River (short story)/Text

There are dark places in the galaxy, where few tread. Ancient centers of learning and knowledge. And there are bright places in the galaxy, equally aged and just as teeming with wisdom. Some are visited by millions or billions every standard year, while others go centuries without the sound of a single footstep echoing within their walls. Still others see regular use, but are hidden, shut away from the galaxy by the careful owners of such places. And, of course, there are those in between. Places that flicker with the softest light, and places that are just slightly tinted by the shadows of evil.

These auras, these details and features that characterize a city, planet, or star system are forged by history. The universe is like a lake, with history being a stone dropped into it. The stone affects not only whatever it lands on, but also whatever else is in the lake. Changes ripple outward from the center of impact, and after the broad ripples of history have reached a world, it is never the same. Depending on what sort of stone reaches the pond, some planets may see light. Others may see darkness.

Some worlds shift toward neither the dark, nor the light. These are very much in the middle, in many cases because history's changes have not affected them in particularly positive or negative ways. Other times, however, it is because the world in question has not been reached by history at all. In a galaxy with four hundred billion stars and well over twelve million inhabited star systems, there are places at the farthest reaches of inhabited space that even the mighty waves of history do not reach.

For some time, anyway. But there is no sector, no system, no world anywhere in all of the galaxy that stays hidden from the echoes of history forever.

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Beyond the edge of the space ruled by the interstellar giant known as the First Galactic Republic, there hung in space a small brown planet. Dominated by sand, rock, and dust, it was nothing special to look at. It was the only inhabited planet in the entire system, and that was a sparse inhabitance, indeed. The planet's gravity was ninety percent of galactic standard, and it had a rotational period of twenty-five standard hours with an orbital period of four hundred and ninety-five local days. The sector it rested in was barely mapped, and to the small but self-sufficient people who lived on this world, the Galactic Republic was a far-off concept that one heard stories about every few months. Something so large that nothing that had anything to do with it would ever take an interest in their planet.

On this planet, there was a city. Then again, such a statement would be perhaps misleading and unnecessarily vague. There were a number of cities dotting the world, but this particular settlement was far too small to be a city; it was closer to a town, or a village. Its population numbered about five hundred people, half of them Humans. Although it had adequate medical facilities, kolto, clean water, droids, a few starships, the basic necessities of life, it was the most modest settlement on the planet, which itself was one of the most modest planets in the galaxy. The town sat alone among sand dunes and hills, many miles from the nearest proper city; indeed, it was farther from another settlement than any other town or city on the world.

A tiny gray dot stood out on the sea of orange sands as the sun beat down. Closer inspection would allow an observer to identify the dot as a landspeeder with an open cockpit. The dull gray hull of the vehicle sported several extra sheets of metal, welded haphazardly over machinery that had been previously exposed by absence of regular maintenance.

Occupying five out of the six seats in the landspeeder was a small group of orange and gray-uniformed men and women, all of them Human. The group's leader was silent behind the vessel's controls, concentrating on following the designated waypoints that had been programmed into his datapad, while the man sitting to his right kept his eyes on his scanning equipment. Conversation among the speeder's occupants was minimal, for a change. The long, tedious routine of surveying the desert landscape for natural resource deposits usually provided for extended periods of conversation between the surveyors in order to stave off boredom, but no one could seem to think of anything to discuss today.

Hours passed, and all of the passengers began to feel exceedingly uncomfortable as the sun approached the horizon. One of them was considering taking a nap when her eye was caught by an anomaly far off in the distant sky. Though she at first shook it off as a trick of the mind, the consistency of its movement aroused her curiosity enough for her to open her eyes all the way and find out what sort of trick it might be.

Rather than simply disappearing into the back of her memories as she had expected, the anomaly, though at a distance that made it somewhat difficult to make out, was clearly a starship. Starships were far from unknown to this planet's inhabitants, but visits from anyone out of system, indeed, off-planet at all, were virtually unheard of.

Suddenly forgetting her desire to sleep, the woman lifted a finger and pointed, raising her voice as she did so to grab her colleagues' attention. Their heads turned, and the entire crew soon caught sight of the phenomenon. Burning a bright gold from atmospheric friction and gouting a trail of black smoke, the ship was streaking at an angle down toward the hills off to the west, just before the horizon.

Impact came a few short seconds later as the ship slammed into the ground, slid a short distance, and came to a stop. To the dismay of his colleagues, the driver of the surveyors' landspeeder nearly crashed the vehicle into a boulder in his haste to rush to the site. After they had come to a stop, the surveyors disembarked, several of them keeping blaster pistols at the ready as they approached the wreckage. One of the starship's large side wings was torn completely off and lay a distance behind, while half of the other was nowhere to be found. The starboard side of its white-gray hull was tarnished by long black scars across its entire starboard side. Scars which could only have been made by laser fire.

A few of the surveyors traded nervous, foreboding glances at each other as they approached the crash site. Their leader was in the front, a man in his late thirties with fading brown hair and narrow, cautious eyes. To his regret, his team had nothing they could use to extinguish the fire that roared on the other side of the wreck; their speeder had only surveying equipment, emergency rations and a small first-aid kit. It wasn't the first time, the leader had encountered a situation like this, but never before had such a scene literally fallen out of the sky on him without any warning.

The surveyors picked up speed as they approached the ship, but before they could reach it, a hatch on the side of the scorched, battered hull opened with a hiss, allowing a man, wheezing and gasping, to stagger out, followed by a small but billowing cloud of gray smoke.

The survivor was a male Human with light skin, looking to be somewhere in his twenties. He was dressed in a torn, dirtied brown robe with a white tunic underneath. His hands were covered by thin black gloves. His short blond hair was mussed by smoke and his blue eyes darted around like a madman's, unfocused and wide open. He tried to speak as he stumbled forward, his arms weakly held out in front of him, but failed to articulate anything. Blood trailed down the right side of his face from his forehead as he fell to his knees, gasping for breathable air.

In another second, however, the survivor was up and attempting to walk again. Hoping that the man could hear him, the surveying team's leader inquired as to whether anyone else was in the ship, even as several others galloped around them to check. The man collapsed, but managed to shake his head at the leader before falling unconscious. The leader barked at one of the surveyors to get the first-aid kit; the man's head needed bandaging.

A few short moments passed, and the survivor, who they soon learned had been the only being in the ship, was loaded into their landspeeder's backseat. After running a quick double-check of the crash site, the leader of the group jogged back to the vehicle. Feeling an odd curiosity about whether the man's arrival meant anything for the planet's future, he glanced back at crash site once, and then slid into his seat behind the controls.

The town was about as busy as a settlement of its population could hope to be as the survey team's speeder wound its way through the streets to its only medical facility. People of every profession shuffled along the streets from place to place, offering friendly greetings to anyone they passed. Artisans, mechanics, doctors, businessmen. Humans, Rodians, Weequays, Grans, Twi'leks, Ithorians. Never in a rush to be anywhere, many of the citizens paused to watch as the surveying team's landspeeder cruised down the street; there were at best only a handful of privately owned repulsorlift vehicles here, so even a single landspeeder often drew the attention of onlookers.

The hospital was clean, quiet, and secure as medical personnel moved the survivor to a room on a stretcher. News traveled fast, and more than a few of the village's residents dropped by to ask about the man; the town's collective curiosity was very obviously conveyed on every visitor's face, whether it showed worry or bewilderment. All of them were given more or less the same answer: the survivor was a male Human, had arrived in a small ship that crashed not far from the city, and while alive, he was very thoroughly in a coma. Visitors that left satisfied by this information were few and far between.

Not three days had passed before the hospital was visited by a man who was, by that town's standards, rather important: the planetary council-appointed “governor” of the city. Accompanied by his few assistants and advisors, he stopped in to inquire about the survivor's condition and what they could piece together about him. The medical staff who were tending the patient and the leader of the surveying team were present for the ensuing discussion.

On the governor's orders, the surveying team had returned to the crashed ship the previous day to search for anything that could tell them about the lone survivor. To their disappointment, the vessel's computer was very wrecked, and the ship was nearly empty; there was no cargo, barely any personal possessions, not a datapad. However, they did find a single item of interest, which they took with them back to the hospital, since it technically did belong to one of the patients. This item was a small, gleaming metal cylinder that turned out to be some sort of a weapon.

The governor and his assistants all recognized it as a lightsaber. The lone survivor was a Jedi.

The Galactic Republic was known to most of this planet's inhabitants in the same way that one knows about some obscure sector far off on the other side of the galaxy, but the Jedi Order was much more well-known. Or, to be more accurate, the Jedi Order was talked about much more often; for every rumor there was about the Republic, there were ten about the Jedi. They were the mysterious beings who wandered the galaxy, said by some to save worlds and by others to burn them. There were those who even claimed that they possessed supernatural powers.

The governor and his assistants had all formerly been members of the Republic, but ended up leaving its territory for simpler, smaller pursuits. They knew of the Jedi, and knew many things that had been claimed about them. And they knew that a very serious situation had just fallen into their lap.

The governor stood facing the administrator of the hospital. Both men were flanked by a few of their subordinates, the advisors and the medical staff assigned to the survivor, respectively. Standing on the sideline was the leader of the surveying team. Their discussion was located in a hallway just outside the room where the survivor could be seen laying motionless in a hospital bed through a one-way window. Even though they were completely alone, all of them kept their voices lowered a bit, as though there was a silent, lingering fear that someone they couldn't see was listening.

All three of the governor's assistants warned the governor that this Jedi was dangerous. Interjecting before anyone else could respond, the survey team's leader demanded to know how a man in a coma was dangerous. The governor's most prominent advisors, a man in a dark suit with a particularly swarthy complexion, expressed the opinion that the man would only bring ruin to the town if he ever woke up. The governor asked how; he had met one of their kind before, and was was confident in the Order's claims to be a benevolent and peacekeeping organization.

The governor's advisor darkly replied that even if the Jedi was friendly, then the threat that he posed came not from him, but from whoever was behind him. This halted the conversation for a brief moment. Though the men and women in the room did not all hold the same opinion in regards to the Jedi as a whole, they all knew that the advisor was right about one thing: that the Jedi had crashed on the planet was no accident. Someone had been following him.

The governor's assistants all agreed that the survivor needed to be kept under watch, but only the one in the dark suit told the man that the Jedi should be killed. He had lived in the Republic for some time, and he knew that terror was unleashed in the galaxy wherever Jedi went. The facility's administrator immediately gave a flat refusal to this request; no patient of his would be deliberately harmed because of a threat that was not present. The argument lasted for some time, but soon enough, every head in the room had turned to the governor, for the final decision was his.

As it turned out, the governor shared the surveying leader's opinion; none of them really knew anything about the Jedi Order as a whole, except that they were intimately connected to the major workings of the galaxy at large, most recently the so-called Jedi Civil War that still raged far away from their world. Therefore, he saw no reason to order the survivor's death. Every innocent who set foot in his city was one entitled to his or her life. In closing, however, he agreed that they should not turn a blind eye to such an extraordinary situation. To this end he stated that none of them were to tell anyone that the survivor was a Jedi, or anything else other than an ordinary spacer.

Grimly, the governor's assistants accepted this ruling, and the discussion ended. An official statement was issued the next day, claiming that the survivor was, as per the governor's orders, simply an ordinary man from parts unknown.

Despite the oaths of silence taken by those few who knew, whispers that the man from the ship was a Jedi still managed to circulate. A sort of dry, ominous sense of dread seemed to sweep over the town in the next day, but as far as anyone could tell, everything was normal. The clouds came and went, the sun rose and set. Life went on.

Four days after the survivor's arrival, a squad of police officers found themselves standing in the middle of a street on the eastern side of the town, in one of its more densely-occupied subdivisions. The morning was young, and there were only a few citizens wandering about. When a random passerby broke off from their original course and approach the scene, one of the officers would gesture for him or her to move along.

The officers were loosely clustered around a body that lay face-forward in the center of the street. The squad's sergeant stood outside the cluster next to an investigator who had also been sent from the station. Both were speaking to a woman in plain clothing with glossy black hair. Nervously, she swayed back and forth as they asked their questions. As the morning had worn on, a cloud of dust had slowly crawled through the village and now hung in place like a fog.

According to the woman, she had been on her way to meet a friend at a restaurant when she spotted the body in the street, at which point she immediately sent for the police. The dead citizen, a Rodian, had yet to be identified. Not a very long time had passed before a team arrived to extract the body for examination.

Later that day, the autopsy on the Rodian pronounced the cause of death as being three stab wounds in the chest, caused by a bladed weapon of some kind. What the murder weapon could have been was unknown; from the looks of things, the three wounds appeared to be inflicted at the exact same time by three blades, each in proportion with that of a stabbing knife of some kind. To complicate matters, the wounds were arranged in a sort of triangle in relation to each other, suggesting the use of an exceedingly bizarre weapon.

The metaphorical fog of dread that permeated the town thickened to match the literal fog of dust that filled the streets, swirling about people's feet as they walked. Murders, killings, or any sort of serious crime in this town were highly irregular. Nearly everyone knew each other very well. Rumors, whispers of accusations aimed at some of the more reclusive and introverted citizens bounced back and forth, but the authorities had little to say, except that they would proceed with an investigation.

As night fell, the survivor inexplicably stirred slightly in his hospital bed, as though trying to force himself out of his coma, but the effort was in vain and went unnoticed.

A few hours into the work day, five days after the Jedi's arrival, it was reported that a security guard at one of the village's warehouses had returned to his post from a break to find the man he was supposed to relieve dead on the floor. The cause of death was something of a mystery; though it didn't take long to determine that the guard's trachea had been crushed, how exactly it had been done couldn't be explained. Promptly, the authorities declared that they were dealing with a serial killer. Needless to say, this did nothing to ease anyone's worries about whatever was going on.

The governor was sitting in silent contemplation in his office that afternoon, mulling over recent events, when there was a knock at the door. In the mood for visitors, the governor invited whoever it was to come in and discovered that the visitors were two of his advisors. Their faces were set like figures carved in rock, undermining the warm nonchalance with which they were greeted. Never being ones for small talk, the two insisted to the governor that the Jedi was to blame for the recent murders. The governor scoffed, reminding them that the Jedi was still very much in a coma. Irritably, the advisors told him that it was still the Jedi's fault and told them that he had to do something about the survivor.

Having suddenly lost all desire for visitors, the governor responded that they had no actual evidence that the crimes were in any way connected to the Jedi. He then told them to leave if the only information they had to share with him was their progress on searching for a scapegoat. Defeated, the two advisors left, but before the door closed, one of them turned, and with sudden sense of desperation in his voice, implored the governor to do the right thing for the people. The governor rolled his eyes as the two vanished.

When the room was silent again, however, the governor felt fear sting his mind as he considered the recent events in light of the two visitors' words. An hour passed, and the governor truly began to wonder if the decision he had made a few days ago had put more than two lives on the line.

After six days had passed since the survivor's starship crashed, the dusty fog that hung in the streets thickened. Casual conversation outside and in public places had undergone a very obvious change, both in terms of attitude and frequency. Instead of happily greeting passersby, people would glance at them and suddenly walk faster, putting up plain, generic faces to hide the anxiety that slowly boiled toward the surface.

At high noon, a man with graying red hair and a firm jaw found himself leading a squad of police officers into the southwestern part of town, where an anonymous tip had told them that screams were briefly heard from inside a vehicle repair shop owned by an Ithorian. From the outside, the structure looked like it belonged where it was; the place was old, run-down, beat up, like everything else in the village, but especially so, since it was in the southwestern part. The place sported a junk pile out front, a large dent in the garage door from an old speeder accident, and no windows.

Closer inspection of the structure revealed that one of the rear entrances had been smashed open. The officers entered through that doorway. The sergeant stayed at the front, keeping his blaster pistol at the ready while his men searched the rooms behind him. The interior of the building was dimly lit, but there was still enough light for them to navigate easily enough. Shelves and workbenches lined every wall of every room, each serving as storage space for an impressive collection of mechanical parts and tools in a great variety of size and function. Quickly and silently, the officers made their way into the garage itself, where four landspeeders had been parked, their engines gutted and awaiting replacement.

The garage was less densely packed with tools and junk than the previous rooms; there were no workbenches, but a stray fusioncutter or torque wrench lay on the floor here and there. Two officers stayed behind to guard the way in while the rest headed out into the garage. The soft tapping of footsteps was the only thing to be heard, and the sergeant could tell that his men were uneasy. They had all heard of the Rodian who was killed in the street, and were more than aware of the possibility that the owner of this repair shop could turn out to be a similar episode.

As he walking around a case of solid fuel slugs that was taller than himself, the sergeant mused that his men were not ready for this sort of thing; it had been decades since a serious murder was last committed in this town; by “serious”, he meant one with no evidence pointing to a suspect or motive of any sort. What few murders there had been in the past were very obvious ones which were always resolved in short order. The case of the Rodian was different; it had come out of the sky with no explanation, no determinable reason. The sergeant had a sinking feeling in his gut that the Ithorian could very well turn out the same way.

His men weren't ready for this because the very small police force that protected this very small town had grown complacent in the lack of danger they had faced over the years. Now, they were dealing with something that they had not dealt with in some time. Perhaps never.

The sergeant glancing down at the floor, as though expecting himself to trip over something. Shaking it off, he kept moving until the voice of his second in command came across the room, informing him that they had found something. Moving slowly to where the voice had come from, the sergeant made his way to the opposite side of the garage, where three of his men stood in a triangle around something on the floor. Sure enough, it was a body, which the sergeant immediately recognized as that of an Ithorian. There was enough blood to know immediately that he was dead.

Word didn't get out of the second murder until the early afternoon. Details came from the investigation fairly quickly; an unknown assailant had broken in and killed the Ithorian sometime earlier that morning. The many wounds found on the body had been inflicted by one or more blades on the proportions of a scalpel.

Many a citizen had noticed by nightfall that tension had only increased as word got out. The mutual fear that tightened like a noose around the town's populace thickened, but unlike with the previous murder, this one sparked conversations, rather than precluding them. Anger began to flare as details of what was going on were analyzed and reanalyzed, discussed and discussed again. Rumors spread like wildfire, and although few of them were accepted as anything more than just pointless speculation, more than a few people were convinced that what was going on was connected to the ship that had arrived nearly a week earlier. Exactly how the two were connected, nobody claimed to know.

Seven days after the survivor's arrival, the fog remained, and no topic was discussed in the village more than the murders. The day passed quickly, almost frantically, and more than one person told his or her associates that another would die before the day was out. Dark clouds started to gather around the horizons, and the fog in the streets was complimented by a stiff, uncharacteristically cold breeze.

The streets were deathly silent until dusk had settled in, at which point the silence was broken by footsteps and voices, centered around an alley between two warehouses in the town. People who watched through nearby windows and from around half-open doors were not surprised to see police officers and investigators outside. All were clustered around the entrance to an alley between two warehouses. Flashlight beams crawled lazily over the sides of buildings.

This time, the scene was visited by none other than the governor himself, escorted by one of his battle droid bodyguards. There was a body sprawled in two pieces just inside the alley. Outside the alley, in the midst of the police, stood a wide-eyed, stammering journalist who claimed to be a witness. He said that he was walking back to an apartment building with the victim when the murder occurred.

The journalist swore that he had walked a few steps ahead of his friend as they passed the alley, at which point he heard a noise that, while it didn't sound like a blaster, was unmistakably an energy weapon of some kind; along with the noise came the a flash of bright red light from behind him. When he'd turned around, his friend was lying on the ground in two pieces, and in the alley stood what the man felt certain was also the one who had perpetrated the other murders. The man claimed that the murderer appeared inhuman, and while he admittedly didn't get a good look at the killer, he swore that whoever or whatever he had seen stood like a Human, but had claws, like some sort of a demon.

While the police listened to this rather peculiar description with more than a little skepticism, the governor was noticeably silent, his face looking grim and professional, but with an unmistakable fear in his eyes that the other people at the scene didn't quite understand. Inspection of the body revealed a very large wound etched across the victim's upper torso, but not one caused by any sort of ordinary slashing weapon. Not a drop of blood was found in the alley; the wound was completely cauterized.

The governor had no doubt in his mind about what the murder weapon was.

On the eighth day following the crash of the unknown ship, the governor announced that he was sending every investigator and officer at his disposal to get a lead on the killer. Talk about the murders reached a peak. Nobody knew what to think, or what could be done. The people could only wait and see how the grisly episode would end.

The day passed slowly. The only regular citizens seen in the streets were ones who had someplace to be; there was no idle wandering going on out there. Out of those who were on their way home or to work, few dared to go alone or unarmed. Inside public buildings and private homes, the air was lively with conversation, but it was dead silent in the foggy streets outside. Along with the odd two or three workers rushing from building to building, the town's exterior sported law enforcement officers standing in pairs on street corners or patrolling up and down the lines of buildings.

A figure in a dark coat and a narrow-brimmed hat stood out in the quiet village. To some, he may have looked suspicious, but the police and much of the populace knew who he was. A member of the near-human Epicanthix species, the man was locally well-known. Considered by many to be the best private investigator that the planet could produce, the man had lived on this little-known desert world for his whole life, and had seen many a strange sight in its more populated cities.

The man in the hat was virtually the only person in town traveling the streets alone. The governor had asked him to look into the recent murders, which wasn't surprising, since every other known snoop in town had been given the same request. While this particular investigator was more used to working in areas with a heavier population, where the pay was higher, his curiosity had been snagged by this most unusual situation.

He spent the entire day on the case, from the minute he had finished breakfast. He visited public places, restaurants, apartment buildings, the small garden that passed for a town square, any place he could think of where he might hear some information, any information that might help him. He knew full-well that at least a third of the population believed that the man who had arrived on the crashed ship was a Jedi; he could hardly shake the dust off his hat without hearing the word “Jedi” tossed around. He didn't know anything first-hand about Jedi, but he was convinced that the survivor from the ship had something to do with what was going on, Jedi or not.

He visited each of the murder scenes in chronological order. The middle of the street where the Rodian died. The security post at the warehouse. The repair shop on the southwest side of town. The alley where the last murder occurred. He stood at the alley's entrance and stared in for a long time, thoughts stirring around in his brain. This murder scene puzzled him more than any of the others. The journalist who claimed to be a witness swore that the one who killed his friend had not rushed out of the alley after the murder. The problem with this was that the alley was a dead end, leading only to a vertical slap of duracrete that made up the other wall of the city. There was no other way out of there, except for flying up over the buildings or something.

The man in the hat stopped at the hospital after he had concluded his fruitless searches of the murder scenes. He insisted that he needed to know more about the survivor from the ship, but they refused to tell him anything. When he pressed the issue, a security guard sent him packing out into the foggy streets.

Hours and hours ticked by. The man in the hat visited any place he could think of where he could talk to someone, pick up some sort of clue, or an idea, a speculation that had eluded him. But nothing. Only the same rumors and crackpot theories, whispered and muttered over drinks and in quiet hallways. The sun had nearly finished setting by the time he became sick of listening as a meal became the first of his priorities; the nearest restaurant rapidly became his most important destination.

Normally, the man in the hat would have been happy to sit down to a warm meal, especially a late one, after a long day of work, but the food might as well have been fried plasticrete for all he tasted it. It was a long dinner. He sat near a window in a far corner of the restaurant, where the overhead light didn't work for some reason. For some time he silently watched pedestrians and workers hurry home in small groups of four or three as the sun went down.

To his surprise, it was close to midnight when the man in the hat next looked at his chronometer. He must have slept without realizing it; the restaurant was closed and he had been left, forgotten about. Leaving his pay on the counter, he let himself out and headed for home. The dust that clung to his legs took the appearance of a ghostly fog, and a disarmingly cold wind swept across the quiet town as he made his way back toward the apartment building where he currently resided.

The man in the hat kept a sharp eye out for anything unusual and kept his hand close to the holdout blaster pistol in his coat pocket. All day, he had hoped to find even a single tiny clue, anything that would put him closer to the trail of the murderer, and he reminded himself that such a clue could still reveal itself, even now. It was when the man in the hat came to a small subdivision, where more homes were unoccupied than occupied, that he realized that he had found something.

The moon in the sky cast enough light down on the village for him to navigate through the streets just fine. Six doors down and on the left side of the street, the man in the hat could see a house being lit up from within by unidentifiable flashes of blue light. He could hear noises coming from the building as well, but they couldn't be properly recognized from his current location.

As his pace accelerated to a sprint, the man in the hat glanced up and down the street to see if he was alone. For the time being, he was, but the commotion was bound to attract police attention soon enough. In less time than it took for him to realize it, he found himself in danger of running into a fence in front of the house. Managing to slow to a walk before he could crash into it, the man looked behind himself again and saw several people standing in open doorways elsewhere in the subdivision. All of them had weapons in hand as they peered at the flickering light visible through the house's windows

Now only a stone's throw from the door, the man in the hat froze as he realized what the noise was. From inside the house came a pandemonium that sounded like nothing so much as electrical discharges, punctuated by sounds of physical violence, objects being hurled into walls... And screaming.

He glanced behind himself. The citizens who were previously standing in doorways were now timidly approaching the house, blasters in hand. There was no time to wait for them. The man strode to the front door and kicked it off its hinges. Ignoring the pain in his leg, the man drew his blaster pistol and headed up a staircase to his right, where the pandemonium seemed to be coming from.

The room upstairs was in such a shambles that the man in the hat couldn't even tell what kind of room it was supposed to be. Pieces of ripped furniture, shattered appliances, and other pieces of debris came into view as the man in the hat ascended. To his mounting horror, he noticed that a number of the objects seemed to be lifting themselves off of the floor and flying randomly about the room.

Taking a deep breath, the man in the hat poked his head out from the staircase and looked around. The first thing that caught his eyes was what turned out to be the source of the light he saw from outside. What looked like bolts of electricity, blue-white in color, sparked and flashed about the room in some sort of malevolent dance of energy. Pinned to the walls near the far corner to the right were three figures, caught in the flickering storm.

All humanoid in appearance, the three figures were secured to the walls by an invisible force as bolts of energy struck them in a spasmatic frenzy, lighting up their skeletons with each impact. Occasionally, the objects that were being thrown about the room hit them as well.

The flashes of light prevented the man in the hat's vision from adjusting to the dark. He was frozen in a half-crouching position as he stared at the ghastly scene before him. His eyes saw it and his ears heard it, but his mind rebelled. Half of his mind screamed at him to flee, while the other half told him to stay put and see how the situation played out; whatever was going on, charging into a room that seemed to be filled with bolts of electricity would probably solve nothing.

After a short moment, the horrible maelstrom the had been engulfing the room ended. The lightning abruptly stopped and the three humanoids fell smoking and thoroughly dead to the floor, followed by the previously levitating chunks of debris. Unable to control the horrible curiosity churning in his gut, the man in the hat forced himself out of the stairs and into the room. After he took a few steps toward the bodies, the smell of burned flesh reached his nostrils, causing him to involuntarily walk backward, past the stairs.

Coughing briefly, the man in the hat turned his back to the corpses, and felt his blood freeze. Standing at the far wall near a window stood what the man took to be the one responsible for this hideous episode. The moonlight coming in through the window hit the thing at its back, reducing it to a black outline of its form and obscuring most of its physical details. However, the man in the hat could immediately determine that it was a humanoid, clad in a suit of black armor that completely hid whatever features it had. A dark gray helmet stared back at the man.

The tableau stayed that way for a moment, with the man in the hat staring in petrified shock at the armored nightmare before him. The thing sported what looked like a short cape hanging from its waist, a high metal collar, and a series of flexible sheets of armor protecting its torso. It stood before the window with its arms and legs spread out in what looked like a fighting stance of some sort, as though daring the man in the hat to approach him.

The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs could be heard. Suddenly the thing lifted a hand, revealing to the man's ever-rising panic that it had claws, and thrust it toward the wall behind itself. The man in the hat finally managed to summon the will to lift his pistol to a firing position, but soon found that he was too late.

With a tremendous roar, a section of the wall exploded, as though an invisible wrecking ball had been thrown at it, leaving a gaping hole large enough for a person to walk through. Dust and scraps of building material filled the air, obscuring the man's vision. Out of frustration, he squeezed the trigger of his blaster, and a bolt of red energy sliced through the darkness toward the hole. It struck the wall to the left, having not been a well-prepared shot, but the brief flash of light allowed the man in the hat to see a distorted black figure leap through the hole just before the darkness returned.

Armed citizens and policemen alike quickly converged on the site. The intruder, whoever or whatever it was, was nowhere to be found. Before long, the civilians were ordered back indoors while an investigation was launched. The man in the hat was brought back to the police station for questioning.

The next morning, the fog of dust was completely gone, and the bitingly cold breeze went with it. An official report compiled by law enforcement officials identified the victims as a husband, wife, and their son, who were thirty-four, thirty-six, and seventeen years old, respectively. The fear that had gripped every living soul in the city remained, but it was soon overshadowed by anger. And hate.

The populace hated what was befalling them. They hated whoever this armored murderer was, and hated that he had chosen to come to their village to torment and kill them at will – they, who had done nothing to him, certainly nothing to anyone that would make them deserve this. News travels fast in a population of five hundred, but anger spreads faster.

Today, the streets were not close to being deserted. Rather than scurrying from place to place alone, people wandered about in groups. Anyone who owned a weapon, or something that could be used as a weapon, had one. Roughly half of the employed citizens went to work; the rest endlessly patrolled the town, searching for the killer, talking about the killer. They hated this monster, and there was no being in this town who didn't want to kill it.

Fear simmered, but hatred boiled. Police stood at their posts on street corners, restlessly watching the pacing citizens and quiet buildings. In some of the less traveled areas of the village, there were small, isolated periods of shouting and other racket as storehouses, abandoned buildings, and the like were broken into. Broken into by people to look for the murderer.

It was not until high noon that the murderer revealed himself. At the docking bays in the northeastern side of the village, where the few starships and long-range speeders in the city were kept, an unexpected disturbance erupted in the halls. Screams of terror and unfamiliar noises sounded through the corridors. One by one, guard stations and control booths fell silent. The sound of thunder could be heard from the hangars. Fuel tanks were spilled. Explosions sounded and plumes of black smoke rose up into the sky, alerting the town that the man they sought was in the open.

When everyone else within the docking bays was dead and all of the landed starships were permanently grounded, the only exit that remained intact opened and out stepped the man whom the residents hated so. Police saw him. Citizens saw him. Droids saw him. Word traveled fast. What passed for a mob in such a small town quickly formed and headed to the docking bays to confront the killer. Hatred united.

The one they were after stood alone, an armored black monster with long metallic claws protruding from its gloved hands. Shouts of malice and vengeance rose up as the mob came within sight of the thing. Men and women of various species, armed with blasters, slugthrowers, vibroblades, hand-held industrial cutting tools, anything that could be used to hurt or kill, shouted obscenities and threw random pieces of debris as they approached. Police were in the minority, but more were en route.

The figure in black stood like a statue. The crowd's shouting grew louder as they approached. A few people near the front took potshots at him, but their aim was far too wide. The mob seemed to be preparing to disperse after coming within a certain range, at which point they would surround and trample the thing from all directions.

As they came closer, the dark one thought it fascinating how anger divided people in the Republic and the Empire, how hatred had turned many beings and ideals against each other back in the center of galactic civilization, whereas out here on an insignificant speck at the edge of known space, it united them. For his entire life, the one in black had seen it demonstrated time and time again that unity through hatred was at best a very fragile alliance, yet here, it strengthened them in their own way.

Hatred granted strength to those who knew how to use it. These people had no idea how to truly harness their anger, but still it united them, and it gave them a sort of perverse mockery of strength. They had set aside their differences, brought together by a common purpose against a common enemy, an enemy that they could not comprehend. This entire village had come out into the streets, united against him. Nothing would stand between them and their revenge. The peace that they had known for many years before his arrival would finally be theirs again.

If only they had known that peace was a lie. This people might have learned many things over the years, but they had missed that fact. He would instruct them.

The front of the mob was now a stone's throw away. The men and women brought their weapons to bear. Every individual face was twisted into a malevolent visage that would have intimidated any ordinary being. As they prepared to circle around him, the dark one raised his hands. Pain was the one lesson nobody would ignore.

Strands of energy sparked from the dark one's fingertips. An instant later, a torrent of jagged blue lightning burst forth and struck the front row of the mob head-on. Cries of pain and alarm flared up, replacing the ones of anger as the bolts of energy chained from one target to the next, searing each one and forcing many of them to their knees. The burst ended abruptly, leaving the front half of the crowd staggering in disoriented agony. The other half shoved its way toward the front in vehement defiance, disparately hoping to kill him before he could continue.

Before any of them had a chance to take aim, another bolt of lightning skewered the air, sending already wounded men smoking to the ground, while others staggered and fought to keep their balance. Weapons slipped from startled fingers and several blasters accidentally discharged, adding to the confusion.

Taking a second or two to look past the crowd, the figure in black saw another mob approaching from around a far street corner. He estimated that he would have a moment or two before they reached him. Calmly, the armored figure sent another wave of energy into the crowd and strode nonchalantly toward its center. A number of citizens who had been lucky enough to avoid his wrath swung their weapons in his direction as he walked, and he dispatched them each with blasts of lightning, not slowing his pace on their account.

By the time he had reached the center of the mob, all of the citizens within range were writhing on the ground, feebly willing themselves to stand again. For all the confidence their anger had given them, it brought them no true strength. Not against him, anyway. He stopped in the approximate center of the crowd, taking a little time to savor the moment.

He had given them time. He had shown them mercy, and either they had not accepted it, or they had failed to realize what it meant. Their lack of vision had brought this on themselves. For days the man in black had waited for his prey to show itself. He had given them more than they deserved, and they repaid him with nothing. His patience was at an end.

The dark one's clawed right hand reached for a metal cylinder that hung from the belt at his waist. As it did so, he noticed that the more resilient men and women in the crowd had managed to force themselves back to their feet and were reaching for their fallen weapons. Taking his time, the armored figure turned the lightsaber over in his hand for a moment before thumbing the activation switch, emitting a shaft of bloody red light that reflected off of his armor.

Heads turned in his direction and gaped. Now they would face the wrath of a Sith Lord.

More of the crowd began to struggle to their feet, as though suddenly energized by a new wave of desperation. Weapons were brought to bear again, but their target was already moving. Racing through the crowd, the figure in black swung and twirled his lightsaber with deadly ferocity, dismembering the hapless victims with speed. Screams resounded all around him with renewed panic.

Arms swung vibroblades toward the Sith, and he cut them off. Laser blasts streaked through the air, prompting him to roll, duck, and spin wildly to dodge out of their way, not that he really needed to. The energy he gathered as he leaped through the crowd, he spent on using the Force to pull fleeing citizens within reach and skewer them with his claws. Blood soon dotted the street.

It wasn't long before most of the mob lay dead. A dozen or so had somehow managed to escape his notice and fled in random directions, but he let them go. He would get to them soon enough. The Sith Lord walked to the edge of the field of bodies and stopped, facing the second mob, which appeared much larger than the first. The screams of vengeance were even louder than before, most probably because they had seen what he had just done to the first group. Police armed with blaster rifles, carbines, and other weapons formed a line ahead of the mob and trained their sights on him. At a signal from their commander, the line opened fire.

Strands of laser fire lanced toward the masked figure. His lightsaber cut red arcs through the air, casting a number of bolts back at the officers and sending several falling to the ground in showers of sparks. Undaunted, the commander ordered them to fire again. Two glancing blaster shots ricocheted off his armor, but the deflected bolts cut down two more of the officers.

Deciding not to waste too much time, the Sith Lord marched at a brisk pace toward the second crowd. As the remaining police officers continued to fire, armed civilians behind them joined in. Several people at the back of the crowd fled. The armored figure continued to swing his lightsaber, deflecting more shots, felling several men with each salvo. The crowd stood its ground bravely, but foolishly.

When he came to about six yards from the crowd, they no longer held back and charged, screaming what could have been the battle cry of an ancient, long-dead army. The Sith Lord held his ground. A brief spray of laser fire came his way. What shots he he didn't deflect either glanced off of his armor or went into the ground. The citizens crowded around him, wildly opening fire with blasters and swinging vibroblades, tools, random pieces of debris, or even their bare hands at him.

The Sith Lord spun like a cyclone, cutting his would-be assailants apart before they came close to trampling him. After driving the crowd back for a few seconds, he charged head-first into the midst of them. His lightsaber was a crimson blur, slicing through victim after victim as their collective rage was rapidly replaced by panic. He gathered his hatred into concentrated surges of telekinetic energy, which he then hurled in random directions, shattering peoples' bones and throwing them around like rag dolls.

It should have been obvious from the beginning that even all of them combined were no threat to him. They could never kill him, and although the panic was spreading with each passing second, several dozen more citizens made an almost impressively brave attempt at it, charging him from all sides with a manner of improvised melee weapons. Dropping to one knee, the dark one beckoned the dark side of the Force to fill him with its power.

A second or two passed as the men and women rushed toward him with all of their impotent rage. The lone figure in black was still for a short instant, and then leaped into the air. He felt like a dam had burst inside of him, unleashing a blast of telekinetic energy that repulsed the attackers, hurling them into each other, into buildings, and through the air.

The screams of terror grew louder when he started using Sith lightning to drive the rest of the crowd back. Most of those that still survived ran for their lives. Drawing his arm back, the Sith Lord threw his lightsaber, guiding it with the Force as it cut down three of the fleeing citizens, then arced back to him like a boomerang. Opening himself to the Force, he let it control his limbs as he resumed the massacre, striking down the remaining victims who couldn't or wouldn't flee.

He glanced around himself at the swath he had cut through the crowds. A dozen or so had escaped, running away frantically in groups. Picking the largest group, he headed after them, lightsaber raised. Drinking in the residual dark side aura that now permeated the city, thanks to the recent surge of hatred and fear, the dark one opened his mind to the Force. He could feel the panic and misery rising up and spreading through the village like a tidal wave. He could sense the near-exact location of every other being in the settlement, as though each was a colored dot on a radar screen.

The Sith Lord couldn't shake a feeling of inescapable frustration as he telekinetically ripped the door from a house where a small cluster of dots was hiding. Despite all of the dark side energy that was present because of his actions and their effects, he could still clearly sense the light side's presence as well. It wasn't like the dark side's, however; that energy's intensity in a given area was determined by how many beings were in that area. Instead, the light side was equally present in all parts of the city, in what he could only describe as a thin layer of some sort, like a slender blanket of snow left on a short winter day.

He knew why this energy was there. Its source was the reason he had come to this planet in the first place. It was the reason he had been killing the people of this tiny settlement. He had been waiting for its source to reveal itself. Just as an ordinary man did not stray from his home town in search of an insect hill to trample, so also did a Sith Lord did not travel to an insignificant ball of rock simply to murder its oblivious inhabitants. He couldn't care less about this place. He had come for the Jedi.

He had spent weeks hunting for this Jedi, trailing him. Evidently, he had been responsible for a grievous defeat suffered by a Sith battle fleet in the Outer Rim. Nothing less humiliating would have been important enough for the Dark Lady Revan to dispatch one of her personally-trained apprentices to take his life in return. It was a long, difficult search, but the Dark Lady's apprentice had finally caught up with his target over this desert backwater. The last he had seen of the Jedi was when he ambushed him in orbit and lost sight of him when he crashed.

The Sith Lord was no fool; when the Jedi died, he would know it. He followed him down to the planet's surface, and from there, to the nearest settlement, where he could sense the light side aura that the Jedi gave off. However, he had found himself unable to determine where the source of the aura was. The Jedi had hidden himself well, but not well enough. He would have to show himself sooner or later. Now that he was finally attacking the settlement outright, he expected the Jedi to appear at any moment.

Torment and destruction raged through the village. Many citizens attempted futilely to hide or to barricade themselves in their homes. The Sith Lord moved in a systematic pattern, depopulating street after street with speed, gaining only a little enjoyment as he waited for his prey. It seemed strange that the Jedi would be so slow to act, considering what was going on, but the dark one had no choice but to see how the situation unfolded.

The governor found himself standing on a balcony outside his office in what passed for the town's main administration building, staring blankly at the ghastly invader that swarmed about his people, killing them with ease. After news of the massacre near the docking bays had reached him, he had ordered the village's entire complement of security personnel and defense droids to attack whatever evil had befallen them, but he saw that their efforts were in vain.

He watched as the demonic figure with the lightsaber below skewered hapless guards and citizens. Strands of lightning emitted from the monster's hands, and nearby buildings shuddered and crumbled under attacks from some sort of invisible force. As the governor watched, he knew that it was partly his fault. He knew that the Jedi had brought this monster here because he had allowed it.

Turning his back on the carnage, the governor walked back into his office, wishing that he had gotten the Jedi away from the village, or even killed him as the others had suggested. If he had known what had been following the survivor, he would have. Now, however, there was nothing that could be done. The governor returned to the chair behind his desk, sat down, and waited. He knew that the beast would come for him soon enough. And he, the governor, would be waiting for him. While someone else might be more inclined to end his or her own life first, the governor was a man who believed in facing his own mistakes.

Hours passed. Men and women stood in open doorways and windows of buildings, taking potshots at the marauder with blasters as he passed, hoping to save themselves or their families. Others still patrolled the streets in groups, fueled by a hatred which remained intact despite the fear that thickened in the air. Occasionally, the one in black would be set upon by these patrols, who attacked him with any random assortment of weapons. Each time, he cut through them without expending much energy. His enjoyment of the spectacle had started to ebb.

Using his Force sense to guide him from one cluster of citizens to the next, the figure in black eventually found himself facing a hospital building five stories high. The entrances and windows on the ground floor were barricaded, and he could feel roughly three or four dozen beings in it. Not in the mood to hunt each one down in a maze of corridors and rooms, he deactivated his lightsaber and drew upon the Force.

Raising one hand, the Sith Lord focused the power of the dark side, projecting telekinetic energy that grasped and tore at random parts of the structure inside, support beams and the like. The building shook as invisible fingers wrapped around it and tightened, shaking it as though it was sustaining a groundquake. The windows on the outside cracked and shattered almost instantly.

After a moment, after he had judged that it was sufficiently weakened, the Sith Lord released a mighty blast of telekinetic energy at a corner of the building, blowing the outer wall on that section apart and destroying a support beam, causing a quarter of the structure to come crashing down to the street below in an avalanche of debris. For good measure, he hurled two weaker blasts at the other side of the building, damaging it further and causing smaller collapses inside.

The dark one stepped back and probed the wreckage with his mind for any survivors. Sensing none, he moved on down the street, his lightsaber lit again. In spite of everything, citizens still attacked him, most likely more out of desperation than of genuine hope of survival. Whenever he came to a barricaded building, he dealt with it in the same manner as he had the hospital, deciding not to waste time breaking in and hunting its inhabitants down.

He still relied on his Force sense to locate the remaining citizens, pinpointing each individual's location with the accuracy of a specialized sensor system. When he came across lone stragglers in the streets, he would dispatch them from a distance with Force lightning, or grab them with the Force and pound them against the nearest building wall. The spectacle continued on through the night, with flashes of light punctuating every murder.

By morning, only a few dots remained in the village. With none of the zeal or the thrill that he had felt at the beginning of the massacre, the figure in black armor made his way to each dot and finished them, one by one. The very last citizen remaining had been wandering about like a ghost between the ruins of three buildings near the center of the village when the dark one reached him.

After the last body had fallen and the dark one put his lightsaber away, he reached out to the Force and searched the city with his will. But no matter how he probed, he felt no presence except his own; he was alone in what had once been a small town. There was not a single being's Force signature to be found. The dark side rushed through the ruins, beckoned by all of the blood the dark one had spilled, yet still the thin layer of light remained.

The Sith Lord didn't know what to think. Could he have been wrong about this place? Could the Jedi actually not be here at all? No, that wasn't possible. The light side couldn't be here for no reason. His target had to be here somewhere. If that was so, however, why had he stayed hidden for so long? What sort of a Jedi would do nothing while he killed so many people in such close proximity? No Jedi would wait this long.

How could he, a Sith Lord feared throughout the galaxy, spend so much time hunting this one Jedi and then return to Lady Revan to report that he had failed because he couldn't find his Jedi when he knew he was there? Tipping his head back and using the Force to amplify his voice, the figure in black howled and screamed in impotent rage and malice. For all his power, it had left him with nothing.

---

The survivor felt as though he was floating in something as he awoke to the most horrific scream he had ever heard in his life. In a short instant, however, the sound faded, and full sensation returned to his body. There was a surprisingly small amount of pain. Stranger yet, he didn't even feel numb. In spite of this fortune, however, he felt disoriented, clouded somehow. He stirred and twitched his and fingers, trying to regain his focus and coordination.

No sooner had the survivor begun to contemplate this when he felt a familiar tremor in the Force. He instantly knew what it meant.

He's here.

Who “he” was, the survivor knew too well. The murderous figure in black that had pursued him to the ends of the known galaxy. An apprentice of Darth Revan, one of the four still alive who ruled the Sith Empire under her, he had been sent to take the Dark Lady's revenge against him. Revenge for how he had sabotaged one of her military campaigns. The survivor had been running from this Sith Lord for weeks, trying in vain to shake him off his trail. Now, he could no longer run. He was a Jedi, and he knew that there was only one more duty for him to perform now, no matter how slim his chances of success were.

I have to fight him.

The Jedi sat bolt upright, finding himself in a hospital bed. The room around him was barely recognizable; it looked as though a bomb had been set off next door. Whatever was going on was serious. Worry started to rise up inside the Jedi as he slid out of bed and put on his robe, which was hanging from a coat hangar on a nearby wall. How long had he been out? He tried to stretch out with the Force and search for any nearby presences and felt nothing; his range was limited, but he could feel it slowly extending as his mind started to clear up.

A new fear churned in the Jedi's gut. Ignoring it for the moment, he decided to concentrate on preparing himself for whatever lay ahead. First and foremost, he needed to find his lightsaber. Heading for a sliding door on the wall to his right and finding it a third of the way open, he put a black-gloved hand in the gap and pushed it out of the way. Staggering through the opening, he found himself in what had used to be a hallway.

The corridor was now approximately one third of a hallway; the path to his left was completely blocked by a collapsed ceiling. He tried to stretch out with his Force sense again, which now had a better range, but still detected no one in the vicinity. Irritably setting it aside, he turned to his right and went down the hall, feeling that he was coming closer to something familiar.

One of the doors down the hall led into a room marked as being used to store items belonging to patients. In a dented-open locker there, he found his lightsaber. Pulling it into his hand with the Force and feeling a new strength enter him, he headed back out and further down the hallway to the end, passing six elevators on his way. Knowing that the lifts would in all likelihood be too damaged to use, he instead approached a door at the end of the hall marked “EMERGENCY EXIT”.

The door opened without protest. Glancing down, the Jedi saw that the stairs which were supposed to be leading to the ground level had been torn completely away from the building and lay on the pavement three stories below. Making a quick mental calculation, the Jedi judged that he had survived longer and more treacherous falls with ease.

Feeling his full energy return, the Jedi stepped out onto thin air and landed painlessly on the ground below. As he walked away, he looked behind himself and felt a shiver run up his spine as he saw the condition the building was in. Unsure at first as to whether he was imagining it or not, he stopped and turned around to take in the view.

The hospital was a wreck to the point that he was amazed that it was still standing. Several large chunks of it had visibly collapsed, and there were gaping holes in the outer structure, as though a massive hand had grabbed hold of the walls and ripped them open. Suddenly feeling as though he was in a daze again, the Jedi turned around and quickly walked away from the hospital.

Gradually and without warning, his senses began to dull. Time slowed, and the air became so thick that the Jedi had to strain to breath it. His circle of vision became distinctly narrower and more blurred, and the sound of his footsteps started to echo, yet for some reason he didn't feel alarmed. He could feel the Force flowing through him like water down a stream, reassuring him silently.

The Jedi moved like a man possessed, his steps not entirely his own will. This went on for a moment or two, during which he felt like he was climbing... Or walking slightly uphill. Walking over things. Where was he going? He could see shapes, tinted by burning orange sunlight, but couldn't make out much else. Another moment passed, and just when he was started to get tired of it, he halted.

Abruptly, his senses returned and his mind came back to himself. Realizing that he was bent slightly over for some reason, he slowly straightened himself and started to look around. The Jedi had a very bad feeling about this. He smelled death in the air.

As he slowly turned his head to study his surroundings, the Jedi found himself standing on a cracked slab of permacrete that had once been the roof of a building. The slab itself was at the top of a small hill of debris. He could see quite a distance from this vantage point. The first thing that struck him was the town itself. Nearly every other building he saw was collapsed, smashed, or ripped open in a fashion similar to the hospital.

Chunks of building material and other debris nearly carpeted the street in some places. Off in the distance, several clouds of dark gray smoke billowed silently up into the sky. The presence of the dark side swirled slowly but threateningly in the air around him. When his vision slid down to the pavement itself, his breath caught.

Bodies lay all over the street. Dozens and dozens, strewn across the landscape. Some were crushed under piles of debris, but most of them were scattered in pieces up and down the street. Many of the corpses laid in pools of blood, but a little more than half of them did not, instead having cleaner, cauterized wounds.

The Jedi sank to his knees and winced in pain as the dark side thundered over him. He felt as though he could hear every resident that had lived in the city crying out in terror before they were silenced. He could almost feel their souls whirling around him in a maelstrom of sadness and rage, shouting for vengeance. He stretched out to the Force, hoping against hope that someone, anyone, was still alive.

To his despair, he felt the presence of only one other being in the settlement, and that one was projecting ripples of dark side energy; he knew exactly who that was. There was no room to be optimistic this time; his full strength had returned, and his Force sense now extended well beyond the town's borders.

He was too late.

He cursed himself for being here, for bringing the Sith here with him, even though he knew it wasn't entirely his fault. He hadn't planned on landing here, and there was nothing he could do to escape or help these people while in a coma. He still remembered staggering out of his burning transport, vainly willing himself to stay conscious long enough to escape, or at least lead the Sith away from wherever he was.

Had he at least stayed awake, he might have managed to steal a ship or a speeder, then he would get as far away from any innocents as possible. The Sith wouldn't kill any of them unless doing so was necessary in order to find him, the Jedi. And because he had been unable to do anything, that was exactly what the Sith had done... Taken to its most logical conclusion.

With all of his will, the Jedi managed to stand. A Jedi's duty was to take responsibility, not cast or divert blame. With that in mind, he decided that whose fault it was was effectively a moot point for the moment. There was also no reason to contemplate, to deliberate on what he had to do; he already knew what that was.

The entire town was effectively wrecked. If the Sith Lord had taken the time to be so thorough as to kill every single citizen in the entire village, they he would also be thorough enough to disable any and all long-range vehicles. Escape was impossible and not advisable; even if the Jedi could get away, the Sith would follow.

The Jedi knelt on the permacrete and closed his eyes, his hands folded in front of him. He opened himself to the Force and immediately felt the deafening roar of the dark side all around him, advancing upon him as though to eat him alive. He ignored it, calling instead upon the light side to shield him and strengthen him for what was to come.

The dark side energies halted. His mind opened, and with the Force, rather than his eyes, he felt as though he was seeing hundreds of different parts of the destroyed town at once. He felt the residual spots of Force energy left behind by its now-deceased inhabitants. Ignoring the horror-inducing details of his environment, the Jedi calmed himself and searched for something he could use.

What he was experiencing as he focused his Force sense was a difficult concept to describe, but he felt like the more he scrutinized the dark side energies left behind by those slaughtered by the Sith Lord, the less they looked like the dark side. There was hatred and anger, true, but more than either, there was fear, which was one of the less strongly dark side-aligned emotions. And there was confusion. Longing for a hope which they had not seen before death.

He focused on this longing, beckoning it like a parent beckoning a confused son or daughter. He searched for the things that were good, that were right. While these things were masked, initially hidden by the darkness which the Sith Lord had pulled down over them, he knew that they were there. They would help him.

The light side energies came plunging in like a waterfall leading into a chasm. Minutes passed, and the chasm filled. His mind rumbled and surged like a hurricane, and his body began to feel distant, like he could dissolve into the Force. But that was impossible for him. He couldn't allow himself to lose his grip on reality. He had gotten what he came for. It was time to move.

Reaching with his will down from where his physical presence was, the Jedi brought his left hand up to within a few inches of his face and snapped his fingers. The Jedi blinked and found himself back in his body. Though disoriented for a few seconds, he soon found himself back to normal, but feeling a sort of energy and strength of purpose that he did not have before. It wasn't a lot, but it might be just what he needed.

He stretched out with the Force as he stood, extending his Force sense once again in an effort to locate his opponent. It was not difficult; the Force signature which the dark side energies were coming from registered immediately. He could feel the presence of the Sith Lord; he was in a relatively open space in the center of the town, pacing in circles like a hungry predator. Waiting for him.

The Jedi walked as fast as he could to the spot. The streets were silent except for a warm breeze sweeping through. The closer he came, the stronger the dark side around him was. The fear and malice, all of the negative emotions which were left behind surrounded him once again, but while the dark side may slowly sap at his strength, the emotions themselves held no power over him. There was no emotion. There was only peace.

In less time than he had expected, the Jedi found himself in the center of town, in an area which was more open than the streets elsewhere; the ruined buildings and jagged chunks of debris lay a good hundred yards or so in any given direction. He felt as though he had just walked through a barrier into another realm; standing in the approximate center of the Force nexus, he felt the dark side gnaw at his very being. He strained to keep himself balanced and clutched to the light side energy he had gathered for dear life.

As he centered himself, he felt a grisly and familiar presence behind him. He didn't need to see the man to know who it was. The Jedi turned to face it and fought back a wave of terror as he beheld the monstrosity that had come for him, seeing it for the first time without any of its features being hidden by the darkness of night. A gunmetal gray helmet with a sinister T-shaped visor and a square vocoder stared back at him.

The Sith Lord wore thick black gloves. Artificial claws were mounted onto his hands, one on each finger, making them look like those of a surgical droid, sporting blades sharp enough to cut bone. Both were stained deep red by many layers of blood. Protecting his abdomen was a ribbed vest of flexible armor plates which traveled upward until they were replaced by a high metal collar that protected his neck. His chest and shoulders were in turn protected by sheets of armor of a brighter, slightly more silver color than his helmet.

Wrapped around the dark one's waist was a single leather belt, from which hung a lightsaber hilt that sported three long, spiked emitter guards, appearing sharp enough to function as knives if the user wanted them to. Like the man's gloves, they too were stained a dark red. Hanging also from the main's waist was a tattered black cape that reached down to his boots.

The armored black monster leered at the Jedi from behind his mask, seeming to study him with derision, yet also with a certain sense of wariness, as though he could hardly believe that he'd found his prey at last. The two faced each other, a stone's throw away, silently preparing for combat. The breeze picked up, causing the two men's capes to whip around their legs.

The two had no words for each other. They were as different as day and night. Neither of them could ever tolerate the other's existence; any communication would be irrelevant. Two lightsaber blades appeared in the air. One burned a bright, deep blue that was as clear and focused as the Jedi's eyes. The other was a spiteful, threatening red. Day and night.

The two men raised their blades and charged, striking at each other's sides as they passed each other. Red and blue light flashed in the air. Spinning around, they simultaneously attacked again, this time with one-handed swings aimed at each other's throats. Both men nimbly backed just out of range of the swings, and then moved back into combat range again. The Force around them turned to a maelstrom as they fought.

Alone, two men dueled for one small victory in a much larger war.

One was an apprentice to the Dark Lady of the Sith, a being who had drowned in evil since the Mandalorian Wars ended, knowing only the dark side and its cold, unloving power. He was a monster that could only have been spawned by a master of the darkness as great as Revan. Alongside the Dark Lady's other apprentices, he ruled over the Sith Empire with an iron fist, with armies and fleets, planets and sectors subject to him. In the vast territory of that dark Empire, his will was law. On his whims, men and women had lived and died. It was the way of things; the most powerful ruled, and he was power.

The dark apprentice had spilled much blood in his time, as he should have. He was a warrior with every breath, a Sith Lord by every definition and every measure. He had mastered all of the seven classic forms of lightsaber combat, both the aggressive and the patient, the furious and the graceful. Many Jedi and Sith alike had fallen by his blade for believing they could challenge him. He had spent years in the depths of the Trayus Academy, studying secrets of the dark side that only the most powerful of Revan's acolytes could hope to understand. The power of the dark side churned in him like the magma in a planet's core. His power was everything; each and every stroke of his lightsaber brought him closer to the success of his mission and the death of another Jedi. This was a battle that he knew he would never be able to lose.

The other was a Jedi, barely old enough to be a Knight, a follower of the light who had seen many different sides of the galaxy in his days. Like the thousands of other beings in the galaxy who were members of the Jedi Order, his life was one of sacrifice, service, and hardship. He had spent years as a Padawan in the Outer Rim, helping refugees escape from devastation by the Sith in the Jedi Civil War, as well as from fallout left behind by the last war. Even before his Master had died, he'd kept mostly to himself. He had seen the stories of refugees end in many different ways; some ended with hope because of him, while others ended with loss. It was the way of things; sometimes the light won and sometimes it lost, but he still tried.

The Jedi had killed more than a few people in his time. He wasn't proud of it, but he had. He knew how to fight, like any trained Jedi, and while he didn't like having to do it, he did his best. He knew two forms of lightsaber combat; the first, Shii-Cho, the most basic form that all Jedi were trained in, and the third, Soresu, which emphasized a defensive style of fighting, used mostly for deflecting laser fire. For all of his life, he had embraced the Jedi teachings and doctrines, hoping to find peace for himself so that he would better know how to bring it to others. The success of his mission which had led him to this confrontation was not due to any great skill or power on his part. This was a battle where he was far outmatched; it was all but guaranteed that this would be his last stand. But still he fought with all that he had, hoping against hope that the light side would triumph in the end, even if he did not.

It was with an immeasurable fury that the Sith Lord attacked. The dark side throbbed through him, granting him inhuman strength and speed. Drawing upon his mastery on fencing and lightsaber combat techniques, he concentrated on precisely controlling every strike and parry, relentlessly battering at every section of the Jedi's defenses. The Force sung through him with every thrust of his blade. Glee rose with each passing moment as victory came ever closer. Malevolent power flooded his soul until it could no longer be held, spilling out into the air like water through cracks in a dam.

The Jedi held his defenses up with a tenacity that almost surprised himself. He didn't spend very much time thinking about what to do; The Force guided his blade, blocking or parrying each attack with just as much energy as needed, and allowing him to launch counterattacks of his own. Most of his strength came from the people the Sith Lord had murdered; the light side energy that he had obtained from them gave him strength in purpose, and strength in will. Will to do what is just, to fight and not heed the wounds.

The dark side poured out of his opponent in a furious tide, seemingly engulfing the universe in a sea of malice and greed. It attacked his mind and spirit as surely as the Sith attacked his body, but the Jedi clutched to his newfound strength with feverish desperation; the light was small, like a candle burning in an eternity of hate and hunger. The dark apprentice was powerful, skilled, and relentless, but even a lone candle could still hold back the darkness.

The Jedi felt as though he were swimming in a river of blood as the battle of night and day raged. He could feel the town's inhabitants inside him as though they were urging him onward, telling him to ignore the boundaries around him. The dark one fought with skill and knowledge; the Jedi fought with blind faith, trusting in the Force not to help him win, but rather to win for him, in another time and place if it had to.

---

A contemptuous sneer traced itself across the Sith Lord's face, though his opponent couldn't see it. His skill eclipsed the Jedi's several times over. His strength in the Force was likewise. In his time, he had killed stronger Jedi and Sith with speed, yet this one was surviving, persisting. The Jedi may have been the slightest distance away from defeat, but nevertheless he persisted, staving off what was surely inevitable.

Anger and frustration burned in the dark apprentice's blood. He hated this Jedi for his strength in the light side. He hated the duplicity of the man, how he was submissive to the Force, but still defiant toward him – a Sith Lord who commanded the Force and understood it better than any Jedi ever would. And yet, each strike leveled against him, the Jedi blocked. Barely in time, barely enough to survive, but still he blocked. Somehow, the dark one began to feel that this battle was different from others which he had been in. Combat forms and techniques somehow seemed irrelevant. This was a duel of wills.

In spite of everything, this Jedi's will to fight was almost as strong as his own. That was how he could challenge him. He drew power from purpose, even if that purpose was as flimsy and pathetic as a Jedi's.

With a speed that caught his opponent off-guard, the Jedi rushed forward and dealt a two-handed strike at the Sith Lord's neck, putting enough strength into the blow to slice his head off his shoulders, even through the neck armor. Red blocked blue in an explosion of light, and the two combatant's blades locked across their chests for a few mere seconds. Straining, his mind reeling from sheer disbelief, the Sith Lord shoved the Jedi back with a Force-assisted push. He took a second to rally, but the Jedi was on him again before he could counter-attack.

The Jedi's blade cut a jagged blue blur through the air. Three one-handed swings sprayed a brief shower of sparks as they sliced shallow cuts into the Sith Lord's armor, one on his right shoulder, another on his abdomen, and a third on the side of his chest. Having lost the offensive, the dark apprentice swung his blade in a long horizontal sweep to ward off his opponent, and then rolled backward several yards, coming up in a fighting crouch.

Sparks fizzled from the damaged portions of his armor. Fortunately for him, none of the strikes had reached his flesh; if they had, he would be at a considerable disadvantage. Snarling, the man in black armor silently raged at himself for letting the Jedi outwit him. What had he been thinking? This wasn't a contest of wills. The Jedi's strength of purpose and will to fight couldn't be denied, but those things should never, could never take anyone very far. The Force bound every piece of the galaxy together, every grain of sand and every massive star. The Jedi was part of it, and so was he, a Sith Lord who controlled this binding power. This he knew. How, then, could he believe at the same time that his strength in the Force was being countermanded by the will of a single sapient being?

This Jedi had tricked him into forgetting himself, probably by accident. It was ridiculous. He knew every facet of lightsaber combat that any Sith or Jedi, except possible Revan herself, could know. Every block and slice and parry and thrust, every technique and strategy was at his disposal. He had just hours earlier been demolishing entire buildings with the power of the Force alone. The Jedi had survived this long because he had been careless up to this point, underestimating the power which could be drawn from the light side. Yes, the light side had made this Jedi powerful, more powerful than he would ever have guessed, but even that light could not stand against his full strength, now that the illusion had been broken, and his ignorance of the Jedi's power had turned into knowledge of it.

---

The Sith Lord charged, slicing at his opponent with a savage hatred. The Jedi continued to block, but soon found himself falling back under an avalanche of blows, having no openings to attack in turn. Further and further he backpedaled, barely able to defend himself from the vicious assault. The Jedi knew he couldn't keep this up much longer; they were rapidly approaching the wreckage of a collapsed building. If he was cornered there, it would be over.

In a sudden move, the Jedi jumped a few yards back, out of range of the Sith's blade. As his opponent caught up to him, the Jedi leaped into the air over his opponent, spinning in a three hundred and sixty-degree turn with his lightsaber in an attack aimed at the Sith Lord's neck, forcing him to roll forward to avoid the blade. Traveling through the air clean over his opponent, the Jedi gracefully landed with the dark one in his sights.

Behind the murderous armored figure, he could see in better detail the wreckage of the building. Gutted and half-standing, the part of the structure that faced the duel was ripped off, and debris of every sort had spilled outward onto the street. Several large chunks of torn durasteel with jagged edges and points also stood out in the wreckage. The Jedi was glad that he was no longer going in that direction; now, he would have enough space if he needed to retreat again.

The Sith Lord was on him again in a second. The Jedi held his ground as he blocked, letting the Force sustain him, but he could feel his limbs start to ache. The world slowed down and the Jedi's mind went blank, his sensation fading slightly as the Force moved his arms and legs for him. With all of his will, he stood in place, seeing the world through unending streaks and flashes of red and blue light.

The Force sustained him. The dark apprentice's rage blazed before him in every furious combination of blows, for battle was his passion. As he parried, the Jedi distantly wondered how he was still going, after all this time. His limbs felt numbed from every sensation except the aching and exhaustion that ate away at them. And in spite of everything, there was serenity. There was certainty. Certainty of what, he wasn't sure.

For how long this duel had been going, the Jedi could not remember; time felt so muddled. The Sith Lord's strength in the Force and skill with the lightsaber outclassed him many times over, and they both knew it. It was a strange battle; a battle of raw skill and power against faith and will.

The Jedi began to slow down even further, and his breathing turned into gasping as the dark side reigned. Skill against will. The light side had sustained him, and it would still sustain him, with all of its valor. But for how much longer would it? The battle had to end, sooner or later. No matter what the Force willed, it still didn't change the fact that the Human body tires.

Strike to the left. Block to the left. Thrust. Parry. Frenzied lines of light everywhere, chaotic. As always, will kept him going. Not just his own will, but also the will of the hundreds that he had collected, sheltered within his own essence. In them, despite his circumstances, he found a refuge from the evil that stood before him.

Block to the lower left. Telekinesis. The Sith Lord was forcing him back again. The Jedi's lightsaber felt loose in his fingers. The layer of surrealism and detachment that blanketed his consciousness thickened further. The battle he was locked in felt distant enough to be on another planet, a sensation not unlike a deep Force meditation. Harmony.

The Sith Lord swung his lightsaber in a two-handed attack with inhuman strength. The Jedi's blade intercepted it, but the sheer force behind the blow turned his block into a desperate parry, forcing his guard down toward the ground and leaving him wide open for a follow-up attack. The dark apprentice spun, turning his back to his opponent and switching to a back-handed grip on his weapon. As he did so, full sensation returned and the Jedi was back in his body, willing his strength to return and his lightsaber to move back into a defensive position.

A candle could hold back the darkness. But could it defeat it?

He saw a bloody flash of light and a felt burning sensation in his chest. Looking down, he saw the red blade of a lightsaber ram itself through him and out his back.

---

With little feeling of triumph in his heart, the Sith Lord paused to savor a brief moment as the Jedi's eyes widened and his lightsaber deactivated, falling dully to the pavement. Then, with a movement that was deliberately violent in its suddenness, he pulled the lightsaber out of the Jedi's heart, allowing him to sink to his knees. The dark apprentice turned to face his defeated adversary and backed a few steps away.

At long last, it was over.

One small victory in a much larger war.

His vision blurring, the Jedi lost his footing and felt his knees hit the permacrete. He had very little on his mind, which surprised him obscurely. There was no disbelief in his mind about his fate, however; he had expected this. Weakly bringing a hand up to the lightsaber wound just below his heart, he looked up at the dark lord who had finally brought him down.

---

The Sith Lord's lightsaber still buzzed in the air. He didn't move; he only stood in place, staring at the dying Jedi before him. He didn't feel victory in the completion of his mission. The closest thing he felt was a vague satisfaction that the ordeal was over. Soon enough, he would return to the Sith Empire and hone his strength further. Existence would go on as it always had. But for the moment, he would wait and watch his prey expire.

---

The Jedi blinked. The numbness in his body left him. To his surprise, he found his vision suddenly clearing, expanding, even. He knew he was dying, but felt like he was becoming more alive than he had been before. Part of him wanted to fall forward onto the pavement and let it end, because by all logic that was what was supposed to be happening, but an unfathomable will kept him upright. Stretching out with the Force, he searched for a clue to this puzzle.

Feeling only the dark side energies that had been around him before, the Jedi ceased the effort and let his gaze turn to his masked killer. The Sith Lord stood unmoving before him. He felt wary, puzzled eyes scrutinizing him. It took the Jedi the better part of three seconds to realize that the Sith Lord was not just staring at him with his eyes, but also with the Force. Something was taking the dark one by surprise, catching him in disbelief. But what?

His vision fell downward, and he found himself looking at a tiny white glow inexplicably emerging from the wound in his chest, outshining the glowing yellow mark left by the lightsaber itself. This was more than a little unusual. Calling upon his Force sense again, the Jedi did something that he had never thought of before in his life: he scanned himself with it.

The breeze abruptly died.

And, at last, he saw.

It was the victims. Those murdered, who had once filled this town. All five hundred and thirty-four of them. He could feel their energy, that nebulous substance that existed only in the currents of the Force, not in these simple formations of matter. They, who had strengthened him and helped him, though it was not a conscious effort on their part. He could feel them swirling like a hurricane within his very essence.

---

The dark apprentice scanned the Jedi with his Force sense over and over, trying to decipher what was happening. He felt the light side thundering back and forth inside the Jedi like the waves of an ocean confined inside a small crate; confused, stifled. Far from content. Why had this Jedi not died and joined the others?

---

The light side burned brightly, its warmth like the sun without the harshness, pure as a laser. The town's former inhabitants thought almost as one; the Jedi could sense their feelings, their thoughts. He could feel them churning inside of him, trying to find a way out.

Opening himself to the Force, he let them out. They called to the light side. The light side answered.

---

The white light that emanated from the Jedi's chest rapidly began to brighten. The power of the Force within the man expanded and magnified a thousandfold, and the Sith Lord knew that the battle wasn't over yet. The light side aura that he could sense outshone even the residual darkness of the town. It was unthinkable, incomprehensible. But even the incomprehensible could be defeated, he reminded himself. He had done it before, and he'd do it again.

The dark side burned. He channeled that darkness into himself, focusing on boosting his speed; speed would be his advantage, his key. He wished that he could prolong this Jedi's death, make him suffer, but was frustrated because he knew that there was no time, because even now, the Jedi somehow still posed a threat to him. Frustration turned to anger, then from anger to hate, and from hate to power. The light side was mercy and obedience to a greater good, and that was not power. It would not stand against him.

There were only a few seconds left, but he could reach the Jedi in time. Raising his lightsaber and drawing his arm back in preparation for a thrust, the dark apprentice charged. The Jedi must die.

---

The Jedi left his body as the Force ignited itself like a star. There was no death.

---

The dark apprentice's blade never reached the Jedi. His screams were drowned out by the thunderous roar that accompanied a massive explosion of energy that erupted from the dying man's body. Hurled far off the ground by telekinesis, the Sith Lord's lightsaber flew from his grasp as he felt the full power of the light side eclipse him, burning through his mind and destroying his power – destroying the dark side itself within him. He screamed through the Force for the darkness to return but the Force left him to writhe in the terrible grasp of the light side.

The light side did not simply attack him, strike him as a Sith Lord would strike with lightning or telekinesis. The light side purged him of his connection to the darkness, cut him off from his source of power. For a Sith, the loss of power to the light was the only true horror, the only true pain. Pain that did not strengthen. Pain that could not be harnessed into power. That was agony. The dark apprentice's hate, malice, and hunger still remained, but it was now an impotent memory of its former self.

---

The Jedi saw, rather than felt, the light side explode outward. Its power was pure; it was not ignorant, selfish, or malevolent. The light endured all things, and it was truth. No one who served the dark side could stand before the light. From his elevated perspective, the Jedi could see the Sith Lord, flung through the air, strike a solid slab of duracrete wall that belonged to the wrecked building behind him, leaving it cracked as he fell away from it.

---

As he fell, the dark apprentice felt like he was floating in something. Turning in the air, he caught a brief glimpse of a twisted mess of durasteel, torn and jagged, directly below him. He knew that there was nothing he could do now; his spine had either been fractured by the impact with the building, or had come close. Either way, he knew that the battle was over.

The armored black figure fell two stories and came to a stop some yards off the ground, his fall broken by the large fragment of durasteel that ran him through as he landed on it, despite his armor. Despair settled in. For all his power and all of his accomplishments, even one as mighty as he, it seemed, could die a death that no one living would remember, a death that no one so powerful could ever deserve.

Defiantly, even as his blood ran down the torn fragment of metal, turning it red, the dark apprentice called upon the dark side for one last bit of energy. It answered him unhesitatingly. Not bothering to wonder why the darkness had returned to him now, the dark apprentice spent it on stretching his arms upward toward the sky, as though reaching for something that was no longer there. But soon, the moment passed and his arms fell back down. Thenceforth, his body was still.

---

Were the Jedi still in his body, he would have sighed in resignation and wariness. The one who had sought his life was dead, and although the town had died as well, its people were now entrusted to the Force. Peace would continue to reign on this small planet.

One small victory.

The living flows and currents of the galaxy scattered themselves across all of space, nebulous, unending, always leading somewhere. He could feel the rivers and channels that bound existence together take hold of his essence, and he left the world where he had died behind. The Jedi didn't know what lay ahead, but he felt content that his destiny was now complete.

He opened himself, and there was the Force.