“Jaesa, it’s a little late to decide that you’re too tired to keep going,” Aly said testily.

“Hey,” I retorted, “I’ve been stuck…in that hole…for a week. Where was I…supposed to get…exercise?”

“What, the Republic doesn’t let somebody who can kill people with her mind out for her daily ten thousand steps?” she muttered sarcastically. “Who woulda thunk it?”

Instead of rising to the bait, I leaned against a tree and continued panting, using the respite to greedily suck in life-giving air.

She sighed – as much as anybody can sigh while jogging in place. “If you weren’t going to be able to keep up, you should’ve told me. I have to deal with enough macho crap between Quinn and Pierce, and I definitely don’t need you playing hero-ball along with them.”

“…Pierce?”

“Yeah,” she chuckled, “the lieutenant’s practically part of the crew now. We had an awful lot of fun out in the marshes while you were in the pokey.”

Whatever. I stepped away from the tree, put my hands on my knees, and spat forcefully near her still-churning feet. “That so?”

Aly’s smiled broadened. “Aw, are you feeling jealous? Your girlfriend has been spending time with other people!”

“No,” I said unconvincingly. It was one of those feelings that I knew was completely irrational even as I was having it – not that that helped much. “We can…let’s just talk about it later.”

“Oh boy! Does that mean we can start moving again?” she asked with mock excitement.

“You’re awful.” It didn’t have any venom behind it. “But yes.”

I hadn’t even finished talking before she pivoted on her heel and crashed back into the underbrush – and once again, I needed to sprint to catch up.

Without the Force, we’d never have made it as far as we did. The jungle around the 203 Meter Hill was alive with the chaos of battle. Through the trees, we could see clusters of Republic troops – the ones that hadn’t already decided to bug out – surrounded and fighting to the last man. The more intelligently-led units were conducting fighting retreats, and the blackhats we saw were too exhausted and too distracted to try to cut them off.

Those distractions included the friendly Tarisian wildlife. With Pub defense lines abandoned, the rakghouls, ferrazids, varactyls, and shaclaws were swarming into the New Tarisian Dawn area. Aly and I were skirting around a particularly nervous Imp fire team when suddenly an adventurous rak-pack burst out of the foliage and tore them to pieces in seconds. Even from a few hundred meters away, it was awful to watch – but the raks bounded off back into the jungle and we could safely continue our trek.

The sooner we kicked the Republic off this planet, the sooner everybody could leave – and abandon the rakghouls to the hell they’d created.

Of course, the most important part of getting the Republic off Taris was getting the colonists off Taris, and for that we needed to talk to Bashun, and convince him to get his community to leave by…uh…

Um.

Aly and I had left the thickest part of the jungle and were pelting down a game trail when I managed to draw alongside her. “Master?...stang. Aly?”

“Yeah?”

“What’re we gonna do when we actually get to the militia base? I, uh, I don’t think the lines we used on Kira will work this time.”

She coughed something that might’ve been a laugh and slowed down to a trot. “Hey, I’m just making this up as I go along.”

“I’d feel better if we had a tighter plan, Aly,” I said sardonically. “Like, I dunno, turning Thana into a sunfruit, or teaching the Sith to love.”

“Oooh, biting sarcasm from the Picture-Perfect Padawan. Have I been corrupting you?”

“A little bit,” I conceded. “You…and Kira…and Vette are bad influences.”

“Compliment received on this end, sweetie.”

With this, she slowed down even further, then sidestepped into the trees. I followed her as silently as I could manage, warned by feelings oscillating back and forth along our Force bond. A month of experience in some of the worst fighting in the galaxy had given me a much better sense of stealth than I’d possessed at the beginning; unlike that first night attacking the Republic artillery, I barely made any noise at all.

This was fortunate, because about fifteen seconds after we abandoned the path, I could discern a loud clattering sound over the incessant blasterfire in the background. Aly and I ducked behind a fallen tree just as a squad of Republic soldiers rushed past down the trail. I held my breath as one soldier’s helmet turned toward us, and I was certain that he looked directly at our hiding place. But he soon moved on to other things, and after about a minute the whitehats had vanished from sight around a bend in the path.

I tried to figure out how a soldier could’ve missed the two of us with his helmet’s thermal imaging scanner – the jungle was hot, but not that hot – but then I turned to Aly and saw the look of concentration on her face. He hadn’t missed us after all. She’d just used the Force to instantly wipe it from his mind.

That was the sort of neat trick I’d really have liked to learn, not the endless hand-to-hand combat drills.

I was still lost in thought about how awesome that would be when a Force-nudge jolted me out of my reverie. Shaking my head, I turned to Aly, fumbling for a properly annoyed remark…only to find that she wasn’t there. Just an Aly-shaped impression in the underbrush.

“What, already?” I said thickly.

Come on, slowpoke, came back her response. We’re on the chrono, here.

I forced everything I knew about Jedi serenity up from the murky depths of my memory and plunged after her. That Jedi Master back in the cell hadn’t managed to crack my calm, but Aly did it without even really trying.

Then again, she had experience trolling the entire Jedi Order, from back when she was looking for me. I guess you could call her a test of my moral conviction. I could fall to the dark side just because of things I might do out of the love I feel for her. Or I could fall to the dark side from the simple desire to smack the snot out of her.

Flashes of blaster fire at the corners of my vision and the odd explosion had long since robbed me of any semblance of night vision, and Aly’s customary dark robes would’ve been nearly impossible to pick out anyway. But she left a wake through the Force that I could’ve followed no matter what. It wasn’t long before I found her, hiding near the tree line, looking out at a clearing in the jungle.

Whereas the Pub forces on the rest of the 203 Meter Hill had fled westwards toward Olaris, Bashun’s militia die-hards had remained at their posts. There wasn’t really anywhere else to go; with families and possessions to worry about, they had no chance of fighting their way out through the Imps and the raks. And the War Trust generals in their bunkers had to be grateful, because the militia would derail the Imp offensive just by being there, like a bone in Darth Gravus’ throat. I had learned something from Aly’s little military-theory quizzes: we couldn’t mount a siege of Olaris with the militia sitting right on our supply lines, so we’d have to clean them out house by house and cave by cave, with all the bloody casualties that entailed.

The only people who would win in that scenario would be the War Trust.

We were standing on the edge of a clearing, but it wasn’t a natural one. Instead, the space around a wrecked skyscraper had been denuded for hundreds of meters in every direction to provide a clear field of fire for the interlocking defensive turrets mounted at the building’s base. Lines of trenches stretched between the turrets, providing cover for invisible platoons of militia.

Other invisible defenders waited in the few swales and dips in the clearing: mines, to provide a nasty surprise for anybody thinking she could shelter from the murderous fire certain to emanate from those defenses. And, just in case we thought to try to have Major Nost’s bombers provide air support, the skyscraper itself was bristling with AA turbolasers tracking unseen targets across the gloomy Tarisian night sky.

On the bright side, this meant that Bashun and his settler militia weren’t in any serious immediate danger from Thana and her misappropriated battalion. She’d have needed a whole legion to storm this fortress, and judging by the immaculate state of its defenses, she hadn’t even tried.

We, on the other hand, had neither a legion nor any particular desire to fight our way inside in the first place.

“So, Aly?” I said timorously. “How about that plan, now?”

She rubbed her chin, stroking a nonexistent beard. “Well, step one is to get ourselves captured. I doubt even Cipher could sneak in there undetected, and we’re not fighting these guys.”

“Not fighting?” I snorted. “Since when do you come up with plans that don’t involve fighting?”

“Hey, I just sprung you from prison and captured the most heavily fortified place on the planet, all without fighting,” she objected.

“That reminds me. How’d you manage to fake a reactor failure? Or even, you know, get inside?”

Aly ostentatiously waved her right hand in front of her as though performing Affect Mind. “Sith tricks,” she said dismissively.

I laughed. “Come on, Aly.”

“Okay, I did kinda have help from Vette, Quinn, and Cipher, and about two days to plan,” she admitted. “And we had good on-site intel developed in advance. This place? No such luck.”

“All right,” I said, “so we get ourselves captured. Then what?”

“I dunno, break ourselves out and fight our way to wherever Bashun is?” Her face was illuminated by the militia base’s searchlights for the briefest of instants, and I could see her eyes squinting at me oddly. “What’s up with you, anyway? Aren’t Jedi supposed to be the ones who are more okay with going with the flow and ad-libbing everything?”

I shrugged. “As much as I hate to admit it, I’m not a Jedi. And you know that part of the reason I’m with you is because I was looking for, y’know, clarity.”

“Clarity doesn’t necessarily mean foreknowledge,” she pointed out. “I mean, there are times to strategize, sure. But there are also times when it’s just best to rock and roll, you know?”

“Fair enough.” I brushed something with a lot of legs off my all-too-exposed arm. “Let’s go get ourselves captured, then.”

“Maybe you should lead the way. You’ve already got practice at being a prisoner,” she snickered.

“And just like that,” I sighed, “the magic is gone.”

Aly stared at me with a gimlet eye. “Did you just say what I thought you said?”

“No,” I said impishly.

“Uh-huh.” She thumped a nearby tree with her fist. “Right. Time to move out and draw fire.”

---

The human militia sergeant in charge of the squad that captured us squinted dimly at the unassuming cave, far back from the fortress perimeter. Back among the bunkers and barracks of the base proper, militia and admin types were scurrying around all over the place. That hive of activity could not have been a more stark comparison to the virtually abandoned sector around this cave.

He turned back to us, chewing the inside of his mouth. “I just don’t think,” he said in a mushy Rimmer accent, “that the boss would be all the way over here.”

Aly glanced at me, and I gave a minute nod. I was…well, I was pretty sure. Force hunch and all that.

She smiled calmly at the noncom. “Oh, he’s here, all right. Let’s go inside.”

He shrugged reluctantly. “Guess it’s possible. All right: fall in, ladies.”

Our group slid down the muddy slope to the cave mouth and tramped inside. The antechamber was a bit musty and very empty – no sign of Bashun or anybody else, really. As far as any of us could see, it was just a barely-used storage room. The noncom turned back to Aly. “Yeah, I’m not seeing anything.”

“Try the door,” she replied patiently, pointing toward a blast door set in the back of the cavern.

“Mm-hmm,” he grunted. “I still don’t like not having binders on you.”

I licked my lips. “We don’t need any of that.”

“Yeah, whatever, screw the binders.” He ambled over to the door and punched in a code. “Nothing. It’s locked.”

Through our Force bond I could feel Aly’s attempt to keep a lid on her irritation as she strode over to the door behind him. A quick flash of purple and the locking mechanism inside the door disengaged with a heavy chunk. “Not anymore.”

The sergeant keyed in his code again and the door slid open, revealing a larger cavern that was, despite its size, significantly less empty than the one we were in.

Specifically, it was full of more militia. What looked like an entire platoon of forty men, almost all of which were pointing their blaster rifles directly at us, was dug in behind makeshift barricades of desks, chairs, couches, crates, and a baize-covered sabacc table.

I swallowed hard but managed to keep my face steady.

“Huh,” said the sergeant dimly. “What the frag are you guys doing here?”

A Cathar with lieutenant’s stripes painted on his armor rounded one of the barricades and leaned on it easily. “One might ask you the same question,” he said in a hard voice that belied the nonchalant posture he’d adopted.

“Well, we captured ourselves a couple of Sith, and, uh, we figured that the boss might be interested in seeing them.”

Aly stepped around the doorjamb and waved. “Yo.”

The lieutenant’s eyes tightened, and so did his soldiers’ grips on their weapons. “You didn’t cuff them?”

“Didn’t disarm us, either,” she said, flipping her unlit lightsaber hilt in the air.

His fur rippled, and he curled his upper lip. “Captured them, huh?”

“Yup,” said the sergeant brightly. A few of the soldiers in the platoon covering us chuckled.

The lieutenant shook his head wearily. “Whatever. Girls, I don’t really care why you’re here. But I’m thinking that if you want to be here, it’s a bad idea for me to let you be here. So how about you surrender your weapons, let some of these fine gentlemen with me put cuffs on you, and go spend some time in the holding cells a few buildings away.”

Aly smiled serenely. “Hmm. ‘Girls’, he says. I’m guessing that means you don’t know who we are.”

“You’re Sith, and that’s all I need to know,” he said dismissively, standing straight up and gesturing for some of his troops to come over.

“I,” she continued, “am the commander of the field army that’s currently kicking the Republic’s tail off of the 203 Meter Hill. You might’ve noticed all the mayhem going on outside.” As if on cue, the reverberations of an explosion from outside rocked the cave.

He froze, turned back to us, and glared, his face a stony mask. I could tell that he knew the score.

“You see, the Republic’s abandoning your settlement and leaving you to the Empire’s tender mercies. You’re not defenseless, of course. Many Imperials will die fighting here, if you choose to make a stand. But in the end, you’ll all be dead. Militia and civilians both.”

Now she had the attention of everybody in the cavern.

“That’s not a fair sacrifice to demand of your loved ones. It’s not a fair sacrifice to demand of you, when all you wanted was a new life and a place to call home. That’s why I’m here: to negotiate. If you let me in to talk to Bashun, maybe we can make it so that none of you has to die.”

The lieutenant closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, lost in thought. After what seemed like an eternity he opened them again. “I’m not getting paid enough to make this kind of decision,” he said with an oath.

She spread her hands. “Then pass it on up the chain of command. Let me talk to Bashun.”

He swore again. “Yeah, all right. But you’re not going inside armed.”

Aly flipped her lightsaber and held it, pommel out, to the Rodian militiaman who traipsed over to collect it. Then he turned to me, hand outstretched.

“That’s…not going to be an issue,” I said sheepishly.

My Master turned toward me with the sort of exasperated expression I knew so well from my parents’ faces. “Oh, Jaesa,” she said with a hefty helping of pained resignation. “Where the kark is your lightsaber?”

“Hey, I just got out of jail,” I said defensively. “When would I have gotten it back?”

“And you didn’t feel the need to bring this up why?”

“I didn’t think I had to! It should’ve been pretty obvious that they wouldn’t let me have my saberstaff with me in my cell,” I retorted.

She folded her arms. “Well, what exactly did you think you were going to be doing with me here? Throwing rocks?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Why’d you want me to come with you instead of Vette?”

“Apart from being my apprentice? Let’s see…oh, I know! Because you didn’t tell me you weren’t armed!”

“Well,” I said virtuously, “you’re not armed either.”

“That’s beside the point,” she blustered, but I cut her off.

“It’s the entire point! Neither of us has a lightsaber right now.”

The Rodian looked quizzically back at the lieutenant, who was trying and failing to keep a straight face, then over at another soldier with a scanner in his hand. The latter gave a curt nod, and the Rodian backed away, handing Aly’s lightsaber to the Cathar.

He glanced at us and chuckled again. “Truly a-mazing. You’re our deadliest enemy on this planet? With that low-comedy nonsense?”

Aly turned back to him and shrugged easily. “Yep. This hapless buffoon is the reason the Republic’s losing this planet. Embarrassing, isn’t it?”

The lieutenant scowled and pivoted to address his troops. “All right, I want two squads to escort our guests. Crev, Larr, on me. Isen, you’re in charge while I’m gone. Stay here with Gyrr’s squad.” He grit his teeth and stomped over to the sergeant who’d brought us in. “As for you, you’re now on security. Congratulations. Get your men set up in here. Enjoy it while it lasts, cause you’re gonna be on punishment detail for a very. Long. Kriffing. Time.”

He contemplatively twirled two pairs of cuffs around his fingers for a few seconds, then put them away. “Whatever. You’ll probably melt them with Force tricks or whatever. Let’s just go.”

We started off toward the back, and the two squads of soldiers filed in behind us. The sensation of having blaster rifles literally pointed at the back of my head was…nerve-wracking. I desperately wanted to hold Aly’s hand, but the militiamen were antsy enough as it was, and a move between the two of us…well. Instead, I poured my feelings into our Force bond, and she answered with her own. The sensation that I was not alone was all I needed.

We passed through two more rooms, each with its own hastily-installed blast door, each with equipment and crating stacked up to the ceiling. The place must really have started life as a genuine storage dump, yet it had been repurposed to…do something. I’d known Bashun was here through the Force, but I couldn’t imagine why he was hanging out in some random cave.

Well, we’d find out soon enough.

The final room was at the bottom of a painfully slow freight elevator. As the cavern slowly slid into view, it was instantly apparent that this was vastly different than the other chambers we’d been to. I could feel cool, dry, climate-controlled air on my skin, a welcome respite from the dank, clammy atmosphere from the other caves. And it was full – not of stacked containers and crates, but of a series of enclosed, roofed cubicles and, further in, masses of electrical and electronic equipment.

Our military escort marched us between the double row of cubicles, and Aly and I took the opportunity to peer inside. Each was a miniature holding cell, much less hospitable than the white room I’d spent the past week in, and the entrances were each blocked by a miniature ray shield – clearly designed to keep even resourceful prisoners like Intelligence agents or Sith from escaping. Most were empty, but I recognized one figure pacing and grimacing with impotent rage from the inside of her cell.

I guess that solved the mystery of what happened to Thana. That still left a battalion unaccounted for, of course, but it was progress. And it meant that we weren’t working on the deadline we’d thought we had. Thank the Force for small miracles.

The back wall of the chamber was dominated by a dais surrounded by holorecording equipment, where a very large bearded Cathar was giving an impassioned speech to the recorder. First thought: wait, Cathar can have beards? Since when? Isn’t it all just fur? Second thought: oh. Well. This must be Bashun. My stomach started to churn.

I gave Aly a little Force nudge. Showtime…literally.

She tossed me a dirty look, then turned it into a little half-smile.

I barely noticed it. Instead, I half-closed my eyes and slipped into a state of altered perception, opening myself to the Force. On Nal Hutta, I’d been inexperienced, and out of practice, and the effort of touching Aly’s mind had been almost overwhelming. After several weeks of experience? It was second nature.

The soldiers marching behind us, and the ones already in the room, weren’t of interest to me. And I definitely didn’t want to try to take a look inside Thana’s mind. Instead, I honed in on Bashun’s presence, worming my way into his mind, trying to get a sense of what motivated him…and what buttons Aly and I could push to get him to do what we wanted. Within seconds, I had my answer, and sent it down the Force bond to Aly.

The lieutenant or somebody must’ve called ahead, because Bashun saw our impromptu column marching up to the dais and paid it no mind. As far as he was concerned, it was all part of the plan. He just kept playing to his broadcast audience.

“The Empire’s trying to drive us from Taris – from our homes,” he ranted. “Soon they’ll learn that Cathar never back down!”

He shifted so that the recorder could take in both our group – which halted right in front of his platform – and Thana’s cell. “The Empire sent these Sith to kill me, but they failed: proof that none can defeat the mighty Cathar!”

Aly folded her arms. “Oh, please. We’re negotiators, not assassins.”

Bashun glared at her. He was already tall, but the added height of the dais made him seem practically Olympian. “Your Empire just doesn’t know when to quit, does it?”

“We don’t know when to quit?” she repeated back, astounded. “The Empire’s winning the war for Taris right now. Your Republic protectors have abandoned you. That’s why we’re here: to offer you a way out.”

Two immense Nikto warriors loomed up behind Bashun, menacingly standing at each of his shoulders. He smirked and turned back to Aly. “If the Empire were really winning, the Imperial commander wouldn’t be standing in front of me, cap in hand, would she?”

She rolled her eyes – whether out of theatrics, exasperation, or some mixture of the two, I couldn’t tell. “Have you ever heard of the carrot and the stick approach? The carrot, Mister Fluffy, is you and your people getting out of this alive. The stick would be me.”

“Pathetic,” he sneered. “You know you have no chance of defeating us, so you try to frighten us into surrender. It’s not going to happen, little girl.”

“Okay, Fluffy, if you’re such a big shot, how about this? You and me, right here, right now. No weapons. No tricks. Skill against skill alone. I mean, a little girl like me ought to be some kind of pushover, right?”

He started to laugh, but abruptly stopped when he realized she was dead serious. Then his expression changed. “Why?”

“If I win, you and your settlers, and the militia, all pack up and leave Taris. Run away. If you win…you get me as your prisoner. The commander of the Imperial army. Who all your followers just saw you beat one on one.”

“You’re already my prisoner,” he snorted.

“Negotiator,” she pointed out. “Sure, okay, you could just throw me and my apprentice into cells. And let all your followers know that you’re too much of a wuss to fight fair.”

I had to fight to keep a smile from blossoming on my face. Bashun’s leadership stemmed not from innate political skills or networking, but from the perception people had of him: a hard man for hard times, a True Warrior, a real citizen soldier. Without that reputation, he was just another settler, with no formal military rank or elected position. And Aly’d just spat in the face of his Cathar warrior’s honor in front of an audience of thousands. Even though it was ridiculous – staking an entire settler colony’s existence on one single combat – he still would feel like he had no choice but to agree.

Bashun bared his fangs. “All right, little girl. But let’s make it a little more interesting.” He gestured to the two Nikto mountains behind him. “Some of our strongest allies have been the Nikto, who have sent many Morgukai warriors to aid our cause. We’re all refugees fleeing the Empire’s cruelty. So we’ll fight together, side by side, to show that we won’t be uprooted again!”

He was playing to the camera again, and I felt like it had to be working on the thousands of settlers who had to be watching. It was even working on me.

Aly scowled. “Uh, that’s three on one. Hardly fair.”

“Well,” he suggested, “you could bring your apprentice.”

My whole body went rigid. Wait, what?

Her lips peeled back in a grin that was even more frightening than Bashun’s. “Done.”

“Aly,” I said nervously as I sidled up next to her, “are we actually doing this?”

“Yup,” she said cheerfully. “Now, which do you want: meat?” She gestured at Bashun. “…or potatoes?” She pointed to the Morgukai.

I gaped at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Too late, sweetie.” Then she leapt for Bashun.

I swallowed hard as the Morgukai lumbered over. You know, out of all the ways I figured I might make the holo news, taking part in a hand-to-hand brawl between race champions for the fate of thousands was not on the list. Not even close.

The thing about Morgukai is that they’re a sect of Nikto specially trained to fight against Force users. They’re very skilled in the use of cortosis-weave blades and phrik armor – the sorts of things that stop lightsabers. They train specifically against the various Forms of lightsaber combat, and they know Force-resistant tricks that would keep them from being as…open to suggestion as, say, a certain militia sergeant.

Fortunately, I didn’t have my saberstaff with me. That took away their biggest advantage: I wasn’t going to fight like a Jedi. I was going to fight like a certain erstwhile Dromund Kaas street rat.

Time to see if I’d learned anything from those sparring matches.

I was definitely faster than both of them, especially with the aid of the Force. That was my edge. So I sprang at the one on the right, the shorter one, trusting that I could use that speed to fight them individually instead of at the same time.

First came my right palm: I rammed it into his jaw, knocking his head backward and disorienting him slightly – not to mention tearing the crap out of my wrist. That gave me enough time to hook my leg around his and try to knock him down, but no such luck. He was rooted to the ground, perfectly balanced despite his woozy head, and that little maneuver nearly earned me a twisted ankle of my own before I disengaged.

Out of opportunism more than anything else, I rammed a few punches home into Shorty’s unprotected ribcage, trying to hit at weak spots in his armor – and, sort of, succeeding. But by then he’d recovered from his head blow, and grabbed at me with both arms. I bent backwards deeply enough to avoid the attack, but a Force tingle immediately went off in my head and I doubled back over again just in time to avoid a haymaker from his buddy Lurch, who was finally in the fight.

From there, I slammed my fist into Shorty’s groin. Naturally, he was armored there – my fist met his armored cup with a metallic clang and a frisson of pain throughout my knuckles – but that didn’t really matter, because the point was to knock him backwards a bit and make myself some room. It succeeded beyond my wildest dreams – Shorty actually lost his balance and had to pinwheel his arms to stay upright.

I used the opening to grab for his belt, and dragged him on top of me as a sort of shield, just in time for him to absorb a body blow from Lurch that made my teeth rattle even with Shorty’s dead weight blocking most of the punch. I slid forward and let Shorty drop off of me, rolling to my feet. As soon as I was upright again I twisted and delivered a roundhouse kick squarely on his hindquarters, earning me an appropriately explicit-sounding snarl and several seconds of respite. With Shorty temporarily out of the game, it was just me and Lurch.

Instead of wasting my time on his ribs, I went for his eyes first, jabbing at them with my fingers. I didn’t bother to follow up there, but immediately went for his jaw, this time remembering to use my elbow instead of my hand and getting a satisfying-sounding crack for my trouble as it dislocated. Then I pushed him in the chest with both hands, trying to topple him over Shorty, who was still kneeling on the ground and fumbling to get up. But Lurch’s fists started swinging wildly and clipped me in the side of my head before I could get anything going. Stars shot across my vision and I stumbled backward to buy myself precious space.

By the time I had my balance and my eyesight back, Lurch was already on me. I managed to guide most of his blows slanting away; Aly’s constant harping about protecting the centerline, and about the Angles of Attack, came in handy. None of the punches he directed at my torso and my head landed. But the other ones did, and they hurt. Staying on the defensive wasn’t doing me any favors; Shorty was already upright again and angling toward my side. I had to retake the initiative somehow.

When Lurch fired off his next punch, I idiotically grabbed at his fist to stop the blow. Pain lanced up my arm, but I held on. For a half-second, the Nikto just stared, then he smiled ferociously and pulled his fist back, dragging me with it, and bringing me in closer to him. He wanted to make this a bear hug – get me in close and squeeze the life out of me.

The Force surged into my legs and I leapt toward him, earning myself a brief look of shock and surprise before my legs slammed into his torso and bore him down to the floor. I straddled his chest and started to unload punches on his face. This lasted for about ten seconds before another warning tingled down my spine and I sent myself into a backroll just as Shorty jumped through the space my head had just vacated.

He recovered nicely, rolling to his feet. I hauled myself upright to join him, giving Lurch some space to allow him to writhe around on the floor in agony. As I got my footing, I noticed the holocams again, and remembered where I was and what I was doing. Which is probably the main reason I decided to do something that was either really stupid or really smart, depending on your point of view. I decided to show off.

So as Shorty started to turn around and face me, I took a few steps forward and propelled myself straight up into the air. For an infinite nanosecond of hangtime, I hovered in front of him, watching as his eyes came into view, as they flickered in recognition, and bugged out in shock and horror as he realized what I was about to do. Then I spun around and delivered a tornado kick straight at his head. It jolted backward before the rest of his body did, then he toppled over like a falling tree. When he hit the ground, he stayed there. I couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead.

And I didn’t have the time to check, because Lurch was back up and out for blood.

He threw his first punch at my midsection, and I didn’t have enough time to get my hands in the way. Instead, I tried to clench my core with a ki-ya that took the brunt of the blow – but only the brunt. A wave of pain shot through my whole body and I stumbled back. I had my hands up, but they were moving sluggishly, and I could only block some of his punches, gave ground for others, and absorbed the rest. His fist connected with my temple as I was backing up and I lost my footing, tripping backward and nearly landing on my butt.

I knelt to catch my breath, resting my elbow on my knee and using it to prop up my head. Lurch sauntered up to me confidently with an obscene grin on his face. I looked up as he stood over me, cracking his knuckles ominously. Then he opened his mouth to speak. I winced involuntarily, expecting something like “any last words?”

But instead, all I got with a mushy jumble of Huttese. I could barely comprehend Huttese when a protocol droid was speaking it, and thanks to this Nikto’s accent and the jaw that I’d dislocated, I couldn’t understand him at all. Great. More low comedy for the last few seconds of my life.

Then a hundred kilos of bloody, sweaty Cathar collided with him from the right and sent him sprawling.

I turned and saw Aly, a sheen of sweat covering her face, as she bent down, resting her hands on her knees. She noticed me looking at her and threw me a defiant little grin that just melted me, then straightened up and strode over to the barely conscious pile of Cathar and Morgukai a few meters away.

For the first time, I got a good look at Bashun, and what Aly’d put him through. The short version: she’d put him through hell. His arm was clutched around his midsection as though it were holding him together: she’d broken some ribs. His face was a mask of bruises beneath the fur and the beard, and blood slowly oozed out of his mouth and his broken nose. And from the angle his feet were in, I’d have been surprised if he hadn’t broken at least one ankle.

Our live, in-studio audience, the proverbial lieutenant and ten men – okay, fine, it was more like sixteen – just stood there in shock. Their stunned silence was all the applause we were going to get. I half expected them to ignore the deal Aly and Bashun had made, just because. But then Bashun stirred, and started to disentangle himself from Lurch, and I let out a tiny sigh of relief. Surely these militia wouldn’t shoot with their boss alive and up on stage with us.

Aly bared her teeth. “You wanna keep going?”

Bashun came up to his knees, supporting himself against the ground, refusing to meet her gaze. Then he raised his hand and gave a little wave of defeat.

She kept pushing. “Say it.” No response. “Say it!”

Then, barely audible: “You win.”

She turned to the soldiers. “DID ANYONE NOT HEAR THAT?” she bellowed, her voice still deafeningly loud despite the tremendous exertion she’d just been through. “DOES ANYBODY NEED IT EXPLAINED?”

A few of the soldiers hesitantly started to shoulder their rifles, as though they really were going to shoot us anyway. Her head twitched minutely to the side, and she frowned in disapproval. Then she reached out with her right hand and I felt a whipcrack of the Force as her lightsaber tore itself from the lieutenant’s grasp and soared across the room to land smack in her palm.

She stared the soldiers down across a brilliant amethyst fountain. “Don’t be stupid.” The militia lieutenant blinked first. He shook his head, then reluctantly gestured for his men to lower their rifles to the floor.

Aly turned back to Bashun, still on hands and knees, and gave him a little jab in the flank with the side of her boot. Slowly, painfully, he raised his head to the holocam.

“Keep…fighting…” he mumbled, barely audible.

She kicked him again. Harder.

For a few seconds it looked as though she’d pissed him off enough to make him go out fighting. But instead, he grit his teeth and kept his word. “Fellow settlers. The Empire’s…won. Lay down your weapons. Leave Taris while you still can.”

He levered himself upright into the Warrior’s Seat, wincing in pain. One arm stayed clutched around his ribs, but the other snaked up to his neck, as though he had to use it to hold himself up. “I’m sorry…I’ve failed you.” Then the claws on his hand extended and sliced into his throat. A fountain of blood spurted out, and I had to look away. For a few seconds, his corpse stayed upright, but then it swayed and collapsed in a heap.

I felt revulsion and a little surprise from Aly through our Force bond, but she didn’t let it show. Instead, she turned to the holocam herself. “It ends now. Your leader went easy. You will go hard. Anybody left in these settlements at daybreak dies. Men. Women. Children. We’re past threats. This is a promise.

“Taris is closed.”

With a lightning flick of her wrist, she sent her lightsaber spinning into the holocam. It split in half with a shower of sparks, and smoking fragments of what had once been professional-grade electronic equipment fell to the floor. Another flicker of intention, and her lightsaber returned to her hand. She turned to meet the militia lieutenant’s eyes.

“That means you, too.”

None of them moved, still rooted to the spot in terror.

Then, with a stentorian roar: “GET THE KARK OFF MY PLANET!”

I wouldn’t have guessed they could move that fast in their armor.

Aly watched them disappear up the freight elevator. Once they were gone, her shoulders slumped and the fire in her eyes died down. She closed down her lightsaber and returned it to its customary belt clip. Then, sighing, she turned and trudged over to me.

A hand was proffered and taken, and I lifted myself shakily to my feet. Aly didn’t say anything as she embraced me. She didn’t need to.

It worked. We actually won.

We stood there hugging for about a minute before the lights abruptly dimmed and shut off. The cells’ containment fields flickered and died, and the computer banks along the walls went dark. Within five seconds, the cavern’s emergency glowpanels had come to life, bathing the place in a sickly red.

“It’s your color,” I murmured inanely.

I could feel her face, resting against my cheek, spread wide in a smile. “You’re a loon, you know that?”

I didn’t answer. I’d been looking at the cells when Aly came over to help me up, and it was only then that I realized what happened when their power got cut. She realized it too, and put her hand to her lightsaber’s hilt as she whirled around to face Thana.

The killer scowled irritably. “They’d better run,” she said petulantly. “I’ll personally slay any stragglers I find.”

“Sure,” Aly sighed. “Good luck with that.”

“How’d you get captured in the first place?” I asked.

“My backup disappeared,” she muttered. “Idiots got lost somewhere in the fighting. I didn’t realize it until I was surrounded by a militia platoon.”

Aly groaned. “You’re welcome, by the way.” She clearly liked Thana better in Republic custody than out and about with the Imps.

“No one’s ever earned my thanks,” Thana shot back, “least of all you. While you two simpering idiots kiss away each other’s boo-boos, I’ve got some blood to spill. See you on the battlefield.”

With that, she stalked off toward the freight elevator. Aly slowly sagged back against me and exhaled.

“Good job back there,” she said absently.

I frowned. “Aly, I think I killed somebody by accident, and if you hadn’t beaten Bashun I’d be dead. How is that a good job?”

She shrugged. “Without you holding those guys off, I’d have had to take on all three. I can’t do that, not straight up. All I needed was for you to keep them busy, and you actually took one down. And that’s with just a few weeks of rushed, inconsistent, barely coherent training. I’m very proud of you, Jaesa.”

“Well, uh, thanks.”

“I mean it,” she said seriously. Then her tone turned mocking. “I mean, you’ve got to do something, now that your lightsaber’s gone.”

“Aly…”

She clapped me on the shoulder and directed me toward the elevator, walking briskly. “Don’t worry about it. We won’t be doing much fighting for awhile. So you’ve got time to fix the problem.”

I perked up. “Does that mean you’ve got time to fill me in on all the crazy stuff that happened the week I was out?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “You’ve…got a lot to catch up on.”

Hey, I'm back. It's been a rough coupla weeks, although I won't deny that part of the reason I haven't been writing as much is because I've been playing more. The Gree and Bounty Hunter events were hard to pass up. Apologies.

In the Notes to Chapter XIII, I mentioned Dennis Showalter's naming conceit from Tannenberg. The title here is just a continuation of that. And the quote? Well, it's a little bit sketchy to use two Neil Gaiman-related quotes one after another, but I have no regrets; The Sandman is awesome. It's from Part III of The Wake, when Destruction drops by to visit with Daniel, shortly before he assumes his duties as the new Dream of the Endless.

It makes perfect sense to me that Aly would like Pierce. He's a soldier's soldier who exists primarily to kick butt and be confident about it. Kinda like her. (Also, he doesn't like Quinn. Kinda like me.) Obviously there are a lot of areas where they wouldn't, and don't, connect, but spending several days wiping out Pub garrisons in the marshes? Yeah, they're down with that. Also, she saved him at General Durant's base - the genesis of the "macho crap" comment - but Jaesa technically doesn't know that yet.

As you leave the Brell Sediment, taking the fight to the Republic, the wildlife does get thicker on the ground - and the Republic soldiers decidedly less thick. Whether this was intentional or not, it does serve to illustrate the Republic's hold on Taris coming apart at the seams. The army's combat power has degenerated so much that wildlife is showing up in the settlement areas, practically unhindered. It's a theme of decay that gets revisited on Belsavis (to considerable effect, I might add; it's why Belsavis is probably my favorite planet).

"The simple desire to smack the snot out of her" is something of a borrowing from - er, a homage to - Shatterpoint, much like how the later "does anybody need it explained?" comes from Caine Black Knife and Caine's Law. It's pretty easy to see how Mace Windu and Caine have affected the way I write Aly - Caine more so than the Korun Master. Maybe I'll just slap the "intertextuality" label on it and walk away whistling.

The apprentice losing her lightsaber...hmm, that doesn't sound like a recurring theme from Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, does it? I didn't really think about the logical consequences of Jaesa going straight from prison to Bashun when I was writing Chapter XVI, but I immediately realized what it meant when I started that scene.

Bashun's lines are almost all verbatim from the game (as are Thana's), but Aly's are somewhat dramatically changed. For obvious reasons.

Meat...or potatoes? To be honest, I only remembered that line (and the cattle prod) from the fight; watching it again just now made me realize how similar the ends of both fights were, with Dredger and Bashun both being used as projectiles to save the day. Although Aly just beat Bashun straight up. Didn't need no zappy-zap stick.

Also, Aly and Jaesa are the ultimate crowd-killers.

As for future updates...well, I can't promise that I'll be on any real kind of schedule. Classes are starting up again, after all. But I'll do what I can. Only a few chapters left, one of which is the relatively-easy-to-write exposition kind. So there we have it.