Desperate Measures/Part 4

Alecto sealed the cockpit of the Scourge to calculate the jump, allegedly to protect Sith secrets; Tirien took it on faith that she wasn't simply going to fly them right into Darth Saleej's arms. When she emerged she showed no interest in conversation and rebuffed Tirien's half-hearted attempts at it. She had grudgingly pointed out a spare bunk for him, and Tirien attempted to meditate in the room, but found it hard to still his thoughts; they kept returning to his disbelief at what he had done.

He remembered Chancellor Phnyong's lifeless body, surrounded by the line of weeping Jedi who had failed him and the dozens of slain who were little more than collateral damage to the Sith. Master Tem-Fol-Rytil had all but stated that the Republic had been destabilized by that single, wretched night. Coruscant, Anaxes, even Alderaan would pay a king's ransom for Alecto's head. Part of Tirien thought he should walk out into the ship's common area and shoot Alecto in cold blood; every moment in her presence when she was still breathing felt like treason.

That would be wrong he told himself. ''You made a deal with her. Killing her now would be treachery—no better than the Sith.''

You should've killed her in the bar he answered himself. There had been no agreement then, no Jedi word to bind him.

But without her he could not have found his way…wherever they were going. Did that justify sparing her life? She was the only link he had to Kai Latra, and Kai Latra was the last, desperate hope to return to the Force for both of them. Whenever he reminded himself of that, Tirien could not help asking whether it was worth the trade—was he so desperate for power that he would unleash Darth Alecto on the galaxy again to get it?

He told himself that was the wrong question; he was supposed to be a Jedi. No Force-sensitive being, Sith or Jedi, was supposed to be like this. Kai Latra's alchemy was against nature; opposing it was all but a moral duty for a Jedi.

Even if it means allying with a Sith? his conscience asked. Would it have been better to sacrifice himself and kill Alecto in the bargain? Self-sacrifice was the heart of being a Jedi, after all, and at the cost of a Forceless Knight he could have rid the galaxy of a murderous assassin forever. It smacked of revenge, but no doubt the Republic Navy, the King of Alderaan, and even the High Council would have considered it a fair trade…

Narasi he told himself at the last extreme. Narasi and Aldayr. He could do nothing for the Chancellor; Narasi and Aldayr were still among the living. He could do nothing for them without the Force; Mali and Slejux had made that clear. Alecto was merely a means to an end.

And if that's not a Sith thought…

Tirien wrestled with the same thoughts and doubts, over and over, and without the Force he had only his own circular reasoning to sort it out. Eventually he emerged into the dark steel main hold of the Scourge and found Alecto on the deck, changed into nondescript gray and black and sharpening her knives. She had donned a gunbelt as well, and wore her lightsaber on her hip. She greeted Tirien with a glower.

"How long?" he asked, leaning against a wall.

She glanced at her wrist datapad. "About two hours."

"And where are we going?"

"Kai Latra's fortress."

"Which is…?"

She looked up from her knives; her expression made clear that she would happily use them on him. "If you needed to know where it was, I would tell you."

Tirien sat down on the floor out of knife range. "And this fortress? How are we going to get in?"

Alecto shook her head. "I don't know, I've never been there."

"You've never…then how do you know—?"

"I'm a spy and an assassin, remember?" she snapped. "It's my job to know things."

"And it's always good to have one up on one's fellow Sith Lords?" Tirien asked.

She ignored the distaste in his voice. "Put it this way: some Sith keep their strongholds secure by concealing their locations, and others feel safe because nobody in their right mind would visit in the first place. Kai Latra's not exactly keeping his place a secret."

"What a good thing we're not in our right minds," Tirien said dryly.

"When we get there we'll find a way in."

"Fine. Tell me about Kai Latra, then." When she hesitated, Tirien pressed, "If you expect me to help you, you need to give me enough to be helpful."

She was silent so long Tirien thought she was ignoring this, too, her face betraying no internal struggle or emotion. He had just started to shift his weight to get up when she said, "He's a Gossam. A Sith alchemist; you've obviously gathered that much.  He makes Darth Saleej's monsters for him."

Tirien thought it over. "Like the Sithspawn on Taanab?"

Alecto raised an eyebrow, looking thoughtful. "I had forgotten about that."

Tirien had not, even though it had been Mali and Aldayr who took on the creature. He seemed to remember a hundred soldiers and civilians dying before the Corellians had finally slain the beast, and the idea of seeking a favor from the Sith Lord was nauseating. His only consolation was that Alecto seemed to hate him even more.

Did he hate Kai Latra? Tirien reminded himself that he should not, willing it to be so, but he could not escape the realization that he would not grieve if he and Alecto wound up having to kill the Gossam.

"Not my style, but it works," Alecto commented with a shrug; she seemed to have noticed his moment of introspection.

Tirien grimaced. "It isn't right just because it works." As he processed her statement, his eyes narrowed. "And since when is murdering innocent people not your style?"

Alecto returned his look with interest. "You really want to do this, Kal-Di?"

His temper, so close to the surface of late and frayed by his failed meditation, finally boiled over. "Yeah, let's do this."

She slammed the whetstone onto the deck. "Fine." Spinning her fighting knife on the index finger grip, she slammed it into its sheath with unnecessary force. "You failed. All your soldiers and guards and blockades and Jedi and you failed, and you just can't handle it."

Gritting his teeth, Tirien leaned forward. "Innocent people," he repeated. "People who never—"

"Even your archaic laws call the Chancellor a legitimate military target—"

"The Chancellor was a good man," Tirien cut her off in turn.

"You mean the Chancellor agreed with you instead of us."

"And all those senators and representatives—civilians? That besotted political consultant you twisted around your finger?  What about them, Alecto?"

"Darth Alecto," she snapped.

"Still?" Tirien mocked.

Alecto's eyes blazed; had she still possessed the Force, Tirien knew they would have turned red and yellow. "Be careful, Jedi, before I decide I don't need you after all."

"And what will you do if you don't?" Tirien countered. "This ship's fast enough to get through Republic space—you obviously got off Anaxes. You could've made it to Sith space…except you didn't know what would happen to you if you showed up to Darth Saleej powerless, did you?"

She glared, but said nothing.

"And if you could make it to Darth Saleej, you could make it to Anzat," he pressed. "You could've taken your Anzati as backup against Kai Latra, they were already with you on Anaxes, but you didn't trust them either."

Alecto's eyes tightened for a moment before she controlled herself. "I trust my brethren."

"As long as you're the most powerful—as long as you can punish them if they disappoint that trust. Now…"  Tirien let the implication hang long enough that he hoped it would discomfit her, then said, "You need me as much as I need you, but if you die, then Darth Saleej loses his best assassin and maybe the Anzati too.  So maybe you should be careful you don't push me too far, either."

Alecto's lips peeled back from her teeth, and she laid her hand on her lightsaber hilt. "We left business unsettled on Milagro, Kal-Di. If you want to settle it…"

Tirien had reached for the lightsaber on his own belt when she moved; since coming aboard the Scourge he had put it back within immediate reach, even if the gesture was mostly symbolic. They stared one another down until Tirien mastered himself. ''Means to an end. Narasi.'' He took his hand off the lightsaber. "Enough. There'll be plenty of time to kill each other once we've gotten what we need from Kai Latra."

She snickered, but released her lightsaber. "I'll look forward to it."

Tirien stood. "Anything else about Kai Latra?"

"Oh, a lot, but I'll tell you when you need to know." She taunted him with a smirk. "Can't have you thinking I've outlived my usefulness, Jedi."

And she picked up her whetstone again. Tirien returned to his bunk, not trusting himself in her presence. He was certain that their truce would break the instant they had their powers back—or rather, the instant she had her powers back. He would need to watch not only their surroundings, but his own back; the closer they came to Kai Latra, the greater the danger would grow.

I should've let her die on Toprawa, he realized. He had justified it to himself at the time, believed it was stopping murder…believed there was something in Alecto worth redeeming. Now even remembering it filled him with shame; had he let Seldec's men murder Alecto, the Chancellor might still be alive.

And if you and Narasi had died there along with Gennic? part of him asked. ''If Seldec had raised the Architect of Betrayal? Where would the galaxy be now?''

Tirien put his head in his hands, willing his mind to stop, to slow down for even a moment and let him focus. It had been easier to still the whirlwind when he had the Force and could channel his thoughts with the light to the best end; without it, he had to grope in the dark for the best solution without letting his own feelings distract him. And yet anger and regret fought for dominance, harder to resist…

Sometime later the ship swayed just a little; the Scourge was finely constructed, but even on a pleasure yacht there was always a faint lurch when it decanted from hyperspace. Tirien returned to the main hold to find it empty, every door sealed. He pressed the cockpit panel, but it stayed stubbornly closed too. He supposed he should count himself lucky Alecto hadn't locked him in his room.

Some part of him thought it might be best to clear his mind with another stab at meditation; that part warred with another that wanted to hammer on the cockpit door until Alecto relented, even lightsaber it open. Tirien did not succumb to that level of pettiness, but neither could he find it in himself to endure yet more laments for what he might have done. He settled for prying open the paneling with a tool from his equipment belt and hotwiring the door.

Alecto was fast on the uptake, he had to give her that; the door had barely slid into its frame before she got over her surprise and drew on him. He leaned against the doorframe, glowering at the muzzle of her blaster and trying to still the rapid beating of his heart while she glared back, wide-eyed, piloting one-handed. Hotwiring the door had seemed a way to prevent Alecto from edging him to the side and orchestrating an eventual betrayal, but it now seemed a foolish act of pride, and Tirien wondered whether he had made a fatal miscalculation.

Alecto lowered the blaster slowly, anger written all over her face, but tinged with curiosity. As she holstered the weapon, she asked, "How did you do that?"

"I picked things up as a Padawan. My master was a Jedi Sentinel."

Alecto grunted as she turned back to the viewport. "That's right, I remember…"

Tirien stared. "What do you mean you remember?"

She did not answer; the world loomed large before them. The Scourge was built for a single pilot, but Tirien braced himself against the wall behind Alecto's chair. Through the viewport he saw a khaki landscape tinged with patches of blue-green; there were bodies of water, but they didn't look sufficient to host enough life. Alecto pulled out of her dive some tens of thousands of kilometers up and put the Scourge into geosynchronous orbit, studying the readings on the control panel.

"What do you see?" Tirien asked, leaning forward to look over her shoulder.

She drew her fighting knife and pointed it over the seat without looking; Tirien leaned back. "I have it on passives," she said, as if nothing unusual had happened. "Nobody's broadcasting, but I didn't expect them to."

"How much do you know about the world besides the coordinates?"

"And the name? Not much.  But it's a Sith world, so we've got it under our control.  And Kai Latra would never tolerate somebody else ruling his throneworld, so his castle will be close to the government center, which is probably the biggest city."

Tirien rocked toward a lean forward, then thought better of it. "Anything on visual scanning?"

"The night side's coming around, but it's probably an hour or two before dusk below us."

Envisioning could only take him so far. "May I?"

Alecto did not answer, but after a moment she sheathed her knife and powered down the display monitors. Tirien sat up and looked over her shoulder. After a moment, he pointed; Alecto flinched as if she wanted to move away from him, but controlled the impulse and steadied herself. Leaving it unremarked, Tirien said, "Look there, where the coastline curves in. It's a natural harbor, and that river flows into it.  Worth a tighter-beam scan."

"There's another one there…and there, by that river delta. All right, sit back." Tirien did, rolling his eyes behind Alecto's back as she ran the scan. "I've got life and tech signs in all three, but one's bigger than the others. We'll start there."

"Which one is it?" Tirien asked. Alecto did not answer as she banked the Scourge out of orbit and down the well; Tirien had a shrewd suspicion, but elected not to bring it up. Instead, he asked, "What's our approach?"

"There have to be civilians living here, and believe me, if Kai Latra's anywhere nearby, we'll know right away."

"No hurting anyone," Tirien insisted.

"Obviously," Alecto said in a scathing tone. "If Kai Latra's here, he's got eyes in the community, and roughing up the populace draws too much attention."

Tirien rolled his eyes again. "Not what I meant…"

Alecto settled the Scourge down in one of two dozen covered hangars at the outskirts of the city. In the hold she pulled up the ruffled neck of her tunic into a face mask and tugged the hood of her fatigue jacket over her hair; it had grown shaggier since Anaxes, though she had kept it dyed black. Opening one of the doors that had been locked since Tirien's arrival, she dug around for a moment before throwing a balaclava at Tirien. "Wear that. If anybody's less welcome here than me, it's you."

He caught it. "Do you have face paint?" When her eyes narrowed, he said, "If they're Humans, green and blue are just as bad as tattoos."

She cocked her head to one side, but eventually went back into the storage room and emerged with facepaint. They applied their camouflage paint in silence, each nodding to the other in turn when their skin was sufficiently covered. Tirien checked the power packs on his blasters while Alecto ran the blade of each of her knives over her index fingertip. When Alecto pulled her fatigue coat over her lightsaber, Tirien put Mali's lightsaber back in its shoulder holster, then led the way down the boarding ramp, Alecto following him and sealing the ship behind them.

Only a handful of beings were milling around in the hangar, all of them Human, along with a corroded astromech droid. One of them approached with a datapad and a beleaguered look, though he did a double take when he got a good look at the pair of masked and armed travelers. Swallowing, he braced himself and said, "Welcome to Bitter End. Ship?"

"The Tisiphone, out of Abhean," Alecto answered.

"What brings you to Vjun?"

Tirien filed the name 'Vjun' away for future reference; he didn't look to see if Alecto showed any frustration, but there was a certain bite in her tone as she said, "Work."

"What kind of work?"

Tirien saw the way Alecto's shoulders arched and her brow lowered threateningly. The hangar attendant leaned back, but Tirien suspected the benefits would quickly be outweighed by the costs, so he inserted, "We're bounty hunters."

The Human's eyes shifted to Tirien and back. "Who's the mark?"

Alecto had controlled her instinct to intimidate; taking Tirien's lead, she gave the Human a scathing look. "You know who the mark is."

He clearly did; the man paled and swallowed. "She's not here."

"How much do you think she'd have to pay him to say that?" Tirien asked Alecto. "Thousand credits?"

Alecto snorted. "That Trandoshan who was hiding her in his bar only took six hundred."

The Human was on the border of panic. "She's not here! Do you think our master wouldn't have found her if she was?!  He knows everything!"

"Your master?" Alecto asked; Tirien admired the artful mix of skepticism and curiosity in her voice. "The one in that big house across the bay? We saw it on the way in…"

"Big house across…Château Malreaux? Oh, no…I mean, the Malreauxs are rich, Gentleman Nouli Malreaux is the planetary Lord Administrator, but I…I didn't mean him…"

"Who did you mean?" Tirien pressed.

"Don't…don't you know?" They stared him down side by side, and he folded. "Our…our master. The Sith Lord, Kai Latra."

"Sounds like as good a place to start as any," Alecto shrugged.

The Human looked at her in horror. "You can't be serious! You can't just go there!"

"Go where?" Tirien asked.

"The Palace of Happiness!"

Tirien caught himself with an extreme stretch of his mental fingertips, but Alecto couldn't quite make it; she laughed aloud. The spaceport attendant looked more worried than offended. "It's what he calls it! His…fortress, his lab.  It's where he takes the ones he…chooses."

He did not go on, so Tirien asked, "Chooses for what?"

The man shook his head jerkily. "Don't…I can't…you can't go there. He doesn't just see visitors."

"Fine," Tirien said. "We'll start here in town. But if we find our mark and nobody told him…"

"She's not here!" the attendant insisted.

"And if we find…information?" Alecto asked. "How do we get it to him? Or don't you want him to know?"

"Of course I would! Gentleman Nouli will want to know anything…but it's hard to see him too." The attendant fretted for a moment, then said, "The Executor of Justice. He can speak to our master, he'd be the one to talk to."

Tirien and Alecto looked at one another and, by unspoken consensus, agreed the man had no more useful information to give. Alecto paid the docking fee—unable to justify the need, Tirien hadn't bothered requisitioning Sith credits from the Temple quartermaster—and they set out into the city, following the attendant's directions toward the town center where the Executor of Justice held dominion. On the way Tirien surreptitiously bared his wrist to the light rain; it didn't sting, but he saw corroded metal and statues worn down to facelessness and suspected prolonged exposure might be less healthy. The clouds cover was brown and almost uniform, and where pavement yielded to bare earth, little plant life grew, and what did looked strange. Had Kai Latra's work corrupted the ecosystem, or had he chosen this place because of its atmosphere?

The sun was invisible behind the clouds, but they began to darken, leaving the vast bay full of choppy gray waves. Without a glare on the waves Tirien could see the towering structure on the far shore, its sickly red and white like commingled bodily fluids. "Château Malreaux. Think we'll need to deal with Gentleman Nouli?"

"I don't think so; Kai Latra won't be right beside him, he'll want to make the Lord Administrator come to him." She strode to Tirien's side, giving the bay a cursory glance. "There—that's the river you saw from orbit. It must flow down from higher terrain, and I saw highlands as I was bringing us in…there."

She had walked around a seafood restaurant on the wharf while Tirien wondered whether he would trust any marine life that came out of an ocean that color, and now she was staring at a ridge in the distance whence the river flowed. Eons of water had cut a gorge through the sandstone, and the river flowed down a rocky escarpment of sudden crags and long screes. The inhospitable terrain made for a kilometers-long climb, but after a moment Tirien looked back up the ridge and saw, on the peak left of the gorge, a dark structure built into the cliffside. While the fading daylight had thrown Château Malreaux into clearer relief, Tirien could make out nothing but the outline of the building; was the encroaching twilight to blame, he wondered, or did Kai Latra's castle simply drink the light—a darkness so profound even a Forceless eye could see it?

"Close enough to intimidate, but not so close to be at risk of an uprising with pitchforks and torches?" Tirien suggested. He turned away to gaze at the sea again so no passers-by would take note of him staring at the fortress; the waves lapping at the dock beneath his feet covered his words from nearby ears.

Alecto snickered once. "Something like that, I'm sure."

"Do you think this Executor of Justice will actually be able to get us in?"

She rolled her eyes. "Good little Jedi—following one clue after another. You have to learn to adapt on the fly.  I think we'd be fools to even try the Executor.  We know where Kai Latra is, we can go right to him and cut out the middleman."

"And what about defenses? Without knowing what he has, we'll be going in blind."

She shrugged. "We could apprehend the Executor, I guess; sounds like he's in with Kai Latra, but I'd be happy to torture it out of him, if you'd prefer."

Tirien made a face beneath his balaclava. "Blind it is," he sighed. "What's our approach?"

She eschewed the downtown for a seedier industrial district, where they rented a pair of swoops from a Chevin who took the last of Alecto's credits. The two craft showed much of the same wear as every other metal object Tirien had seen, and his took three tries to start. In the end they wove through transport vehicles and beasts of burden to the outskirts of Bitter End, where Alecto brought her bike to a halt and gazed at the distant ridgeline.

"I don't think the bikes will be able to handle that incline," Tirien pointed out.

She laughed. "I'm not sure yours can handle too much level terrain. But no, we'll have to climb eventually."

She dismounted and rolled around in the dirt, back and forth, as if she was on fire and trying to put it out. Tirien stared. "What are you doing?"

She rolled a few more times, then got to her feet, looking as dusty and worn as anything else on Vjun. "Black is a bad color for night infiltration anyway—it's easier to spot. I'd have worn dark blue or charcoal if I had it, but this terrain is too light for it anyway.  Stealth is about—"

"—blending in," Tirien finished. "People look for what they don't expect, not what they do."

Alecto's eyes were hard to read. "…yeah. More wisdom from your Jedi Sentinel?"

"Yes." Tirien heard Suwo speak the words in his memory as he dismounted and copied Alecto, trying to stain his jacket enough with dirt that the wind would not blow it away. When they were both camouflaged they resumed their flight, rocketing off across the barren terrain, weaving around boulders and jumping sudden crevices. They slowed as night fell in earnest, no longer able to rely on Force-sensitive reflexes to protect them.

Eventually the terrain started to climb and Tirien's swoop started to sputter. When the handlebars started rocking so hard the steering vane oscillated left and right, Tirien finally pulled it to a halt. Alecto noticed his absence and pulled back in a circle.

"It's done," he reported. "Can yours take both of us?"

"And let Kai Latra take me out along with you in one shot? I don't think so." She jerked her head toward Kai Latra's castle. "We'll go on foot."

As she powered down her swoop its exhaust pipes gave twin belching coughs, and Tirien thought perhaps her swoop wasn't long for the world either. They clambered up the escarpment, gravel sliding beneath their boots, and soon Tirien's thighs were burning and he was pulling deep breaths through his mouth. A few times Alecto paused for a second, bracing herself before pushing off again, and Tirien knew they were both stubbornly pushing themselves on only because neither wanted to be the one to call a halt. It began to drizzle again, making the handholds more tenuous and kicking up mud in the wake of their boots. They had to tackle the crags and short bluffs head-on; the loosened terrain made lateral movement too dangerous.

Tirien was climbing up a crag beside Alecto, though she was nearly a meter ahead of him, when the toe of his boot slipped off a slick rock spur. He dug his fingers in, but his hands were unable to support his weight. In the second it took him to fall, however, Alecto dropped back down with agility he couldn't believe and caught his wrist with one hand. The next second, Tirien caught a new foothold and steadied himself. Alecto slapped his hand back onto the rock and resumed her climb.

When he reached the top several seconds behind her, breathing hard, he stared at her through the drizzle. "How did you do that?"

"Mirialan," she said; Tirien heard the smirk in her voice. "Try to keep up, Kal-Di, I can only carry your weight so far."

Tirien's grumble was lost in a crackle of thunder, and he followed Alecto up the slope. Veiled by the darkness now, he pulled his balaclava up into a hat; the fabric had soaked through and made every breath humid. He considered using Mali's lightsaber to cut handholds into the rock, but the glare would have given them away for kilometers.

With the Force, Tirien knew, he could have taken the slope at a run, that three-second intuition guiding every step and skip to rock solid enough to support his weight. It was sparring Master Toldin all over again, except here the potential consequences of exhaustion or miscalculation were real and deadly. Alecto stumbled and rode a rockslide down a dozen meters, and as she hauled herself back up Tirien heard her cursing under her breath.

He was not a man given to idle chatter, and certainly not with a mortal enemy. But still…for a month he had been surrounded by other beings who sympathized without empathy, without comprehension. Now, he was alone in enemy territory, and yet the being with him, a woman every cold thought told him he should kill at the first chance, was also the only person who might possibly understand. "What did you do?"

"I caught a bad rock," she growled. "I don't need you to—"

"That's not what I meant," he said, looking at her through the gloom. "What did you do this last month? Since Anaxes?"

"Do you think we're going to bond now?" He heard the sarcastic curl of her lip even though he couldn't see it.

"We've both been alone," he pressed. "Surrounded by people—different people, sure, but people—and yet alone."

Alecto said nothing, but her hand slipped and another shower of pebbles rained down the rockside, though she caught herself this time. "I got by."

"Did you even leave that room once you got it?"

"Of course I left it!" She stopped, and Tirien paused, grateful for the opportunity to rest. "I flew to Kohlma; it's another of Bogden's moons, it's supposed to be strong in the dark side. I thought it could…"

She trailed off, and Tirien said, "I thought the same thing about the Jedi Temple. I meditated in every room, consulted every holocron I could get my hands on, asked every Master for guidance.  And in the end…"

"…nothing," Alecto said; her tone had changed, and now Tirien could not guess the expression that went with it. "Cold stone without pity or mercy."

It hit too close to home. Tirien regretted starting the conversation; he did not want to see Alecto as a person. And yet he found his mouth framing words as if compelled. "And in the end, the loss of what made you who you were. The loss of the reason for you."

He saw Alecto's silhouette turn her face away. "Why are we talking about this?"

"Who else but us would understand?"

"I don't need to be understood. We're here—we've got Kai Latra within reach, we just have to get our hands on him."

He had sought answers everywhere in the Temple, run every lead into the ground, driven on by desperation masquerading as hope. And here, now, was the architect of this atrocity, the one who could undo this evil…and here, with Alecto, Tirien could finally voice the terror he had not dared speak to any friend. "What if he can't cure it?"

"He's an expert at this sort of thing, he'll have a way."

"It's a Sith poison, why would it have a cure?"

"Alchemists are smart enough to work weaknesses into their own weapons, they don't want them used against them—"

"But if he can't—"

"He has to!" Alecto snarled; she slid toward Tirien, but wobbled for footing. Tirien caught and steadied her, but she ripped free of his grip. "He has to fix it! I can't–keep–being–this!"

There was fury in her voice, and far less control than Tirien had ever heard in a voice so often given to cool superiority or snide derision. But there was fear there too, a fear alien to her voice and yet hauntingly familiar; it was Tirien's own internal agony in Alecto's voice. He thought again of Ulic Qel-Droma and his horror at the fallen Jedi's fate. Alecto had unleashed chaos on the Republic murdered dozens of good and noble people, but now, hearing the anguish in her voice, Tirien felt more certain than ever no one, not even a Sith, deserved punishment of this sort. He would kill her if he had to, strike her down with honor, but to condemn even an enemy to this existence-without-living was to inflict torture no decent Jedi should be able to justify.

"I promise we'll do whatever we can to—"

"Don't you pity me, Kal-Di!" Alecto hissed. "Don't you dare!"

"It's not pity, Alecto, it's empathy. I understand how you feel." He realized, too late, that he had talked himself into seeing a person beneath the Sith, and he contained a sigh.

"You don't understand anything," she muttered, but there were cracks in her confident tone. "Come on, let's go."

They continued their climb, but the brief rest helped little; Tirien's muscles were burning again soon, and his deep breaths shook. The scree was closer to vertical than horizontal when Alecto paused and Tirien hauled himself up to her side, taking another opportunity to breathe. He noticed she had dropped her face mask too. Digging the toes of her boots into the gravel and mud, she pointed with one hand. "There. That's our path up."

Tirien saw what looked like a goat track wending its way up toward the head of the river. "Why the river?"

"We'll take the cliffs if we have to, but we don't have climbing gear, and I can't keep catching you. Besides, any Sith Lord worth his lightsaber will have a secret escape from his fortress—we can walk in on Kai Latra through his own back door."

"We could cut handholds into the rock? Emitter pressed up against the rock, it might cut down on the glare…"

Before Alecto could reply, a bell rang from high above; low and iron, the peal rang down the rock and echoed through the gorge. In unison, Tirien and Alecto pressed themselves into the slope, waiting. There was a second ring, then a third. Alecto brushed her camouflage jacket away from her blaster.

Then, over the patter of rain, there came a ululating shriek. It was alone only for the time it took the first echoes to die; there was no sequence of a second and a third, but a sudden swarm of insentient shrieks, borne down by the wind and louder with every call. Tirien and Alecto began to scramble for high ground, but even as the threatening screams grew closer, Tirien thought he heard, in their midst, a gleeful cackle.