Private The Cargo Speaks

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

THE BEZHARL
EN ROUTE FROM SVOLTEN TO ELSEWHERE

Apparently carbon-freezing was in Ashin's immediate future. For the moment, the Jedi strike team had resorted to stun cuffs and ysalamiri and a snugly locked door. Sore and tired, she rested on a bare bunk and thought about not much.

A door hissed open, revealing a woman she didn't recognize. Well, maybe. Half a dozen lives and deaths had left Ashin's memory a junk drawer. The new arrival carried herself like a person worth taking seriously, albeit not necessarily a serious person. Ashin stayed on the bunk with her cuffed wrists in her lap.

"Can I help you?" she said drily to Allyson Locke .

 

[Allyson Locke]

Ashin Cardé Varanin was a story. One that she had heard several times from her mentor. The stories were always different compared to the ones that the Jedi had in their archives.

Seeing that the infamous Ashin had been so easily captured, Allyson was curious. Which of the stories were true, Ember or the Jedi?

"Alert as ever." Allyson quipped. At least one thing was true, Ashin was a hard woman to put down. "You look different than he described you." She started, wondering if through her lifetimes she ever came across Ember again.

"Supposed to ask the typical questions, where would your ship go, who is on it, where's your wife - but I doubt I'd get any of those questions answered, and to be honest; I could care less." Allyson stepped farther into the room, the door shutting behind her.

"I guess I want to know why. Why ever leave the Jedi to lead the Sith? Why do what you've done in your lifetime - only to be caught - only to give up?"

Maybe she was projecting; Allyson had just recently relinquished her position on the New Jedi Circle - she was a rogue for all intents and purposes. Maybe she just wanted justification for her actions. But why from Ashin Varanin of all people?​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Ashin stayed exactly where she was. It had been a hard day. For entertainment purposes, she decided to answer all those questions and answer honestly.

"The Pomojema has no set flight plan for situations like this. Makes it harder for precogs to track. I could probably figure out their current location if you gave me a dozen guesses. Who's on it? About a hundred Darksiders, mostly Sith Knights or their equivalents. Spencer too.

"Why I left the Jedi? I left twice. First time: Sith poison, and a Grandmaster asking me to infiltrate and undermine the Sith. Second time: Force Drain addiction."

That would do for the moment. Wouldn't want to be chatty.

 

[Allyson Locke]

“Obviously not your first rodeo.” Allyson mumbled under her breath. The answers were what she had expected. They were enough bits of information to give them a breadcrumb, but nothing they could easily use to pinpoint the runaway ship. Crossing her arms, she leaned against the doorway.

“So you were a Shadow? Sent to infiltrate the Sith and undermine them, yet you joined them?” The story alignment scared her. She often had nightmares of her time with the Sith, nearly losing herself to the persona that she had played for so many years. Waiting in the shadows to strike, yet failing at the very end because her friends - attachments got in the way.

“Do you regret it?”

Ashin Cardé Varanin ​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Oh, it's scarier than that, my friend. I didn't. I was a sleeper agent for the Jedi for my entire tenure on the Obsidian Throne. I wasted, oh, trillions of credits of Sith Empire materiel. Directed conquests away from sensitive worlds. Delayed the great war until the very last moment, until Roche, giving the Jedi time to prepare. Sank the wealth of the Sith into everything from..." She laughed under her breath. "I shavvit you not, I even had them build a non-functional Death Star. And it all...worked. Millions dead instead of billions. When the Dark Council betrayed me at Roche, I doubt they had any inkling of what I was, but they understood the effects. They understood I made the Sith weak.

"The cost was my soul. Worth it, wouldn't you say?"

Allyson Locke

 

[Allyson Locke]

Ashin's laughter made the Corellian's chest tighten. Was that all it took, economically destroying the Empire? Yet after Ashin's reign, the Sith returned found funding in other things. "But it didn't work; they're still here. Theys till terrorized the galaxy and not just under the Empire, but in other forms as well." Allyson stopped herself. Her words reminded her of the children back in the New Jedi Order.

"How is your soul worth the cost?" she asked, irritation filling her voice. Ashin's answer wasn't something she wanted to hear. A part of her had hoped there was something more.​

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Well, there I was, one little Jedi Knight stuffed full of Sith poison. I spent a year, a full year, living on Trevel'ka — a planet-sized slum. I was no good to anyone. So someone had the bright idea that I could still do some good.

"Along I went to the Sith, and of course the damage I did was temporary, but you could say the same for the last invasion you fought, my friend. Nothing we do is permanent. Everything we build contains the seeds of its own decay. Every peace, every government, every cause, every secret, every life — everything we fight for has an expiration date, doesn't it?"

Allyson Locke

 

[Allyson Locke]

The Corellian could feel the effects of the woman's words. It was true that nothing they ever did was permanent, yet they both sacrificed what felt like everything. In Ashin's case, maybe it was everything.

Everything always had an ending.

"But.." She started, unsure if she should continue. A step forward, allowing a better view of the captive woman. "What if it didn't? What if what we did actually mattered…wouldn't that be worth the cost of a soul?"

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Maybe. I appreciate the offer of, hm, moral peace. But I live a more authentic life now, one where I don't scramble to justify myself retroactively or satisfy the cognitive dissonance that used to give me power. I don't hate myself anymore, or hunger for retroactive absolution. When I hate, it's intentional, and it's not projection."

She offered Allyson Locke a dazzling smile.

"Despite all the Drengir and the occasional arrest, it really is the best my life has ever been."

 

[Allyson Locke]

Moral Peace.

The concept seemed foreign for the woman. Everything she had done, there was always a consequence. Her infiltration into the Sith - she lost her friends and the trust of the Jedi. On returning to the Jedi, she lost someone she cared about, whom she found tightly gripped by the Dark side. And now, leaving the Galactic Alliance, Allyson found herself a fugitive constantly looking over her shoulder.

Was she happy? Was Ashin Cardé Varanin only a mirror for her to examine herself with? She returned the woman's smile with a slight grin.

"Drengir?" Allyson questioned. She assumed they were the beasts that were assaulting while the Jedi were. "Those creatures you were running from? Why are they hunting you?"​

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Oh, the Drengir? Very special."

Ashin warmed to the subject.

"The Drengir scare me more, and have inconvenienced me more, than every Sith Lord and Jedi Master in the galaxy put together. They're plant-based clusters of hive minds, darksiders, highly intelligent but implacable, capable of assimilating and mind-controlling the strongest Masters. Cut a Drengir body in half and it'll re-form into two, and half a Drengir is still strong enough to overpower a human. To them, we're just meat like any other meat, with no possible common ground."

A smile.

"And I made the mistake of digging around in their deepest level of hive mind, the Root-Mind, for visions to help me resurrect my wife a few years ago. The Drengir have decided that I am their favorite food. Wherever I go, they follow. If not for the ysalamiri, they'd be chasing or intercepting this ship right now."


Allyson Locke