The question stopped Bastila for half a step, a hesitation that was out of character for the Jedi. Yet the pause was not because she didn’t know the answer, but more in a sad state of because she did.
“There are warrants out for half the Jedi I know,” she replied, the words carrying just far enough through the air.
“It doesn’t make them criminals.”
It sounded defensive even to her, the words having come out of her too quick and with the usual Sal-Soren sharpness. It was the sort of answer that came from somewhere beneath reason, a place where loyalty had already made its decision long before good sense could interfere. Lorn Reingard was her Master. Whatever charges had been laid against him, whatever prison he had broken into or prisoner he had broken out, Bastila knew there would have been a reason.
There had to have been. She had promised him and Briana that she was at their side, that if they walked away so did she. Yet now here she was, half way across the galaxy fighting aliens that she hadn’t even known existed until a few weeks ago.
Her lightsaber carved another scalding line through the darkness, forcing one of the creatures back as Soph’s voice rose several octaves behind her. Bastila might have laughed if the situation had been anything close to funny. The memory of the smell was still clinging to the inside of her throat, every step deeper into the facility giving the impression that the Force was tightening around her like a closing fist.
“Queen’s Heart Oil,” she called back.
“Then something acidic afterwards, dye or bleach it. It still took me three washes.” Bastila neglected to mention that she had seriously considered cutting the affected strands away. Or that she had spent the better part of an hour sitting beneath scalding water, long after the last trace of gore had disappeared, because she swore she could still feel it crawling across her skin.
With a flash of light the blue wall Soph conjured bought them seconds. Nothing more. The creatures behind it threw themselves against the glowing structure with enough force to make the corridor shudder, their distorted silhouettes folding and stretching across its surface. Bastila did not need to look back to know the other woman was following. She could sense her now, a bright and stubborn presence at her shoulder, firing light into the dark and refusing to be left behind.
Bastila…
She froze. Her name had come from somewhere inside her rather then without. It was a desperate yell for her, a plea for help. It was Dominic.
“Bastila…” The softer use of her name reached her more clearly than the panic or the weapons fire had and she slowed.
Not enough to stop or enough to admit that Soph’s words had found their mark. Yet some of the violence bled from her stride, her grip shifting around the hilt of her lightsaber as the violet blade lowered from a striking guard. She had heard Dominic call her reckless before. Briana too. Lorn had rarely needed to say it aloud; the look had generally been enough.
Idiot hero.
But Dominic needed her, she knew it was him. In ever inch of her soul she knew that the voice had been his. She gave it thought, perhaps there were worse things to be. Perhaps there were considerably smarter ways to die.
“I’m not trying to be a hero,” Bastila said, quieter than before.
“I’m trying to make sure they’re looking at us.”
Because if every creature in the facility was tearing through these corridors in pursuit of them, then they were not hunting Tatiana. They were not standing between the others and Dominic. They were not surrounding his cell, or laboratory, or whatever foul little hole his captors had decided to keep him in.
Bastila could endure being hunted. She had endured the halls of Naboo, she had endured worse.
The doorway opened as they passed, its sudden movement bringing her lightsaber up on instinct. Violet light flooded into the room beyond, spilling across metal tables arranged in precise, repeating rows. Tubes hung from articulated arms above them. Needles. Restraints. Drainage grooves cut into the surfaces beneath where a body’s spine would lie.
Bastila turned, Soph on her heels as they flew into the room and Bastila hitting the door controls to slam a barrier between them and the aliens. It would be enough time for them to catch their breath.
The machines were dormant and quiet, yet the room was not empty for it was filled with echoes in the force. Pain had seeped into the walls here. Not one moment of it, but hundreds. Perhaps thousands. Terror layered over terror until the Force itself seemed bruised by what had happened within. Bastila stood upon the threshold and gave Soph a look that said all it needed to.
“We shouldn’t be here…” Then the press began, the cold plunge as the Force around them was thrown into the opposite of everything the Jedi knew and loved. It was like a migraine forcing it’s way into your head, drilling through your skull and filling it with the sound of cruel, harsh laughter.
Balun Dashiell
