Who You Are in the Dark/Part 9

"I am one with the Force and the Force is with me," Narasi breathed. "I am one with the Force and the Force is with me. I am one with the Force…"

Tirien had taught her the mantra as an aid to meditative concentration, but the words were falling flat for her. Hoping even a speciesist Jedi wouldn't kill her in her sleep, she had tossed and turned on the unforgiving rock ground for hours. The last remnants of her hangover, the slog through the swamp, and the fight with the dianoga had sapped much of her energy, but she was too keyed up for real sleep, and woke from a doze over-alert.

She had hoped meditation might rejuvenate her, but just as she was starting to feel a little stronger and more settled, she felt a chill sweep over her body, and her stomach turned so sharply she thought she might be sick. Blinking as she came back to herself, she gasped.

"Friends of yours?" Gennic Forgey asked.

Reaching out into the Force, Narasi felt danger and death. She bared her teeth at the Human, but then closed her eyes and tried to refocus. "What's happening?"

"No doubt General Seldec is indulging in more of his…experiments," Gennic mused.

"What is he doing?" Narasi asked.

"Hmph. Sith and their superweapons.  Have they told you what this one does?"

"The Council didn't even know what was here. They didn't even know which Sith faction was here."

Gennic's smile was mocking. "What a convenient dearth of information."

Fired up again, Narasi snapped, "Maybe if you hadn't gotten captured, we'd have had more to go on!"

The Human gritted his teeth, but before Narasi could goad him further, she felt a cascade of misery and pain in the Force, wrapped around a familiar sense. "Master!"

She didn't know what exactly this General Seldec's "experiments" were, but she could feel her master's agony. Storming to the force field, she roared, "Let me out of here!"

The two guards on the other side seemed to hear her faintly, because one of them glanced back, smirked into her livid face, and deliberately turned back around. Narasi threw a Force push at him; he staggered, then turned around angrily and pointed the blaster at her in warning.

Whirling on Gennic, she barked, "They're hurting my master! Do something!"

"Like what, use the dark side?" the Jedi Knight asked. "Why don't you, it's already come to your call."

"I'm not a Sith!" Narasi said, kicking a rock in frustration. "I'm a Jedi!"

"Could've fooled me."

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggh!" Narasi spun around in a circle, trying to fight her anger, desperately afraid for Tirien and crippled by the impotence of her desire to help.

The lights went out.

Narasi hadn't realized how much light the hall's lanterns had given them until only the glow of the force field remained. She heard Gennic get to his feet and move toward her; she gave way, not wanting the man anywhere near her. He seemed to study the force field, and Narasi felt him drawing the Force into himself.

The force field flickered, and then it failed too. In the sudden darkness, Narasi heard a gasp of surprise and the sound of scuffling. She crept to the wall that had become a door, squinting, but even the Force could not amplify her vision into the infrared spectrum. She tried to let the Force paint a mental picture for her instead. She felt one guard's fear, another's utter confusion and panic, and Gennic's cool determination.

Blasterfire illuminated the tunnel in flashes; Narasi saw Gennic with his stun cuff chain around one guard's throat, strangling him to death. The guard was firing wildly, and his partner was trying to aim at the Jedi, waiting for a shot.

It'd serve him right, Narasi caught herself thinking, loathing the man. Then reality caught up with her, she remembered he was a Jedi Knight, and her loathing turned inward as her mouth dropped open in horror. At the same moment, the dying guard wrestled Gennic sideways; even in the darkness Narasi felt the other guard take aim.

Hurling herself out of the cell, she tackled the second guard into a wall, and his shot went wide. She could not see, but the Force flooded her combat senses and saw for her, and she ducked the guard's instinctive, flailing swat. Lacing her fingers together, she smashed the durasteel of her wrist cuffs into the Human's face. He went down, patting the ground for his blaster; the Force saw it and brought it to Narasi's hand. As the guard grabbed her leg, she went with it, sat across his chest, and pressed the barrel of the gun into his eye socket.

The guard froze, and Narasi heard his terrified inhalation as her finger found the trigger. She could feel the man's fear…

Narasi shook herself, aghast, then clubbed the guard with the handle of the pistol. His fear blanked out into unconsciousness, and she became aware of Gennic Forgey standing over her, freed from his stun cuffs. He activated a glowrod, evidently taken from the other guard. Narasi felt no other life signs in the tunnel; apparently the Jedi Knight hadn't taken his guard alive. She blinked against the glare and looked up at Forgey, who looked from her to the unconscious guard and back.

"Leaving an enemy alive?" he asked. "Bad form for a Sith."

Narasi almost snapped back, but then forced herself to take a deep breath and meet his cold eyes. "'We wound the Force when we kill without real need'. My master taught me that."

He studied her, then bent down, laying his palm on the unconscious guard's head; the man, who had started to stir, slipped dreamily back into oblivion. Narasi got to her feet, pulling on her stun cuffs. "Can you get these off me?"

Gennic's eyes were filled with distrust. Narasi very much wanted to leave him and race to Tirien's side, but blundering off alone in the black tunnels with the Dark Vanguard on the loose wasn't going to help him. So she said instead, "I'm a Zygerrian, but I'm a Jedi Padawan, and my master needs me. Needs us."

The Human glowered, but waved a hand, and the cuffs unsnapped, dropping to the floor. Taking the pistol from her, he said, "I'd rather not have this at my back. Just in case.  Let's go."

She opted not to argue, thrilled to be moving at last. "Where are we going?"

"Something hit the generator room," he whispered back. "I saw it before they caught me."

They wound their way up through the tunnels, Gennic extinguishing the light whenever he sensed someone coming. Eventually they found a room where two of Aresh's guards stood with glowrods raised, radiating dismay. "Frak, frak, frak…"

It was as far as he got before Gennic wrapped him up in a chokehold. The other guard turned that way in shock. Unarmed, Narasi settled for coming up behind him and kicking him between the legs. He sank to his knees, gasping, and she kicked him again in the head. As he went down, Gennic dropped the limp form of the other guard—alive this time—and surveyed the generator room.

His eyes widened. "Oh, Chaos take me…"

Narasi followed the beam of his reactivated light and felt her stomach turn. There were eight Sith soldiers in the generator room, and everyone one of them was dead. The generator pressed against the back wall was a charred cinder, with little crisped, severed wires littering the floor like decapitated snakes, but Narasi knew at a glance the explosion hadn't killed the guards, though some of their bodies were fried too. Most of them had been opened in long gashes, and the rest were in pieces, heads and torsos parted from one another. One being had died sitting down; he had slumped forward onto his desk while the back of his chair had fallen the other way, cut apart by the same blow that had bisected the guard at the waist.

"And you said Tirien Kal-Di is your master?" Gennic asked skeptically.

"My master didn't do this," Narasi said, sure of it. As she spoke of him she remembered why they were there, and raked the room with her eyes, looking past the carnage. She saw a hardened box, crisped by fire but intact, its locking mechanism cut by a lightsaber blade.

Throwing it open, she cried out in triumph. There lay three lightsabers: her own weapon, Tirien's curved lightsaber, and a third she assumed had to be Gennic's. There was space for a fourth weapon between Gennic's and Tirien's, but Narasi didn't have time to puzzle it out. She clipped her weapon and Tirien's to her belt, then tossed Gennic his own. He caught the weapon, but kept it in hand, staring at her warily.

"You can have the blaster, but I'm not giving you my lightsaber," she said flatly. "C'mon, we have to save Tirien."

He did not put the lightsaber on his belt, but he did lead her down a rocky corridor, back into the lower levels. Now when they came upon guards, he didn't hesitate, activating his yellow blade and cutting them down before they even realized his presence. Narasi didn't protest, feeling her master in danger and knowing they needed speed.

The tunnel ahead lightened with a soft blue glow, and Gennic slowed his pace to a creep. Ahead Narasi felt a mass of pain and fear, as well as the unmistakable taint of the dark side. Peeking past the Human's shoulder, she saw aliens of various species, and heard a buzz-crack that sent a shudder down her spine in time with a sentient wail.

"A shock whip," she said.

"Familiar sound?" Gennic asked.

Narasi bristled. "I don't have time for this."

She went past him, ignoring his inarticulate hiss and the hand he reached out to try to stop her. Creeping low, ducking behind a stalagmite, she looked around and saw her master on an overlook some twenty meters up, still restrained and standing beside an older Human, apparently the General.

"Get the lights back on," the General commanded, then looked down at the slaves; Narasi crouched a little lower. "Get back to work."

Narasi took her lightsaber hilt from her belt, trying to decide how best to attack. The General was far above her, and she wasn't sure she could Force push him off the ledge; even if she did, she didn't know how many others were guarding Tirien. She could try to sneak through, but there were too many people in the way; even if she dodged all the overseers, she might still draw cries of surprise from the slaves before she could convince them she was on their side. Maybe if…

Snap-hiss.

Narasi activated her own blade just in time to catch the red blade cutting at her neck, though the impact was jarring and her shoulders strained in their joints. Scrambling to her feet, she gave way under the Vanguardian's assault. The Human was much taller and stronger than she was, and the brute force of his strikes compelled her to fight two-handed rather than try for a Makashi guard. She sensed Tirien's reaction to her presence, but dared not look away.

Gennic Forgey came at him from the other side, activating his yellow blade on a leaping cut. The Vanguardian met it easily, turning to block and kicking Narasi back without looking. Rolling to her feet, she sensed danger and looked up. The General was gazing down at her, taking a medal from around his neck and holding it out.

For an instant Narasi felt a sudden wave of sharp pinpricks over her body. Then, with a roar, Tirien charged into the Human from the other side. Caught off guard, the General lost his footing, and they both fell off the ledge.

Narasi felt her master right himself in midair and touch down as gracefully as possible, though he still had to drop and roll. The General seemed to cushion some of his impact, but landed on his chest. Tirien darted over and kicked the medal away into the suddenly confused mass of slaves. The General grabbed his ankle, but Tirien leapt and spun into a kick that slapped the General's face sideways.

As the Pantoran landed and rolled over onto his knees, the Human cried, "Get the amulet!"

From above, two more Vanguardians leapt down. Tirien blasted one with a Force push on the way, and he scraped against the rocky wall, but the other touched down neatly. Racing for her master, Narasi met his eyes, and he ran her way as well, the Vanguardian in pursuit. "Cut me free!"

Narasi remembered long hours of practice with Zilq, her Myke Clan mate in the Temple, running through the sevinte cadence again and again, enduring stings and welts from their training blades as they tried to come close without touching. That had been to satisfy Master Z'dar, but this was deadly serious, and a single slip could maim Tirien, or worse.

"Narasi!"

Trusting in the Force, Narasi swung. Her first two cuts severed the cuffs on each side; Tirien arched his head back and she split the chest restraint down the middle, missing his chin by centimeters. He opened his hand, and his lightsaber leapt off her belt and into his palm. Spinning, he called forth the green blade just in time to catch the Vanguardian's cut at his back.

Narasi moved toward his side as they squared off, but Tirien called without looking, "I've got this! Get the amulet!"

And then they were away in a whirlwind of snarling, crackling plasma. Narasi turned toward the crowd of slaves, all of whom were scrambling away from everyone with a lightsaber while the overseers tried to restore order with whips and blasters. Gennic Forgey was losing ground to his Vanguardian. The General was on one knee, but pressed a hand to the other to lever himself up. The Vanguardian Tirien had knocked into the wall was stirring too.

There was no time; she leapt into the mixed-species crowd, trying to keep her lightsaber blade away from them. An overseer drew his blaster and fired at her; Narasi deflected one shot high, but accidentally sent the second into an unsuspecting slave's shoulder.

"Sorry!" she gasped as the old woman went down cringing. Ducking a third shot, Narasi gritted her teeth and waved a hand; the overseer stumbled off his vantage point and fell into the crowd of slaves, who immediately began clubbing him with mining tools.

"Hey!" cried another overseer indignantly, and he lashed a Wookiee across the back with his shock whip.

Forgetting her objective, Narasi raced across the distance, leaping into a cut as the Human swung again. Her blow took off his whipping hand as she came down. Landing beside the howling Human, she turned around and punched him in the face. Still clenching her lightsaber hilt, her fingers did not give way, but his teeth did.

"Never again!" she snarled, picking up the fallen whip and hurling it into a dark crevice. She could not hear its fall amidst the screams and blasterfire around her. She did, however, hear Tirien.

"Narasi!" he complained. He was fighting the Vanguardian and the General now, and clearly outmatched. She almost ran to him, but then remembered the amulet. She saw the last Vanguardian pushing through the crowd, slashing them down with his blade when they did not move quickly enough.

"Where is it?!" she asked the slaves around her. "The amulet! Where did it fall?"

She heard a wailing language she didn't know and a series of glottal clicks, and spotted an insectoid frantically waving at her and pointing to the ground nearby. She started that way, but of course the Vanguardian saw it too, and began to hack his way to intercept her.

A severed hand went flying past her face, and Narasi heard a slave shriek. Gennic had been forced into the crowd, compelled into a conservative defense to avoid collateral damage even as the Vanguardian showed no such restraint, mowing down slaves as he cut at Gennic. The Wookiee who had been whipped gave a yodeling roar and tried to intervene, but the Vanguardian amputated his hands. He turned back to catch Gennic's sudden attack, but in the opening Narasi herself jabbed in, slashing the Vanguardian across the hip.

His gasp of pain was lost in the Wookiee's wailing, but the Dark Jedi pressed a hand to his wound, trying to hold off Gennic one-handed. Turning back toward the amulet, Narasi saw the third Vanguardian almost where the insectoid alien had been. She didn't know what it did, but Gennic's grim reminiscence and Tirien's sharp orders told her she didn't want to find out. "Keep it away from him!"

Most of the slaves were getting as far from the Vanguardian as possible, but to Narasi's awe, a little Mrlssi grabbed the amulet, hopping up and down with it and trying to press toward Narasi. "Tekk it! Tekk it!  Naow!"

Narasi reached out a hand, pulling on the amulet with the Force, but the Vanguardian did the same, and Narasi could feel his telekinesis overpowering hers. She struggled as hard as possible, but it was no good. There was too much chaos; her ears rang with the maimed Wookiee's roars and the screams of the wounded and dying; she was buffeted by those trying to flee the melee; the dank cave smell mixed with the odor of burning flesh. She couldn't concentrate.

An overseer, hemmed in by slaves advancing on him with mining tools and hateful expressions, backed into the Dark Jedi. The Vanguardian turned instantly and cut the overseer down, but in that instant his focus split, and Narasi pulled the amulet into her hand. She almost dropped it; just touching it filled her with revulsion. She could feel its pull on her mind, demanding to be used. But she dared not let it go, because the Dark Jedi had completed his bisecting spin and was now headed her way.

She retreated into the crowd, jostled by a slave and almost losing her balance and plummeting into the abyss one crevice revealed. Deactivating her blade and clipping the weapon to her hip, she scrambled around the leg of what looked like a gargantuan insectoid walker; was this the Exar Kun weapon? She thanked the Force the Dark Vanguard hadn't gotten that thing working too.

She heard the dopplering slash of a lightsaber and felt pain and death behind her, and knew her Vanguardian was closing. Scrambling up a rock face too quickly, she slipped and caught herself one-handed. As she dangled, she saw Gennic staggering under his enemy's blows; his body appeared intact, but captivity has weakened him and even injured the Vanguardian was a much better swordsman. But even as she watched, she felt a pulsar of rage and saw the maimed Wookiee bowl over a Human, come up behind the Vanguardian, and beat him with what remained of his arms. Even without hands, the giant alien had enough brute force that the Vanguardian crumpled, and the Wookiee sat atop him, pummeling him. Gennic scrambled back, panting.

The next thing Narasi knew was pain. Her torso slammed into the rock wall and she lost her grip, but rather than falling, she hung suspended in the air, her ribs squeezing the breath from her lungs and pressing on her frantically beating heart. Spun in midair, she saw her pursuer with a fist raised, crushing her with the dark side. Distantly, she saw Tirien limping, trying to keep his two attackers in one another's way. Blaster bolts and lightsabers had made short work of many of the slaves, and the others had fled toward the exits. She tried to grab her lightsaber, but her hands were shaking too badly, and the amulet fell from the other one.

The Dark Jedi might have killed her, but his eyes followed the amulet, and he flung her aside. Narasi hit the rocky ground, coughing hard and trying to suck down enough air to fill her lungs. Gennic Forgey staggered past.

"The am…ulet!" she wheezed. "Get…the…amulet…"

He charged. She didn't see exactly what happened, but she felt a surge of the Force, and by the time she got to her hands and knees and turned around, Gennic was holding the amulet, backing away from the Vanguardian and fighting him one-handed. He was clearly exhausted, yielding ground as quickly as his feet would carry him. Narasi wondered if she could stab the Vanguardian in the back.

She looked for Tirien, and her priorities changed instantly. He was backing through the stalagmites, using the terrain to buy himself time, but the two Dark Jedi were relentless. Getting to her feet, Narasi got up to a trot in his direction, coming in alongside him in time to stab at the Vanguardian; he was forced to block, and Tirien nicked him in the shoulder.

"Where's the amulet?!" he and the General demanded in unison.

They stared at each other for a heartbeat, then both looked back. Gennic had retreated up a slope, but he was off-balance and struggling to defend himself.

"Gennic!" Tirien called. "Destroy it!"

"No!" the General roared. "Kill him! Retrieve the amulet!"

Narasi had to whirl to parry a slash from the Vanguardian while Tirien fended off the General, and the two of them retreated side-by-side. Tirien waved his free hand and a shower of pebbles leapt off the ground, pelting the Vanguardian. Narasi was ready to come to her master's aid and take on the General together, but a bellow loud enough to rattle the cave walls distracted her, and she couldn't help but look back.

Gennic threw the Vanguardian down with a Force push. The Dark Jedi rose again immediately, but Gennic dropped the amulet at his feet, raised his yellow blade, and plunged it downward to impale the dark side artifact.

"NO!" the General screamed.

There was a wrenching, ripping feeling of destruction in the Force, and the amulet exploded. Gennic Forgey and the Vanguardian were vaporized in the explosion; Narasi watched their flesh burn down to bones in the space of a second. Half the mechanical insect tank went with it, its head blown completely to cinders; one of its legs was blasted off and toppled into a long crack in the ground, sticking out awkwardly. Blue-white tendrils of energy erupted from the mutilated amulet and carved fissures and fault lines into the cave walls as well. The entire cavern began to groan and shake.

"Time to go," Tirien said.

The General's bearded face contorted with rage, but a stalactite broke free and landed not two meters from him. Backing away, he snapped, "This is not over, alien."

He ran, the last Vanguardian following. Tirien staggered, and Narasi saw his limp was worse than she had suspected. Throwing his arm over her shoulders, she cast about for an exit and spotted the old Mrlssi who had given her the amulet jumping and waving her arms.

"Thizz way! Hurree!" she cried.

The two Jedi went that way as fast as possible, the cave rumbling and debris falling all around them. Confident they were following, the Mrlssi took off as fast as her little legs would carry her, but Narasi fixed her in the Force so she could follow. They slipped and staggered up shaking stone paths, the deafening cracks of fissuring rock pursuing them, Narasi holding up her blade for light. At one point the tunnel ahead started to cave in, and Narasi's eyes widened, but Tirien thrust out a hand, suspending the rockfall in midair. His single-minded concentration meant Narasi all but had to drag him through, but they made it, and Tirien let the rocks fall behind them.

They picked up the pace as they saw light ahead, and Tirien called on the Force to allow him a short run. Bursting into the bright morning, Narasi blinked against the glare, but was forced to refocus as she heard blasterfire and screams through the ringing in her ears. Looking around, she saw the rush of fleeing slaves had overwhelmed some of the overseers, but the survivors were sniping at the slaves as they ran for the hills and bluffs.

Narasi brought her blade to guard, but Tirien laid a hand on her shoulder. "Master, if we don't kill them—!"

"Oh, I know," he said, removing his own lightsaber from his belt. "Cover me."

He ignited his blade and threw it, turning it into a wheel of fire as it curved in the air. By the time any of the overseers realized their presence, half of them were already dead. Narasi only had to deflect a single shot before it was over and the green blade deactivated in midair, its curved hilt flying obediently back to Tirien's hand.

"Do you think they got out, Master?" she asked. "The General and the Vanguardian?"

"I don't think we should stay to find out," he answered. "I'm in no condition for another round."

Narasi saw the cauterized cut in his thigh and lighter, charred holes in his tunic. His dust-coated face looked like he had been beaten up, too. The ground below was still trembling, so she helped him clear of the excavation site. As they made for the bluff, Narasi wondering how Tirien was going to handle the climb, she saw the little Mrlssi who had led them out waiting for them.

"Yoo are Jedi?" the old woman asked.

"We are," Tirien said. "I'm Tirien Kal-Di, and this is my apprentice, Narasi Rican."

"I am Cssarti Chawa."

"Thank you for saving us, Cssarti," Tirien said. Then, taking Narasi's forearm, he lowered himself painfully onto the knee of his good leg so he was at Cssarti's height. "I'm sorry I hurt you."

Narasi didn't know what to make of that, but Cssarti clicked her beak and made a swiping motion with her claw. "Naht yoo, Jedi. The General's doing."

"We only came in a freighter," Tirien cautioned her. "We can't get all of you off the planet."

"We will be all raight," Cssarti assured him. "We will hide in the forrests and the cities. But yoo saved us!  Freed the slaves!  Thank you!"

She came over and hugged Tirien, then hugged Narasi around the waist too. Touched, Narasi patted the old Mrlssi's multicolored feathers. As Cssarti scampered off for the forest, Narasi helped Tirien to his feet, and he gave her a smile before they started the long climb.