Sacaea Episode I: Return of the Light by Nephthys Moon

No matter how fast the light travels it finds that the darkness has always got there first and is waiting for it. – Terry Pratchett

***

She could feel him, coming down the hall, his presence brushing against her as she crouched, one hand poised over the switch that would engage her lightsaber. As though he had sensed her movement, the hum of a lightsaber turning on echoed through the hall, muffling the soft tread of his footsteps as he continued his deliberate gait towards her. The red glow from the beam filtered through the darkness that separated them, and the sudden taste of blood startled her; she’d bitten her lip in an effort not to scream. The droids were silent, disabled. She supposed she should be grateful they weren’t destroyed; if she survived this encounter, she would need them.

The footsteps were louder now, coming closer, and a single bead of sweat slipped down her face, hitting the durasteel floor at her feet with a soft plop. He paused, as though he heard it and reveled in the sound, and in the light cast by his lightsaber, she saw his face; not the face of the Sith she expected, but one familiar. It was both comforting and terrifying. If she could but get his attention and reveal her identity before he attacked, she was certain that he would recognize her, but if she couldn’t –

Before she could finish the thought, she felt herself sailing through the air and she realized with a sickening sensation that she might not even get the chance to fight for her life. She hit the window of the Ebon Hawk’s cockpit, slamming her head into the control panel as she fell. Instinct took over. It no longer mattered who he was; her life was on the line and she could no longer consider that. A violet glow met that of the red, and a strong, steady purple beam blocked his first strike.

“Dammit, Kael!” she shouted angrily, her use of his first name – his real name – forcing him to look at her before he attacked again. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Tana?” he breathed, disengaging his weapon and dropping it to the floor. “What are you doing here? How did you get my ship? And why are you in your underwear?”

When she was convinced that he wasn’t going to attack again, she peeled herself from the controls of the ship and stood up shakily, turning off her own weapon and reaching her hand up to feel the lump forming beneath her shoulder-length blonde locks. “Hello, Kael,” she muttered sarcastically. “So nice to see you again.” He had the grace to look chagrined as the full implications of his actions rushed over him.

“Dammit, Tana, why didn’t you just say it was you to start with?” he muttered, wrapping an arm around her waist and walking her down the hallway, through the main hold and into the medical bay. He patted the bed before lifting her up onto it. “If I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have done that.”

“I didn’t know it was you until just before you tossed me across the room,” she grumbled, wincing as he jabbed a medpac into her thigh. “What the hell did you hit me with, anyway?”

“Force Wave,” he muttered, watching her carefully as the pained crease in her forehead eased. She sighed in relief as the kolto worked its way through her bloodstream, healing her minor injuries and clearing her mind of some of the haze from the probable concussion. “You’re going to be okay.” She nodded in agreement.

“Now,” he said, “how about you tell me what you’re doing here – and how you got my ship?”

She hopped down from the medical bed and led the way to the ship’s tiny galley. As she sat across from him, Tana took in the changes she hadn’t been prepared for. He was older than she remembered, and for some reason that surprised her, as though he should have remained in his twenties forever, though he had to be over forty now. His face was harsher, the lines of his jaw more pronounced, and his eyes seemed deeper somehow; perhaps the difference she saw was merely the passage of twelve years, but she didn’t believe that was it. It was age, yes, but it was also that what she’d most feared when he first donned the mask that covered Kael Var, when Kael had ceased to exist, replaced by a name, one that had inspired thousands – and then caused them to tremble in fear: Revan. It was as though Revan had taken over, leaving Kael to be forgotten in a tomb on Dantooine. And it was Revan who stared at her now, waiting for her to begin speaking. It was Revan, and not Kael, who had stepped onto the ship.

She shuddered. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice soft, familiar.

“Nothing,” she said quietly. “I’m just trying to decide where to start.”

“How about the beginning?” he suggested wryly and she was forced to chuckle, though she was certain he could hear the bitterness behind her laughter.

“But you know the beginning,” she reminded him. “You were there.”

“That wasn’t what I meant, and you know it.” His voice was soft, not threatening at all, and that scared her more than if he’d shouted. He never raised his voice. He’d never had to. The angrier he was, the lower his voice would get, a sign that she’d learned meant danger to whomever was causing that anger.

“If you mean the beginning that led me here, well, that was a part of it, Kael,” she snapped, suddenly tired of this. She wasn’t the youngling on Dantooine that had fallen into a forbidden fascination with the older, more experienced Padawan. She wasn’t his General, either. She was a grown woman, a Jedi, and she’d just spent nearly two years looking for his sorry ass out in the middle of the Unknown Regions.

“Dammit, Tana!” he growled.

“Oh, stuff it, Kael!” she said dismissively. “I didn’t come all the way out here to have you jump all over my ass, you know.” She took a deep, cleansing breath and released her anger and frustration, a trick she’d learned from him. “Now, what is it that you want to know?”

He glared at her for a moment before answering. “For starters, how did you end up with my ship?” She laughed.

“From what I understand, it wasn’t your ship to begin with, and since I’ve had it for the past three years, I’d say it was my ship now,” she teased. “But, to answer your question, I came into possession of it on Peragus II. I can’t speak to what happened to it before I got it, but it was pretty banged up. From what I gathered from various holorecords after the fact, it had been fired on by a Sith ship and nearly destroyed when it was picked up by a Republic cruiser, The Harbinger. And see, that is where I come in, too. I was on the Harbinger, being escorted to Telos on the orders of some Admiral. On our way there, we apparently got a distress call from the Ebon Hawk and went to its aid – again on the Admiral’s orders.”

“You’re saying that the Republic picked up my ship?” he said quietly, and she nodded.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. The Admiral seemed very interested in the ship – actually, I think he was more interested in the Ebon Hawk than the so-called Last Jedi, which was why I was picked up in the first place. But then the shit started to hit the fan and the Harbinger began malfunctioning – which is why I don’t remember any of this. Some droid bounty hunter knocked me out and locked me up. The crew investigated the Sith ship while they brought the Hawk on board and found one dead Sith – they brought him on board, too and he woke up and started killing everyone. That was when the pilot of the Hawk got me on board and apparently tried to get us out of there. By then, the Sith started firing at us from the Harbinger and we ended up on Peragus, where the damn droid managed to kill off the entire station.” She shook her head at the memory. “Right as we were getting ready to get off the damn rock, the Harbinger showed up and started trying to kill us again.”

“Who was the Sith?” Kael asked, leaning across the table as though he were hanging on her every word.

“Darth Sion,” she said. “We managed to make our way to Telos after that, thankfully.”

“Telos? I thought it was destroyed.” Kael’s eyes widened and he leaned back into his chair.

“The Republic decided to start restoring the planet. That’s kind of beside the point, though, isn’t it?” she asked. “You wanted to know how I got your ship – well, that’s how. It kind of fell into my lap.”

“Who was the pilot?” he asked, his voice tight.

“Ah, I almost forgot.” Tana paused. “I think you’ll know this name: Kreia. Or should I call her Darth Traya?”

“Ah, my old Master,” Kael smirked. “How is the old hag?”

“Dead.” Tana closed her eyes, indicating that it was all she would say on the matter. She didn’t want to go into her own training under the Lord of Betrayal, nor did she care to discuss anything else with him, at least not until he gave her a few answers of her own. “So, now that you know how I got your ship, care to tell me how you lost it?”

Kael smirked. “Kreia, actually. I was out on Malachor V about four years ago, looking for a base I thought I’d set up out there and ran into her. The hag stole my ship and left me stranded there. She couldn’t have gotten far before she started sending out that distress signal – the Republic must have picked up the Hawk within a few days of her taking it. Anyway, I stole one of their ships and continued searching – and I found what I was looking for. Or rather, it found me.”

“You were captured?” she gasped. Of all the explanations for his disappearance from the Republic for so long, that would not have been among her list.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he muttered. “They let me land on their world, but they took me prisoner almost immediately. I spent the past four years trying to find a way off that rock, and when I finally did manage it, the only ship I could get was a dinky fighter too small to get me very far. So I came here – I know this planet, and the native species, and I knew that in its past, many ships had fallen to its surface. With enough searching, I could find the parts to repair one of them and make my way back to the Republic.”

“Back? Why are you going back?” A wave of apprehension broke over her. Was he planning on resuming his role of conqueror?

“Because I can’t do this alone,” he explained patiently. “I went out here alone, determined not to drag those I cared for into my fate, and I found out I’m just not enough. I need help.”

“That’s why I’m here,” she said, getting confused. Neither as Kael nor as Revan had she ever known this man to admit to being in need of assistance. She stared at him, daring him to challenge her views.

“Yes, but how? Why?” he demanded. “How did you even know to come looking for me?”

“In part, because of that Admiral,” she muttered. “He was a friend of yours, from what I could tell, and he seemed to think that me arriving on your ship was some kind of sign. When Kreia told me what you were doing out here, trying to track down some ancient Sith Empire on your own, I decided he was right. The Force brought your ship and your droids to me so that I could find you and help you.”

“Admiral?” His face took on a look of concentration. “I can’t think of any Admirals that would still know me.”

“Damn, what was his name?” Her face screwed up in concentration as she tried to remember the man’s name. His face she remembered, but his name eluded her. “It started with an O, I think…”

“Admiral O?” Kael asked, a smile breaking across his face, but she ignored him, still struggling to pull the name.

“Onessi? Onissi?” she murmured to herself, knowing that it wasn’t right, but it was close.

“Wait – Onasi?” Kael’s eyes grew wide. “Carth Onasi?”

“That’s the one!” she exclaimed. “Admiral Carth Onasi! He said to tell you that he was following your orders. He’s the one that had the Harbinger pick me up, and he’s the one that ordered it to divert course from Telos to pick up your ship.”

“Carth Onasi an Admiral?” He laughed softly. “Where was this?”

“Telos, of course.” She thought she’d already made that much clear to him.

“Telos, huh?” Kael chuckled wryly. “Who says you can’t go home?”

“What?” she asked, truly confused, but he just shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said. He cleared his throat, and his face suddenly changed; he was a man bracing himself for the worst. “Were there any Jedi with him?”

“Not that I saw,” she said slowly, wondering why he was asking. “And given that he thought I was the last Jedi, I’d say it’s not very likely.” He shrugged as if to brush it off and smiled weakly.

“You said that was only a part of it,” he reminded her. “Besides Carth and Kreia, what else is there?”

“A woman,” she said, and he sucked in a breath. “There was a recording on T3 – she said that she knew you were leaving and for the droid to look after you. If anything happened, he was supposed to find someone to help you. I never did catch her name, but she obviously cared very deeply for you.”

“She was Jedi,” he whispered. “If she survived those butchers, Carth would have known. He wouldn’t have thought you were the last Jedi.”

“I’m sorry, Kael.” She didn’t know how to comfort him. His pain was a palpable thing, and she wished, for his sake, that she could bring Sion, Nihilus and Traya back and destroy them again for what they’d done.

“It’s not your fault, Tana.” He brushed off her concern with a wave of his hand. “I don’t know what I expected when you said that Carth was on Telos, but I guess I must have had some hope that she’d survived and was there with him, even if it meant that the two of them had taken up with one another in my absence. I’d prefer that to this.”

“I understand,” she murmured.

They sat in silence for long minutes, staring down at the scarred durasteel table. It seemed an inappropriate time to mention her final reason for coming after him, so she let it go. There were some things that were simply unimportant. The man in front of her was no longer the Kael she remembered from her youth, nor the Revan who’d recruited her as an adult. He was someone else now, and so was she, and a lifetime of friendship seemed to pale in significance next to the loss of the woman he so clearly loved. Not for the first time, she wondered, selfishly perhaps, if the Masters had been right about her being a vacuum in the Force, sucking in all life, and that was why she’d never felt something akin to his obvious feelings for the unknown woman. She cared for her companions, and she’d felt affection and passion over the years, but this devotion was something she’d witnessed many times and never experienced herself. She tamped down her envy as he stood.

“I’m going to go finish up a few things at the settlement,” he said quietly. “You should probably get dressed and I’ll meet you back here in a few hours. If you can get the droids working again, that would be a big help.” She nodded and watched him carefully as he left the tiny kitchen, his pain echoing through her as though it were her own. She made her way through the ship to the dormitory she’d claimed as her own and dressed quickly before returning to the cockpit to repair the droids who’d been her only companions for the past two years.

There’d been days when she thought she was going crazy. For two years, she’d been wandering the Unknown Regions, traveling at what felt like a snail’s pace in the uncharted territories, hoping that she might happen to stumble across the Prodigal Knight or the True Sith. There were times she hadn’t been sure which she’d prefer. Logic dictated that the former was the correct choice, but some days she’d take anything, even a fight she couldn’t win, over aimlessly drifting through space searching for something or someone without any bearings and talking to two droids, one of which was borderline sociopathic.

She’d been forced on more than one occasion to laugh at HK-47 against her better instincts. With his violent tendencies and his determination to consider any water-based creature a ‘meatbag’, she couldn’t help herself.

She was sleeping, tossing her way through troubled dreams when the droids came into the dormitory.

“Beep! Beep! DWOOT!”

“Statement: Master, we have found something.”

She groaned and sat up, blearily rubbing her blue eyes as she tried to focus on the two droids positioned by her bunk. “Explain,” she managed to croak out, running a hand across her face.

“Explanation: A planet has appeared in our range, Master. It is habitable and appears to have sentient beings upon it,” HK-47 said condescendingly.

“Meatbags, huh?” she laughed.

“Affirmation: Yes, Master.” The red, human-shaped droid shuddered in apparent disgust and Tana turned her attention to T3-M4.

“Humans?” she asked, knowing that the tiny droid could project a rough image of the life forms to compare against the databases of the Ebon Hawk. It was better to know that she was going to land on a hostile planet before she actually did it.

“Dwoot,” the droid beeped in the negative. A hologram of a lanky, brown-skinned alien appeared from his projector. The alien had a large, fish-like head with eyes on either side of it, and thin, awkward-looking limbs.

“Now what do you suppose that is?” she muttered, recognizing that the hologram was far crisper than the ones T3 normally showed when they were coming upon an unexplored world.

“Recitation: The Rakata were once the great Builders of the Infinite Empire, creators of the Star Forge, and enslavers of many thousands of worlds. Commentary: They are my kind of people, Master,” HK-47 added unnecessarily.

“So, you’re saying they are hostile?” she asked.

“Clarification: Some tribes are, Master, but the only tribe that appears to be still in existence is the Elder Tribe, and they are not.”

“Wait – you’ve met these Rakata before?” she asked, beginning to get excited. Suddenly it all fit. HK knew these creatures, and T3 had obviously seen them before – Revan had been to this planet.

“Condescending Answer: Of course, Master.”

Tana rolled her eyes and stood up, heading for the cockpit. She’d bring the Ebon Hawk down as close to this Elder Tribe as possible, and hope that they spoke Basic.

Within minutes, the planet appeared through the windows of the cockpit, and a dull pain began to form around her heart. Something wasn’t right about this planet – there was something off about it. The overwhelming aching in her chest grew stronger as she approached the planet, and she suddenly understood. This world had seen death – death on such an incredibly large scale as to create something of a vacuum within the Force. She would know, after all. While the planet was not ravaged, as Malachor V had been before its final destruction, she felt the life lost throughout the course of its history was far, far greater than that of Malachor V. And she knew, with a sudden certainty, that she did not want to set foot upon the planet.

As she rewired the smaller droid, she thought back to that feeling, acknowledging that it was still there, thrumming in her chest, but it had been overwhelmed by the excitement of the past hour. With a forlorn little ‘doot’, T3 came back online and began to chitter at her.

“No, buddy, I don’t think we can leave him disabled,” she laughed. “We might need his help.”

“Dwoot-deet-beep?”

“No, not even for a little while.” She shook her head sagely at the silver robot and set him to work repairing his companion. Kael had proved her original instincts about the planet correct; he had been here before, and somewhere in the Hawk’s database were holorecords of that trip. All she needed to do was spend a little time digging.

An hour later she lay on her bunk, the viewscreen on the wall displaying various scenes of the Ebon Hawk’s previous journeys. She grew familiar with the names and faces of Kael’s former companions. She found it very interesting that Kael hadn’t mentioned that the Admiral had been the pilot of the Hawk when they’d gone to search for the Star Forge. She learned the name of the beautiful Jedi whose image had sent her on this course: Bastila. She was a proud, haughty woman, and Tana felt a sliver of unease pass through her when the recording showed them returning to the Hawk without her after being captured by the Sith. She queued up the emergency landing on this planet.

She admired Onasi’s cool throughout the entire experience. Watching the holorecord, she saw flashes of the Kael she had known years before, but it was overshadowed by the darker persona that had emerged during the war. He wasn’t dark, exactly, but he was not the same Jedi Knight that she had followed to war. His companions didn’t see it – they had not known Kael before. A sense of foreboding came over her. This man, the one in the holorecord, was very much like the one she’d seen in the kitchen hours before. It unnerved her, but it was also reassuring. The Kael of the holorecord had been a good man, and a Jedi. He may not have been the shining hero of their youth, but he was not a Sith.

“Daydreaming over Onasi, are you?” came a voice from the doorway, and she looked up, startled to see Kael standing there. She had been so deep in thought that she hadn’t heard him board the ship. He was pointing at something, she realized and let her eyes follow the line of his finger.

“Wh-what?” she spluttered, looking at the image still suspended in front of her. The Admiral was frozen, his face a mask of military indifference. She rolled her eyes.

“Bite your tongue!” she scolded. “The last thing I need in my life is a broody, uptight soldier boy mucking things up.”

“Many women find him attractive, you know,” he teased. “Something about the eyes, I think. Either way, you’d better stop ogling the holorecord, because we’re on our way to Telos to pick him up.”

“Telos? Kael, that was three years ago. What makes you think he’ll still be there?” She pushed a small button, turning off the viewscreen over her bunk and stood.

“I know Carth,” he said with a grin. “If there’s anything he loves, it’s his son, the Republic, and his home world of Telos. Even if he isn’t there right now, he will be soon. As soon as this ship is picked up on someone’s scanners there will be a Republic-wide search to find out why its ID doesn’t show up in any database. He’ll hear about it and he’ll meet us there.”

“If you say so, Kael.” She shrugged.

“I’m going to take a quick run through the ‘fresher and then start work on some translations,” he said. “Think you can get us off this rock?”

“Better than you can,” she tossed over her shoulder as she made her way down the hall towards the cockpit.

“Try not to hurt my ship, Shol,” he retorted and she stifled a laugh.

“You lost it, Var; it’s my ship now,” she threw back, letting loose the chuckle that threatened to choke her, settling herself comfortably in the chair and propped her feet up on the ‘dash’. Watching the holorecords of Kael’s journeys had brought her own travels and her companions close to her mind, and the painful tugging near her abdomen began again. She sighed, rubbing her stomach absently.

“Bwoop deet?”

She turned to look at the tiny droid behind her. “I’m fine, T3. Just tired of being always on the run. When this is over, buddy, we’re going to go retire to a nice, quiet planet and plant some trees or something. How’s that sound?”

“Dwoot?”

“Yeah, I guess you don’t much care about trees, huh? Oh, well.” She stood and punched in the coordinates for Telos into the Navicomputer, groaning as she realized the journey would take about ten days to make. She returned to her seat and the ship lifted off the surface, gaining altitude quickly.

“Dwoop deet beep bwoop!” T3 began chittering excitedly.

“What?” she asked, hoping the droid would repeat himself a little more slowly. He did, and she swung the ship around, looking in the direction the droid was indicating.

“Oh, shit…” She grabbed a communicator. “Kael, you need to get out here!”

“What’s going on?” he demanded, running into the cockpit.

“That!” Tana shouted, pointing his head towards the window of the cockpit. His jaw dropped.

“Oh, shit…” he trailed off.

“Exactly.”