I also try to have a little bit of fun inthis one...***
Keven was dreaming.
He could see a woman. She was young still, barely out of her teens, but she wore a look of determination that belied her years. She wielded the yellow bladed lightsaber she held with equal determination. She was engaged with a man wearing black robes whose red bladed saber met hers in a series of crackling clashes. The young woman’s dark hair was matted down with sweat and her yellow colored robes twirled as she dodged and parried her opponent’s attacks.
There were other men with her, other Jedi who fought on either side of her, but Keven was only peripherally aware of them. All his attention was on the girl. She took a half step back and lowered her blade slightly. The dark robed man she was fighting lunged hard into the opening. She was ready for him though. She ducked and twirled underneath the attack. As she came around, she reversed her grip on her lightsaber and thrust the blade into the man’s chest. Horror and relief flashed across her face as he groaned and fell at her feet.
Keven’s view of her shifted and he realized he was moving closer to her. Another emotion flashed across her face. Fear this time and she whipped her lightsaber back into a guard position. The fear faded as she forced her mask of determination back into place. Then Keven felt himself frozen as he looked deep into her liquid brown eyes...
He came awake and sat up. There had been something about the woman, he knew her somehow. He placed a hand on his forehead and shook his head to clear it.
“You're awake I see,” someone said. Keven looked up. He was in a small, dark, single room apartment. The orangish glow of sunrise or sunset filtered in through a large bay window at the back of the apartment. There was a man sitting in a chair across from the bed. Keven recognized him as the man who had saved him on the Endar Spire, Carth Onasi.
“Where are we?” Keven asked.
“In the Upper City of Taris,” Carth replied. “Our escape pod crashed near here. I managed to drag you out before the locals showed up in force. The building we’re in is real low rent for the Upper City, so no one’s asked too many questions about us being here, but that could change at any moment. Especially now that the Sith have taken over the whole planet.”
“How long have I been out?”
Carth shrugged. “A few days. You had some serious injuries. A badly sprained ankle, a dislocated kneecap, plus you took a nasty bump to the head when we crashed. I had to use most of our medpacs getting you put back together again.”
Keven worked the leg he had hurt escaping from the Endar Spire. He couldn’t feel any pain. “You did a good job, thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Carth said. “But I needed you healthy. What do you know about Taris?”
“Not much,” Keven replied. “It’s basically one big city, like Coruscant.” Though there was something else. He felt like he should know more than that but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. I wonder what that means, he thought.
“Not quite like Coruscant,” Carth said. “Trade routes have shifted over the years and Taris’ heyday is very much over with. The upper levels are still safe, but the lower ones are ruled by warring swoop bike gangs. The things I’ve heard about the lowest levels make them sound even worse. I imagine the whole place will be as bad as Nar Shadaa in a few years.”
“What about the Sith?” Keven asked.
“They moved in after the battle in space,” Carth replied. “The locals knuckled right under. I don’t blame them. It seems like the whole Sith fleet is in orbit. I heard someone say that Darth Malak himself is here.”
“Malak?”
“Yes,” Carth said. “He’s looking for Bastila. She’s the whole reason we’ve lasted as long as we have in this war. Her Battle Meditation has changed the course of entire battles. She was part of the team that killed Darth Revan, Malak’s old master, two years ago. She’s the only person in the Republic Malak truly fears.”
Bastila. There was something about the name. Keven knew who she was, but there was something else tickling the back of his brain. Much like how he should know more about Taris than he did. “Do you know if they’ve found her yet?”
Carth shook his head. “I don’t think so. I know she got off the ship. The locals say several Republic escape pods crashed into the Undercity, the very lowest part of Taris. We can only hope she was on one of them. We’ve got to find her before the Sith do. Not only do we lose her Battle Meditation, but she knows everything about our war effort.”
“She’s a Jedi,” Keven said. “She should be able to hold out against interrogation, shouldn’t she?”
“Normal interrogation, yes,” Carth replied. “But against Darth Malak? I’ve head the Force can do terrible things to a mind, twist thoughts, even wipe away your whole identity.”
“Yeah,” Keven began but before he could say anything else there were noises coming from outside, shouting, doors being forced open and the like.
“Hold on,” Carth stood and began moving towards the door. “The blasters are under the bed,” he said. Keven reached down and felt the cool metal and plastic of the weapons.
Carth opened the door and Keven could hear a voice yelling in a stiff Core Worlds accent. “All right you scum, this is a raid! Everyone out and against the wall!” Carth froze for a moment, then put his hands up and began moving into the hall, but not before sending a quick glance towards Keven.
Keven glanced around the small room, looking for anything else he could use. He had their blasters, but he had no idea how many Sith were out there, besides he wasn’t even dressed. All he was wearing was his pants and unlike Carth, who wore local civilian clothes, his trousers were very obviously part of a Republic uniform. Think Kev, think! There’s got to be something you can do! Then a crazy idea occurred to him.
***
Keven stumbled out into the hallway. He had the sheets from the bed wrapped around his waist and his hands were at the small of his back, holding the sheets up and hidden among their folds. A Sith trooper dressed head to foot in silver and black armor grabbed his shoulder and pushed up against the wall next to Carth.
“I was trying to tell you to hide,” Carth hissed at him.
“Really?” Keven whispered back. “I’m sorry, I don’t take direction very well.”
“Quiet!” A Sith trooper told them in a scratchy, electronically reproduced voice.
Keven looked around. The corridor in this complex was curved, like it wrapped around in one big circle. The wall on the outside of the wall was where the apartment doors were and most of them open. The people being pulled out of the apartments were all aliens: Duros with their green skin and red eyes; hunchbacked, hammer-headed Ithorians; Twi’leks with their tails growing from the tops of their heads, and even a few black eyed, lizard-like Rodians. A quick count showed Keven six armored Sith troopers lining the aliens up against the walls, plus one officer in starched black uniform leaning up against the wall. Seven, Keven thought. Not as bad as I thought.
A moment later, something else occurred to him. Wait a minute, Carth and I are the only humans here, he thought. So much for keeping a low profile.
The Sith officer turned his eyes towards Carth and Keven. “What do have here,” he said, his accent as stiff and starched as his uniform. “Humans consorting with aliens? On Taris? I do believe this violates some local statutes.”
Carth opened his mouth. “I...” he began.
The Sith officer raised a finger. “I did not give you permission to speak. I was merely contemplating the oddity of this situation, given the prevailing attitudes towards non-humans.” He then turned his eyes towards Keven and looked him up and down with a faint expression of disgust. “You, where are your clothes?” he asked.
“You see, your lordship, I was getting ready to get in the shower when you started kicking in doors,” Keven replied. “This was all I could get to wear on short notice.”
“I see,” the officer said. “Show me your hands.”
Keven feigned embarrassment. “Well, you see, your lordship, they’re the only things holding this sheet up and...”
“Well then, take the sheets off,” the officer said evenly.
“That really wouldn’t be good idea,” Kevin said.
“And why not?” the officer asked, with a certain iciness creeping into his voice.
Keven looked side to side conspiratorially. “I really wouldn’t want your lordship getting jealous, if you know what I’m saying,” he replied in a lowered voice but still loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.
The officer’s face darkened over with anger and his hand lashed out, ripping the sheets from Keven’s waist. The Republic uniform trousers he wore were clear for everyone to see.
As well as the blasters he held in each hand.
Keven fired both weapons at once into the officers chest, sending him tumbling to the floor. Two of the six Sith troopers were standing right behind the officer and Keven began shooting at them, firing as fast as he could pull the triggers on both blasters. They were both slammed back against the wall before they had a chance to respond.
Keven tossed the blaster in his left hand towards Carth. “Go left!” he shouted and turned to his right without seeing if Carth caught the weapon or not. He gripped the blaster he held now with both hands and dropped another trooper with a single shot to the head. A fourth trooper was trying to aim his blaster over the diving bodies of the resident aliens. Keven fired twice at him. The first bolt caught him in the shoulder and spun him around. The second hammered the man to the ground. “Clear on right!” Keven called.
There was a final blaster shot and Carth called out, “Clear on left!” Keven realized that he and Carth were the only ones left standing. The aliens had joined the Sith on the floor, but the Sith were clearly not getting back up again. Keven slowly lowered his weapon. “Is everyone all right?” he asked.
The aliens began stirring on the floor, some of them feeling at themselves, clearly not believing they weren’t hurt. One of the Duros sat up and began gesturing at Keven and saying something in his own language.
“What’s he saying?” Carth asked.
“Uh... He’s wondering what did I think I was doing shooting the place up like that,” Keven said. “He says the Sith will now bother them even more.”
“He’s got a point,” Carth said.
Keven turned towards the alien. “I am very sorry,” he said. “They were looking for us and would have caused us great harm should they have caught us.”
The Duros grunted and said something that sounded a bit more mollified but still unhappy.
“I understand,” Keven replied, “and you have my thanks.” He turned back towards the apartment.
“What did he say?” Carth asked.
“He said he has no love for the Sith and he’ll see that the bodies are found somewhere else,” Keven said.
“That’s helpful.”
“Yeah, we just gotta hurry up and get out of here,” Keven told him.
Carth nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Just let me get dressed first,” Keven said. “Is it me or did it just get real chilly around here?”
***
The sun was just setting behind Taris’ skyline and it set the horizon on fire as it painted the clouds in shades of red and gold. The tops of the planet-wide city’s skycrapers turned the horizon from a smooth line to a jagged, staccato procession of slender spires, rounded minarets, and soaring arches. Skycars moved in and amongst the buildings like flocks of migratory birds.
Keven leaned against the railing of crowded walkway and watched people walk by. What the Sith officer said about the locals seemed true. There were almost no aliens in sight, nearly everyone he saw was a human. What few aliens he saw moved together in small groups and were given wide berths by the humans. The only people who seemed more shunned than the aliens were the Sith, who moved through the crowds in groups of three or four. The invaders tried to act confident and cocky, but Keven could sense their underlying nervousness. Well, they weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms.
“I saw your service record,” Carth said suddenly.
“What was that?” Keven asked.
“When you came on board the Endar Spire,” Carth continued. “You caused quite a stir.”
“How’s that? I’m just a scout.”
Carth arched an eyebrow. “Just a scout? Keven no-last-name. Top marks in both marksmanship and swordsmanship. You tested fluent in about twenty different languages...”
Twenty? Keven thought. That many? Wait a minute, just how many languages do I know? There was something vaguely disturbing about the thought.
Carth was still talking. “...plus there’s the fact the Jedi themselves requested your presence on this mission.”
That stopped Keven for a moment. “Come again?” he asked.
“You didn’t know?” Carth asked. “We were all set to leave and then this message comes from Bastila’s party, ‘Get this man onboard.’ We had to delay our departure a whole day waiting for you to arrive.”
“What are you getting at?”
Carth shrugged. “I’m just saying that it’s kinda odd that a person whose this last minute addition is one of the few people to escape the ship.”
“Now, wait a minute, I had nothing to do with...”
Carth raised a hand. “I’m not saying you did. It’s just that all that, coupled with what I just saw, makes it obvious that you’re more than ‘just a scout’, and well... I just don’t like surprises.”
“There’s no surprises here, Carth,” Keven said. “I’m just a scout. I may be good at what I do, but I’m just a scout.”
Carth turned away. “We’ll see,” he said.
“What about this,” Keven said after a moment. “You said it was Bastila’s party that put in a request for my presence. Why don’t we ask her when we find her?”
“We’re no closer to finding her,” Carth replied sullenly. “The Sith have got all access to the lower levels blocked.”
Keven nodded. After leaving the apartment complex, they had tried to get into lower levels, but found all the elevators under heavy guard. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “Follow me.”
“Where are we going?” Carth asked.
“Drinking,” Keven replied.
“Drinking?” Carth repeated. “How is drinking going to help us?”
“Because we need info, Carth,” Keven answered, “and people talk when they drink.”
***
Carth Onasi leaned against the bar in a darkened cantina and watched neon lights play against the wall. This is insane, he thought. I’ve fallen in with a crazy man. Carth had fought several wars on behalf of the Republic, first against the Mandalorians and then later, the Sith. One thing he knew that you didn’t do was try to fight wars from the back of a bar.
Which was exactly what Keven no-last-name was dead-set on trying to do.
Keven was at a small table, sitting across from a plain looking woman, deep in what appeared to be an animated conversation, looking for all the galaxy like a young man out chasing women.
“So, what are we looking for,” Carth had asked when they walked in.
Keven had glanced around the cantina, looking very much like a predator sniffing the wind. “Lonely people, Carth,” he’d replied. “Lonely people drink more and talk more than any other kind of people you’ll ever meet.”
Keven spotted her almost immediately, sitting alone and slowly nursing a drink. She wasn’t an unattractive woman. She was obviously someone who kept in shape and she dressed in way to catch a man’s eye. But she had a sharp angular face that was emphasized by the way her hair was pulled severely into a bun at the back of her head. She he also wore an expression that seemed to discourage conversation. Still, it wasn’t enough to explain why all the tables around her were empty as well.
A quick inquiry to the bartender explained that. The woman was a Sith officer who had come down to mix with the locals and had not succeeded. “Perfect,” Keven said with a smile. He had bought her a drink and had gone over to talk to her. That had been fifteen minutes ago.
As Carth watched them, Keven pulled a datapad from his pocket and set it on the table. The woman took it and tapped something into it before handing it back. Then she smiled at him and caressed the back of his hand with her fingertips. After that she walked to the bar, settled her bill and left. Keven was sitting at the table, smiling contentedly.
Carth sat down across from him. “What have you done?” he asked.
“I hope you brought your dancing shoes, Carth,” Keven grinned. “We’re going to a party.”
