Hold Down the Storm

It was deathly quiet in the docks. Elsewhere in the small, densely-populated city of Anchorhead the raucous din was interminable. Thousands of people pushing, shoving, arguing, fighting, trading, and bargaining created a constant backdrop of blank noise. But in the docks there was a still silence that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickle with unease. Bastila felt eyes surveilling her and Carth as they hurried for their docked ship, summoned by Mission's near-frantic call.

There was a dark presence plain as a thundercloud stalking the place. Bastila suspected that even the regular workers had sensed the fundamental threat looming in their midst and had fled for on reason or another that their minds had invented to disguise the truth.

Yet, she had told Mission to stay right here, not to leave the ship. She'd ordered her to remain in an insidious trap.

Bastila longed to clutch the heavy hilt of dual-bladed lightsabre, but she feared doing so would alert the Sith that she was aware of him, and thus give away whatever advantage she might yet hold, so she forced herself to keep up the pretense of ignorance. She noted Carth's hand staying well clear of the blaster on his belt, but every muscle in his body had to be coiled in readiness to respond to any sudden threat.

Hard-packed dirt, clods of sand, and gravel crunched underfoot as they approached the Ebon Hawk, its maroon-gray superstructure ominous and foreboding, the opaque cockpit windows offering no view inside. The muffled, faraway noises of the city lent a surreal quality to the entire scene before her, heightening her degree of awareness and tension.

Bastila was deeply worried. Mission had made no further calls after her first alert, and aside from her general perception of a Sith's undeniable presence, Bastila's sixth and seventh senses could offer her no other information on what it was she faced, or whether her companions were even still alive.

The cargo ramp lay open. Bastila hesitantly set her feet on the path, and entered the ship.

Inside, there was no more noise than there had been outside—less, even. Finally she could stand it no longer, and eagerly grasped the handle of her lightsabre. Carth likewise pulled out his blaster and nodded.

After a brief inspection, Bastila concluded that no one was in the ship's garage or the cargo bay, and she slowly moved into the main hold, scanning each room with all her myriad senses. She saw Canderous at the round table in the center, leaning on its surface with both hands. He didn't look up when they entered the room.

"We're here, Mandalorian," she announced in a cautious voice. "Where is Mission?"

He didn't respond. In fact, the Mandalorian seemed frozen in place where he was. Again, the fine hairs on the back of her neck prickled with dread.

"Carth, something is wrong here," she confided. When the Republic man made no answer, she turned to look at him.

He had become a living, breathing statue. Carth had frozen in place as he was in the process of reaching for her to catch her attention, his eyes registering recognition of a threat. He was leaning slightly forward, about to lunge in front of her and place himself in harm's way. His mouth open partially, he had not quite started his shout of warning.

Bastila now recognized all the signs of a Force stasis field.

Without another thought, she clicked on both her amber blades. As she did so, she registered movement in her peripheral vision; a figure coming into view as if melting away from the very walls. Bastila whirled about to face the threat.

He was tall, broad-shouldered and powerfully built, not unlike Malak, but Bastila could see from his complete face and jawline that it was not he. The man bore strong resemblance to the Dark Lord regardless, with a smoothly shaven scalp and dark, penetrating eyes. His strong jaw was complemented by a thick beard and a hideous tattoo covering his entire neck that displayed a number of visual motifs that were strikingly familiar.

In that one instant when she captured a complete mental snapshot of the character facing her, Bastila had no doubt that this was Darth Malak's apprentice.

She raised her lightsabre, but he was already one step ahead of her. The man's hands came up and she was hit with a blast of kinetic force like she'd never felt before, ripping her off her feet and hurling her across the compartment to slam into the opposite wall.

Breath left her lungs in a gigantic whoosh, and she felt a hairline fracture in one of her ribs send a flare of pain through her side. The pain would have to wait, however, as she saw the Sith coming at her with frightening speed, igniting a deathly red blade of his own.

Having no time for anything else, Bastila dragged herself away from his first murderous downward lunge with a crude Force pull. She quickly found her feet and met his crimson blade with her gold.

Now that they were on even footing, the Sith attacked with vicious intensity. Bastila found herself backing away from his wild assault, unprepared for his combination of traditional and unorthodox techniques.

As she desperately parried his blows, Bastila dodged his sporadic hail of impromptu missiles. He threw container lids, heavy tools, spare or broken ship parts; he knew she couldn't evade them all and still keep him at bay. A sharp piece of sheet metal sliced her across the abdomen, causing her to cry out in pain, and he lunged for the opening in her guard.

Bastila stopped him cold with a sudden, intense burst of violent energy which made him stumble. She pressed her own attack, utilizing her two blades to their greatest effect and forcing him to parry. They clashed blades again and again, their lightsabres scorching the walls where they brushed against the surface of the bulkheads.

She drove at him repeatedly, trying to open up more distance between them. When she could, she began hurling some of his own missile back at him. She had to break his awesome concentration somehow, otherwise he would go back on the offensive and sooner or later she must be overwhelmed. No Sith she'd ever faced had such magnitude of strength to be able to sustain multiple stasis fields and fight so effectively at the same time as he hurled exterior objects. She was in grave danger until she could somehow disable or kill him.

An unexpected bolt of lightning sizzled through her. As it blasted through her defenses, Bastila tried to will her fingers not to let go of her lightsabre as her muscles convulsed uncontrollably. But it was no use, the electricity coursing through her body completely isolated her limbs from her brain's command. She could do little more than writhe on the ground in utter agony.

The Sith loomed over her, victorious. He scooped up her lightsabre and tossed it across the room as he tormented her with another brief blast of wicked blue lightning.

"Bastila Shan," he breathed the name with great reverence. "Do you know that you are legendary among the Sith? You made the rise of Malak possible."

Bastila's teeth chattered against themselves as her body seized when she wanted was to draw her face in a defiant glare.

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Bandon. As you might have realized, Malak is my master, the savior of all people."

The convulsions relented sufficiently for Bastila to spit, "Malak is a despicable murderer!"

"Lies!" Bandon shouted with venom. "Malak will bring peace and prosperity to the galaxy, only you Jedi would still cling desperately to power at the expense of others!" Bandon viciously backhanded her across the face when she tried to rise.

Bastila tried to crawl toward her lightsabre, only to find herself frozen in his stasis web. With mounting horror, she realized that Bandon had been in control the entire time. Helpless to resist, Bandon lifted her up and pinned her against the wall with a field so strong it felt like she'd been impaled by a six-foot wide marble pillar.

"Now you are going to answer my questions, Jedi Bastila," Bandon declared as he dragged someone by the neck and hurled her to the ground at Bastila's feet. It was Mission.

"I won't waste my time trying to break you with violence; your Jedi mind conditioning won't permit you to talk under torture." A peremptory lightning bolt flickered from his hand to the floor, causing Mission to start in fright. "But like all Jedi your weakness for mercy will be your undoing. I will ask you once, and if you refuse to answer, your friend will be doing the rest of the asking for me. Now where is Revan, please?"

Tannis scratched his head in confusion, looking this way and that as if he expected the hermit's cabin to be hiding somewhere, or to suddenly appear over the horizon and take them unawares. Namenlos appeared to be working himself into a nervous panic, almost. Juhani shared his unease, but not his franticness.

"Perhaps we have gotten lost," she suggested. That pacified Namenlos somewhat, but Tannis was unconvinced. Behind the ghostlike shroud around his face, the quaint man was inscrutable.

"This is wrong," Namenlos growled suspiciously.

"Wait, wait, wait," Tannis protested. "Ah'm sure I must've just stopped one hill short. It's prob'ly around here somewhere. C'mon! Let's just walk a bit." Immediately, he set off for the crest of the nearest dune.

Juhani started off after him, and Namenlos followed reluctantly. The dune overlooked a narrow gully, and from the top she could see the unmistakable spires of moisture vaporators rising over the sandy ledges slightly ahead. There looked to be just one final bend obscuring the lodge that was sure to be there. So they were not in the wrong place at all. She was relieved.

Namenlos climbed down into the gully after her. "Where's Tannis?" he asked.

Juhani took a startled look around. He had again vanished. "I don't-"

Consternation bubbled to the surface once more. A vague smell caught her attention, and after inhaling a deep breath her initial suspicion was reaffirmed; smoke. Something had been burned here or close by, and very recently. Namenlos smelled it too, and his hiss of displeasure reminded her of how much he hated fire.

"Tannis!" she called out, trying to fight down her surging unease.

"I don't like this, Juhani," Namenlos said as they edged along the gully, Tannis was nowhere in sight. Despite her efforts she was getting infected by his pessimism. This did not feel as it should.

"Nor do I," she admitted. "I feel..."

Namenlos suddenly froze beside her. "Like we're being watched." He nodded up toward the ledge ahead and hissed.

Black-robed figures lined a rocky outcropping that commanded a view into the whole gully, five of them, their faces hooded, and radiating uncouth hostility. They held the high ground, Juhani realized, and she and Namenlos had unwittingly trapped themselves.

One of the five stepped forward. "So these are the Jedi, then?" he asked a sixth figure who skulked behind the five of them, his voice snide and condescending.

"Yes, Master Shaardan," came the accented reply which Juhani knew could only belong to one person.

"Well done, Mister Tannis, Lord Malak thanks you," Shaardan said with a hungry look toward Juhani.

"You filthy, lying styetvah!" Namenlos roared. "I trusted you!"

"Aye, ya shouldn't have," Tannis answered regretfully.

"Mister Tannis has done his duty to the Sith Empire by reporting illegal Jedi," Shaardan pronounced imperiously. "Lord Malak does not permit Jedi to roam free in his realms, and he has promised a great reward for the capture of any such illegals."

His face might have been covered, but Juhani could read him like an open book, her long hours of training at the Jedi Enclave having not gone to total waste. All five of these Sith were raw, largely untested, but viciously hungry for conquest. They were seething vessels of chaotic hate and hubris, liberated by the belief that they could do no wrong, for no concept of wrong existed in their minds. Shaardan in particular, had intentions for her that were all too easy to fathom, without even the aid of her Force perception.

She hissed in challenge and ignited her lightsabre, which still wore a blade of bright crimson. Shaardan and his other Sith leaped from their ledge to land in the gully, surrounding her and Namenlos on all sides. Their blades came out, reds and yellows waving threateningly as the Sith hemmed them in. Namenlos' hand strayed close to the lightsabre at his belt, but it was only meant for training and he was woefully undertrained; the blade would do him little good. Even against raw Sith Juhani feared he stood little chance. They would cut him to pieces.

Instead of drawing his sabre, he pulled his knife and settled in a defensive posture at her back while Juhani tried to put herself between him and as many Sith as she could. Mentally, she rehearsed the motions of battle despite its futility. Even in the slightest of conflicts, pre-planned strategy rarely applied, and no enemy would cooperate with one's battle plan, so it was better to adapt on the fly, something Juhani had grown up doing.

The Sith circled and she and Namenlos counter-circled, trying to present the least vulnerable target to the Sith's position of greatest strength and so forestall the inevitable fight of five against two. Shaardan and the other Sith shouted insults, but Juhani let the words deflect off her mental barriers built up over a lifetime of racial persecution. She'd listened to the temptations of the Dark Side once, and it would not claim her again. She held her ground and answered them not a word.

The Sith circled them and she would counter. The deadlock continued.

The sound of urgent footfalls caught her ears. Juhani's eyes darted for a look up at the ridge, where she saw Tannis dashing away, apparently having not the stomach to watch a sure slaughter.

Shaardan noticed his flight as well, and chuckled in amusement. "Mekel, Rey-al, catch the insipid traitor. I am not finished with him," he said officiously. "We will handle these two."

As two of the Sith started to break away, Namenlos whispered into her ear. He had something in his hand. "Take it," he said, and immediately started moving.

He lunged for the gap as it appeared briefly in the Sith's encirclement, drawing over a third who tried to cut him off from escape. But Juhani realized in the same split-second he made his move that escape was not his objective. As he had begun to move, he tossed an object into the air at her. She pulled it into her hand and instinctively switched on the weak lightsabre blade.

With the third distracted by Namenlos, Juhani engaged the remaining two. They came at her both at once, looking to engage her in straight-up combat and overwhelm her through force of arms, but Juhani dipped low to the ground and slipped between them as they slashed into empty air with their sabres. Pirouetting, she bit both her blades into Shaardan's hasty guard and threw him back several paces, then dodged around the second Sith's angry swing, slashing the blue training sabre across his side to inflict a nasty burn on his ribs.

Both her opponents staggered, Juhani scooped up air and sand in a net of Force energy and hurled it at them, hoping to blind them for a few seconds and thus buy her time to aid Namenlos. She saw him dodging swings from a hungry yellow blade and darting lithely around his opponent looking for opportunities to strike with his knife.

Juhani gave the third Sith a hard Force push and then quickly turned her attention back to Shaardan and his other accomplice. She sidestepped one attack, took a fleeting stab at Shaardan, then trapped the other Sith's lightsabre between her two and neatly severed his hand. The Sith howled in pain and let loose a blast of lightning from his other hand, which Juhani blocked with the crossed blades of her two sabres. Some of the bolts shot past her and hit the Sith whose hand she'd cut off, but Shaardan simply sent more and Juhani continued to block.

The desert air began to fill with the smell of cooked flesh.

Shaardan finally halted his lightning once he realized it was an ineffective measure. Without giving him a moment's break, Juhani flung her blue sabre at him like a baton and pulled the dead Sith's lethal red blade to her hand. She leaped, somersaulting through the air to scythe both her blades downward with near-unstoppable force. Shaardan parried, but the blow knocked him back several more paces.

Juhani had backed him up to the sloping walls of the gully, and at last he stumbled. One swipe took off one of his feet, and the next thrust went through his chest. Behind her she heard the rasp of steel grinding against bone and a third Sith collapsed to the blood-soaked sand at Namenlos' feet.

She looked at him and he looked and her and said one word. "Tannis."

They both dashed back up the dune to find the remaining two Sith and their traitorous guide.

It should have seemed like pure luck that Arravin found himself drawing the blade of his knife against the Sith's throat, feeling it bite into the flesh, and seeing his enemy fall unstrung. But from the moment the five Sith had surrounded them, a cool and detached part of his mind had known exactly what to do at each step of the way. He knew he couldn't use the training lightsabre at his belt, and exactly why he kept that with him he wasn't sure, but he had instantly known Juhani would make better use of it than him. Better he should stick with his one dependable weapon: his knife.

Tannis' cowardly flight was the one bit of good fortune he hadn't counted on, and it evened the odds considerably, and as soon as he saw the opening, it was apparent what he had to do. He tossed Juhani his lightsabre and surged for the gap, and as soon as he saw the yellow blade coming for him he ducked and rolled and dodged, not trying to block because the sabre blade would cut through his knife in an instant. He knew enough how to avoid an angry thug, and even though this one came at him with the weapon of a Sith, the principle was the same: use quickness and never engage directly.

He kept his arms tucked in close and his body in a half-crouch, so he could spring with his leg muscles and and play to more of his strengths. Somehow he never gave thought to shielding against some other Force attack, but the murderous lightning never came, nor did he feel his throat sharply constricting. He remembered the way the Sith governor of Taris had fought with finesse and skill which had taken even Bastila by surprise.

In comparison, this Sith fought like a dockyard worker swinging a broomstick, and Arravin found he could skip around his attacks with relative ease, his lighter frame giving him the distinct maneuverability advantage, and then he could dart in to make quick slashes with his knife.

It felt perfectly natural when, after cutting the Sith's sword arm at the elbow, he grabbed him by the hood and dragged his knife across his throat. After a quick glance verified that Juhani had expertly handled her two foes, he remembered the other two Sith who had gone after Tannis.

Arravin wanted the man's blood.

He and Juhani took off back up the slope and toward the man's speeder. Somewhere in the back of his mind was a voice telling him that if he killed Tannis then he and Juhani would be stranded, as he had no knowledge of how to pilot the landcraft and he doubted Juhani would either, but his need to kill burned those thoughts away.

Juhani reached the crest of the dune before him, and he saw a flash of lightning deflect off her raised lightsabre. She spun, slashed with her blades, and an arm fell to the sand still clutching a pale yellow lightsabre in its grip. Arravin sprang to the top just as the second Sith launched himself at Juhani.

Tannis, seeing Arravin coming with murder on his face, produced a venerable old blaster pistol, took it in a two-handed grip and fired. His shot found the back of the second Sith, who sprawled to the ground where Juhani buried her sabre into the base of his spine. Arravin halted.

"Eh, heh, look I ain't no fan of them Sith-" Tannis started to say in his infuriating accent, but Arravin would have none of it. Fury took hold of him and he smashed his elbow into Tannis's face, sending him to the ground.

"Namenlos, stop!" Juhani shouted, but he did not hear or acknowledge her. He grabbed a fistful of Tannis's face shroud, pulled it loose from the man's unruly head, then punched him again in the nose. His knuckles were bloody, but his rage did not abate. Growling, he heaved Tannis up by his shoulders and viciously headbutted him.

"That is enough!" Juhani was pulling at his clothes now, trying to separate him from the traitorous scum on the ground, but he broke free of her placating grasp, snarling.

Tannis tried to stand, but Arravin hit him with a Force blast almost without thinking. He was on him again in an instant, his knife to the man's throat. His face was inches from Tannis's bloodied, bruised, yet impassive visage.

"Why!" he hissed in anger.

"You'd have done the same thing, fella," Tannis answered. "I've got a family to take care of. Didn't know that, did ya? When ya live only by the indulgence of the Sith Empire and rely on stayin' in their good graces to keep your family safe and food on the table, ya have to make some choices ya hate yourself for."

"Namenlos, please, let him be," Juhani pleaded.

Tannis's voice was strangely cold, he seemed almost not to care anymore. "You don't what it's like to have to live off nothing, because the Sith they take what's yours, what you've earned from honest hard labor, and then give it to whatever slacker or thug don't want to work they decide deserves it. Yeah, I know I'm no good person, but I do what I got to to keep my family cared for as best I can."

An image flashed to Arravin's mind: He was crouching in a rusty storage container, wearing filthy rags and feeding on garbage from the streets of Taris, and he was grateful for what little he had to subsist on. Living off of nothing was well familiar to him; it was how he'd lived since as long as he could remember, the Jedi's intervention had not changed much of anything, least of all who he was.

Sickened with himself, Arravin dropped his knife in the sand and let Juhani pull him away from Tannis, who took to his feet and dusted himself off awkwardly.

"Look, I..." Tannis tried to speak but failed, and Arravin could not bring himself to look at him.

"Go. Just go," he told the man. "I don't ever want to see your face again, Tannis."

Tannis nodded his head. "And you won't have to-" he was interrupted by the sound of a lightsabre igniting and a red blade suddenly poking through his chest at an upward angle. He gurgled a final breath and then fell away to reveal the one-armed Sith dying on the ground behind him. Holding his lightsabre in a shaky hand, the Sith spat on Tannis's corpse. "Die, blasphemer!"

Hot fury pounded through Arravin with renewed vigor. He reached his hand out and found a lightsabre leap into his grasp and a blade the color of blood shooting from its tip. He swung the weapon with a roar and in one swipe sent the Sith's head tumbling into the sand.

He turned from the dead and did not look back. "Come on," he said, switching off his new lightsabre and clipping it to his belt, "we still need to see Komad."

Juhani looked at the carnage about them and shuddered once. He knew how she felt but there had been little choice. Arravin started toward the hermit's remote dwelling.

Komad's lodge was a burnt out ruin, only a blackened skeleton remaining where the ashes had already been scoured by the wind-driven sands of the Dune Sea. It looked like an old wreck, but he could still smell the smoke. This was a recent burning, two days, three at the most, he'd missed Komad by only that much. Now again he had nothing, nothing he could fight Malak with, no sense of direction.

"It's all gone," Arravin said disbelievingly. He dug his fingers into the ash-filled sand and felt his hope draining away.

"Komad may still be alive," Juhani reminded him, her expression unreadable as she poked at some of the larger pieces of rubble. He wondered if she believed that.

"Where else could he be?" he asked. "Even if he escaped, this is days old, he'd have died out on the dunes by now." The futility of it all was numbing and only beginning to sink in.

"We don't even know this is where the hermit lives. Whatever his reasons, Tannis deliberately led us into an ambush, this is likely not even Komad's home but a convenient place for the Sith to capture Jedi. Namenlos, we must not give up hope."

Arravin recognized her reasoning; it was desperation. She was still clinging to hope. Had he not been so bitterly disappointed he might have smiled at the change of roles; she being the resolute one and he the one in despair. But a sweet sentiment was not going to remove the menace of Malak from their lives.

"I am not namenlos, Juhani, I have a name..." A faint sound caught his attention, distracting him from his correction. Arravin shielded his eyes against the glare of the two suns, searching for the source of the familiar whining hum in the sky. With a start he realized it was indeed the Ebon Hawk, although why it was appearing in the horizon—approaching quite fast—and neither Bastila nor any of the others had contacted him or Juhani in hours was puzzling.

Even stranger was that they couldn't know where to find them, as Tannis was the one who brought them out here and only he knew the way. Unless he'd covertly transmitted the coordinates to Bastila before or after selling them out to the Sith... No, that didn't make sense. Tannis had been a desperate man, but a frightened one. The Sith bought his cooperation by threatening his family and his livelihood; he wouldn't have put them again in jeopardy so flagrantly. And furthermore Bastila never told the man how to contact them.

He continued to stare at the oncoming ship, wondering why things weren't adding up.

"Namenlos," Juhani said in a suspicious tone, "that ship should not be here."

"I know," he replied, no longer concerned with telling her his real name and frustrated with himself for not seeing what was in front of his face.

There was something wrong with this—all of this. Tannis knowing exactly where to find the hermit's dwelling, their presence betrayed to the Sith, Komad's lodge having been burned and destroyed mere days before his arrival, and now the mysterious appearance in the sky of the Ebon Hawk—there was a simple explanation for the whole chain of events but he wasn't seeing it.

"This is not good," she insisted.

"I know."

Arravin started going over the whole situation again when it hit him full force like a ton of steelcrete: The entire planet was a trap.

He eyed the ship, now almost close enough that he could make out the reflections on his opaque cockpit windows. It read "Ebon Hawk" on the side, but Arravin was certain it was no friendly ship.

"Juhani-" He was about to tell her to run, but she was already grabbing him by his loose sleeve and pulling him back to the low gully. Needing little encouragement, Arravin took off after her, racing for the dubious safety of the ancient ravine. The landspeeder, he thought. Maybe they could outrun whoever was pursuing them. In any case, he indulged the urge to run, to escape in any way possible.

The Sith were coming.

The hum of the Ebon Hawk's engines grew to a flat roar as the spacecraft came closer and closer. Arravin and Juhani were only about halfway down the gully to Tannis's landspeeder when he felt a tremor shake the ground and loosen sand and debris from the walls which settled into deep drifts at the bottom, weighing down their feet and ankles already swathed in the heavy folds of fabric. The engine noise became impossibly loud, reverberating off the walls as a whoosh of displaced air tumbled into the ravine, kicking up more sand and dust until it was nearly impossible to see.

Arravin grabbed hold of Juhani and threw them both to the ground as the Hawk plowed into the side of the ravine with a spectacular splash of sand, dust, rocks, and large clumps of orange clay. Covering her beneath him, he protected his head with his hands against the flying debris while the ship continued to grind across the sand above, its nose crunching into the opposite side of the ravine and continuing forward until the whole ship lay atop the cleft in the ground.

The air stilled, though Arravin could still hear the thrumming of the Hawk's engines idling. He blinked his eyes to clear his vision, but the airborne dust still hung in a thick cloud. He felt something move beneath him and realized with a start that Juhani was completely buried in the scree.

Arravin felt a brief moment of complete terror, then calmed himself, dug about with his hands until he could feel the outline of her shoulders, then started scooping sand away from her neck and her face. If not for the special desert garb Tannis gave them, they both would be choking on the sand, if not suffocating. Arravin said a silent thank-you to Tannis for that.

After a minute, he was rewarded by the sound of Juhani taking a gasping breath and could just make out her face lifting out of the sand. Arravin immediately started digging her the rest of the way out.

Juhani said something, but his ears were still ringing from the crash and the dust in the air was playing tricks on his senses. He thought he heard a pair of boots hitting the ground, but dismissed it as he hurried to get Juhani unburied.

Finally, she was able to twist partially out of the ground. She screamed at him. "Behind you!"

Arravin's senses instantly spun into high gear. His hand shot to his belt, pulled the lightsabre and ignited its crimson blade into a precise guard across his body as he twisted his torso around to face the threat.

He saw a tall, broad-shouldered figure, and then a purple-white light burned the world.

His ears popped as if from decompression, his skin tingled, his vision was of nothing but pure white, but he felt no pain. It was a curious void, but not one he was familiar with. Nor, apparently, was he alone.

As Arravin looked, he saw others encased in the whiteness, indistinct figures that blurred when he looked directly at them. One pushed forward, taking on shape and solidity as it walked toward him. Arravin recognized him to be a male Twi'lek whom he was certain he had met before, but the memory was a frustrating blank.

"You should not be here," the Twi'lek said accusingly. "Bandon hunts you, and now he has you. You would not be here otherwise."

"Bandon..." Arravin reeled as he tried in desperation to recall how he had come to this white place, feeling overwhelmingly like he had always been here. The thought frightened him. "Are you Komad Fortuna?" he asked hopefully, trying to contain his fear and remain calm.

The shade nodded. "I am." Komad's eyes narrowed. "And I know who you are."

Arravin's mouth went dry. "I need your help to stop Malak," he breathed.

"Help? Malak has won!" declared the ghost of Komad. "He is the Jedi's greatest disciple, the one who will destroy them, eradicating liberty in the name of the common good of all. What more noble a crusade could there be?"

The Jedi's vicious rhetoric cut into Arravin like a knife, such insipid fatalism igniting furious rage. "That's why I have to stop him!" he insisted. "I need to find Bindo, I have to reach the Star Forge, destroy Malak's seat of power. It's the only chance any of us have!"

Komad's shade considered him critically, then shook his head. "If you so wish to do this," he said, "then you must be willing to do whatever is necessary. I do know where to find Bindo, but the moment I tell you, Bandon will know also. You must escape the Sith Lord's grasp and reach Bindo before he does or you will have no chance. But you cannot escape Bandon on your own, you must take my life and use it bridge the gulf his hunger has placed between you and your soul.

Arravin blinked. He had just been asked to do what was impossible. "What!"

Komad's eyes burned into his. "You must use my life energy to supplement your own power. I will die so you may succeed."

He recoiled. The thought of using another's life-force in such a way seemed... evil.

"If you are not willing to do this," Komad warned, "then you will become as I am; another soul trapped within the hunger that is Lord Bandon, forever cut off from the world, unable to live or die. Neither you nor your companions will ever find Bindo or the Forge and the crusade will continue unabated until the last flickers of liberty are extinguished. When they refuse to live under Malak's rule, your friends will be executed, and he will try to turn the one you love most to his cause. If he cannot, then she too will die, but only after suffering horrors that you and I can scarcely imagine."

Arravin clenched his fists, summoning whatever power, morality, or will he had in him. All of the things he had seen and done and everything that had happened to him in the past weeks—being bitten by a rakghoul, his abduction by the Jedi, the razing of Taris, meeting Juhani on Dantooine, the fire-bombing of the academy and the murder of the children—cascaded into a numbing, crushing responsibility singing a merciless counterpart to Komad's chilling prediction, echoing back and forth through his mind.

He could not allow such a thing to happen, he would not. Not to Juhani, not to everyone in the galaxy like him who would never accept slavery to someone's corrupt vision, people who wanted to live their lives free. Arravin would not accept such a thing, not as long as there was breath in his body and perhaps beyond. He understood that this was not just about his life, but about everything he loved and cared about.

Arravin's choice was made. "What must be done?" he asked.

"Do nothing, the Force will do," Komad answered. "More strictly speaking, in a state such as this your spirit can communicate directly with your source of midichloral energy, without mediation by the inefficient brain. Instinctual action requires no thought, this level of reaction is simply difficult to reach unless in a time of extraordinary duress or a moment of severe emotional passion."

Arravin didn't fully understand the shade's explanation, but he comprehended enough to recognize that direct knowledge was not what was required. Instinctive use of the Force. It was not something new, he had done it before when he needed it most. There could be no greater duress than having his soul ripped from his body to feed a dark lord's insatiable appetite for power, and he had no alternative save accepting defeat.

He drew in a deep breath, trusting his life—his entire being—to the Force. "I am ready," Arravin said.

Immediately, he felt life entering him as a drowning man would feel air touch his lungs. Komad's shade shimmered in his sight as the force of life within him intensified. "You must go to the Kashyyyk System. Speak to Chuundar of the Wookiees, he will lead you to Bindo. You must hurry!"

Before Komad's words had even faded from his ears, pain exploded through every fiber of Arravin's body, the white collapsed and he wrenched free of Bandon.

He was once again on Tatooine, facing down the Sith Lord with his lightsabre raised. Purple-white lightning crackled between Bandon's hands, and to Arravin's surprise a thin orange-red glow stretched from his own hands and into Bandon's chest. He felt the force of life flowing into him, filling him with power, more power than he'd ever felt; Komad's last sacrifice.

Once the orange fire receded, Arravin realized he was screaming.

The lightning storm crackled, pulsed, and gyrated with horrendous energy as Bandon tried once again to wrench Arravin's soul from his body. Arravin howled and pulled back, and the roiling tempest of lightning imploded with a crack of thunder. Dust and sand traveled outward from the point of inclusion in a circular shock wave.

Buffeted, Bandon glared in baleful hatred and drew his lightsabre—then staggered as a brilliant blue blade impaled his chest from behind. Juhani rose behind the Sith as he fell, pulling her sabre from his back. Arravin stared in mute surprise, then they both looked up to see Canderous lean out the Hawk's open cargo ramp and toss down a rope.

"Get on board, Jedi! Wouldn't want us to leave without you!" he yelled.

Arravin grabbed the rope gratefully and began pulling himself up. Juhani simply leaped aboard. She was going to have to teach him that someday, he thought to himself.

The ship lifted off sharply before he made it halfway, forcing him to abandon climbing and simply hold on for dear life. The Mandalorian pulled him the rest of the way and hauled him aboard. Bastila was waiting for him on deck, looking like she'd been through a blender.

"Did you find-" she started to ask, but he cut her off.

"Kashyyyk, Bindo is on Kashyyyk," he said in a rush. "Go! Tell Carth to go. Now!"

She didn't hesitate a moment, and an instant later the ground dropped off sickeningly fast as they rose through the atmosphere.

Face-down in the sand, Bandon struggled to draw a breath. Pain twisted his insides and ignominy burned at his fierce pride. He had been close enough to taste his prey, and then Revan had slipped away.

He admitted his overzeal to himself. His task was not to destroy Revan, only to deliver him to his judgment. Bandon had overstepped his bounds and his error allowed the heretic to escape. He also had underestimated the resolve and fortitude of the old Jedi Komad.

Suitably self-chastened, Bandon turned his attention to what for any man would have been a mortal wound. Bandon was not an ordinary man, he possessed the mighty power of the Force. He had hundreds of lives at his disposal. He was legion. Bandon took those lives as it were between his fingers and bled them away to heal the gaping wound in his chest. Years of life were consumed in the blink of an eye as he drew from his vast reserves to pull the seared flesh closed and reknit the savaged organs inside.

Once complete, Bandon was once again whole, but he felt the vacuum inside him crying out for sustenance after having devoted so much energy to regenerating himself. There was hunger and a terrible coldness not unlike he'd felt his whole life in the frozen city of his childhood, except that this was stronger, biting down into the very marrow of his being. It was his particular calling, his unique gift.

Bandon pulled himself up off the ground and summoned an acolyte with his communicator to bring his personal prowler to pick him up from the desert. Komad might have made it possible for Bandon's quarry to escape, but he had also pointed him straight back to Revan. And the heretic would not escape him a second time.