| abstract
| - Darth Sion was a shattered shell of a living being, at least physically. Held together by the dark side of the Force and the sheer strength of his own will, his skin, and indeed every bone in his body was a mass of splinters caused by injuries far too numerous to recall. The result was constant agony, and the Dark Lord of the Sith drew upon that agony to feed his emotions, which in turn fed his control over the Force according to his creed. As a Dark Lord, his power was enormous, and his will was challenged by none that still lived. Save for one. It was the last of the Jedi that Sion sought, why he had taken over this useless hulk of technology, why he and his assassins had slaughtered mercilessly all who had been aboard her. The woman he sought, the exile, had been whisked away, right from under his nose, and this had infuriated him far more then simply losing her. But the Sith Lord was still determined to bring this last Knight of the Order to him, to see the woman beg at his knees for the death she so long deserved. It was this passion, this furious desire, fueled by the dark side, which had allowed him insight into where his prey had gone. So it was that, kneeling in meditation on the ruined warship’s bridge, Darth Sion felt the nearing presence of his adversary. As the ship docked with the Peragus mining facility, his eyes opened, and his face was contorted into a stare that bore witness to the kind of extreme hunger that no physical thing could ever hope to satisfy. Soon, he would triumph. Sealed in her environmental suit as she stood upon the surface of Peragus, Vima Sunrider had a front-row seat to the Harbinger's arrival. The Hammerhead-class cruiser winked into existence among the rocks with a flicker of false motion as she dropped out of hyperspace, and began to make her way to the docking facility. The exile watched the procedure in silence; as a nearby fuel pipe extended to meet the vessel’s engine compartment, she began to get an idea. All she had to do was to get back to the administration level, enter the Harbinger through the docking bay, make her way to the engine room, and enter the lower level of the fuel depot through the loading pipes, completely bypassing the energy barriers that had blocked off access to the hanger. Now all she had to do was get through the dormitories, because if the vents had been rerouted, the airlock from which she had come most certainly would have been sealed. Working as quickly as she could, Vima entered the far airlock and began to extract herself from the environmental suit. This part of the facility seemed to be just as deserted as the rest, and as she entered the next room, yet more hostile droids descended upon her. She took care of them quickly, and continued on, where she found the journal of a dead miner. The poor being had been trapped in that section by the fire suppression units, when they had gone active at the same time as the mining droids. The whole place was a mess; in the room beyond, the floor was covered in frozen carbonite, which also encased yet another miner. A pair of grenades, taken from the nearby storage room, took care of the turrets and Vima was able to progress deeper into the dormitory section. “This doesn’t make sense,” Vima muttered under her breath. “Why would someone take such great pains to kill everyone here?” As the exile progressed through the complex, battling droid after droid, she rapidly lost hope of finding anyone that still lived. When she reached the dorm rooms themselves, she could hear a hissing sound through the communications console just outside...that loathsome noise could herald only one thing: gas. A look at the camera controls confirmed this, and she shut down the ventilation systems which stopped the flow of the poison. After ending the lockdown, Vima began to explore the place. The floors were covered with the dead bodies of the miners that had managed to make it here, which included, unfortunately, the mine administrator, the dock officer, and the medical officer. Strangely enough, however, the Sullustan mine foreman had not been killed by the gas, but by blunt-force trauma to the back of his head. The logs that Vima was able to find told the story: the last explosion that had caused the lockdown that she had awakened to, combined with the sudden assault of the facility’s droids, had forced the surviving workers and officers to seek refuge in the dormitories, where they had been gassed. The administrator had suspected Coorta and his cronies, but Vima had a hunch that this wasn’t quite the case. The administrator’s log gave a partial code for the turbolifts, based on a military flash code that Vima was able to fill in. The foreman’s log garnered some more insight: apparently the maintenance officer was plotting with Coorta to sabotage the station...but when the foreman talked with the latter, he claimed that he had never spoken to Coorta. With nothing else to do there, Vima left the dormitories and made her way to the turbolift and back to the administration level, armed with the partial access code the mine administrator had spoken in his log. The mess hall held yet more droids, and Vima was nearly lanced up and down by a barrage of laser blasts as she attempted to take them out. This was getting tedious, and the exile was starting to become fatigued. Finally, she made it through, and was at the turbolift access terminal. Strangely, there was a trio of bodies here as well. One of them turned out to be the corpse of Coorta himself; his log, plugged into the console nearby, showed that he was attempting to work with the maintenance officer to smuggle Vima off of the station and into the Exchange’s custody. But there was something odd about the man’s voice, and his attitude. This was not the true maintenance officer, which was confirmed when the camera logs were accessed… “...almost didn’t make it out of the dormitory section before the lockdown, you murglak! You’re cutting it a little close, aren’t you?” “Yes, a regrettable miscalculation on my part,” the image of the maintenance officer responded in a deadpan monotone. “I am contacting you because I am picking up a subspace transmission from within that area. Is that your doing?” “No, they...they must be using the old relay system to try and send an emergency signal,” Coorta replied breathlessly. “I doubt they really know what’s going on…” “Hey Coorta, this turbolift’s locked down...” one of the co-conspirators stated anxiously. “Enter the code again, and don’t worry about the miners and their transmission,” Coorta said confidently. “By the time help arrives, we’ll be all the way to Nar Shaddaa…” “Oh, they won’t be leaving the dormitories,” the maintenance officer continued, still in that dull monotone. “The explosion in the tunnels has damaged the ventilation system, causing breaches in the core exhaust conduits...” “What?!” Coorta exclaimed. “That’s going to kill them all!” “Not all of them,” the officer replied, unfazed. “But I am sending a number of droids to your location to correct that problem…” “Coorta, the terminal’s locked down,” the miner said fearfully. “The sequence isn’t working!” “Keep trying it!” Coorta yelled. “You…why are you doing this? Why me?!?” “You?” the hologram asked. “It was never about you – the Jedi is all that interests me. But then you had to ruin everything by revealing her identity, and then trying to harm her. And that, I cannot allow…” The officer’s voice changed then; it became more artificial...more cruel...more hunter-killer. “Statement: You are a risk, Coorta. You are crude...impulsive...and soon, deceased.” The camera feed continued as a number of mining droids burst into the compartment, and gunned down the images of the trio of miners, whose corpses now adorned the floor of the room. “Coorta? Coorta, are you dead yet?” the voice of the HK unit in the fuel depot asked mockingly. “I believe that I forgot to mention that I reversed the turbolift codes, in case you managed to get this far…” it finished smugly. With a disgusted look on her face, Vima turned back to the console, and entered the access code that she had obtained in reverse. The door opened, and she entered, taking the lift back to the administration section, where Kreia awaited her. “I have felt a disturbance,” she said in a low voice. “Our enemy is here, and we must leave at once…” “Then let’s go,” Vima replied simply. “We need to make our way to the docking area on this level,” Kreia said urgently as the two began to jog down the corridor. “I fear the airlock has already been opened, and if so, we must be on our guard. We must recover the Ebon Hawk, but if we cannot, then perhaps that ship holds a means of escape.” With Kreia following her, Vima made her way back to where Atton was in the communications blister. “What in space is going on?” Atton exclaimed indignantly when Vima and Kreia met him. “Who’s this, another Jedi? What, did you guys suddenly start breeding while I wasn’t looking?” “There’s no time to explain Atton,” Vima prodded. “We’ve got to get out of here...” “Um, okay,” Atton replied simply. “I’m guessing that Republic ship that just docked isn’t carrying friends of yours.” “I hope your talent for understatement is offset by your skill with a blaster,” Kreia said, somewhat snobbishly. “If not, then I fear our time together will be very short indeed.” “Yeah, and I’m also good at running and drinking, your majesty,” Atton shot back. “And even if you two aren’t big friends of the Republic, that warship’s the only way off this station.” “We should go,” Vima prompted. “Yep, it’s a good thing we’ve got a clear run over there—" Atton began as the trio made their way to the docking port. He was interrupted mid-stride by the appearance of a familiar-looking, tall metallic bipedal android. HK-50 had tracked Vima down. “Threat: Master, perhaps I did not enunciate clearly enough last time we spoke. I suggested that you should shut down, stay put, and wait for rescue!” “You were clear,” Vima shot back, “But after the deaths you’ve caused, ‘rescue’ is hardly the term I would use.” “Master,” the droid responded indignantly, “I will not attempt to argue semantics, but suffice to say that you are wrong, as were those recently-corrected miners...” And the droid proceeded to launch into a tedious, highly-detailed explanation of just what he had done to the mining facility. Fifteen minutes later... “...but as you have proven, they were never a match for a Jedi.” Vima had had enough of this runaround. “I’m getting off this station,” she retorted, brandishing her vibroblade. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way, but I’d prefer the former.” “So be it,” the droid muttered resignedly. “If inflicting pain is the only way to resolve this matter, then you leave me no choice.” Out of thin air, a squadron of floating mines appeared, thundering headlong for the exile. With Atton and Kreia providing covering fire, Vima unleashed bursts of Force-energy into the explosive orbs. Two were destroyed in quick succession, but another two impacted on Vima, sending her flying backwards with the force of the blast. But the assassin droid was now alone, and as Vima regained her feet, Kreia and Atton bombarded HK-50 with laserfire until finally, the exile stuffed her weapon into the droid’s chassis. “Autodestruct in three...” the droid began. “Two... One...” “Get back!” Vima yelled, and the trio darted backwards as the droid finally expired in a ball of flames. When they died out, Atton strode forward to examine its remains. “Damned pile of scrap…” he muttered in disgust, kicking at the droid’s head. “That’s for getting me locked up!” “Come on, Atton,” Vima prompted as she walked up to her companion. But before turning to leave, she picked up the remains of the droid’s vocabulator. The three of them were soon aboard the docked Republic ship, but something was terribly wrong. “This...this is the Harbinger.” Vima said in awe as they walked through the corridor. “But something is wrong,” Kreia put in. “I sense no one on board...” “You ‘sense’ no one on board?” Atton asked, unimpressed. “Sense any more assassin droids sneaking up on us like last time?” “Everyone here has been slain,” the oldster continued. “But there are few signs of battle; no carbon scoring, no blaster fire… This vessel has been hit by assassins of a different sort...” “Then what are we doing on this ship?” Atton asked incredulously. “We were better off in the facility! You two are supposed to be Jedi? You two are the worst Jedi I’ve ever met!” “There is nowhere else to go, Atton, the facility’s sealed off,” Vima advised. “Vima is correct,” Kreia said after a pause. “We need a plan. Be silent, I need a few moments to think.” “We need to get to the Harbinger’s engine room,” Vima suggested. “From there, we can enter the fuel depot through the fuel loading pipe, bypassing the force fields that have sealed off the hanger deck.” “I don’t want to cast another shadow,” Atton began cagily, “but even if we get to your ship, it wouldn’t matter. We still need the orbital drift charts to get through the asteroid field, unless you want to have the shortest trip out of Peragus ever recorded…” “The Harbinger, wouldn’t it have those charts?” Vima asked. “Of course they would have to have them in their navicomputer...” “Then let’s get their codes.” “Well, we’d have to get to the bridge, and then...” Atton stammered. “That is a sound plan, for the moment,” Kreia confirmed. “Let us go.” The stagnant air within the corridors of the Harbinger’s command deck echoed with the footsteps of the three humans as they made their way through the derelict cruiser. Vima could feel for herself what Kreia had mentioned; a sensation of lingering death gnawed at the back of her mind as she made for the bridge. As they approached the bulkhead door, they began to find the bodies of the ship’s former crew, lying where they had died. When they finally entered the compartment, it was to find it a charnel house. :The scene before them caused Atton to turn white, and he quickly looked away; at least twenty bodies, maybe more, covered the deck. Some had been slashed open where they sat, or were missing arms or legs, while others were decapitated or completely dismembered. Blood soaked many of the instrument panels, and even the windows had been liberally spattered with crimson. Pressing on despite the carnage, Vima soon found an operational console, and had it rerouted to interface with the navicomputer. “We should get going now that we’ve got those charts,” Atton prodded as Vima hooked a datapad up to the terminal to download what they had come for. “Agreed,” she replied. “But I want to check out the ship’s logs, there may be a clue as to how it got here.” “Well, I’m not going to stop you,” the scoundrel said in surrender. Vima could see the man’s point, so she kept the session short. The logs seemed to indicate that the Ebon Hawk, which was apparently empty save for a T3 unit, had already been damaged before the Harbinger had encountered her. The freighter’s attacker, a Sith warship, was also drifting, seemingly abandoned. But as she delved deeper into the logs, Vima realized that the Sith vessel was not abandoned, that its crew had stealthed its way onto the Republic warship and had taken it over from within. This explained how the crew had come to meet its grisly end, and why they had not been able to fight back. “Let’s move on,” Vima advised, and the trio left the bridge, heading aft. They happened upon the briefing room, and despite the objections of both Kreia and Atton, Vima insisted on downloading the contents of the logs there. Apparently, the Republic had been aware of her exiled status, and had taken great pains to get her back into their space and to monitor her. Even the HK-50 “protocol” droid had been assigned to keep an eye on her, which was probably how it had learned of her existence. “I know that it is your desire to find out just what is going on,” Kreia prodded irritably as Vima finished. “But our enemies are gathering as we wait here for you.” “Forgive me, Kreia,” Vima replied. “You’re right, let’s keep moving.” As they progressed further towards the ship’s stern, the bodies of even more crewmembers—and the ones that had killed them—could be found. Vima’s hunch had been correct; the ship’s crew had been slaughtered by stealthy assailants. Every so often, the group was ambushed by teams of black-clad, masked assassins, who would decloak and attack with quarterstaffs. With Vima’s blade and her increasing command of the Force, Atton’s blasters, and Kreia’s experience, their attackers fell in droves. To Vima there seemed to be something strange about them, as if they were being killed too easily, but there was no time to speculate on that, they had to keep moving. Eventually, they made it to the crew quarters, where they found a temporary reprieve from the waves of roving warriors. That was not the only thing they found, however, as Vima paused before a familiar-looking door. “Are you alright?” Kreia asked, sensing that Vima’s thoughts had been disturbed. “I just need a moment, these were my quarters,” she responded somberly. “This was your room?” Atton wanted to know. “When was this?” “Before I lost consciousness and woke up on Peragus,” Vima said simply. “Right before the whole ship was wiped out, apparently.” “We do not have much time,” Kreia warned. “Whatever you intend to do, do it quickly.” Vima didn’t have to be told twice. Leaving her companions outside, she darted in to search for anything she had left behind. Inside of a footlocker she found a few of her old possessions, including her old robes and armband, as well as a couple of weapons upgrades she had been tinkering with. After stashing the items and donning her band, she exited the room to rejoin Atton and Kreia. With a nod, she led the way as they continued to make their way aft. The rest of the deck was much the same; bodies everywhere and teams of their killers roving about, invisible to the naked eye. The warship’s medical quarters bore evidence of where the carnage had begun; logs from the medical computer contained a recording of an impossibly-scarred warrior smashing his way out of a kolto tank to begin the slaughter. Vima was also able to find out how she had come to be incapacitated; here again this was the HK unit’s handiwork. The trio descended a turbolift to the cruiser’s engine deck; the corridors within contained a number of faulty glow panels, casting hallways in shadow and sending sparks cascading. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” Atton said somberly. Vima turned askance at him. “What is it now?” she asked. “Don’t you feel it?” Atton asked. “Something’s about to get real wrong real quick. Trust me, when it comes to staying alive, I’m rarely wrong about these things.” Vima looked briefly at Kreia, then at their surroundings, then back at Atton, extending her fledgling awareness about. “We can’t worry about that now,” she said. “We’ve got to keep moving.” “You’re right,” Atton admitted. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” “We won’t,” Vima assured him with the meanest ghost of a grin. They started off again, but had only gone another twenty paces before they found out what Atton had been feeling ill tidings about. A man, if he could still be called that, stared expressionlessly at them from the turbolift door, one eye white and overlarge, the other bloodshot and intense. “This battle is mine alone,” Kreia announced, brandishing a vibroblade. “I am not defenseless.” And without another word, she ran back the way they had come. “He cannot kill what he cannot see,” she said over her shoulder, “and power has blinded him long ago. Run! I shall be with you shortly.” Not doubting the old woman’s proclamation in the least, Atton and Vima made a break for it as Kreia strove to meet the newcomer. For good measure, the pair sealed the next bulkhead behind them as they progressed through the bowels of the cruiser’s engine rooms. “Wait a minute,” Atton said suddenly, attempting to grab Vima’s arm to stop her. “We’re not actually going through the fuel pipe, are we? That’s crazy!” Vima dodged the man’s arm, raising an eyebrow at him. “The last few hours have been crazy enough, in case you were sleeping,” she responded irritably. “It’s the only way through to the hangar deck, Atton. You have to trust me.” “Alright but—“ Without warning, physical pain such as she had never known tore through Vima’s body. Grasping her left hand as though it had been cut off, she collapsed to her knees. The pain nearly rendered her senseless, tears were streaming from her eyes, and she grimaced in agony. “Hey! What happened?” Atton asked in shock. “Damnit, hang on, it’s only a little farther!” he barked as Vima still cowered in pain and shock. Finally, she mastered herself and stood up. “What happened?” he asked. “My hand...” Vima panted, still fighting the aftereffects, “...felt like it was dipped in carbonite…” “Huh? How did that happen?” “Kreia...I think she’s been hurt,” was all Vima could think to say. She wasn’t sure just how she knew this, but at the same time, she was certain that it was the truth. “Well, if Sleeps-With-Vibroblades is busy hurting her, it means he’s not hurting us. Let’s move!” The two made their way through the echoing semidarkness of the fuel pipe back toward the facility. Near the end of the tunnel, they discovered yet more mines, along with a small metal case and... “A utility droid. Looks like it’s been hit with an ion blast and dumped here,” Atton assessed. Hearing that he had company, T3-M4 began to beep feebly. “It’s okay,” Vima assured him. “We met the ‘protocol’ droid too, but we got it before it could get us.” More beeping and whistling from the droid. “Don’t worry, it’s not your fault,” Vima replied. “Without you, we’d have never made it this far. Can you travel?” T3 beeped in the affirmative. “Then let’s go,” Vima finished, crouching to apply a spot repair to the droid’s chassis, giving him a pat on his photoreceptor in an assuring gesture.
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