“So who’s that leave, then? You, me, and this half-sized bucket of bolts?”
Canderous gave T3 a playful kick with one of his heavy boots. The droid beeped angrily in response.
“Don’t forget Bastila,” Revan added.
“I thought you wanted to leave the Jedi out of this.”
“She’s my wife,” Revan answered. “I’m not going to abandon her.”
“Hey, it’s your call,” Canderous said, holding his hands up defensively. “She’s welcome to come along. I mean, if you really think you can convince her that heading to the Outer Rim to explore Rekkiad’s frozen wastelands is a good idea.”
“Well,” Revan said with a shrug, “we never did go on a honeymoon.”
BASTILA WAS SITTING in the living room when he got home, watching holovids while she waited for him to return. Revan wondered if she’d been waiting long.
He hadn’t told her where he was going, and he hadn’t told her about sending Canderous off to investigate the Mandalorians—he just hadn’t seen any point in worrying her if there was nothing she could do to help. Now that they had a plan, however, he was eager to share it with her. He just had to be careful how he explained it all.
“Sorry,” he said as he crossed the room and bent down to give her a kiss. “I didn’t know I’d be so late. You shouldn’t have waited up.”
“That’s okay,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him down onto the couch beside her. “I couldn’t sleep.”
Still holding his hand, she turned to face him. “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said.
“Me, too. Big news.”
“I bet mine is bigger,” she said with a faint smile.
“That’s a bet you’d lose,” he warned her.
“I’m pregnant.”
Revan was stunned into silence for several long seconds. When he finally managed to speak, all he could say was, “Okay, you win.”
REVAN COULDN’T BELIEVE he hadn’t noticed Bastila’s pregnancy earlier. Though there were no visible physical signs of her condition, it should have been obvious. The instant she’d told him, he’d clearly sensed the life growing inside her through the Force.
“I must be getting senile in my old age,” he said, caressing her still-flat belly.
“You’ve had a lot on your mind,” Bastila reminded him. “And you haven’t been sleeping much.”
It was still too early to tell if it was a boy or a girl, but it didn’t matter to Revan either way. He and Bastila were going to have a child; it was the happiest day of his life. There was just one small problem.
“Talk about bad timing,” Bastila murmured, echoing his own sentiments.
Once he’d gotten over the joyful shock of her news, he’d told her about his meeting with Canderous.
“I have to do this,” he said softly. “It’s the only way I’m ever going to find out what that vision actually means.”
“What if you don’t find out?” Bastila countered. “Your nightmares are fading. Maybe in a few months they’ll stop.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, though he didn’t believe it. “But I think these are more than just old memories bubbling up. They’re a warning. Even if the visions stop, the threat they represent would still be out there.”
“Haven’t you done enough already?” Bastila asked, her voice rising slightly. “You saved the Republic from the Mandalorians. You saved the Republic from Malak. And in return, you had your identity destroyed and were ostracized by the Council.”
She pulled away from him, her anger building. “You don’t owe them anything anymore,” she insisted. “You’ve paid for your mistakes. You’ve sacrificed enough. You’ve earned the right to live out your days in peace!”
“If I don’t do something, nobody else will,” he said, shaking his head.
“So what? So nobody does anything. Whatever evil’s lurking in the Unknown Regions might not show itself for decades! We could both be old and gray by then. We have a chance to live out our entire lives in perfect happiness. Are you willing to risk throwing all that away?”
It was tempting to give in. It would be easy to pretend nothing was wrong and just live in blissful ignorance like trillions of other beings in the galaxy. There was only one problem with her argument.
“I’m not doing this for the Republic,” he explained. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m not even doing it for me. I’m doing it for our child. And our child’s children. We might never live to see the horrors that are coming, but they will.” He tightened his arm around her. “We have to protect the Republic for them. We have to risk our chance at happiness so they can have a life we might never know.”
Bastila didn’t answer. Instead she leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder, and he knew she felt the same way.
“When do we leave?” she asked after a long moment of silence.
“You can’t come with me,” Revan objected gently. “What if I find something on Rekkiad? Some clue connected to my past? What if it leads me farther into the Outer Rim? Or even the Unknown Regions? We could be gone for months. Maybe longer. Do you really want to give birth on some uninhabited world on the edges of the galaxy? And then what will we do? How are we going to care for an infant under those conditions? I won’t risk the life of our child like that. And I know you won’t, either.”
Bastila reached two fingers up and pressed them gently against Revan’s lips. “If I say you’re right,” she whispered, “will you please shut up?”
He nodded silently.
“Because I can think of better things to do on the last night before you leave than talking.”
Revan couldn’t have agreed with her more.
BASTILA ACCOMPANIED REVAN and T3 to the spaceport. Canderous was already there, loading supplies onto the Ebon Hawk.
The Ebon Hawk had served Revan well during his hunt for Darth Malak. Owned by a succession of smugglers and pirates, it was one of the fastest ships in the galaxy. It had enough room to comfortably accommodate a crew of eight—with cargo and supplies—yet a single individual could pilot it when necessary.
Technically speaking, the Ebon Hawk still belonged to Davik Kang, a Tarisian crime lord. But Davik wouldn’t be coming to reclaim it: he was long dead, his body buried beneath the ruins of Taris when Malak bombed the city-world from orbit.
“Be careful out there,” Bastila said.
“I always am,” he answered with a smile, wiping a single tear from the corner of her eye.
They didn’t need to say anything else; they’d said their true goodbyes in private the previous night. Bastila’s years of Jedi training had left her uncomfortable with public displays of emotion, but she stood up on her toes and planted a long, hard kiss on Revan’s lips. Then she turned away and quickly left the spaceport.
Canderous raised a curious eyebrow but showed enough restraint not to ask why she wasn’t coming.
They finished loading the ship in silence. Twenty minutes later the Ebon Hawk took flight.
CHAPTER EIGHT
BOSTHIRDA’S ORANGE SUN WAS SETTING QUICKLY.
Scourge, crouched in the shadows of a cramped alley in the warehouse district on the outskirts of Jerunga, the planetary capital, watched it disappear. As darkness fell, the photosensitive streetlamps kicked in, casting the entire district in a pale yellow glow.
The dim artificial illumination was enough to give Scourge a clear view of the two-story building across the street. From the outside, there was no way to tell that the structure was the separatists’ base. There were no autoguns on the roof; no guards patrolled the perimeter. The loading bay doors were ordinary durasteel, rather than the reinforced kind used to construct blast doors. The windows were blacked out, and several security cams panned back and forth, surveying the street, but neither was unusual for buildings in this district.
Instead of military fortifications that might draw unwanted attention, the separatists relied on anonymity and secrecy to protect them. They would be unprepared for the
wrath about to rain down upon them.
His comlink beeped softly, followed by Murtog’s whispered voice. “Team is in position.”
“Hold until my signal,” Scourge replied. “Give me time to take out those cams.”
“Could be droids in there,” Sechel chimed in. “You sure you don’t want Murtog’s team to go in first and clear the way?”
Scourge gritted his teeth. Did Sechel know about Scourge’s difficulties in taking down the droids at the UDM plant? Were his words a way of saying, I know your secrets; I know your weaknesses?
On the other hand, if Sechel was just making a joke based on what had happened on their last mission, then Scourge’s paranoid over-analysis meant that the slimy little sycophant had gotten to him.
Neither option sat well with the Sith Lord, particularly since he still wasn’t sure whether Sechel was trying to get him killed.
“Remember the plan,” Scourge snapped. “The two of you stay back until I give the all-clear. We can’t risk a stray blaster bolt taking out our Lord’s favorite adviser; leave the dirty work to me and your team.”
“Understood,” Murtog agreed.
Keeping Murtog out of the battle wasn’t the best tactical choice, but it was worth it to keep Sechel away from the action. Scourge didn’t need to be looking over his shoulder while he was fighting the separatists. Plus, Murtog would be at a safe distance, as well—just in case he turned out to be a co-conspirator.
“I’ll send the signal once I poke out their eyes,” Scourge said, rising to his feet.
Careful to stay in the shadows, Scourge crossed the street to the building adjacent to the base and crept around the back. There he located the utility ladder running up the side of the building and climbed to the rooftop, from which he could look down on the roof of the separatist base. The gap between the buildings was substantial: nearly ten meters. Scourge measured the distance, took a dozen steps back, then ran to the edge and leapt over the precipice.
He pulled his knees up and tucked into a forward roll as he landed, then sprang to his feet, lightsaber drawn and ready. There were four cams on the roof, mounted on poles at each corner. In rapid succession he reached out with the Force and snapped them off one by one, sending them tumbling from their perches to shatter on the street below.
“Target is blind. Move in,” he said into his comlink.
In the street below, small squads of Murtog’s soldiers were approaching the building. Scourge waited while they launched their first volley of flash and stun grenades, followed by a round of suppressing fire as the soldiers took cover positions near the door. From inside came the sound of blaster carbines as the separatists returned fire.
Moving quickly but calmly, Scourge crossed the rooftop to the hatch built into the center. A few seconds later it swung open and a pair of separatists emerged—snipers coming to the roof to take a position on the attackers below.
Scourge hacked down the first with his lightsaber, then grabbed the second by the scruff of his collar and yanked him off his feet. The young human looked at him with abject horror, his panic so great that he never even thought to raise his weapon.
The Sith Lord fed on the man’s fear, savoring it as the heat of the dark side rushed through him. Effortlessly toting the sniper along, he took three quick steps toward the rooftop’s edge, then hurled the man over. The sniper’s terrified scream was cut short a second later by his fatal impact with the ground below.
Scourge turned and raced back to the open hatch. He could hear frenzied shouts and blasterfire. An instant later an explosion rocked the entire building, followed by several seconds of silence. Another round of blasterfire and shouting confirmed that Murtog’s team had breached the entrance.
Scourge leapt through the hatch leading into the warehouse’s upper floor. There were no interior walls; it consisted of a single massive room. In the far corner a staircase led down to the lower level. A row of mattresses ran along one wall, but the primary purpose of the space seemed to be storage. Crates and footlockers were scattered about, along with a haphazard collection of armor, weapons, and other military equipment. A computer terminal had been set up near the mattresses, along with four blank monitors that would once have shown the images from the security cams on the roof.
Scourge registered all this without conscious thought; his primary focus was on the twenty-odd humans struggling into their combat gear to join the battle downstairs. Unfortunately for them, that was never going to happen.
Like a red wind, Scourge swept through their ranks, slashing left and right, hewing off limbs and decapitating bodies. Violent bursts of the Force picked his victims up and tossed them around like rag dolls, breaking bones and shattering skulls.
The separatists offered virtually no resistance. They had been caught off guard; they hadn’t expected an ambush from the roof. These were not soldiers. They were ordinary men and women who had received only the most basic training when they’d joined the cause. Scourge’s savage and sudden assault, and the bloody carnage he left in his wake, sent them into a panic. He fed on their primal fears. Some he killed, others he left mortally wounded and writhing on the floor, their lives enduring for thirty or forty agonizing seconds while their high-pitched cries of pain fueled his bloodlust.
Had the separatists coordinated their efforts into a focused and organized counterattack they might have been able to challenge him. But they just scattered, running for their lives. Scourge drank in their terror and confusion, and felt the growing power of the dark side. He channeled that power and refocused it, sending it out in waves that rippled across the room, further inciting the panicked retreat of his enemies.
When two women managed to resist the onslaught of fear and fight back, he was on them in an instant, cutting them down with a few quick slashes of his lightsaber. Everyone else was running. Some fled downstairs. Scourge let them go; they wouldn’t get past Murtog’s team. Others tried to hide, cowering behind crates and footlockers. But Scourge didn’t need to see them to hunt them down. He could sense them through the Force, trembling and sobbing silently, their minds numb with shock, and he stalked them one by one, breathing hard not with exertion but excitement.
It was over in minutes. Only then, standing alone amid the bodies, did Scourge notice that the sounds of battle from below had ended.
Moving quickly, he crossed the room and descended the staircase. The floor below was similar to the one above: except for a row of offices built along the east side of the building, there were no interior walls; the floor was stacked with crates and piled with supplies. Bodies were scattered everywhere. Most were separatists, but Scourge noticed three or four wearing Nyriss’s colors. The rest of Murtog’s team were methodically searching the dead, looking for survivors to interrogate.
Scourge shook his head, knowing it was a waste of time. The greatest fear of any separatist organization was betrayal from within. Only the two or three top people would know anything useful, and they would never have allowed themselves to be taken alive.
Confident that the building was secure, he deactivated his lightsaber and clipped it onto his belt. Then he activated the comlink on his wrist.
“All clear, Murtog. Get Sechel in here.”
“We’re already inside,” Murtog’s voice came back to him. “Found their control center in some offices at the back.”
Scourge had to clench his teeth to keep from screaming with rage. He had given specific orders, and Murtog and Sechel had willfully disobeyed them.
He made his way toward the offices with long, purposeful strides. As he approached, his anger gave way to suspicion. There had to be a reason they had defied him. Were they simply undercutting his authority, or was it something more sinister. Were they setting some kind of trap?
As he drew near the offices, he saw both Sechel and Murtog huddled at a comm terminal. Surprisingly, there were no other members of Murtog’s team nearby. Scourge approached cautiously, probing with the Force to see if he could detect any im
mediate threat.
Neither turned as he approached; their attention was focused entirely on the comm.
“Are there any others?” Murtog was asking.
“Not that I can find,” Sechel replied. “But I might be able to—”
“I gave you two an order!” Scourge barked as he came up behind them.
They both turned to face him. Murtog’s lips were pressed tightly together, and he seemed to have gone pale. But Sechel seemed more amused than scared.
“After you were gone I realized a flaw in your plan,” he said with an ingratiating smile. “If the separatists had anything incriminating here in the base, they’d probably try to destroy it before we could get our hands on it. I told Murtog I might be able to salvage something if he could get me inside. But the longer we waited, the less chance we’d have to recover anything useful.”
Scourge didn’t say anything, his eyes fixed on Sechel with a piercing glare.
“We would have tried to contact you, but you’d already started the mission. We didn’t want to distract you.”
“Do you take me for a fool?” Scourge asked softly, his hand casually falling to the hilt of his lightsaber.
Sechel’s smile faded, and Scourge caught a hint of fear in his eyes.
“I don’t normally disobey orders,” Murtog said, jumping in to try to defuse the situation. “But in this case Sechel was right. Once the separatists knew the battle was lost, they ran a cleaner program on their computers to erase all their datafiles. If we’d waited for your signal, everything would have been lost.”
Scourge let the hand drop from his weapon. Now was not the time to settle this. But it was one more thing Sechel would answer for once he finally got a chance to speak with him alone.
“What did you find?”
“A recording of a recent communication,” Sechel answered, pressing a button on the terminal.
A ghostly blue, three-dimensional image crackled into being, hovering a few centimeters above the holocomm. The frozen image was slightly under a meter in height, a perfect miniature of the speaker.