1,385 BBY
Six Days Later
"Tirien…Gasald brought her interdictor ships with her. It was a massacre. The Seventy-Second, the Crescentia…they're all gone."
Silence followed Raven Kaivalt's pronouncement in the cockpit of the Second Chance, and Zaella looked from Narasi to Tirien and back. Tirien stared at the holo, and Narasi's mouth hung open. When neither of them moved for a few seconds, Zaella spared Jirdo a glance too and saw horror on his face.
Figured you'd be relieved, Zaella thought. Delayed judgment for us both.
But even internally, she couldn't maintain snark for long. Narasi had told her enough stories about the Crescentia and her friends aboard that Zaella grasped immediately how grave the situation was.
"Tirien? Are you still receiving me?"
Narasi found her voice, but only a whisper. "…gone?"
Kaivalt's face tightened against emotion. "I'm sorry."
"You…" Tirien's voice cracked. He cleared his throat, but Zaella shivered anyway; she had only known him a month, but even she knew struggling for words wasn't his style. "You mentioned survivors."
"A couple hyperspace-capable fighters made their way here. I heard a transport got past the interdiction field and made it to Milagro, but now they're trapped."
Tirien turned to the galactic map. "Has Gasald taken Pax?"
Unfamiliar with this region of space, Zaella followed his eyes. It took her a moment to find the tiny "PAX" below a dot. She saw it at one end of a hyperlane, which she followed north until it crossed another dot labeled "MILAGRO". Was this how the Republic had been getting supplies to Milagro behind Gasald's back?
"Not yet, but it's only a matter of time. Republic Intelligence is scrambling, they didn't see this coming at all." When Tirien didn't say anything, Kaivalt added, "We shouldn't discuss this on a line, even a beacon frequency. Come to Pelagon, you can regroup here."
Zaella wondered if Raven Kaivalt would be as eager to see them on his homeworld if he knew they were bringing a Sith apprentice, a Jedi traitor, and a continent-killing nuclear bomb, but she kept her questions to herself. Neither the destruction of the Crescentia nor Raven Kaivalt's plan for a response particularly concerned her. It was a Jedi problem; she would let the Jedi deal with it. Except…
She could feel Narasi's pain in the Force—still muted, because Narasi hadn't gotten past shock yet, but growing as the realizations hit her. Zaella had had few real friends in her life; even Nykan she only trusted halfway, despite how strongly she felt for him. She and Narasi didn't see eye to eye on many things, but Narasi was more up front and honest with her disagreements than any Sith apprentice had ever been. And while their alliance against Ghrond Farshyk on Circumtore might have been nothing but convenience, Zaella could not say the same of their conversations and sparring sessions on Guudria, let alone the crucible of their battle with Chelshgodru Brokkodd. Somewhere in that mess, Narasi had become Zaella's friend, and her suffering was Zaella's problem.
Part of Zaella balked at being bound up in someone else's issues, while another part wanted to find the people who had made Narasi feel this way and carve them into pieces while they screamed for mercy they'd never get. She wasn't sure her friend would appreciate either, so she bit her tongue.
"All the survivors came to you?" Tirien asked. "People fleeing the battle?"
"It was that or stay and die, Tirien. There was no way—"
"I'm not questioning their courage," Tirien interrupted; the bite in his voice was unlike him too. "Did anyone go to Eriadu?"
Kaivalt stared at him like he'd lost his mind. "Eriadu? Tirien, it's Darshkére's industrial capital. Even if Gasald's retreated to Allanteen, Darshkére might still have hundreds of warships there!"
"I'm not talking about a counterattack. I mean spy probes, reconnaissance craft—"
"All those kinds of assets the Republic had closer than the Inner Rim were in the Seventy-Second." Without warning, Kaivalt's expression morphed to one Zaella would've worn if Tirien announced he was taking her back to Ryloth. "Don't. Tirien, you can't be thinking—"
"We're closer than anyone else," Tirien said. "The Second Chance is only one freighter."
"Wait, what?" Zaella asked. "Your whole battle group got slaughtered and you want to take them on in this thing?"
"Who was that?" Kaivalt asked.
"It's a long story," Tirien said, then looked up at Zaella. "I don't intend to fight anyone; with only the double gun, we'd be hard-pressed to take on a fighter squadron. I want to sneak in, look for survivors, and sneak back out."
"What if Gasald left an interdictor?" Kaivalt demanded.
"We'll drop at the edge of the system first, beyond any interdiction field. Even if they sense us, we'll make a break for it."
"Wait," Narasi said; she sounded close to tears. Zaella reached for her shoulder, but lost her nerve halfway and set her hand on the chair. "You said their sensors could detect the bomb from halfway across the system."
"Bomb?" Kaivalt asked, but they all ignored him.
"We have to chance it," Tirien said, his voice recovering some of its brusque authority. "Six days is a long time for survivors to hold out as it is; it's now or never."
Jirdo, who had said nothing at all since arriving in the cockpit, managed words at last. "We should go. When…when the pirates hit our mission, I survived, but nobody came for me. Nobody but Maia and Bras."
Zaella made a face, but Narasi swallowed. She took a couple shaky breaths, and squeezed Gizmo in a hug so tight he croaked, but she said, "We have to. We're Jedi; if there are people who need our help, we have to help them."
Tirien nodded, then raised his eyes again. "Zaella?"
She blinked. "What?"
"This may be very dangerous, but we have to chance it to rescue our people if any of them survived; if we don't they'll die, or fall into Darshkére's hands. Will you come with us?"
Do I have a choice? Zaella thought, but she had the oddest sense that she did. Tirien could drop her on Vondarc; if he didn't bother explaining the situation to the Vondarcans, it wouldn't cost the rescue mission more than an hour. Of course, being a Sith on Vondarc might not be a picnic if Vondarc was still a Republic world, but she'd stand a better chance with the locals than against a fleet of enemy Sith. And it definitely wasn't her fight; whether everybody in the battle group survived or nobody did had no effect on her life.
But…
Narasi and Tirien were going regardless of what she decided. Narasi was the only friend she had left; if things at Eriadu went Night Side, Zaella could lose her as quickly as she'd gained her. Tirien wasn't a friend, but Zaella trusted him more than she had any man since her father—more, she could admit to herself with a clench of her stomach, than even Nykan. Tirien had plenty of opportunities to hurt her or take advantage of her weakness on Guudria, and he hadn't. Besides, he was willing to fix the holes Lady Hadan had drilled into her mental defenses; Zaella was pretty sure she wouldn't get that offer from another Jedi.
Jirdo she wouldn't miss. But that still left Narasi and Tirien.
I don't want to die! Zaella thought. But Guudria had shown her, terrifying as the realization was, that there were things worse than death.
"I…oh, kark it, fine, let's go."
Tirien nodded, and Narasi squeezed the hand Zaella had left on her chair. Jirdo smiled at her, though the look curdled when she glowered at him and he drew back the hand he had reached out to pat her shoulder.
"Raven, we're going to Eriadu. We'll sweep for survivors and meet you at Pelagon."
"Tirien, please don't do this," Kaivalt begged. "I know how you feel, I had friends on the Crescentia too. But this is suicide."
"Not if the Force is with us," Tirien replied. "We're going for survivors, not Darshkére."
"Although if we bump into him, we could put him on the agenda," Narasi growled.
Zaella expected Tirien to chide her for her vengefulness, but all he said was, "Darshkére's turn will come, but the survivors are our first priority. Second Chance out, Raven."
The Tapani Knight sighed. "May the Force be with you…"
"Let's hope," Tirien said as he cut the feed. "Narasi, program the jump for Eriadu. Zaella, go make sure the main gun is ready to go if we need it."
Zaella didn't know much about shipboard guns and had only climbed the ladder to explore the Second Chance's once, but she was pleased to have been given a task. As she set off down the corridor, she heard Jirdo ask, "What can I do?"
"Drop down into the cargo hold," Narasi said. "Make sure the bomb isn't counting down."
"What?!"
Zaella snickered to herself. The climb up the ladder took only a few seconds and the examination of the double gun's readout little more. Once she was sure it was good to go, she stayed at the top of the ladder, watching the stars swirl as Tirien banked the ship around. He could handle himself—he had started internalizing again before he'd even gotten rid of Raven Kaivalt—but Zaella thought Narasi hadn't let it hit her yet, and when she did, she would want support. Tirien was her master…but Zaella was her friend. And she was bound to be more helpful than Jirdo.
When the black of space turned to the blue-white gleam of hyperspace, Zaella grasped the ladder rails and slid back down. Jirdo was sitting in the hold, having apparently taken the nuke for granted, but Tirien and Narasi were coming down the corridor from the cockpit, and Narasi's voice had cracked again.
"And…and Slejux," she said.
"I know." Tirien sighed. As bright as his eyes were, he found a way to shadow them. "So many good beings. They—"
He stopped—not just mid-sentence, but right in the middle of the corridor, too, so abruptly that Narasi walked into him and Gizmo hopped into the back of her leg. Steadying herself while Gizmo croaked reproachfully, she walked around Tirien and asked, "Master? Are you all right? What…?"
"Ayson," he whispered.
Zaella didn't know what it meant, but all the blood drained from Narasi's face and tears filled her suddenly-huge eyes as she choked out, "Oh no…"
"What? Who's Ayson?" Zaella asked, but Narasi's anguish was a physical blow in the Force, squeezing her chest until she couldn't breathe either. Narasi laid her head against Tirien's chest, wrapped her arms around him, and cried.
Tirien didn't hug her back, arms limp at his sides in the face of her grief, and that gave Zaella enough anger to get her recentered. She drew a breath to snap at him—this was Jedi detachment taken to cruelty—but when she saw his face, she exhaled without a sound. She had only seen that expression once before in her life, on a slave in Lessu. The woman's mate and children had been enslaved with her, and after a few months of captivity she had struck her Sith Knight owner. In punishment, the Knight had killed the slave's mate and younglings in front of her, one-by-one. She had worn the same expression watching it that Tirien had now.
Narasi cried for a long moment while Jirdo hovered, looking as wretched and useless as he was, and Zaella stared at Tirien. When Narasi finally peeled her face away from Tirien's chest, leaving a damp spot on his dark Jedi tunic, she looked up and her ears backed. "Master? Are you…?"
"I took him from his home," Tirien whispered, still staring at the horrific vision only he could see. "Away from his father…"
Zaella shivered. She had never been able to perceive his emotions clearly, his mental shields almost unfailing against her instinctive senses and even her intentional prodding; now she knew his feelings in detail and she wanted nothing more than to lock herself in the closet and hide.
A bit of fear crept into Narasi's eyes alongside the pain, and she laid her hands on his chest. "Master?"
He brushed her hands off without meeting her gaze. Shambling past like a sleepwalker, he made it into the hold, but leaned against a bulkhead, bent by grief. Narasi showed Zaella a startled look, and Zaella knew she had to look almost as unnerved. Even as Jirdo turned to them for guidance, Tirien slumped down the bulkhead, sitting with his knees bent up and his face in his hands. He wasn't crying—even when she sharpened her hearing with the Force, Zaella only heard his slow, steady breathing—but he sat unmoving as his mind spread poison into the Force.
"Master? Tirien?" Narasi knelt in front of him and tugged on his forearm. "Tirien!"
But he didn't answer, and after a moment Narasi pulled her hand away. Zaella sensed her reeling, and desire to protect her friend made Zaella blurt out, "What do we do?"
Narasi started. "What?"
"Captain Cowardice here is a prisoner—"
"Hey!" Jirdo complained.
"—and I'm a Sith," Zaella finished. "You're the Jedi; what's the plan when we get to Eriadu?"
Narasi's eyes widened, and she looked at Tirien. He did not move, and the seconds dragged as she stared at him. But in the end, Narasi swallowed, wiped her eyes with her sleeve, squeezed Tirien's shoulder, and stood. She sniffled as she looked at Zaella and Jirdo, hardened her jaw, and said, "Right. We'll have to do a beacon scan—"
"Wouldn't they have come up when we were broadcasting?" Jirdo asked.
Narasi grimaced. "You're right. Okay…okay, we'll have to do it with the Force, then."
She glanced at Tirien, and Zaella knew why—not only was he far and away the most powerful of them, he was also the only Jedi Knight in their crew. If anyone stood a chance at sensing out individual Jedi in the trillions of cubic kilometers in the Eriadu system, it was him. Zaella feared they would get stuck there, but Narasi drew a deep breath. "We'll make it work. Besides, there are four of us, maybe the Jedi will sense us."
"What if Darshkére senses us instead?" Jirdo asked.
Narasi's face darkened. "Let him. Darshkére's one thug with a lightsaber, and a traitor too; there are four of us. Even three of us can handle him."
Would Tirien really not bestir himself even if Darshkére descended on them? Zaella didn't know, and she was afraid to ask, so instead she went with, "What kind of army does he have? Other fake Sith?"
Narasi rolled her eyes. "Did you know the Empire's people call Hadan a 'false Sith'?"
Zaella made a face. "But what—"
"I don't know," Narasi admitted. "We got a bunch of briefings about Lakalt—Darshkére's master, the one he killed—but nobody ever seemed to know how many Dark Jedi he had. It's not just Darshkére, though."
"So…more than three or four?"
Though she shot her master a look from the corner of her eye, Narasi didn't turn her head this time. "It's like Tirien said—if it's too hairy, we'll make a break for it. But if there's even one Jedi left, we have to take the chance."