Who You Are in the Dark/Part 6

Dragged away down the corridor, Tirien tried to send Narasi reassurance in the Force, but circumstances made it challenging. They had spoken of incarcerating him, which suggested he was not slated for immediate death, but he was still in the custody of a Vanguardian without his lightsaber. The clamps on the restraint system had different locking mechanisms for each cuff and the back harness, and a whisper of warning from the Force told him that trying to open them one-by-one might do more harm than good.

The darkness in the Force deepened as the Vanguardian escorted him deeper into the cave system; the guards pushed Tirien from behind, and he staggered for balance now and then, with his arms pinned to his chest and his boots still dripping swamp muck. Eventually the Vanguardian depowered a force field shielding the entrance to a deeper cave, then flung a Force Push into the darkness. Tirien felt a burst of pain and fury from inside.

"I don't think so," the Dark Jedi told the occupant, then threw Tirien into the darkness as well.

Tirien heard the force field repower behind him as he rolled to a crouch. Its buzz muted the conversation beyond, but before it came up Tirien thought he caught something like, "Wanna take bets?"

He couldn't see in the darkness of the cave; the force field's light was dim enough only to illuminate a few meters. The air was just as thick, but now choked with the rank odor of waste. The cell's other occupant was hidden in the shadows.

Drawing a deep breath—through his mouth—Tirien sought calm in the Force and asked, "Who's there?"

He caught a hint of surprise. "No," said an uncomfortably familiar female voice. "No, not possible…"

There was a blue-white spark of light from the darkness; Tirien saw a current of Force lightning running between a thumb and forefinger, bright enough to throw half the cell into murky relief. He saw the other prisoner restrained as he was; she kept her fingers carefully away from her neck so as not to electrocute herself. And in the flickering dark side light, he saw the three arrowheads around one of her suddenly narrowed eyes.

"You!" they barked as one.

The dark side wrapped a strangling coil around Tirien's throat, and he choked. He threw Alecto back with the Force hard enough that she came up onto her feet and slammed into the far wall. The impact drove the breath from her lungs and broke her chokehold. She summoned lightning into her hands, but couldn't twist them far enough away from her face to use it. Snarling in fury, she squeezed her hands into fists instead, and a dozen rocks levitated off the ground.

Sensing her plan, Tirien levitated some rocks of his own, and they struck in unison. Tirien tried to dodge, but one rock caught him in the ear while another hit the nerve in his thigh, sending him to one knee just in time to dodge a rock that had almost caved in his face. Another rock hit his left hand, narrowly missing his neck and cracking his little finger. Some of his rocks bounced off Alecto's restraints, though one scraped her cheek and another hit her in the stomach so hard she doubled over.

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his hand, Tirien sensed more than he saw Alecto struggling upright again, the dark side surging. "Stop! Alecto, stop.  Enough.  Neither of us is going to win like this."

He jostled his restraints indicatively, and his little finger throbbed. "If we beat each other to a pulp, it'll just make it easier for the Vanguard to finish us off."

She remained in the darkest corner, so Tirien could only see the outline of her form in the force field's dim glow. He sensed her hatred, but Sith though she might be, Alecto wasn't stupid. Eventually she loosed her grip on that toxic power, sat back down, and spat, "Fine. But you're living on borrowed time, Kal-Di."

Tirien sat against the opposite wall. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, the same as you, of course." Her tone conveyed her invisible sneer. "I'm here to save the day."

"Why do I sense that 'save the day' means something different for you than it does for me?" Tirien answered.

She spared him one burst of the cold laugh he remembered from Gizer. "Are you here for the Jedi or the superweapon?"

Tirien started; he was pleased to have Gennic Forgey's survival confirmed, but that sank beneath the more problematic revelation. A superweapon. That was what Aresh was digging for. Some arcane Sith monstrosity of Exar Kun's, buried here for millennia. Or perhaps abandoned by intervening generations of Sith. Either way, were they still excavating it, or were they digging on the surface because they had found it and were trying to get it out?

He had been quiet too long; he did not want Alecto to realize her slip. Remembering his discussion with the Council, he said, "Why stop Aresh? If he unleashes that thing on the Empire, it's your problem."

"Until he turns it on you, too," Alecto replied. "If it's what I think it is, you're no safer than we are."

There was nothing for it. "And what do you think it is?"

Alecto laughed again. "Nice try, Jedi. Just wait; you'll get a front row seat soon enough."

Something in the way she said it… "You're not here to stop Aresh, you're here to steal the thing."

There was no response from the darkness. After a moment, Tirien prodded his little finger, wincing. He was confident Alecto had broken it, though relieved that the ring finger seemed undamaged.

"I hope it hurts," Alecto said from the corner.

Tirien rolled his eyes. "It's nice to see you too, Alecto."

"Darth Alecto," she replied.

"Yeah, Mali Darakhan told me. Another Jedi you failed to kill," he couldn't resist goading. "How'd you get that 'Darth' again?"

"Darakhan's time is coming," Alecto growled. "Though Vandak might get him first. Not you, though.  You're all mine, Kal-Di."

"I'm flattered," Tirien answered. "But if we don't get out of here we're both Aresh's."

He hesitated; the thought he had made his skin crawl. Just hearing her voice put him back on Gizer Battlestation, watching her cruel smile through the electric haze of green and red plasma. He remembered Arstyn and Shadeez falling from their chairs, Rhosa trying to speak through the blood in her mouth, and for a second Tirien hoped Aresh's men would at least do him the favor of killing Alecto first. But he heard the lure of the dark side in his own thoughts, took a deep breath, regretted it as the room's odor made him gag, then blew it out.

"Look," he said; he was trying for 'reasonable', but the struggle to avoid 'hostile' meant it balanced out at 'flat'. "Neither of us is going to accomplish anything in here. I know you hate me, and I'm not overly fond of you, but maybe—"

"Don't even think it, Kal-Di," Alecto snarled. "Meditate the thought right out of your mind."

"The enemy of my enemy, right?"

"Oh, but Tirien, I could never choose between you!" Her cloying tone grated on him. "I hate you both equally!"

"How far do you think you'll get with Aresh?" Tirien demanded. "You serve a rival Sith faction and you're not Human?"

"I don't want to negotiate with him, I want his head on a spike."

"You're not putting anyone's head on a spike with those restraints on."

"Then help me get them off, Tirien. I'm sure we can do it if we work together.  Then I promise I'll get yours right off too."

Tirien grimaced; there was no way he would trust Alecto fully free while he himself was still restrained. His misgivings must have shown on his face in the force field's light, because she laughed at him from the darkness.

"This is why the Sith are weaker," he snapped, temper rising again. "You'd rather both of us die just for the satisfaction of my death."

"And that's why the Sith are winning this war," she retorted. "Because we'll sacrifice for the final victory."

She said no more, and Tirien was too disgusted to try to keep up a conversation. And so they sat in the darkness, breathing the fetid air, together but each completely alone.