Desperate Measures/Part 1

For a heartbeat they stared at one another in silence, a twitch of the hand or finger away from death or murder.

Two heartbeats.

Three.

Then Alecto took a slow, experimental step back, ready to cut Tirien's throat in an instant, still clutching the wrist of his hand holding the gun under her chin. He stared into her eyes, alert but without the tension that would betray immediate danger. Gauging him, Alecto took another step back, and when the Jedi slacked his grip on her wrist, drawing his pistol away from her jaw, she took a third step.

Her arm was fully extended now; one more step would take the blade off his neck. He had lowered his pistol, but it was pointed now at her chest. If she took that next step, he could snuff her out with the pull of a trigger before she could retaliate. It was no mere step—it was a leap of faith. Faith in the Jedi's misguided sense of honor, faith in their hopelessly naïve Code—faith that the Jedi would not sacrifice his holier-than-thou sense of moral superiority for the revenge for which he and the entire Republic were clamoring. Alecto trusted no one enough to place her life freely in his hands.

But, she thought, he saved your life once. Perfectly positioned to let her die, and with his own hands clean of the killing, Tirien Kal-Di had saved her. If there was any Jedi she might, conceivably, trust not to kill her at the first opportunity, it was him.

And what choice do you have? that cold, cruel voice mocked her. Who else can you trust now?

Alecto gritted her teeth, let go of Tirien's wrist, tugged her knife hand gently out of his unprotesting grip, and took that last step out of reach, out of range, taking a leap.

Tirien did not shoot her, though he lowered his blaster to a hip shot position. They studied one another, seconds ticking by until Alecto glared and, with slow, deliberate movements, sheathed her knife behind her right hip; she was determined to give the Jedi no excuse to take the shot. He watched her hands, then just as slowly reached behind his back with both of his own to holster the hold-out pistol at the small of his back.

His coat pulled wide as he did, and Alecto saw the empty pistol holster at his right hip, the one that had held the gun she had kicked away. But she was more interested in the shoulder holster under his left arm, which held a lightsaber, though not Kal-Di's own, curved weapon. He'd had the lightsaber the whole time; he could have come in swinging from the get-go. For that matter, he could have broken her against the wall with a single blow.

If he'd had the Force.

The realization was growing on her now, horror turning her stomach, twisting her insides and squeezing breath from her lungs. She had held it at bay, unfocused, when they were nose-to-nose, mortal danger pushing every other concern to the side, but now…

"You've lost the Force," she said, and mounting fear choked her voice down to a harsh whisper.

"Your doing," he replied, and now she saw the anger she had expected in his yellow eyes, but they narrowed in suspicious confusion. "But so have you."

And there it was. His confirmation was like a physical blow, leaving her reeling; he could have drawn his pistol again and gunned her down, and she would have still been standing there as the bolts struck home. She had not thought she could experience more anguish, more torture than this last month, but just when she had thought her spirit well and fully flayed, Kal-Di had appeared bearing acid for the flesh laid bare. In the end, she had not made a mistake with the needles.

She had made the mistake of trust.

Rage seized her, and she turned around and kicked a table so hard it flew across the room, its lamp shattering against a wall. "Kai Latra you son of a BITCH! You sold me out!"

Speaking the words flooded her with more fury, and she overturned the small desk, sending two drawers flying, barely conscious that she had turned her back on Kal-Di. She clutched her hair, arms trembling with helpless rage and betrayal, sucking breaths through her gritted teeth. The waves of realization crashed down on her and dragged her under, and it was a long time before she resurfaced.

She whirled around to find the Jedi standing exactly where she had left him, watching her with a coolly analytical look now. Humiliated by her loss of control, she struggled to cobble her cold look back together. "What are you doing here? Come to mock me?"

He shook his head. "I thought it was just me."

Was he doing it deliberately? Some Jedi twist on dun möch—tearing her down with words alone? She wouldn't put it past a Jedi Consular, and his blows were striking true. Baring her teeth, she sneered, "And you thought you could take me on without the Force? Me?"

Even she could hear the weakness in her mockery, and it was a struggle not to wince before him. Kal-Di grimaced. "I had to try. I can't keep living like this."

Alecto couldn't stop herself in time; she felt the agony inside reach her face. She knew at once Tirien had seen it, too, because his hard expression softened, something she couldn't understand touching his face. Was it pity? Did it sadden him to see the hollow shell that had once been Darth Alecto? The thought of the Jedi pitying her helped her bury her hurt. "You thought I'd help you?! I could kill you right now and never have a second thought.  I should!"

Cool control replaced that momentary flicker of emotion on the Jedi's face. "It was supposed to be just me, wasn't it? This one was supposed to really be a cure."

He reached into his jacket—slowing as Alecto tensed and fingered the hilt of her knife—and drew out a hair stick with a silver gem. He tossed it to her, and Alecto caught it reflexively. She remembered plunging the needle into her own breast, the feeling of relief as the coughing, dizziness, and organ failure of Kai Latra's Sith poison abated. She had thought she was safe…her hand tightened on the needle until it shook.

"Get out, Kal-Di," she snarled. "Get out, now, and I'll let you leave alive."

"I'm not leaving until we fix this."

"You think I wouldn't have fixed this already if I could?!" she exploded, advancing on him. "You think I've been hiding on this hellhole for a month because I want to?! You think if I had anywhere else to go…"

She trailed off too late; Kal-Di narrowed his eyes again, and Alecto could almost see his mind working. "Kai Latra set you up, didn't he?"

"Get out…"

"And you can't go to your fellow Sith now, not like this…"

"So help me, Kal-Di, one more word…"

"You went and murdered the Chancellor for them, took all that risk, and now that you need help, they'd just as soon kill you as—"

"Shut up, shut UP!" she screamed, lunging at him, but he was ready for her this time. Pivoting as she closed, he slammed her against the wall, pinning her right hand as she reached for her knife.

"Listen to me!" he barked. "I need to get my powers back—to be connected to the Force again. And you can help me with that."

"Why the hell would I help you?!"

"The same reason you do anything—self-interest." His lip curled in contempt, but he controlled himself after several seconds of what looked like considerable internal struggle. "If Kai Latra made this poison, he can cure it. And if he can cure one of us, he can cure both of us."

Alecto stopped struggling against his hold, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. "And why would you help me?"

The look on his face was hard to read. "This isn't just about having the Force back; there's more going on now." She wasn't sure whether he was trying to convince her or himself. "I can't find Kai Latra without you, but you can't take him on alone, or you'd have done it already. We need each other."

He looked how she felt—like the very idea made him want to spit, or perhaps punch something. Kal-Di's face was temptingly punchable, but when Alecto forced herself to think dispassionately, to at least resemble the Sith Lord she had once been, she saw the logic. But… "And two Forceless are that much better than one?  You think you can do something I can't?"

Before he could respond, Alecto's wrist comm beeped. Kal-Di looked down at it. "What is it?"

"Proximity alert—the hallway!" Alecto hissed.

She prepared to slip his pin, but to her surprise he released her at once, bolting across the room and diving for the pistol she had kicked out of his hand. Alecto wrenched the long knife she had thrown at him out of the wall just as the door opened again. The first being through wore a face-obscuring helmet and carried a rifle with an unusually long barrel. The long barrel allowed Alecto to parry the muzzle away from her, which was fortunate, because the killer pulled the trigger an instant later and the barrel spewed fire. He hit Alecto with the rifle, and they grappled for it as flames poured forth and ignited half the room. In the end Alecto trapped the rifle to her body with one arm and slashed the man's throat with her long knife.

Pitching the corpse into the fire, she only then noticed a second corpse on the floor; the assassin, armed with a pair of blaster pistols, had turned in to follow his comrade, and Kal-Di had shot him in the back of the head. Kal-Di stuck his own head out into the hallway, then looked back. "Clear!"

The fire pressed her deeper into the room; she ripped open her rucksack and drew her lightsaber out before slinging it over her back. "There may be more downstairs!"

Kal-Di coughed; the smoke was spreading. "Got a better idea?!"

Alecto ran to the corner opposite the fire, ignited her lightsaber, and plunged the blade into the wall. She had dragged half of an oval before Kal-Di joined her, cutting the opposite side with a blue-bladed lightsaber that was not his. When their blades met, Alecto pushed a hand toward the wall without thinking. The Force did not respond, but as Alecto clenched her jaw, Kal-Di kicked the wall and the oval dropped out into the street. Water spilled from a severed pipe; Kal-Di holstered his lightsaber and dived through, catching a rusted conduit that groaned under his weight and swinging to slow his fall. Alecto followed, and when she caught the conduit it broke in a shower of sparks. She staggered on the landing and Kal-Di reached out to steady her, but she pushed him away. "Get off me!"

He scowled, but drew a blaster from his coat pocket and offered it to her. She took it as he peeled off his outer coat. "Here, take this too."

"What?"

"The hood!" he hissed, looking down the alley. "You're the most wanted woman in the galaxy, cover your face!"

She pulled on the coat, noting the bloodstains around the collar and wondering how Kal-Di had come by it. Alecto slunk to the edge of the alley, peeking around the corner with blaster in hand. The usual sentient detritus speckled the street in front of Rosstark's; half of them were staring at the growing calamity in the bar, half were oblivious or occupied with their own drug transactions or whores, and Alecto considered every last one of them a potential scout for the strike team. Without the Force or a repeating blaster, though, she stood no chance of killing them all if she started shooting…

"Where are we going?" Kal-Di whispered from behind her.

Alecto was startled to find him there. "What do you mean 'we'?!"

He glanced over his shoulder the way they had come—flames were now pouring from the hole they had cut in the wall—then glared at her. "I'm not any happier about it than you, but we're each other's best chance to return to the Force. Make a decision—yes or no?"

Alecto gritted her teeth, but it was no time for extensive deliberation. "Let's go."

She pulled the hood up over her head, tucked the blaster pistol in her coat pocket, and walked from the alley, trying not to appear hasty. Kal-Di sauntered in her wake, turning toward the entrance of Rosstark's for a few steps before he rerouted her way; Alecto almost cursed him under her breath until she realized that Rosstark must have sold her out too, and spies might be watching for both of them, not just her. She resisted the impulse to run and leave him behind, forcing herself to wait in the opposite alley until he caught up.

They ran through smoggy alleys and across cracked streets, skirted turbines extending kilometers into the earth and towering antennae where mynocks circled and glowing eyes watched them from the girders, until they finally came upon a spaceport that was little more than a series of control towers connected by catwalks and open spaces where spacers who were bold enough could leave their vessels and pray that they would still be there when they came back. She almost led him across the cracked duracrete when something occurred to her.

"Leave your beacon transceiver."

"What?"

"Your Jedi transceiver. You think I'm going to risk you bringing an army of Jedi Knights down on me?" When he opened his mouth to argue, she snapped, "Leave it or there's no deal."

"Are you really worried I'd call for more Jedi, or just jealous that I could call for help and my allies would answer?" Alecto gritted her teeth, but when she continued to glower, Kal-Di dug the beacon transceiver out of his belt and tossed it into a garbage dumpster. "Happy?"

Alecto thought happiness was going to be a stretch in Kal-Di's company, but she started across the spaceport. She saw scavengers skulking around a few ships—and one or two who gave Kal-Di and her an appraising glance—but her Scourge was right where she had left it. The ship was unharmed, which was more than she could say for the fried mynocks and Ranats around it; she saw dried blood and burned-off flesh around the boarding ramp controls and assumed a few sentients had tried their luck too.

"Nice defense system," Kal-Di commented, making a face.

"At least she's still here," Alecto retorted as she disengaged the defenses. "Where's yours?"

"I got a ride." He looked over his shoulder. "We should go."

"Scared of the dark, Jedi?" she taunted as the boarding ramp dropped.

"If you're going to get me killed, I'd rather it not be by someone trying to kill you."

"I'm sure I can find another way for you to go," Alecto muttered to herself, leading the way inside.

"Didn't catch that…"

"I said, I'm sure you'll be fine, let's go."