps wrong—No, she had to remind herself, not perhaps. They were wrong—but the spirit of the Mission was, itself, pure. They had followed Tantiss because he made them believe. Because they wanted what he wanted.

When she trained to become a Jedi Shadow, they tought her about stealth and infiltration, which are the tools used to get close to the target; but they also tought her to know her target, as well. She watched the holovids, read the reports, talked to his friends. She learned to anticipate his next move. She learned to predict when he would fight and when he would run. She learned how to get inside his mind, how to feel what was going on underneath the savage smile and glinting eyes.

Tantiss believed in the Mission. Of that she was certain. But the other…

He did not.

She couldn't quite say Tracyn's name, even a decade later. He had become something of a boogeyman for the younglings, over the years, which made him ridiculous in their eyes. But to those who saw him move, who felt the unadulterated savagery beneath those Jedi robes and easy smile—they knew better. They knew a monster when they saw it. They knew what evil feels like.

It amazed her still, she thought as she stepped around the carcass of some breed of sewer rat, that the Council didn’t have him put to death. His grandfather certainly advocated it; the old man had seen evil already, decades before any of us were even thought of. He knew what had to be done. But the others hadn’t seen. They didn’t know; how could they? Nearly all the “Dark Jedi” had returned to the light side of the Force after the war’s end. Flush with optimism, the Council decided to lock him away, frozen in body and imprisoned within his own mind.

Eight years he stayed like that. Eight quiet, peaceful years. Eight years they had tried to forget that men like him ever existed. For eight years they grew naïve. She could scarcely imagine. Awake for eight years, without a soul to talk to, without a thing to do but stew in his own hatred.

Is it any wonder he is going to kill me?

She fopught the feeling down. She was a Knight. A Jedi Shadow. She had helped bring more than one renegade to justice, and there were five others just like her crawling through the stinking sewer. But in the back of her mind, a small voice laughed. It remembered his name, and it was not afraid to call him by it. You remember that Ranger boy—the one you thought was cute? You were there, just like the rest. You watched Tracyn paint the kid with his own friends’ blood, just sat by and watched him. And then, when he lashed him up in the tree, and laughed, and wondered how long he’d last…

“Shut up!”

Her voice echoed through the sewer, loud and afraid—but could he hear it? Was he near?

Is he watching me?

Easy. Breathe easy. She checked the chrono at her wrist, and frowned. Tracyn is supposed to be just up ahead - that's where he said he'd be, when he called Carinna Versun. He said come alone, but Master Desdina wouldn’t hear of it, and his Padawan had acquiesced. Desdina sent the Shadows. The best hunters in the Order, trained killers all. Nothing they could see down here can would break them. Nothing.

Right?

Breathe. Get your lightsaber.

She rounded the corner.

Something broke.

---

Not long after the news of the catastrophic failure of the attempt to assassinate Tracyn reached the Jedi Academy, a small packet came by mail. That alone was strange, for Carinna had never received a paper envelope before. The data chip on the front was made out to her—not to the Jedi Order, not to her Master, but to her. It had passed screening, though, so the mail droids must not have thought it contained anything hazardous when they’d slipped it in her box. Still…

Her finger slid in between the folded top of the packet, slitting the manila paper clumsily. It ripped in unevenly, and at one point she’d gotten stuck. A small voice inside her told her to give up, to throw it away. She knew who had sent it. And she knew why. The Padawan pressed her lips together and tore. Inside, she found smooth paper, and tugged it out, gently.

Something inside her that had been warm and bright flickered, sputtered, died. She let out her breath slowly, and was several moments in deciding to draw it in again.

Carinna had seen corpses before. Had made corpses before. Every Jedi had seen death, particularly those who’d taken an interest in the healing arts. They’d watched the cold dismemberment of donated cadavers under the skillful laser scalpels of trained doctors, and been fascinated—if moderately repulsed, at first—with the results such experiments yielded. Underneath, everyone was more or less the same: pink and squishy and all-too-easily torn apart.

He’d hung a dozen live people against a wall. The pictures showed them, all too clearly: how they’d been wearing work clothes – or school clothes, she saw, turning the pages... one... by one... by one. The children were wearing school clothes.

He’d hung them on hooks. Like meat. In a neat line against the duracrete wall. He’d rigged the room with explosives and left them hanging there, helpless and terrified against the terrible force of his transient mercy. A series of photographs showed how the Jedi strike team had blundered straight into his surveillance equipment long before they’d found the room—part of Carinna wondered how he had sent the letter so fast, and part of her hated herself for wondering. She turned the pages mechanically, holding back her emotion as a the dwindling flame of a matchstick holds back the dark. They showed how he’d watched them as they slugged toward it; how he’d detonated the explosives as soon as the Jedi were near; how he’d hung up the bodies—or what remained of them—side by side with the the now-dead civilians; that he'd opened their eyes and mouths in a parody of mirth and photographed them all with a wide-angle shot—

A message. A message at the bottom of the last photo. A message penned in something that had once been red but had faded to dark brown.

How does it feel?
Isn’t it sweet?
Isn’t it wonderful?
Aren’t you complete?
The blood on your hands—
The ash in the air—
Though I’m over here, and you’re over there!

How does it feel?






This, I Wanted
5 June


Peerage City lay in ruins. The mute, blackened skeletons of abandoned skyscrapers stared down accusingly through broken-window eyes at deserted, litter-strewn streets. Gone were the mobs, the rioters, the looters - fled, all fled in the slow disheveled trickle of refugees from the broken capital of Dairax. In the smoke-hazed distance, a forlorn siren wailed, signifying emptily the too-late rebound of government and law. Even the birds had abandoned the city. The humans had taken their dead.

A lone starship had creased the sky, unopposed and unquestioned. Some, to be sure, saw it land. Some, perhaps, even spared a moment to wonder what it would bring. But the many-barreled turbolasers and missile batteries that dotted the city glared blindly at the unassuming twilight sky. Only one man truly cared about the ship's arrival, but he had known that it would come - had felt it long before it penetrated the atmosphere. He did not look up, though in the shadows, he smiled.

All this Carinna perceived as she walked the streets, threading her way through crashed vehicles and fallen rubble. All this she felt, and more. Perhaps the Force told her, or perhaps her knowledge came from something older and stranger still, but she knew where he was, and she knew why, even as she knew that it would do no good to seek her friends - Pemm, who had saved her life; or Gerar, who had betrayed her to death. None challenged her as she walked, though she felt eyes upon her from the black windows of burned-out shops. Was it her bearing? The lightsaber worn openly at her side? Or did the survivors of Peerage City's civil war simply feel, as she felt, and slowly turn away?

She followed her feet where she knew they would lead, and as the last sunlight reddened the western horizon, she found herself back where she had started three months ago - where the path she followed ended and began. Where she had been a prisoner for eight cruel and soul-eroding years.

Carinna Versun, Jedi Padawan, looked up at the Mind Ward and felt true fear.

The chain securing the heavy, once-white doorway had been severed cleanly, and Carinna recognized the work of a lightsaber. Panic tingled at the back of her mind, but she let it pass through her. She imagined eyes on her back but she breathed deeply and did not turn. Her heart beat hard. She pushed the door open, steadying herself, and was not surprised when they slammed shut behind her, sealing the Mind Ward into its own isolated half-darkness. Tracyn Chaelos was waiting.

She drew her lightsaber, feeling its familiar, too-large solidity under her hand, but she did not light it. Tracyn must have activated the old generator, for most of the dim red night lights were glowing, illuminating corridors she knew much too well. The last time she had stood in this doorway, she had shot a man dead, and the glassed-in office to her right had been full of uniformed corpses. The office seemed miraculously preserved: its large panes of perfect glass denied the desolation that had been wreaked upon Peerage, and there were no corpses within it. There were not even bloodstains. She walked past it, finding the interior gate to the patients' wards forced by the same practical slash of a lightsaber. As she did so, she felt a trembling in the Force, almost so slight as to be unnoticeable. She had half-raised her lightsaber when her eyes fixed on the video camera at the far end of the corridor. She reached out with the Force to smash it when another, more powerful tremor presaged a deep, hollow rippling bang. Power flowed up around her, answering her call to shield her from the inevitable following shockwave, the searing heat and spray of shrapnel that would accompany the bomb - it was a trap, a trap like the one that had taken the Shadows, and she had walked like a fool into the center, believing naively that Tracyn did not want to kill her.

But there was no explosion, no shockwave, no agony and death. Carinna felt the Dark Side drift slowly about her, and recalled, with sudden clarity, the banging sound her door had made every time it had been opened by the electric panel mounted on the outside. She multiplied the sound a dozen times, a hundred times, and understood what Tracyn had done - understood it even as sick horror gripped her insides and she realized what crime the Mind Ward's new guardians had committed when they fled their posts. She turned where Tracyn had turned and pushed through the door whose freshly-repaired lock he had severed with his lightsaber.

Already, their stench was in the air. Carinna fixed her gaze steadfastly ahead, but still she saw them, on either side of her, in various stages of slow, sterilized decay. One had sprawled out into the corridor. Her forehead was caved in and blood matted her short gray smock. Carinna saw that she had no fingernails. Dying of thirst in her cell, she had battered herself to death against the unyielding door. Carinna wondered when the escape attempt had changed to suicide.

Some cells had been empty, but the others were more than enough to fill the Ward with the stench of rot, feces, blood, decay. She saw from the corner of her eyes men and women in every position of death: some were curled into fetal balls; some clutched at the air with rigor-frozen fingers; others still lay on their cots, looking almost as though they could be sleeping except for the inevitable signs of advanced decomposition. The Dark Side lingered on them, wafting over her in sullen waves. It is, she thought, unwittingly echoing Tracyn's words, a gallery of despair.

She passed through them the only way she could: one step after another, eyes ahead, lightsaber drawn. She paused only once as she followed Tracyn's path by the doors he had forced, her eyes flickering to the cell that had been hers. It was empty, reserved, perhaps, against her eventual return. Carinna shivered and moved on.

She knew where Tracyn would be. She had awaited his message, knowing it would come. He had drawn it out; given her time to wonder; allowed her, with demonic insight, to force herself to return again and again to the photographs he had sent her of his murder and desecration in search of a hidden message – that if she did not find the message and answer it, he would kill still more people in her name. But the message had come, unsigned, penned in simple black ink on white paper – the second letter she had ever received.

Meet me, love, in two weeks time
in the room where truth is lies.

And so, with her heart fluttering high in her chest; with a scream trapped deep within her; with ice on her spine and sick, terrified tightness in her belly, Carinna opened the doors at the far end of the Patients' Ward. At the end of the long, doorless, lightless, featureless hallway, was an open door.

In that door, framed against the vibrant light of the Blue Room, stood Tracyn Chaelos.

As one, they ignited their swords. It was an odd dichotomy: hers, blue, backlit in red; his, crimson, reflecting on blue. Across a distance that was more than space, master and apprentice gazed at each other, content, for a time, to let the wavering thrum of their lightsabers be the only sound. Carinna stepped forward.

“You have come,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

"I wanted this."

"Yes."

And he had. He did. He wanted her with all his being. But she had not come because he wanted her, nor because she thought she could be enough. Nothing, he thought, will satisfy my hate. Nothing will win my vengeance. I will have you, at any cost. In time, you will be my apprentice again; and together we will make the galaxy burn. But Tracyn said none of this. She knew it. Perhaps she had always known it. He could feel her certainty over her terror, over her resolve. She knew this, and yet she had come.

Was it love?

Tracyn backed slowly into the Blue Room; and, clinging not to strength, nor to the Force, nor even to love, but to the small unblemished flame of hope... Carinna followed.

She entered the Blue Room with her chin down and her saber ready. Its cold blue light gave her skin the pallor of a corpse over her plain gray clothing. Tracyn reached out a hand as though in welcome, and slammed the door behind her.

Carinna lunged. Master Desdina would have balked, cautioning her to wait, to respond. Master Desdina had been wrong before. She crossed five meters in the blink of an eye, her lightsaber flickering towards Tracyn's heart. He countered with a powerful vertical arc, sparks flew as master and student clashed. They needed no words, these two, communicating with the silent ease of deep and long-held love. They had never needed words - and here, in this room, any words would have been empty.

Winds spun from forces beyond the human understanding swept up the sparse furniture of the Blue Room, so innocent without context: a chair, a hose, a rack of dry syringes. Tracyn broke the chair across Carinna's back. She staggered, spattered his face with needles and drove her heel into his groin - where it found a hard plastic plate in stead of man's vulnerability. Lightsabers crashed and snarled, and the first droplets of their blood mingled on the blue-painted floor.

"I knew a man," she said at last, in a ragged pause, "who longed for peace."

Tracyn feinted twice and struck at her with the Force, but she was ready, and the wave broke against her defenses.

"I loved him, Tracyn. "

The monster smiled.

They fought on, and on, beyond the endurance of any mortal man, locked together in the room where the truth was called a lie, where Carinna had all but vanished into insanity. At every range of combat they struck at one another. She defended herself against a flurry of blows, moving instinctively along the paths that Desdina had taught her to follow, stepped inside his guard and broke his nose with a blow of her elbow. He spat blood and threw her to the ground. She felt something crack in her chest as he followed the motion with a crushing blow of will. She scrabbled backwards, fending off blows to her body and legs, breathing raggedly through her mouth, and somehow managed to stand.

"Join me," he said.

"No."

"I love you!"

"You desire me."

The words hung heavy in the air, as if trapped by the walls that had seen the truth denied so often, by so many. Even as Tracyn faltered, Carinna took advantage of his vulnerability, her face twisted with pain and effort. Faster than any eye could follow, the blue sword struck again and again, for it knew its art as Carinna knew hers: it was a sword, and its purpose had always been death. But a new fear seeped into the room, already redolent with the lingering emotions of anguish and despair. It was Tracyn's fear, though not of death. It reeked of the Dark Side.

Tracyn screamed as the last of his humanity burned away.

His first blow swept hard from left to right, striking away Carinna's Force-strengthened guard. He smashed her back and back, the powerful muscles of his back and arms tensing and bulging as he hewed at her. Drops of blood flew from his lips and chin. Carinna ducked a slash and stabbed him in the thigh; he batted the lightsaber away and drove a kick into her already-broken ribs. Air left her lips in a strangled hiss. He hurled her across the room, using the Force as a bludgeon. Her lightsaber - his lightsaber, he saw with sudden anger - flew from her grasp, and he commanded the Force to bring it to his hand. It nestled there with perfect familiarity, made by him, for him, so long, long ago. Tracyn leered and drew breath to speak.

"Join me," Carinna said.

Tracyn blinked. Carinna smiled sadly.

"I love you."

Her eyes were distant, not quite focused on his face. She pushed herself to a sitting position. There was blood running from one side of her mouth; she had bitten through her tongue. Tracyn advacned, wary, even then. There was something of his old self in the room, lingering like a memory of a dream. Even now, even here, even at the end of her life, he could feel Carinna's hope, small and wavering but painfully bright above her sorrow and her fear, and it troubled him. She was his student. He snarled. She would be his student again, when he had cut off her hands and restrained her; he would break her, turn her to the truth, and she would be his, his for all of time. She was his student.

She was his student indeed.

He'll come, Tracyn had said once, so many years now gone. What do you do?

And Carinna struck. She struck without warning, without forethought, without hesitation. Her eyes fixed for a fraction of a second on a sharp fragment of the broken chair beneath Tracyn's feet as he stepped over it, and she hurled it upwards with all the power of the infinite Force. Tracyn was fast, faster than lightning, faster than she, but there was no time: the primitive missile flew upwards, bypassing by millimeters the Dark Jedi's concealed armor and sinking deep, deep, deep.

By some secret strength, Carinna lunged, ignoring agony and shock. Before the pain had registered on Tracyn's face, she was upon him. The blue blade slashed out more in reflex than in action, and chopped in half her groping right hand. Her left closed around the hilt of the red sword in Tracyn's right hand. She drove a knee into the broken chair-leg, forcing it deeper, and the sword came free.

Tracyn stumbled.

She slashed, and his left arm went tumbling, still clutching the blue lightsaber. He lurched after the weapon. She stabbed before he reached it, and the blood-colored blade slammed deep into his torso, cooking his lungs. Their eyes met as a wisp of smoke escaped his open mouth. Power flowed to him, drawn by his pain, by his fear, keeping him alive beyond the point of death.

Carinna ripped the weapon out through the side of his ribcage and drew back to strike again. Tracyn held her eyes for a long moment. He nodded, very slightly.

As Carinna Versun struck off her master's head, the man smiled.





The End