Now that everything’s all straightened out again, I have to do something to occupy myself… and why not finish my replay of this game and the related fanfic to boot? My dreams are going overtime now that I’m back, though. I suspect that all the energy that was going towards adventuring is now channeled into my brain at night and that makes them extra weird. Also, I am in love still with this Kotor 2 LP which burrows into every possible bit of plot and is entertainingly written too. But I’m still going to play it my way, too.
Also, it is stupid hot and humid here. Can I go back to Norway?
Part 3: Silver
“Grab on to something!” Atton yelled back into the hold of the shuttle. “This is about to get rough real fast!”
Heart beating slightly faster, Selyn took hold of the hand grips by her seat, her restraints fastened tightly. They were being fired upon as they flew over the partially restored surface of Telos. Who, what, why, no way to find out, only to trust in Atton’s skill and hope they survived. It reminded her strongly of how she’d felt when she’d been dropped on- no, best not to think about that. She concentrated on her breathing instead.
She felt the ship kick forward with a small explosion, heard Atton curse, felt gravity begin to assert its hold on the shuttle…
She came to with her face in the grass, feeling like she’d just been in a three-round match with a wampa… and had lost every time. Carefully, she shifted her head, then her arms, then tried to push herself up. She made it to a sitting position and decided to take a break.
The shuttle was a smouldering, twisted wreck about twenty meters away, smack in the middle of a narrow valley. Kreia was lying beside her, still breathing, and Selyn could not tell whether the aches she felt were her own or Kreia’s, but neither of them were terribly injured.
In the last two weeks, they’d made it to Citadel Station at Telos, where they were temporarily detained under suspicion of destroying Peragus, then placed under house arrest. Meanwhile, the Ebon Hawk had been stolen, and rumour had reached Selyn that it was on Telos’ surface. When the Ithorian leader on the station, Chodo Habat, had offered her use of their shuttle to search for the Hawk, she had taken it, despite the face that they were all technically still under house arrest. She feared too much the Sith would be close behind her if she stayed too long.
And now they had been shot down over a Czerka-controlled restoration zone. Highly suspicious, but ultimately not that surprising.
Where was Atton? How did they get out of the shuttle? Alarmed, Selyn pushed herself shakily to her feet, but at that moment, a figure emerged from the shuttle, carrying Atton in a firefighter’s carry. It was a beige-skinned Zabrak, with a prosthetic arm, and he dumped Atton gently down beside Kreia before he straightened and turned to Selyn with a slight smile. “Good to have you back, General.”
Selyn’s mind reeled. Who was he? How did he-? He must have been under her command, back when- But he- “What happened?” she managed to say without stammering.
“Easy now,” he said, holding out a hand in a calming gesture, his voice soft and even. “You just survived one spectacular crash. Good thing I was here to pull you and your friends out of the wreck or you’d all be more than a little crispy right now. But it’s only fair. I owe you more than one, General.”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
“You must be in shock from the crash, or forgot me over the last decade.” He glanced at a small droid floating at his shoulder. “Too bad she’s not a droid, huh?” The droid booped and beeped in response. “We can’t all be that lucky.” He looked back at her. “I’ll humour you, General. I was one of the Iridonian mechanic corps at Malachor. Bao-Dur? I can see why you might forget me, I was the only Zabrak.”
She moved quickly past the feeling of ice-water down her spine. He was the one who- “I remember you. But don’t ever call me General again. Selyn will be fine.”
His eyes were sad. “I understand. I don’t like talking about the war much either. We all went through some tough times afterwards, and maybe we all did a little forgetting.” His droid nuzzled him. “Guess that’s one thing we’ve got better than droids – they can’t forget anything. At least until you give them a memory wipe, and then they forget for good.” The droid beeped.
Selyn crouched down beside Kreia. “Are the others going to be all right?”
“I believe so. The pilot is unharmed, and the old lady… well, she’s tougher than she looks.” He crouched across from her, his almost-human face unreadable. “I have to say, never thought I’d see you again. The galaxy’s a big place, and this is the last place I thought I’d bump into you.”
“I was told my ship was somewhere on Telos,” Selyn explained. “It was stolen from me a week ago. Chodo Habat told me to look out for you and to ask if you would help me find it.”
Bao-Dur gave another slight smile. “I will do my best. Though if your ship’s in as bad a shape as this one, I don’t think you’re going to have much luck. I came out here hoping to repair this one, but not even I can salvage this pile of scrap into a flyable ship.”
“I understand,” Selyn said, and then Atton and Kreia began to recover.
What a day. Hiking for hours across Telos on foot, stealing a shuttle from Czerka, flying out to the pole only to be shot down again, this time by a too-smug scrap pile with a missile launcher, and now imprisoned by these weird creepy white-haired, white-eyed, white-clothed women who did not look like they had a sense of humour. They were Echani, unless he missed his guess, so definitely not to be messed with.
“Why is it that everywhere we go, I end up in a cell?” he complained, stuck for the third time this month in a force cage. His only consolation was that the old bat was locked up beside him and not running loose. But then the Zabrak, who seemed to know Selyn from way back and didn’t seem all that bad a guy, was locked up and unconscious on the other side of her. And the white women had taken Selyn somewhere. “I mean, why did they lock us up? What is this place?”
“It is a training ground, for Jedi,” Kreia responded, as cold as the polar wind.
“What, this ice hole?” Seriously? Well, it didn’t look military, that was for sure… and it didn’t look like anything else familiar, so… she could be right. It certainly wasn’t an irrigation center or whatever it was supposed to be in official records.
“Yes, it bears the semblance of an academy… but where are the students? Curious.” Well, yeah. Wait, so the white women weren’t students?
He snorted. “You’ve gotta be joking. What’s a Jedi Academy doing way out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“It is a place hidden from the galaxy, like the academy on Dantooine. But this place… oh, Atris… you have been clever.”
The familiar way she said that… “Atris?”
“It’s none of your concern.”
Fine. He didn’t care anyway. He had bigger things to worry about. “Well, the sooner we’re outta here, the better. Two crazy Jedi are more than enough for me. No one told me we were going to be dumped in a nest of ’em.”
Kreia slowly turned her hooded gaze to him and he began to sweat. “And what is it about this place that causes you such fear?”
He panicked under that unseen stare. “What do you mean? We’re in the middle of a bunch of Jedi. You know how they are.” Sithspawn. That was his foot squarely in his mouth. Even Selyn would have known he was lying.
“No, I do not… not in the way you seem to.” Her voice trailed off.
And he felt something – someone – a feeling he’d hoped never to feel again, working in from the outside, though his thoughts, through his feelings – Sithspawn! – two and five is seven, plus three is ten, minus- “What… what are you doing!? Get out of my head!” He clutched at his head as if he could physically block her creepy old-lady mind-tendrils from probing his brain, but it was too late to shield anything, and in his shaken state, he didn’t have the presence of mind, the willpower, to shut her out, not when she was already in.
“Stop struggling…” she said, her voice almost mystical in its detachment, in her concentration. “Let me follow the current, deep… deeper… to its source.”
No! She was almost – his memories were flickering, at her whim, to the front of his brain, physical pain boiling up to match the mental pain. “Stop! St- ahhh!”
“Ah, with the fear… is mingled guilt… it squirms in you like a worm.” He hardly heard her contemptuous voice over the humiliation tunneling his vision. “And the why… ah, and there is its heart.” He could hardly breathe, his throat closing off. He felt lightheaded.
She chuckled mirthlessly, the laugh of someone who had all the power and knew exactly what they’re going to do with it. “You surprise me. I could not feel it before… your feelings are a powerful shield, indeed.” Her voice became mockingly comforting. “Do not worry, ‘Atton’. If she is a Jedi, she will forgive. And if she is not, she will not care.”
Oh, she’d care. She’d care, all right. And she was kind, but to just assume her forgiveness extended that far… “You can’t tell her,” he… he begged, still drowning in images from the past, horrific twisted things he’d carefully buried when he changed his name. “Please- I’m asking you. I don’t want her to…”
“Think less of you? I hardly think that’s possible.” Now she was just trying to jab him – and it worked, to his chagrin. “Still, there is no shame in what you ask. We all wage war with the past. And it leaves its scars. I will not speak of yours, Atton, but there is a price for such things.”
His voice rose incredulously. “What? What price?”
Kreia’s thin voice felt like a knife in the ribs. “There are those who wage war, and those who follow them. You are a crude thing, murderer, but you have your uses.” As if he were no more than a tool. He wondered if Selyn knew this side of the old woman. Somehow he didn’t think so. “You know how important this woman we travel with is – even one such as you can feel it. You will serve her… until I release you.”
He considered, then straightened up and glared at her. “And if I refuse?”
“You will not,” Kreia said with final certainty. “If you do, then my silence will be broken. And then you, Atton, will be broken. You fear the Jedi, and rightly so. If Atris learns of your… choices, you will never leave this place. But whatever fear you hold of the Jedi, know that if you disobey me, that my punishment will make you beg for the death that has long hounded you.” Well, damn. She wasn’t lying, and the mind-sifting he’d just been through backed that up completely. Her thin lips smiled mockingly. “Wipe the fear from your mind. You will not find blind obedience a difficult Master… you chose it once. You will learn to embrace it again.”
He scowled in her general direction. “I don’t know how you became such a manipulative witch, but why a vicious old scow like you would even bother with me is a bigger mystery.”
“No game of dejarik can be won without pawns… and this may prove to be a very long game. You are a slippery one, your thoughts difficult for even one such as I to read. I suspect the self-loathing that squirms within you gives you a curious strength. Your spirit, as diseased as it is, refuses to allow you to give up, no matter what threats you face… and whatever wreckage you leave behind you.” His face burned, but his core felt cold as vacuum. It was true, all of it. He would fight tooth and nail to survive, screw anyone who got in his way… and he hated himself for it. His life was a self-perpetuating cycle of ruthlessness and cowardice that meant he’d be atoning for it well into the afterlife. At least… at least he didn’t enjoy it anymore, right? That had to be a step forward, right?
He’d have to hide all this carefully, so carefully from Selyn. No hints, better lying, and most importantly, to get away as soon as he could. She hadn’t probed his brain yet… but she would, sooner or later. If she was a Jedi like everyone except her claimed, she would do it. Which was too bad. He kind of liked her. That is, she talked to him mostly like a normal person, even if she was annoyingly placid and still so dedicated to Jedi ways it was painful to see. But she didn’t treat him like scum, or a creep, or a one-night stand – although that wouldn’t be so bad – wait, yes it would. But she took him seriously. It’d been a long time since anyone did that.
It would be really nice if she proved the exception and didn’t try to read his mind before he managed to get away from this craziness. That she’d… remember him as a decent sentient being, not the… monster… from his past… Why did he even care? Would she hunt him down? He honestly couldn’t say, at this point.
Kreia was still talking for some reason. “I feel you have crossed our path for a reason… perhaps even you, at the right moment, may be able to turn aside disaster. If so, your potential is not yet spent.”
He couldn’t see any way out. “Fine. I’ll be your pawn. But I still think you’ve got the wrong man.”
“Perhaps. But someone has to fly the ship.” Was… was that almost a joke? Or – no, she was back on the tool thing. “And the Force is a hard thing to predict. You have crossed our path for a reason. Our path brought us here for a reason… and now I know why. The past is here, and it must be met before the future can be set in motion.”
“More Jedi speak,” he muttered. “Care to explain?”
“No – I have wasted enough time with you. Sleep, murderer – and be silent. I need no distractions.” He felt his eyes closing and a great weight on his mind, and he tumbled to the floor.
Selyn was brought into a grey, cold, empty room shaped in imitation of the Council chamber on Coruscant. The centre was dimly lit, the illumination barely reaching to the edges of the vast chamber. Ahead, a long walkway stretched up and across an abyss to a great door; the door opened, revealing a gleam of red light, and a figure in plain white stepped through.
Selyn’s hackles went up in anticipatory defensiveness and she forced herself to calm. Atris ever was the most abrasive of all the Masters, and she had been present, glowering, at Selyn’s trial.
“I did not expect to see you again after the day of your sentencing. I thought you had taken the exile’s path, wandering the galaxy. Yet you have returned – why?”
Selyn’s voice remained quiet. “It was not my intention to come here, Atris – or to see you again.”
“Yet here you are,” Atris said tartly. “Perhaps you do not know yourself as well as you think. Regardless, your arrival here begs an explanation. Have you come to face the judgement of the Council, as you did so many years ago? Are you finally willing to admit we were right to cast you out?”
Atris was about black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. It wasn’t so simple for Selyn. When the Mandalorian Wars started, there was only one choice that made sense for her – to fight, to defend, to protect. With hindsight, she had no idea if it had been the right thing to do or not. No way to know how to learn from the past, except to try to make amends for the suffering she had caused, by helping everyone she could and trying not to break everything she touched. The second part was much harder when she wasn’t shunning civilization.
One thing the Council had gotten right. She was no Jedi any longer. But she wasn’t going to let Atris have the satisfaction of knowing that, not with the arrogant way she asked. “I’m not here to debate the Council’s decision.”
Atris took her answer naturally as submission. “Indeed? Very well. Your exile has given you some wisdom, at least. I will never forget that day. Your words, your defiance… when you stabbed your lightsaber into the stone.”
Selyn frowned. Was Atris trying to goad her? To prove herself right? “I am already defined too much by my past. I will not be defined by my long-gone lightsaber.”
“Your legacy is already defined by it.” Swiftly, she drew a lightsaber from her belt and ignited it. Silver blazed, like sunlight shining through water in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. And the design of the hilt…
“Why? Why would you keep it?”
“So I would never forget. I have always kept it, as a reminder of what can happen when your passions dictate your actions. I have kept it, so I would never forget your arrogance or your insult to the Order.”
“Atris…” There was something buried deep there, something Selyn had no wish to touch. Atris had always been critical of everyone and everything, holding everyone to impossible standards, but this bitterness was not that. This was something personal, and whether it was directed at Selyn, for unintentionally betraying Atris, or at Atris herself, for… whatever reason, Selyn could not tell and dared not probe deeper. “I did not come here for that.”
“So, then, answer me – how did you find this place? And why have you returned after all this time?”
“Tell me what you’ve done with my friends, first.”
“Your concern has been noted… your friends have not been harmed. They have been detained for their safety.” Atris tilted her head, looked at her suspiciously. “I find it… unusual… that you are traveling with others again. I thought you had forsaken the company of others after the war. Or is that why you are here?”
“I’m looking for my ship so I can leave Telos.”
“Your ship… Ah – the Ebon Hawk? It is not your ship. Unless you are admitting to the destruction of the Peragus mining facility.”
“The destruction of Peragus was an accident.”
“Ah… an accident,” Atris said sarcastically, and Selyn hid the prick of anger that flashed through her. “Something beyond your control. You have not changed. Acting instead of thinking. Putting yourself before the galaxy, before the Jedi. Do you know what you have done?”
“I know I put Telos in jeopardy, but I had no choice.”
“No, your crime is much more than that. Without the fuel from Peragus, Citadel Station cannot maintain its orbit. It will crash into the planet, and its destruction will echo across twenty other worlds.”
“What do you mean?”
“Telos was a test, to see if the Republic could mount a restoration effort on the Outer Rim. When it fails, the Republic will not finance another. The other Rim worlds devestated by the Sith will remain graveyard worlds, devoid of life. And that is the magnitude of your crime.”
That… made her feel worse. But it still wasn’t entirely her fault. She didn’t want to destroy anything. “But the Sith attacked me on Peragus – the battle destroyed the colony.”
Atris paused in her ranting and looked at her cautiously with narrowed eyes. “The Sith? What do you mean?”
“The Sith came for me on Peragus, to kill me.”
“You speak truly… you have encountered the Sith. I can feel the scars on you. And you encountered them on Peragus? But what would they want there? They can’t have been looking for you.”
“The Sith believe me to be the last Jedi.”
“You?” Atris scoffed. “If they believe you a Jedi, the teachings of the Sith blind them, indeed. I am the last Jedi, not you. You betrayed our teachings, our beliefs… the very core of the Jedi Order. If these Sith attacked you, they will soon realize their mistake. And if you escaped… they most likely let you go, to see if you would lead them here.”
“They’re stronger than you think,” Selyn tried to warn her. “At least one Sith Lord stands with them… and they fight differently from the Sith from the Jedi Civil War.”
“Whatever force they can bring to bear, it will matter not – if they face a true Jedi, they shall fall.”
An old blindness she had seen before and tried to reject, and the fact that Atris still believed in it to the hilt brought out her rare sarcasm. “Your grasp of tactics is… questionable.”
Atris dismissed her comment. “We shall see… for now, the perspective on your situation has changed. I have ‘your’ ship. I will return it to you. You must leave here, before you place us in jeopardy.”
“Wait – is there anything I can do to help?”
“You offer your aid? After turning your back on me – on the Council? The Jedi is not something you embrace out of fear. The commitment is stronger than that, something you never seemed to understand.”
Selyn did not lower her head. “I am not doing this out of fear. I want to help.”
“Perhaps… but if you help me, it cannot be done from here. There are others in the galaxy who may help us against a Sith threat. If you can find them, gain their trust, perhaps our defences will be stronger for it. Take your ship, seek them out. If you find them, encourage them to gather on Dantooine – from there, we can call a Council and see what can be done.”
“If there is anyone who can aid us, I will find them.”
“Then I shall send you on your way… Now it is time for you to depart.”
The white-clad handmaidens came up beside her. “We shall remove her, mistress. Come with us.”
Bao-Dur was finally waking up when she found them, groaning but otherwise intact. Kreia looked inscrutable, and Atton was also waking up from a nap, it seemed. He was paler than usual, and he did not smile as he looked at her. She felt vague disappointment, and worry. It seemed… unlike him. Not that he always smiled when he saw her, but he obviously did not share the same relief about seeing her that she felt about seeing him.
She gathered them all, discovered T-3, and led them to the Ebon Hawk. Atton grumbled at the controls, but as far as she could tell, they seemed untampered with, and he put the ship into space and into an orbit around one of the other planets in the system, where they wouldn’t be disturbed.
All of her companions gathered in the main hold, around the main computer projector. “Well, now that we’re off that dejarik board of a planet, I say we burn sky until we see lines,” Atton said.
T-3 squealed.
Selyn knelt beside him. “What is it, T-3?”
The droid beeped rapidly. “Slow down – I didn’t catch that first part.” Warbling. “The link worked both ways?” Behind her, she heard Atton sigh impatiently. T-3 continued blooping melodiously.
“What is the machine saying?” Kreia asked.
“…There is a holo-record of the day I was exiled,” Selyn said slowly. T-3 beeped triumphantly and plugged his jack into the projector. She made a move as if to stop him, then stilled herself. Those memories were for her alone, not Atton and Bao-Dur. On the other hand… what could it hurt for them to know? They probably didn’t even care.
The holo-record began to play in monochromatic blue, a half-dozen security feeds from the Council chamber on Coruscant. She thought a decade would have insulated her from this moment, but it still felt a little like a punch in the chest to see the Masters she had known so well, seated to judge her: Vrook, Zez Kai-Ell, Vash, Atris, and… Kavar.
“Do you know why we have called you here?” Master Vrook asked her.
She felt hollow inside. Numb. She had felt so ever since that last battle. She kept her face as impassive as she could. She was no fool. “You called me here to answer for my crimes on Malachor V,” she said quietly. She would have done so if she was in their shoes, certainly.
“As Revan summoned you, so you have come full circle to return to the Jedi,” Kavar said, and her emotionless stare almost broke as she looked at him.
“Why did you defy us?” Master Kai-Ell asked. “The Jedi are the guardians of peace, and have been for centuries. This call to war undermines all that we have worked for.”
“Is Revan your master now?” Atris asked bitterly. “Or is it the horror you wrought at Malachor that has caused you to see the truth at last?”
They might sense the hollowness in her, but she knew why she had done it. “The truth… the truth is the Mandalorians had to be stopped, or countless more would have died.” How do you bring peace with a people who only wish war? How do you protect the helpless against them, save with the strength of your will and the blood of your own body?
They’d heard all these arguments before. “You refuse to hear us,” Master Kai-Ell said. “You have shut us out, and so have shut yourself to the galaxy.”
“We feel your true understanding of what happened at Malachor V will only come in time,” Master Kavar said. “And it cannot happen here, near the battlegrounds where you fought.”
“You are exiled, and you are a Jedi no longer,” Master Vash said, surprisingly gently.
“There is one last thing,” Master Vrook said. “Your lightsaber. Surrender it to us.”
She had expected it. What else would they have done? It was not the Jedi way to imprison. But… she had thought maybe… healing might have been had, that some punishment, no matter how heavy, might have been given to her that did not involve sending her away…
Her control slipped. She took her lightsaber in her hand, ignited the silver blade, and plunged it in frustration and grief into the stone in the centre of the Council chamber.
She turned and walked away, and all were silent.
The door closed behind her holographic figure. Selyn was about to shut the recording off when Kavar spoke. “Much defiance in her still.”
“You were correct, Kavar,” said Kai-Ell. “When she was here, I felt it. It was as if she was not there, more like an echo of her.”
“Revan’s influence has grown among the youngest of the Order – she speaks to their passions, not their sense. The war has touched them. Many have found themselves in the war against the Mandalorians.”
“It is as I feared,” Master Vash said. “And I fear we have played into the hands of the enemy.”
“We have not lost a Jedi this day,” Atris declared. “You felt it, she has lost herself. She is no Jedi… She walked Revan’s path… but she was not strong enough.”
“I fear it is our teachings that may have led Revan to choose the path she did,” Kai-Ell said.
Atris gave him a sharp look. “We are not the ones who taught her.”
“We take responsibility, Atris, not cast blame,” Vash soothed.
“The choice of one was the choice of us all,” Kavar said. “Revan’s teacher intended no harm. And Revan has had many teachers since.”
“Yet they all stem from the same source,” Atris said. “Her teachings violated the Jedi Code and lead all who listen to the Dark Side, as they did Selyn.”
“You are wrong,” Vash said. “The Dark Side is not what I sensed in Selyn. Surely the rest of you felt it as well. That emptiness we felt… she has changed.”
“Whatever that… wound was, it was of the Dark Side,” Atris said stubbornly. “We should not have let her depart. She will simply join Revan again, or perhaps worse.”
“What would you have done with her, Atris?” Kai-Ell said, voice deep and resigned. “Be mindful of your feelings. This is not Revan who stood before you. This one walks a different path.”
“No,” Kavar said, “although that may come in time. We let her go because we must. Where she travels, she carries her destination with her.” What did that mean? Was it related to the fact that she had no real destination in mind when she left the Council?
“Malachor V should have been her grave,” Atris said, voice shaking. “You saw it in her walk, and in the Force. It was as if she were already dead.”
You may be right for once, Atris, Selyn said to herself.
“No, not death,” Kai-Ell said. “Many battles remain for that one, if what we have seen is true. But the future is a shifting thing, and Selyn Tekeri cuts like a blade through it.”
“We should have told her the truth,” Vash said. “A Jedi deserves to know.”
“No good would have come from it, even if what you believed is true,” Vrook said. “There is still the matter of Revan, and such truths could leave us vulnerable on two fronts.”
“Perhaps, in many years, we will call her before us and explain what happened to her, and how she may be healed. Until then, she must accept her journey,” Kavar said.
“But she may never discover the truth,” Vash said. “And she will never know why we cast her out.”
“Then that is the future we must accept,” Vrook said, and the Masters rose to depart.
The recording shut off on its own.
Selyn leaned against the projector, swallowing hard.
“Those Jedi sure like their secrets, don’t they?” Atton asked, his tone somewhere between levity and bitterness. T-3 moaned softly.
“That last part… I had no idea,” she said almost in a whisper.
T-3 beeped interrogatively.
She looked down at the little droid. “I know it could take a while, T-3, but keep searching those archives. See if there’s anything else useful in there.” The droid burbled. “A list of the missing Jedi? That’s exactly what we need.” She straightened up, business-like.
A list of names and faces appeared through the projector. Vrook was last seen on Dantooine. Zez Kai-Ell, on Narr Shaddaa. Kavar, on Onderon- Onderon? Vash was apparently headed to Korriban, and Selyn felt a shiver run down her back at the name of that cursed planet. And Atris was on Telos, but that, she already knew.
“Those are all the Masters from the recording,” Bao-Dur said. “A strange coincidence.”
“It is no coincidence,” Kreia said. “There is some larger plan at work here. And we are walking into it. This is too convenient to be anything but a trap.”
Selyn considered. It was absolutely true. But Atris had not been good at plots, and while gaining Selyn’s help had been blunt enough, there was something subtle at work that did not seem like her. But… “We don’t have much of a choice. We need their help against the Sith.”