The Force Shall Free Me

Chapter Five

Thunder.

Lightning.

The charge in the atmosphere as a storm rolled in.

Helena's skin tingled with the change, and she reveled in the sensation of looming weather. Even through the shield, even blocked off from the force as she was, there was a slight and subtle shift in the texture of the air.

It had been so long since she'd seen a storm.

Though the view wasn't much through the high, reinforced plastisteel windows, it afforded her a glimpse of a warm sky during the day and an endless starfield at night. Tonight, she could see the clouds as the lightning arced across them.

The sky was lit with a dull orange glow, the power of the electrical storm giving light where there typically was not any. That dull glow set across gunmetal grey clouds reminded her of another place, and another time.

Dromund Kaas had been a dark world even in the daylight. There were creatures and plants on its surface that did more to illuminate the land than the distant sun. Yet what the sun failed to do with light, the planets warm geothermal core made up for, and life was able to flourish on the dark planet. What survived, however, was brutal and hard and cold, and the Sith way of life reflected the nature of the world it called its capitol.

Her homeworld had been at once a wonder of nature and a prison of sorrow, and the rolling storm reminded her of both.

Her father had been a well-respected officer in the Imperial Fleet, but like so many that crossed the wrong Dark Lord, he was killed, his property distributed to his killer's favorites, and his family forced into slavery. At 12, Helena had lost track of her mother and brother, forced to serve and scrape and degrade herself according her master's whims. At 16, she unexpectedly found herself with child. It was a mark of shame in the aristocratic world she had grown up in, but she could feel the tiny life within her from its earliest days, and was inexplicably driven to protect it. One harrowing night, afraid for both their lives as her master approached her with his favorite weapon, she instinctively and blindly reached out with the Force and crushed his feeble mind.

Because her world valued brute strength over justice, those actions did not earn her punishment. They earned her a spot in the Sith Academy, instead.

She might have become just like the rest of the Sith she encountered there, had it not been for her daughter. The precious, helpless little thing was such a strong presence in her mind and the Force even before birth, one that would require a careful kind of protection from the dangers of her mother's life. Should Helena ever fall to another Lord, he would do with her property and family exactly what had been done to her father, and under no circumstances would she allow any child of hers to become a slave. So she bore the child in secret just before her training began and left the child in her old tutor's care, a man with a fondness for puzzles and a kind and gentle heart despite the culture they lived in, and made her way through the academy as the brightest and most promising acolyte in memory. She did what was necessary, cultivated the careful façade of an adept and ambitious student whose primary care was for the Empire, and herself besides. It was an illusion that served her well, and drew all malevolent attention into the swift and adept trap of her whirling saber blades.

It was a comfort, in a way, to lie beneath a familiar sky that she had long ago given up hope of ever seeing again. It was also a bitter sting. Citizens of the Sith Empire viewed attachment and sentimentality as weakness, and its elite members – its Lords – were meant to be the very embodiment of the values the Empire had been founded upon. And so when the storm made her long for the people that had given substance to her life - for a beloved old teacher and a precious daughter, both so long gone – the impulse was at odds with her nature.

Four thousand years alone with her mind and the Force for company had only made the matter worse.

Her mind and spirit had always been in conflict with her environment. In those long, lonely years, she spent a great deal of time evaluating her tenure at the Academy, where the Force spoke to her in a way it seemed to speak to no other. It led her away from the uncontrolled rage that wasted so many acolytes. Rage was a tool, a fuel during battle that gave her just enough extra to carry her past an enemy's boundaries, but never the only fuel. She had learned long ago that having something greater than herself to fight for was a far more effective survival incentive than the simple lust for power.

That difference in her personal philosophy was perhaps why she had so willingly taken the mission to accompany Revan back to Republic space. She recognized in him the same drive and desire, the same conflict within him that she felt, and he had recognized that kindred spirit within her. They formed a friendship, something that rarely happened between two Lords.

In stasis, her relationship, her motivations, her origins, and the role the Force played in her life were all things she could spend far too much time meditating upon.

At first, she had thought that the absence of the Force would be a relief after so much time attached to it, after so long joined with it actively in an attempt to keep the ancient Leviathan from falling apart. Instead, she found nearly immediately that she missed it like an amputated appendage, but perhaps far more keenly than she would miss a hand or a foot. Locked within her cell, she was subject to an isolation and a loneliness she had never felt. The ache within her grew day over day, until she shared some sympathy with those certain animal species that would sooner chew their own limb off than remain confined in a trap.

Unlike her typical even temper, she found herself growing cold and angry as time passed. She felt untethered, ungrounded, and exposed. It made her lash out in ways that her aristocratic upbringing should not have allowed for. Despite having been reconnected with the Force earlier in the day, she was already falling back into the same foul temper that had settled within her over the last few days.

Oh, but the welcome relief of being able to touch that power once more had been…heavenly.

And so had Myka Bering.

When the shield was lowered on her cell it was like the release of a tourniquet, only instead of blood rushing from an injury the Force flowed through her and into her, as vital as air or water. Myka's presence was the first thing she sensed. It flooded her with warmth, surrounded her, wrapped her in a kind of comfort she could no longer remember. As awful as she had been to the woman – to all of them – she felt instant regret when the Jedi's true nature revealed itself. Oh, there was darkness and fear, and she had perhaps thoughtlessly remarked upon it, but of all the Jedi she had ever encountered, Myka's spirit was the closest to that ideal they all strove to become.

Any other Sith would have been disgusted, but Helena Wells was far more practical than that. Instead she had enjoyed her afternoon with the Jedi, finding her kindness and brightness beautiful and alluring despite how very foreign it was to a child of the Empire. As the daylight waned and the forcefield was raised between them once more, Helena was surprised to discover it was not her connection to the Force she would miss most.

She wasn't sure what to make of that, yet, but the knowledge had left her with a lingering guilt over her treatment of the only being left in the universe that she might consider a friend.

It was, she mused, highly un-Sithly of her.

Her lips thinned into a quirked grin as she realized that didn't bother her at all.

She had never aspired to become one, after all. She had been thrust into the academy, then made to kill or be killed. She had seen the value in success in the Sith Order, but she had only ever wished to use it to protect Christina.

In time, she had trusted Revan with that information, as he had trusted her with his own true purpose.

In their conversations, he had often made mention of a place between dark and light that neither the Jedi nor the Sith would ever acknowledge existed. They spoke at length about such contested philosophies on their long journey back to Republic space, and then again often in the aftermath of their battles. He had fallen from the light - far from the light - but he fought for his Republic as much as he fought against it. He knew that when the Sith invaded with more than a simple scouting party, the wonders of his home would be destroyed. And so he set out to teach the foolish Jedi Council and the addled Galactic Senate what their poor preparation would yield them if they took no action. In willingly becoming their greatest enemy, he also became their savior.

Helena had admired that purpose, had even understood it though it was her place to see his mission succeed. And in the end, Helena had defended him and his mission even before consideration of her own life.

The thunder rolled, palpable but silent inside her shielded cell, and the lightning illuminated the hall and the room and the spartan décor. She smiled – secluded within a stasis field for so long, she had come to the conclusion that his vision of civilization spoke to her so fervently because it was exactly the kind of utopia she wished for her child, one where strength was valued as much as intelligence, and where justice was sought rather than avoided. Revan had been right all along - they had both been as grey as the storm clouds, as grey as the sky above Kaas City in daylight. Despite their adherence to a set of rules very different from those of the Jedi Code, neither of them were ever truly Sith…

…but Malak was.

Once again the lightning struck, brighter, and once again the thunder rolled, and it shook the earth and her cage. Her chair and the small table beside her bed toppled, the datapads on the shelves rattled off their perch and struck the ground with loud clacks, and the vase of bright flowers crashed to the floor.

The forcefield shimmered, quivered all over, and then disappeared.

She was again connected to the Force, and gasped as the extrasensory awareness it granted assaulted her senses as if that missing limb had suddenly and painfully grown back. And with that awareness…

There was pain, and hurt, from somewhere beyond the walls she'd spent the last week within, and it slammed into her. Her breath was stolen by it sharpness, and the impact was like a physical blow.

The sensation brought her to her knees.

/

The world was bright. Every sense lit up, flared, and agonized as it was overloaded.

And then, darkness.

Seconds, minutes, maybe days later, she woke to the muffled sound of chaos, the sight of blurred, ominous colors, and pain in her head. The rest of her senses began to rush in one by one – she could smell thick smoke, taste the distinctive metallic tang of blaster fire in the air, and through the Force and the ringing in her own ears she could faintly feel a familiar presence cry out in alarm.

Then Pete was beside her, reaching, his yelling still muffled but mostly discernible.

"Myka! Myka!"

She felt arms around her, the pull of skin and tattered clothing as she was hauled away from where she was to some other place, darker but less chaotic. Her vision returned as the smoke cleared, and she realized Pete had pulled her out of the wreckage that used to be her quarters, into the mostly intact hallway further into their home.

"Mykes!"

"I'm here, Pete. I'm okay."

The world grew easier to take in by the second, but their tranquil home was now anything but. There was smoke and ash everywhere, rolling like a fog through gaping holes in the house, and the interior walls were lit by the bright flames from various points of impact.

"Are you all right?!" The question came from the youngest member of the group, her voice laced with no small amount of alarm.

"I'm fine, Claudia," she answered reflexively, not at all certain it was the truth.

"You can't be all right, Mykes…you should see you."

She ignored the comment and glanced at the others, noting their injuries for the first time. Leena had abrasions across her dark face, and Artie held his left elbow gingerly. Steve leaned heavily against Claudia, who looked like she'd actually walked through a fire. And Pete…"

There was a nasty-looking burn where he'd grabbed at whatever she had been trapped beneath. His shirt was so singed he would have done better not to wear it at all.

Her head ached, badly, and when Leena took it within her grasp and placed her hand over what must have been a pretty deep gash, she winced and hissed.

"Hold still," the woman said. "It'll be over in a second."

True to her word, it was. The woman was a gifted healer – a gifted great many things, actually. The pain eased immediately, and the wound began to heal itself. There would be a massive bump, probably some bruising, but for now she was fit enough to defend herself.

She was always amazed by the depths of Leena's talents.

"Mykes…how are you still alive after that?"

"You warned me," she replied, not at all sure her answer was sufficient even for herself. "I managed to throw up a barrier."

Pete looked unconvinced, but grunted as she righted herself and glanced through the opening that used to be a door. Myka could see her saber on the floor, hidden below some rubble that might once have been her dresser. With little more than a thought, she summoned it to her hand.

"I'm fine, Pete." She pushed away from him and swayed for just a moment as her equilibrium caught back up with her, but swatted away the many hands that came up to help. "We need to get to safety. Whatever that was…"

Her voice trailed off – the hole in their home led straight out into the courtyard, to where a Separatist shuttle had landed, and where several mercenaries were removing themselves and assembling as an invasion force.

At the rear, dressed in dark black robes and wearing a sinister smile stood James MacPherson.

"They're here for Helena." The realization hit her just a fraction of a second before it escaped her lips. "We have to stop them."

Pete frowned, and gingerly put his hand on her shoulder.

"You're worried about that? Mykes, they Warehouse is compromised! We have a bigger calling here." He gestured his hand backward, toward the hidden entrance to the actual Warehouse. "I mean, let 'em have her. She's probably on their side, anyway!"

Myka glared at her partner, heat rising to her cheeks in the wake of her ire. "Stop it. You don't know that."

He sighed, shook his head, them looked at her wearing a kind of sympathetic grimace, as if he was about to utter words that would hurt. "We have to prioritize here. You know that, right?"

"He's here for her, Pete, and whatever he wants with her can't possibly be good for any of us. We also have to worry about what happens to the Warehouse if the Separatists win!"

Pete looked about ready to protest, but then Claudia, still mostly holding Jinks upright, shook her head and cleared her throat.

"She's right, Pete. MacPherson sees Wells as an artifact, and whatever he plans for her isn't good. We can't just let him have what he wants."

"James is here for the Sith. There's no doubt," Artie added, his voice just barely above a growl. "We have to protect her. That's also our job."

If her fellow agent and closest friend was disappointed by the consensus against him, he didn't show it. He wasn't that kind of guy, though – he did what was necessary, and always had.

Yet he hesitated so fiercely to even acknowledge Helena as anything more than an inconvenience. Even Artie, in all his dislike for the mere existence of the Sith, admitted that she held some value…just not to them.

Myka suspected a deeper reason for Pete's distrust, even suspected he had some vibe about it all, but whatever it was he hadn't quite gotten around to verbalizing it yet. She would have to goad him into it some other time.

They drew back into the shattered hallways as the mercs advanced, drawing close enough to catch the markings on their very distinctive armor. Pete cursed, and Myka could see why – the armor was custom-crafted, and bore the ceremonial markings of a particular kind of clan.

"Mandalorians?" Pete yelled. "What the frack are they doing on the Separatist side?"

Steve stumbled his way toward the opening and lifted his blaster rifle. It was a special weapon that Claudia had modified some time ago that was meant to stun and incapacitate for hours rather than kill. "Let's find out, shall we?"

"Is that gonna work on their gear?"

Claudia balked in response to the older woman's question and bore a very offended look, before she pulled out a blaster pistol of a similar make. She held it in her right hand and her saber in her left. "These babies work on everything," she asserted, before darting into the exposed opening and taking the first shot.

The blaster bolt hit its target, and a blue light arced across the Mandalorian's armor. The warrior beneath seized, then collapsed to his knees before falling face-first to the ground.

It did indeed seem like the weapons were effective, but with the first volley fired, the invaders opened up with their own hail of gunfire.

Chaos ruled for several long minutes, as bright and deadly blaster bolts rained over their heads and into the walls of their home. The deafening rancor of careening shots and the dust and smoke of impacts and explosions and crumbling walls made it hard to see and concentrate. Yet with stunning accuracy, Claudia and Steve and even Leena managed to pick their shots and drop warrior after warrior, thinning their numbers and evening the odds. Eventually, the Mandalorians realized that the group of agents had decimating weapons in their arsenal and scurried out of the line of fire.

Myka could feel them closing in slowly.

To their right, down the hallway, another point of ingress blew open, and the four Jedi drew their sabers long before they entered the remains of Pete's room.

Mandalorians were each adept fighters, skilled at marksmanship and piloting and ordinance, but their true renown was in hand-to-hand combat. At first, it was two-to-one odds against the knights in their new arena.

In close quarters, however, the advantage belonged to the Force-user.

Myka concentrated and gathered the dust and the air, coiled it beneath her palms and then pushed it down and out. The resulting wave blew the attackers into the walls, sending some sprawling so far back into the courtyard that Steve and Leena took them down from their defensive position at Myka's room. The rest rose, one by one, and resumed the attack.

Lightning struck somewhere nearby and illuminated the courtyard for just a moment, but it was enough for Myka's eye to detect movement along the crumbling far wall. MacPherson crept in the shadows, inching toward the inn's entry and, inevitably, the green door.

"Myka!"

It was Artie's cry of warning that sent her in motion, pushing her to fly across the yard and block the tall, slender man's path with her saber drawn and her heart racing.

He met her with his own red-bladed saber ignited.

The man's face was mostly cast in shadow, but what fiery light was present in the courtyard painted the lines of his face with eerie malice.

"Stand aside, you foolish girl! I'm not here for your precious artifacts! I'm here for the Sith!"

He pushed against their locked blades in an attempt to simply overpower her and shove her aside, but where he had strength as his ally in a fight, she had a far superior skill. His saber slipped away from hers, and she brought her blue blade up to strike, forcing him to take an imbalanced pace back to defend himself.

"You'll never have her," Myka said confidently, pushing her own advantage against him.

"Come now, what's one relic of a dead era in the grand scheme of the Warehouse's mission? I bear you no ill will, and I bear her none, as well. I daresay she might enjoy what I have in store for her."

Through the Force, she was suddenly made aware of a gathering darkness, one that had been present all along but grew in strength in moments, and at its focal point was the man standing before her. Her senses weren't like Steve's, and they weren't like Pete's, so she neither felt his lie nor sensed an imminent danger, but the heavy presence of hate and rage was a familiar warning.

She had never questioned Artie's claim that the man before her had fallen to the Dark Side, but there was no longer any room left for doubt. In that moment, standing before a true Dark Jedi for the first time in her life, she realized that this malevolence had not once been present within Helena Wells.

"I don't think so," she spat, and the true fight began.

Beneath the onslaught of the Mandalorian explosive charges, the courtyard walls had crumbled and craters marred the sprawling lawn of overgrown fauna within. They battled across the ruins, Myka using her keen skill and force sense to anticipate and parry and drive backwards. And the man - perhaps taken by surprise, perhaps simply bested – stumbled backwards across ferrocrete slabs and upchucked rock.

She had the man nearly cornered, and could sense the approach of the rest of her team. With one controlled spin, she batted the older man's lightsaber away, sending it to skitter across the ground. He raised his hands in surrender as she backed him into the wall at the point of her bright blue blade.

"You are quite gifted, my dear," he muttered, but she didn't bother responding. She would keep him at bay until one of the others could assist her in getting the man into restraints.

Then, before anyone could approach, his hand twitched.

"Myka!"

Her instinct had been to press forward and quickly end it, but the particular tone of Pete's yell was fearfully familiar.

A small stone appeared in the man's hand, simple in appearance but bright and red and angry through the Force.

An artifact.

Myka looked away as fast as she could and threw up every protective Force ward she knew, but the sound of countless screaming voices filled her mind, overwhelmed her senses, and pitched her over into the dust.

/

It took far too long to come around again.

Within minutes of her emergence from stasis, Helena had felt the full effects of mental exhaustion so keenly that she stayed blissfully unconscious for the bulk of a three week journey across Republic space. Upon her arrival on Ossus, still somewhat exhausted, her fatigue had only supplemented her bad mood.

Physical pain, however, was something she hadn't felt in a very long time.

It felt like a small eternity before the sensation disappeared, almost as suddenly as it had come on, and despite the obvious danger the Sith took her time pulling herself back to her feet. In the interval she felt the earth beneath her rock once more, ruining her first effort to right herself. At length she succeeded, and then pushed herself down the long corridor.

The green door was shut tight, locked and wired with its own redundant power supply. Helena could feel circuitry through the Force, and the combination of an innate skill and the extra sense had made her quite mechanically proficient.

She looked back toward the cell. Surely the forcefield had the same redundancy that was complicating her escape. However, she let the oddity slide and set to work on releasing the final lock on her cage. The circuitry was older, and yet somehow vexing in its configuration, and it depleted her patience until she at last had it – a pull of a wire, a feedback loop formed, and –

The green door clicked. Helena was, at last, free.

A pale, eager hand reached for the handle, hesitating only because its owner had such a hard time believing that this ambition she had pursued for much of her life and throughout her isolation was but the twitch of a muscle away. Smiling, the former captive tugged the door open.

The moment it slid ajar, she was dropped once again by agony.

Voices crowded her head, screaming in pain and sorrow and anger. The torture was mental, and chaotic, but not foreign. It was easier to manage than the physical experience she had been assaulted with before. Helena rose once again using the doorframe for support, and as she reeled against the onslaught she realized that the sounds and the fear and the tone of it all was familiar.

It was the pain of a hundred million souls crying out to the Force as their lives were extinguished by a relentless bombardment from above. It was the fathomless wound of a planet dying.

The agony in her mind was the terror of Taris as Malak directed the Leviathan – already her prison – to destroy the world from orbit.

As if acknowledgment was enough, the voices quieted significantly the second she recognized their source.

Helena staggered through the portal and into the smoky devastation of what used to be a living area. The sofa was overturned, the dining table broken. She could see distantly – regrettably - that the glass protecting Leena's grotto had been shattered. She rounded the corner slowly and crouched behind a disintegrated wall to observe the courtyard beyond for signs of opposition, and a chance at escape. The screaming of tortured souls had dulled somewhat, but she was also anxious to quell the noise.

In the distance, looming over the smoke and debris stood an efficiently-designed shuttle, and it was perhaps one of the most welcome sights she had ever seen. Her abilities as a pilot were quite extraordinary, if she did say so herself, and that craft would be her vehicle to freedom. All she had to do was cross the courtyard and avoid anyone left alive...

The Sith looked about the blazing battlefield once more, and her heart seized as a single, bafflingly disturbing thought crossed her crowded mind.

If there is anyone left alive.

She found bodies everywhere – stunned and silent suits of armor strewn across the floor around her and the dirt beyond, and amongst those motionless men she found the still bodies of the Jedi agents that had incarcerated her. The warriors were dead, but she could sense the Jedi were not…yet.

Her heart started once more, and began to race as the implication that Myka might be among them sank in. She sought the familiar form, her gaze raking across smoldering rubble until it landed upon her goal.

The Jedi was bent over the top of a pile of rubble, much like her companions. And before her stood a smug James MacPherson, clad in dark robes characteristic of Helena's own kind and holding the apparent source of that miserable wailing.

Crouched safely behind her crumbling wall, she surmised based on its undeniable effect upon every other living soul in the compound that an artifact had been created out of the terrible moment of an entire planet's extinction. That moment had left an indelible mark even upon her, for despite her imprisonment in a stasis field she had felt the damage done by Malak's desperation. In a failed attempt to kill one powerful Jedi, he had sacrificed and massacred a population of billions.

Rage flooded her, fueled her battle senses, and her muscles clenched in an attack posture purely out of instinct. That MacPherson would use an artifact created of such an event and imbued of such devastating power proved how truly corrupt he had become. He was no better than Malak, and that man had been a fool. A Sith pretender.

Now, as then, Helena Wells had no tolerance for such incompetence.

She was quite content to let the man suffer her wrath. She would have the fight she was denied on the Leviathan, and the Sith Code would finally deliver her the promise offered by its last lines.

Through victory, my chains are broken, she thought. The Force shall free me.

She gathered power about her, a reflex so much like inhaling, and primed for the expulsion of her fury. He might have sensed it – his head tilted in her direction and his eyes began to critically scour the wreckage.

Yet just as she was ready to strike, Myka moved.

Helena gasped, and the coil of power was cooled as the woman she had thought completely incapacitated drew to her full height once again, saber in hand, and ignited a clear blue blade. MacPherson seemed equally shocked, though his face bore a look that was more aghast than amazed. Helena, by contrast, was relieved beyond measure that the woman was alive.

That incongruous feeling would have to be contemplated later.

"My, but you are persistent," the man taunted as he turned the stone over in his hand. The screaming in her brain increased, and she winced, but it was still not enough to cut through the roiling anger racing through her veins. Myka staggered under the weight of the attack, as well, but righted herself in just as much time.

Again, Helena was impressed by the Jedi's force of will.

The Sith supposed she had as an advantage a survivor's armor against the agony, but plainly every other person in this battle had failed to withstand MacPherson's artifact-augmented attack. The woman standing before MacPherson in the courtyard had no defenses against this artifact except determination and fortitude. Rather than escaping or joining the fray, Helena was driven to simply bear silent and amazed witness for long moments to Myka's rather courageous stand. She soon shook herself free of that impulse after a few moments, and began to move through the shadows toward the shuttle, watching the pair of combatants as she progressed. The Jedi had things well in hand, it seemed.

It was almost a shame – Helena did so wish to dispatch MacPherson herself.

The man frowned deeply as Myka drew near. "The time for your heroics is past, Jedi," he called out, raising his other hand before him. Myka used his new offensive movements to her advantage and yanked the rock out of his grasp with hardly a jerk of her fingers, sending it flying across the courtyard and silencing the voices at last.

In response, the former Jedi's composure melted away. Anger swelled around him like a cloud, not to be seen but to be felt as something dark and terrifying...and familiar to Helena. She bore witness to the moment of the man's final act of betrayal to the order that he once served.

For somehow, despite its destruction so very long ago, he had been schooled in the ways of the Sith Order.

His hand flexed much as the Jedi's had before, but with the intent to push rather than pull. Hatred and disdain flared anew in Helena, who could not even cry out a warning before purple bolts of energy arced off MacPherson's fingertips and engulfed Myka in searing anguish.

Helena was taken off-guard when physical pain lanced through her once more, darkening her vision and blocking out sound, and she collapsed to her knees again, clutching at the edge of a demolished wall to keep herself from pitching over into the ash. She might have screamed – the sound filled her ears though she couldn't be sure of its source – but it was the buffer of unspeakable rage alone that kept her conscious and thinking. She could somehow feel Myka's agony, and though her body was perfectly fit, her mind reacted as if it were her flesh being singed, her muscles fried.

Wild, unchecked fury grew alongside the foreign feeling of fear for Myka's life until the mysterious pain was just another fuel, and she lifted her body to bear witness as Myka finally dropped likes a stone. The Jedi rolled down the hill of rubble to come to rest on her back, motionless.

"It's a shame," MacPherson said, just loud enough for Helena to hear him. "The Force is strong with you. My Master could have used a power such as yours."

Helena's eyes widened, her suspicious confirmed and more as he summoned his saber to his hand, activated it, and raised his arm to strike.

"NO!"

Propelled by the Force, powered by her emotions, she summoned Myka's saber to her side just as MacPherson's arm began to descend, then leapt the distance between with an aim for his head. He blocked it easily, but was forced into a defensive stance, and Helena twisted to recover and land on her feet beside Myka, at the foot of the mound of debris that MacPherson stood atop. He held high ground.

His advantage was dangerous, even insurmountable against a skilled opponent, but she had experience and indignant rage as her allies. She also something far more powerful: in threatening Myka, a woman she inexplicably cared for a great deal, James MacPherson had scorned Helena Wells and given her a cause.

The man's eyes had yellowed in his full embrace of the darkness, and his frustration at constantly being denied his desires was beginning to manifest in the disgusted curl of his mouth.

"What is it you mean to accomplish by saving this Jedi? Why would you stand against your own kind? This is a rescue mission, my dear. Put that saber down and let us leave these pathetic creatures behind."

Her rage curled and morphed in the pit of her stomach like a serpent and became something tangible. It was a coil of power, a reservoir of fleet fury to draw upon that sped her motions and heightened her senses. Yet she had to be judicious about its use - the anger was a drug, something to be used sparingly, and the longer it was allowed to manifest, the more dependent upon it a Sith became. She'd seen so many acolytes stumble into that dependency and pay for their misstep with their lives.

And for all the faults of the Sith culture, she knew that to be truly mighty was to walk that razor's edge, to embrace the myriad forms of fury, but use each as unique tools in a fight.

The suggestion, the mere idea that this fool could be a Sith was offensive at best, and blasphemous at worst. How dare he sully her great Order by pretending to be one of them? He was a toddler in the Dark Side, playing with forces far beyond his understanding. He was weak in the worst fathomable way.

And the gall of the man, pretending to sympathize with her after very literally sacrificing her on the Leviathan. How dare he insult her intelligence in such a way? Did he honestly think she would ever trust him?

"You believe yourself worthy of the title of a Sith? You know nothing of the elite society you pretend to belong to. You know nothing of its history and tradition. All you are is another misguided Jedi, lured by the sultry promises of the Dark Side and never committed to true mastery."

It wasn't a comment meant to assure him of anything other than his own subservient place in the order of things. The histories she had read suggested that the Sith had dwindled to only two Lords – a Master and Apprentice – at any given time. It was absurdity – it didn't matter that there may yet be creatures wandering the galaxy claiming the titles of the Dark Lords. In her mind, the Empire and all that was Sith was gone - these modern facsimiles were utter fools.

"And what are you, MacPherson? You're not the apprentice, and you're certainly not the Master. Are you a lapdog, then? An acolyte, at the beginning of his inevitably fruitless servitude under an inept Master? Or are you simply a buffoon, selling yourself as something greater than you will ever become?"

The ground beneath her began to shake as MacPherson's anger manifested. Loose stones began to levitate ominously.

"Weak, you say? By what measure? Even as a simple acolyte, I wield a greater mastery of the Force than even you could understand. In the shadows, the Order has thrived." The rocks arranged themselves to bombard the ancient Sith from all directions as MacPherson ground the rest of his statement through clench teeth.

"And you would do well to respect that."

She had seen such posturing before by so many prideful incompetents, and they had all met their end as little more than saber fodder.

She had many things to fuel her rage, but the anger most present, the weapon most fierce was the white-hot wrath that curled around her heart and drove her to crouch low and protective beside her Jedi savior. It was this fury, brought to bear by the threat against Myka's life, that would be his undoing.

How dare he.

Her answer was action – it was a pulse, a warning through the force not unlike the thunder still rolling above their heads, and as the clouds above finally broke so did MacPherson's hold over the pebbles. Helena was not interested in mere tricks.

One by one, the slabs of felled wall beneath his feet began to slide away and rise around him, threatening to fall in upon his head. He stood suddenly on even ground with the former Sith Lord, his advantage taken from him as a toy from a misbehaved child.

"The Order is dead, you fool," she hissed, her voice low and menacing and replete with the rage she was tapping into. "There are no Sith left but me. If you wish servitude to the true Dark Side, then I am the last Master."

She could taste his fear on the air, bitter and metallic as it mingled with the hard and driving rain. And it was his fear and not his anger that flailed outward toward the encroaching wall of rubble and disturbed it. Helena tilted her head, feeling the resistance, and let the slabs fall away.

She wanted him to learn his lesson painfully well before she killed him.

"You are a relic, Morlock!" MacPherson shouted, his face a cocksure configuration of arrogance and relief. "You cannot hope to stand against my master! Give yourself to the cause so that we may once again bring the mighty empire you once served and loved to its proper place in the galaxy!"

"I may have believed in the Sith Order," she growled, "but I was a slave to that empire! It is best left crumbled in history, where I will never be subjugated by it again."

"Oh, yes you will," James responded, "but perhaps not willingly."

He lunged forward, saber above his head, and she met his attack with a vicious grin.

It was over in a handful of split seconds.

So fast were her strikes, so fluid were her movements that MacPherson was disarmed and on his knees in moments. Shocked and not a little fearful, the man looked up the long length of Helena's borrowed blade and into her dark eyes.

In her triumph, she realized the truth of something she had suspected in reading the history of the Republic's victorious struggle against her Empire – the delicate art of saber combat had been lost over time, and the Jedi only had themselves to spar against in a time when blasters became the preferred weaponry of rare conflict.

It was sad, in a way, that the galaxy had modernized to a stage where such an elegant and civilized weapon was no longer favored. That unfortunate truth, however, flawlessly proved her point.

"You were saying?"

James MacPherson held his hands up in supplication, his brown eyes wide with fear and surprise. "I underestimated you...Master."

Pride was a dangerous thing – another lesson she had learned by observation. Yet there had been many Sith that had once deserved the vice. They were the elite, the masters that sat on the Dark Council. Each of them bore an earned arrogance.

Helena certainly had her fair share of those vices as the most accomplished acolyte, then Lord of her era. His address, the title of master had an undeniable appeal.

"The ship awaits. We can leave together, you and I, and I will serve as your apprentice. We will defeat the pretender Lord and his weakling second, and we will lead the Separatist droid armies to a victory over this accursed Republic. Together, you and I can reshape the Empire to your desire, and rule this galaxy."

She inclined her head to the shuttle, to the promise of freedom and all the power that the addictive rage whispered could be hers. It was such an easy thing to imagine, to reform the Republic into a shape of her making, to truly release herself from the cares of everything but her own creations.

It was such an easy thing to imagine creating that utopia that she and Revan had discussed so long ago.

In that brief moment of fancy, her concentration slipped just a fraction. MacPherson summoned his saber once more, activated it, and hurled it at the still figure on the ground behind her.

The thirst and anger in Helena mingled with a Force-born urgency that latched to her heart and squeezed it tight. She flung her own saber to deflect the pretender's attack and to defend the weapon's true owner. Darkness was summoned, swirled tightly around her and pool at her feet, then launched with the power of her powerful wrath towards the object of her rage. For James MacPherson, there was no escape – he was relieved of his footing and shot into the last solid wall standing, connecting with such a loud crack that it could be heard even over the thunder. At its limit, the barrier shattered and bowed over at his point of impact before it gave way completely and collapsed to bury him beneath it.

Fury left her as she realized he would not be attacking anyone again. He was alive – and likely to remain that way, unfortunately – but he would be incapacitated for quite some time.

With the rage dissipated, other sensations began crowding through her mind's barriers, and a desperate feeling of urgency became overwhelming as it clenched fiercely around her mind and heart. She could articulate the pull as the thread of a precious presence in the Force, and it pulsed and flickered against her awareness as if it was a living thing. She knew without question that the faint and fading tendril curled around her heart must belong to Myka. Helena knelt beside the woman that held faith in her when no other did, who cared enough to let her free of that bleak cage and lead her to that gorgeous and tranquil garden, even though it might very well have been the catalyst for MacPherson's attack, and the cause of all the destruction.

The rain muffled the sound of the shuttle's engines, but only just. She regarded the transport briefly, knowing it was her one chance at escape. Yet to leave was a death sentence for Myka...and for reasons quite beyond her capacity to understand them, the former Sith Lord found herself unable to pay such a price for her freedom.

Seated beside Myka, the forfeit was paid by the act of placing the dying woman's head in her lap. Wet strands of unruly hair, so often kept constricted in a conservative bun, clung to pale and clammy skin. There were scorchmarks on her modest nightclothes, along her arms and up her neck, and Helena winced as she ran her fingers across them.

It scared her, this decision, in a way that only one other choice ever had. She cared for this woman in a manner she should never care for anyone as a Sith, and certainly in a way that no Jedi should ever be cared for. Attachments were so very dangerous.

She never had been able to resist them.

A mighty Sith Lord had once cared for an old, quirky man and a child that never should have been born. She had even made friends with another Lord, and beneath his careful mask had found a man worthy of the kind of loyalty that her kin was so loathe to bestow.

And yet, it was those attachments that she had always found most worthwhile, and in them had found a deeper purpose. Glory and legend were the goals of every Sith, but legacy could only be built by those they left behind.

Perhaps there is no escape, she thought. Perhaps freedom lies in the ability to choose that which you serve.

There was no more contemplation as Helena began a healing trance, the only one she knew. It surrounded Myka in a shimmering blue light - a force-induced stasis field - and by will alone Helena held her together until more qualified help was available.

The choice was already made.

/

"Well this is...unexpected."

After the Jedi awakened and licked their wounds, after Claudia repaired the broken forcefield in the cell, and after MacPherson was dumped into it in the Sith's place and the Mandalorian troopers he killed with the Taris artifact were scooped up and stored for a respectful service, all that was left of the details was to speak to the Regents. Their intel reported that the raid was limited – no chatter indicated that the cartels or the Separatists were aware that Ossus was occupied. They'd gotten lucky, it seemed.

And Artie was not fond of luck.

The aged Jedi Master gave his report succinctly, and without opinion – his agents were fine, save one, and she would be dead already if it weren't for a Sith's efforts to save her. The facts irked him. They were, nonetheless, facts.

"It seems," Mrs. Frederic intoned, her blue form lighting up Artie's Warehouse office, "Miss Wells is not beyond redemption."

"Good can be found in anyone, Irene," Senator Amidala responded, "if given the proper environment to thrive in."

"And is the Warehouse the proper environment?" The other opinionated Regent from their conference several days before – Jane, Artie had heard her called – asked. "Can we trust someone like that with so many powerful objects? Can we trust a Sith with weapons capable of destroying the galaxy?"

"She has nowhere else to go," Bail Organa countered with a shrug of his broad shoulders. "Her empire is long destroyed, her home lost. We can't arrest her. We may as well keep her occupied, doing something useful somewhere where we can keep an eye on her."

"Inclined am I to believe that evil, she is not." Master Yoda stroked his wrinkled chin with a three-fingered claw, a gesture that, even though projected as a hologram, brought Artie back to his days as a youngling under the ancient master's tutelage. "Dark, the Force is. Clouded, our vision has become. Yet great destiny for Miss Wells, I sense. Anxious to see that come about, I am."

"Then it's agreed," Mrs. Frederic said. "We'll keep her here as a probationary agent, and help her re-acclimate to the galaxy as we can."

Artie shifted in his chair, but kept his mouth tightly shut. Unfortunately, in light of recent events and some of his own suspicions, he had to agree that keeping the Sith around was the right thing to do.

Of course, that didn't make him feel any better.

"We trust you and Master Artie will be exceptionally skilled in assisting our new agent in that endeavor," Amidala responded. And Mrs. Frederic, ever a mystery, opted to respond with an enigmatic smile and a bow.

"We've dispatched a heavy cruiser with a trustworthy crew to rendezvous with you in three weeks time to transfer MacPherson and the dead Mandalorians. We'll get what we can out of him, and then let him stand trial after selectively wiping his memory again." Organa shook his head. "Until then...just keep him alive."

Artie nodded. "Yes, Senator."

The meeting was adjourned, the transmissions were ended...and Artie was left with a cold chill in his bones.

He was accompanied by the Warehouse's resident spirit on his journey back toward the inn, where some quick repair work by maintenance droids had at least cleaned the place up a bit. The holes in the walls hadn't quite been patched, and the place still smelled of exploded ordinance. Yet as they made their way toward the one untouched bedroom, where Myka still lay unconscious, all of those details slipped his notice.

"You're worried," Mrs. Frederic said at last.

Artie grunted in reply at first, but when he cast a glance at her and noticed the arch of her eyebrow, he sighed. She wasn't going to let it go until he actually answered.

"Of course I'm concerned."

"And you still do not trust Miss Wells, do you?"

"No."

"Might I ask why not?"

They came to a stop at the doorway and peered through. Leena was gathering some supplies at the bedside, preparing to leave the other two occupants of the room alone after working a bit more of her healing magic. She smiled at the pair as she approached them at the doorway.

Artie looked, long and hard, at the younger and ailing knight spread across the bed, and scrutinized the woman at her bedside, hands wrapped around one of Myka's own as she waited for his agent to wake up.

"She'll be okay," Leena said, resting a hand on Artie's shoulder. "She just needs rest. Lots of it."

He could have asked a million questions. He could have thanked her for the reassurance, or the help. Instead, he turned his intense gaze upon the young innkeeper and posed another, entirely different query.

"It's a Force Bond, isn't it?"

The curly-headed woman nodded her head, and probably couldn't help the smile that broke out across her face. "And a particularly strong one, too. Very rare. It's remarkable, really. They should be able to feel each other's pain, and will be affected by each other's absence. Keeping Helena in that cell for so long was undoubtedly difficult for both of them. They would have felt…untethered."

But Artie felt unhinged.

"Remarkable," Mrs. Frederic whispered. "I have only rarely heard of a bond so strong. And there hasn't been one reported in so long. Not since…"

"Not since Master Bastila Shan," Artie finished, his voice just barely outside of the range of a snarl. "And Revan."

Mrs. Frederic drew back a bit at the bite in her agent's tone.

"You still do not believe she is worthy of your trust, Arthur? Even now, when you know for a fact that she might never be able to sever the bond she has with our family?"

"No. Definitely not now." With that, the Jedi Master turned his back on the pair and walked back towards the Warehouse.

"Not ever."

/ end Episode I