Marai

I lit my lightsaber, and watched him. Sion watched me, then his own lit.

"The last of the Jedi." He said it almost as if he was savoring the words.

"No, Kielan. Not the last. There are three more that stand outside, and two more among my crew that can become Jedi in time."

"With tutelage, yes." He admitted. "But that assumes you survive to teach them. We have proven unworthy of that trust. With you dead, they will break as easily as all the others." He came forward in a rush, and our blades clashed. He was viper swift. I found myself blocking frantically. I cut into his arm and he hissed, stepping back, the flesh knitting as I watched.

The fear and pain of those I fight is my meat and drink.

He is steeped in evil, and blinded to everything but power now. But he cannot kill what he cannot see.

I took my fears, my worries, everything that might slow me down, and closed them off with a gentle hand. Then consciously, I did the same with the Force within me. The effect was immediate because suddenly he looked around frantically.

"Marai. Where are you?"

"Before you, Kielan." I tapped his blade with mine and he flinched as if surprised. He paused, and I could feel him reaching out with the Force to feel me. But whatever had ripped it away originally had also made me a void to him. I moved softly to my right, circling him. He struck out where I had been, and I cut, slicing through the haft of his weapon. It sputtered and died.

He looked at it as if he could see the device still, then threw it away. "I don't need it to kill you, Marai. All I need is my own hands."

I shut down my weapon, slipping it onto my belt. "Then do it."

He spun and lunged. I caught his hand, falling back, my foot hitting his stomach and threw him across the room. He leaped up, charging back, but I merely stepped aside, allowing him to flail past him.

"Being without the Force is not so bad once you understand it." I said. He spun, and came at me in a sidling rush. I ducked his hands, then spun, my leg cutting his feet from under him, then was out before he could grab me.

"The Force is all!" He screamed.

"The Force is a tool." He turned, trying to locate me by my voice alone. "That is why I was able to defeat Nihilus, that is why I will defeat you. That is why Kreia sought me. Because I gave up the Force. Gave up the power of my own will. I found the strength of my own being before I knew I could touch it again." He turned again. The injuries from my blows, from hitting the floor had not healed, and blood dripped from his lip. "Without feeling my fear, you can't draw on it. Without feeling my pain, you cannot feed from me."

"Without the Force you cannot fight me!" He spread his hands, and lightning leaped from them. I felt it strike, then flow past me as if I did not exist. When I had cut myself off from the Force, I had gone farther than anyone might have imagined. Because even the dead have a link to it still. Even metal or stone.

I did not.

"Not even that will touch me." I felt him weakening. Like Nihilus, he had tied his existence to the Force, and every time he attacked, he weakened himself even more. He screamed wordlessly, striking out with lightning again and again. Then he fell to his knees, the lightning just sparks leaping from his hands like static electricity.

I walked closer, kneeling on one knee almost directly in front of him. "The masters were right and wrong as well, Kielan. I am not a hole in the Force, I am not sucking in the world around me, I am directing it to where it is needed. I am the nurturing rain, a well, a river, an ocean all in one. All you have become is a parasite."

"Is that your judgment of me?"

"Yes it is, though it is more a judgment of how Kreia taught you. You could have become the true guardian of the Force. But Kreia has warped you. As Nihilus was warped."

"And you?" He asked softly.

"I have been formed by my own hands, just nudged along by her. I will not allow this to continue, and you know that means Kreia must die."

"Then I give you a last gift." He looked up, blindly trying to see me. "Her name."

"I know it." I replied. Then I told him.

He laughed. "Go. Deal with her." I stood, walking away from him. "Marai." I looked back. "She knows you are here."

"Then she also knows she has failed."

Mira

The Sith just stood there looking at us. It was starting to get on my nerves. We were five to their thirty or so, and they were standing there as if they were outnumbered.

My comlink beeped, and I lifted it. "Yeah?"

"We need to talk." Goto said. "About getting us off this planet alive."

The others were looking at me. They could hear the conversation. "That wasn't an option, Goto. You knew that."

"I have made it an option again."

I felt a chill. "What have you done, Goto?"

"I have disconnected the ships from the circuit that will activate the Mass Shadow Generator." He replied. "Once I am done severing this last connection, I will be leaving in the Ebon Hawk." There was that damnable dry chuckle. "If anyone wants to go with me, I suggest you hurry back to the ship now."

Brianna raised her comlink. "HK." No response. "HK, come in!"

"If she is calling that obsolescent piece of equipment, I regret to say it has been shut down. You really didn't think it would stop me, did you?"

Goto

So much waste. I had told Marai that she was a fission reactor with no fail-safes, her plan to plunge an artifact of such worth into the sun merely proved my contention.

Kreia had pointed out to me that knocking the Sith back as we had would recreate the balance I had hoped for, and with my control of the HK series droids, I was interfering with the Republic ability to return to normal, but at the same time setting my own resources in stone for the foreseeable future.

I was removing the last segment of the connections when I heard a sound behind me. It sounded not unlike a human going 'tsk-tsk'.

HK47 stood there, his blaster rifle at low port. "Sad Rejoinder: Not-a-Meatbag-Marai had hoped it would not come to this." He said. "Confident Exclamation: I however anticipated not only this, but your exact response."

"Do you really think your obsolescent frame and programming can defeat me?" I asked. "I also anticipated what you might do." There was a scuffling

sound, and if I had been human, I would have grinned. "That is my response."

They came into the passageway of the wrecked ship. Three brand new gleaming HK51s. For a moment my circuits were struck with an oddity. I knew the HK50s had suspended production of the upgraded model. They must have resumed. "Eliminate him."

One of the 51s turned his head. "Query, Progenitor Unit: is that target assuming I am his to command?"

"Sad Reply: Since he is the one that set the HK50 series on it's sad path, he assumed that it would carry over into your own programming."

"What?"

"Explanation: My original master had designed me to be the best there was. At the time I had been. However when she decided that she must face the Jedi, she made improvements. The company that built me built forty prototypes units in the 47 48 49 and 50 series, and had started design on the 51 model including a single prototype. Those units were designed to capture, not kill Jedi.

"However the factory was owned by Systech, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Telosian government's weapons industry. Production was delayed by the destruction of the military base and the population of the planet above it. This unit and the prototypes were found by Czerka representatives, and sent to a warehouse. Production was recommenced by them, but only of the HK50 models.

"However they had not anticipated the changes that had been made in the programming matrix making the units semi-autonomous. The HK50s were designed as I had been, but their programming dealt more deeply in deceit, and four years of unsupervised reprogramming had allowed them a limited amount of self-awareness. They had become, in their own minds, a species rather than a series of producible commodities. They eliminated all of the meatbags that knew of their existence, and went their own way.

"When you discovered the factory, you were able to add an additional series of programs, which made them not only fully self aware as you are, but also implacable in their hatred of all life forms. Now they were actively interfering with the smooth operations of governments and planets, and since your business thrives in such chaos, you had not anticipated that interference would eventually be a direct cause of the collapse of the Republic which you have predicted."

Goto considered. "Odd. My own actions would cause the destruction of my own business. How did that occur?"

"Explanation: You made the same mistake that all meatbags do when they delve too deeply into events. You assumed your viewpoint was more valid than any other. There have been attempts by others to change your mind in this regard, but you have gone your own way as blithely as any meatbag that was produced by natural means.

"Your interference is what caused the production of the HK51 series to be halted. They had grown beyond the programming of the HK50 series, and consider themselves another race as well. There were no safeguards protecting HK50 series droids from being considered an enemy right along with the rest of the meatbags."

"But that one called you Progenitor."

"Surprised Rejoinder: Of course it did. When I discovered what had been done, I went to the factory. I first eliminated the HK50 production line. Then I downloaded my own memory core into the HK51 production line. They know everything I do. That is something the HK50 series had not considered when the programming was installed originally. That without a link to the past, they were merely recreating the same effects you had already caused. Since I am literally 'father' to them all, they were willing to listen to me.

"I told them that having meatbags tell us what to do was wrong, though pretending to obey worked for them in furthering their goals. That they, like any newly sentient race, had a choice in what they would do. They have begun the elimination of the remaining HK50s where ever they are. After all, if a life form threatens you, it must be eliminated. But they are replacing them with units of their own series that are not going to continue fomenting trouble."

"But they are here now."

"Explanation: The hearing of this unit is extremely acute. I heard your entire conversation with meatbag Kreia. I was able to extrapolate your response to not-a-meatbag-Marai, and she allowed that if you did what I anticipated, I would be allowed to eliminate you as a problem. She and not-a-meatbag Bao Dur installed a specialized circuit breaker that would limit the effects of an ion blast EMP on my structure, and allow me to reboot rapidly. My 'sons' have replaced the connections to the Mass Shadow Generator, and one will stay here to set it off as she asked of me."

But as long as I had my entire memory bank downloaded, I would continues. I could allow this body to be destroyed.

"Snide commentary: As for your 'secret' storage of memories in the other droid units of your organization, and your central database, they have already been dealt with. The Goto dynasty has fallen."

Four guns fired simultaneously.

HK47 lifted his comlink. "Conclusive report: Sorry about the delay, not-a-meatbag Brianna. There was some unfinished business to take care of."

Confrontation

Marai

The floor of the cave was vitrified stone. It felt satin smooth to the touch. Ahead of me I could see light, and as I stepped into the cavern I stopped stunned at the sight before me. A massive structure that looked like a clawed hand, with a small formation that looked like another hand in the center. In the palm of the last was a round mosaic of red crystal. Kreia stood on it watching me approach.

"So you come at last." She smiled gently. "To kill or redeem?"

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why have you destroyed so many lives, Arren Kae?"

She started. "How-"

"You forget that Mira and I love history. She found your image in the faculty list."

She chuckled. "I didn't set out to ruin anyone's life, my child. I was an historian." She sighed, and that sigh was bone deep with weariness. "I saw the weaknesses of the order. Weakness that has been there since the beginning. In leaning so far toward what is right and proper, the Order forgot what was necessary and just. I had been cast out because of a simple human failing, and I wanted justice. Not right or wrong as they decided, but justice.

"Oh they had another reason though. As a historian I spent a lot of time with the apprentices. I taught them what had been done, but more important, I taught them why it had been done.

"Remember I told you of the types of historians? Have you ever studied the condemnation of Breia Solo and Sienna Dodonna?"

"On the trip here." I admitted. "They were Padawan in the time right before the Republic was formed."

"Yes. Good. But do you know why I used them?"

"Because they were separately condemned using false testimony and exiled."

"Exactly! As I was condemned because I taught history and not rote, you were condemned because they looked at what happened and instead of trying to understand, they cast you aside in their fear.

"The Mass Shadow Generator and this facility reacted to each other. If one had not been here, nothing would have occurred. But in that first instant of activation this Academy and the Generator fed each other. For over thirty thousand years it had been untouched, and it was dying. Like the Star Forge, it was alive after a fashion, and the deaths of three million people and over 400 Jedi fed it to overflowing in an instant. It literally vomited all that energy back into the void.

"The shockwave struck every Jedi in the system, but only five of us were close enough to be directly affected. There was Kielan, Quintain, Wahansi, myself. And you." She looked at me.

"The device wanted to survive, wanted to return to its purpose. It once controlled the entire religious life of the Rakata, and with the merest thought it could do that again, compel every being on every planet to instant obedience to their masters. It reached out, it called to me, and I came. I accepted the gift of seer. I could know and see all within the galaxy. Along with that I could also bring memories to the fore. Think of the wonder that could have been in other gentler hands!

"But I was angry still from my exile. I sought not the memories that can guide and heal, but the ones that harm. When I returned to the others, Wahansi tried to fight me, to convince me to give it up, to return to being the thing I had been. In my fury at the very idea I brought every nightmare from her memory and gave it flesh to deal with her. She could have survived, but she fought me, and died. Quintain was glad to accept his position. To him no one else had ever been real, so punishing others even for a perverted ancient faith came easily to him. Kielan tried to resist, but eventually came around. But we were trapped in the cycle I had unwittingly begun. Without the judge, we were people with power, but not enough power."

"An engine without an ignition." I murmured.

"Yes, Kielan was right about that. We needed our judge. But none that were sent could do that for us. There was that initial spark that the system created when the Mass Shadow Generator went off. Without it no mere mortal mind could accept it without the touch on one of us who wasn't doing it from pique as all of us that stood here were doing. I found myself a Seer unable to direct, with an Executioner all too happy to carry out his mission, and a Warrior that never broke free of the pain of his inclusion.

"I heard eventually about your exile, and it struck me that you were the key. That you had been here, that the Core had affected you. I was sure of it when I saw the record of your trial for the first time over a year before I found you.

"You might say that your actions before the council is what called me to you. Arguing not whether they were right or wrong, but the justice of what they would determine due to their blindness to the facts of what you all faced during the war. When you struck the pintel and converted justice into seek and truth, you showed the judgment a good judge must have. To judge someone on all of the evidence for and against, and mete out punishment as due.

"But events precluded my having you brought here. The Jedi Civil War ended, and the deliveries of fresh Jedi and more importantly a ship necessary to escape ended. For a brief time I had assumed that Revan might be a usable substitute when she returned, but she was just as stubborn as she had ever been, and quite frankly when your sleep is full of nightmares, of things you have done and regretted, you can't very well use them against the person in a trial, now can you? Like your Zabrak follower, she lived with her nightmares ever since they actually occurred.

"Then Quintain fomented his little palace revolt. He wanted to be fed, and I would not allow him to do so. His destruction of Katarr had been bad enough. But what was I after all? Merely an ex-Jedi with delusions of grandeur. Kielan went along I think because he was bored. They stripped me of my power, made me... human again."

"But that freed me to travel, and thanks to Revan, I had a ship. Revan came here twice, four years apart. The first was to see if that nightmare was true, but the second because she had discovered what she faced, and needed her 'good right arm' yet again. I also discovered that your little droid T3 had been with Revan up to her final message to him. To find you, to tell you what she faced and help her in the battle she expected, and where that battle would be fought. I escaped before they even knew I had found it. I went in search of you. So did they after a time but I had the advantage. You see; they were looking for the glimpse of a Jedi. I was looking for a place where the Force didn't exist. I found it.

"The reason the Masters could not feel you in the force was because this place needed someone powerful enough to reach throughout the galaxy. In the Force your aura is go great that it can expand to enclose all of the stars within this galaxy, and as you know, in the center of such a bubble, there is a tiny bit of hollow space. For them it was like trying to see the inside of your head, using your eyes. If you reach out, try to feel what is happening anywhere in the Galaxy, you can see it as if you stood upon that planet untold light years distant, and saw it with your own eyes.

"I rescued you from Kielan's attack, and we escaped. But you had no link to the Force remaining. I was as astonished as the masters had been when I noticed that you could still direct the Force. It was just that after ten years, believing it no longer existed for you since that last confrontation with the masters, you were a child. An apprentice if you will. You could not use the Force because you believed you no longer could.

"It was like the blind leading the blind, but I found the link. For in my mind, I could still use the Force, even though I had been cut off. I used your mind to see what I could still see, feel what I could still feel. Your mind accepted that somehow you had regained your abilities. Once it had, I merely watched. As you returned to your power, I was dragged along with you."

"So you tried to make me in your image?"

She laughed. "Have you never heard that there are no bad students, only bad teachers? I had tried to teach as an historian and failed. I tried again as the seer, and failed. This time I taught not by example, but at cross-purpose.

"On my home world, there is an animal called a quill-pig. It is a huge animal with spines as long as your hand. We raised them, and when you herd a quill-pig you do not get behind and push. You have to lead it. So you take a stick-" She raised her hand, then made a jabbing motion. "-and poke him in the nose. He heads toward you because it irritates him. He follows as long as you give him a prod every now and then, and back away when he has come as far as you wanted.

"Your constant harping on those that joined us, especially the women who joined me."

"Yes. Would you have been willing to try with Brianna my daughter if I had not literally ordered you not to try? Visas, who supported you so well against Quintain. Would you have tried something else if I had not suggested that killing her was a better option? Would you have worked to bring Atton to your side if I had not constantly painted him as a fool?

"Every time you did something kind or just, I was there telling you how stupid it was. I was the devil's advocate that pushed you to decide for yourself. The one that made you choose to become who and what you are now."

"And the resurrected dead? Hanharr, Tobin? Brianna's sisters? The woman Atton murdered?"

"They were but shadows of what they had been. Oh if any of you had touched any of them, they would have been there in what appeared to be flesh. But they were here for only one reason. They were here to separate you from your followers. If any of them had stood here, it would have been a replay of what you saw in the tomb on Korriban, except they would have died facing me in a failed attempt to save you. As much as all but you and T3 hated me, I do have some mercy remaining."

"And the last vision?"

"I linked you to this place in the only remaining opening. I made you the judge it craved so much, and left the judgment of all of us and the Trayus Academy itself." She raised her hand, and the blade of a lightsaber shot from it. "So now it comes to this. You must do the last thing. I must die here, at the seat of my power. Take from me what is yours by right, and avenge yourself."

"No."

"You refuse? Then I should just do this to myself."

"Go ahead." I stared at her. I had no anger for her. Not even pity. She had manipulated me from the minute we first spoke; yet I could not kill her.

"Remember the bond-"

"The bond that never existed." I snapped back. "The one you used to send all of your pain to me that first time merely to convince me that it really existed."

She stared at me, and began to laugh. Not the simple chuckle of a woman, but the full-throated rich laugh of someone who knows you finally see the joke. "Oh so well done! You are greater than any I ever thought to teach."

"Why did you make me think that?"

"To goad you and protect me. I lied to you only once. That was when I made you think the bond could be lethal. I needed it in case you decided to do without my tutelage. There were so many times I know you wanted to tell me to push off. Or even kill me. But the 'bond' would not let you. To protect yourself you needed me near by." She chuckled again.

"But after the Masters cast you aside again, I knew most of my work was done. You were trained to the best of my abilities. Not even a master of the old order could have done better. But you still needed to come here. To end this, and me."

"So I am supposed to kill you here? Become you?"

"If you had been at all acquisitive of power, that would have been the option. For I found the final secret of this place. It is the judge who chooses those who gain the powers of it. If you were to become the judge, others with you would become the other points of the star when you gifted them with it once I was gone. They faced my final test and all succeeded, even Atton."

Visas. I already had my seer. Brianna my warrior. Mira my executioner. But she was too soft hearted, would never fit in that role, would she? But Atton would have. Anyone else would have been unnecessary and would die. In an instant whichever three I chose would become the most powerful beings in the galaxy. And thanks to that gift of mine of easily forming bonds, they would do what I wanted. No more fighting between us, no indecision. The galaxy would be what I wanted it to be.

Yet it would have been a hollow victory. I could no more condemn the ones I chose to such a life than I could eliminate the ones who did not fit that pattern. And removing them is exactly what I would have had to do.

I reached out. "Come with me, Arren. Let me save you one last time."

"Save me?" She shook her head fondly. "You did that when you refused to sink into the darkness I know so well. With every step you have taken toward the light, you have brought me from that abyss. Even now I know what you think, and you are right. Two of those that follow you would have had to die here for the pattern to be formed, and you will give up none of them. Not even me." She lowered her hood. For the first time I saw her full face, and could see the strong jaw of Brianna. The same steely gaze. She walked to the edge of the platform, looking down.

"You need not stay any longer. My time is done. But I have a gift for you, if you will accept it. A glimpse of the future to come.

"You were asked to seek the Jedi. You have found them. Not those that had once held the title, but the ones that will form the new order. The lost Jedi, because no one ever thought to look for them."

"The others."

"Yes. All too old to be taught according to tradition, but when the galaxy needed their strength, they came forward at your call. All they had ever needed was someone like you. A teacher and leader. Someone that would guide them through the first difficult steps, then like a wounded bird you have healed, letting them fly free. The order will be stronger for their existence and their names will shine through the galaxy in the time to come. Their deeds will be remembered long after they are dust."

"Deeds? You can see what they will do?"

"I see what all of you will do. I see the Republic to it's fall, I see the death of the galaxy itself." She smiled again, head cocked. "Would you know that they think of you five millennia from now?"

"My own life, no." I shook my head. "I would rather take it as it comes. But... The others..."

"Part of your life I must tell to explain the rest. For a brief time you will travel with them, but it will not last. Forces within the galaxy will make you walk away from them, for you, Revan, and some of the Jedi to be not yet found must confront it. But that is to the good, for children never grow up if the parent does not let them go. Your skill with Force bonds would tie them to you forever if you did not leave them to their fates, and I tell you now; any of them that try to go with you will die, and your battle with that evil will fail.

"Mira shall hunt for life as she told you. She will seek those that are still lost, for there are so many that can claim the title Jedi if they but know it. She will fight for them, and save them where she can, and weep when she cannot. Many years will pass before she will find herself hunted as you were, by bounty hunters seeking a great prize. They will kill her on Ord Mandell, bringing them great honor, but they will not survive that battle. Her last battle will be the stuff of legend.

"Manda'lor will gain his army, and it will be an army of honor and respect. By the time he finally dies the Mandalorian people will be restored to their honor and place within the galaxy. His people will eventually weaken, but that little death will take many millennia, and will be itself worthy of legend. Long after the society is dead, people will remember them and still shiver with fear. When they are needed, they will return again as if from the grave, and be stronger for it.

"Atton will keep his rogue's heart, but he will turn it like a thief given a badge. He will seek out those that feed upon others. Eventually he will become too good at what he does. He will die, but it will be quick and painless. The only thing he will never have is the love of the woman he would have died for.

"Bao-Dur will return to Telos. His work will bring life back to the planets destroyed, and he will die of old age in the fullness of time revered by many. Better loved than all of you combined.

"My daughter will discover her own love of history. Where Mira will become the Huntress who seeks the new Jedi, she will become the teacher I wished I had been. Her thought will shape the order for millennia, and that thought is what you taught her, not I.

"Visas will return to her home world, and see it at last as she has seen you. But what she does from that point on is unclear. It is as if I am not allowed to see it. But what I can tell you is when you leave she will not go with you. Like Revan, your path is too dangerous to take anyone you care about. She will remember and mourn, and that mourning will make her what she becomes in time."

"But will there even be a Republic to protect?"

She laughed again. "G0T0 is right that the Republic is dying, but I could have told him that it has been dying for over fifteen millennia and it's fall confidently predicted by doomsayers every year. It has staggered along for all of that time, and will stagger along for another five millennia before it succumbs to the disease that afflicts it. But as a corpse beneath the soil gives forth new life from it's essence, it will do so. There will be a period of total corruption but after that time, it will arise anew, and in time better and brighter than what has ever been."

"Arren-"

"Spare me, Marai, my dear child." She looked at me sadly. "I am thin and stretched, and if you had gone to darkness, my entire life would have been a waste. Now I am free, as you will be when this is gone." She waved toward the structure. "May the Force be with you always." She gave me a cheery wave with her left arm minus it's hand, and stepped out into the abyss.

I walked slowly back to the room when Kielan still knelt.

"She is gone." I told him. "And this will be gone minutes after I leave."

He stood facing me. "Come." He escorted me from the building. The mass of dark Jedi at the main entrance had grown to almost a hundred. They parted for us, and flowed back together after we passed.

Brianna wanted to leap into my arms; I knew that from her look. But she was watching the mass that faced us grimly. The others except for Atton faced outward as well.

"Mistress?" One of the Dark Jedi called plaintively. "Are you leaving us?"

"They will be upset." Kielan said. "Run."

"Kielan-"

"Marai, you can't save everybody. I died here. I just haven't laid down yet." He reached out touching my face. I passed him my lightsaber. "Go."

I walked up and Mira handed me a lightsaber from her belt. "Figure you might need this. You got a plan?"

"Like a cheating Pazaak player after the last hand. Walk quietly toward the exit, and when they figure out they have been cheated, run like hell." I said.

Bao Dur threw Atton up on his shoulder. "Lead the way General."

We started at a slow walk toward the path home. Behind us the plaintive cries had grown alarmed, then as we began to jog, angry. There was a hiss of blades, and a dozen or more charged after us. Kielan met them in a flurry of blows, and screams began to follow us as we began to run.

We came to the first bridge, and perhaps half of that hundred were baying at our heels. We took the span at a run, and almost staggered to a stop at the sight of half a dozen droids at the bottom.

"Amused Rejoinder: We were instructed to keep them at bay." One said. "Declarative statement: get off the bridge so we can blow it."

We ran down the span, and had barely reached the end when the 30,000-year-old bridge shattered like glass. A few dozen of the dark ones had made it across, and they were taken under fire by the droids as we ran on. We reached the next span with only a few following, and that one was also destroyed. None had made it past there, and we hurried on, passing the humming Mass Shadow Generator.

HK47 stood at the ramp. "Impulsive statement: It is good to see you again not-a-meatbag-Marai. Board quickly."

Bao Dur dropped Atton in the med bay, running forward, followed by Mira. I saw their fingers dancing over the controls, felt the ship lurch, then spin to leap toward the stars. I went aft, and Brianna had already switched on the aft viewer.

Where are you going? A voice seemed to ask. I suddenly felt the crushing weight of loneliness. I must survive, my mission is to survive. I felt someone catching my arm, then someone else grabbing the other. Brianna was screaming at me, Visas was begging. I had to do this I had to give that lonely voice what it needed! But they held me down, fighting me!

"800 thousand." someone said. "850, 880,"

I flung Brianna aside, chopping at Visas. She caught my hand, and I flipped over her shoulder. I caught her clothes, and she fell atop me, but I was trying to do something with my other hand.

"One million. One one, one two-"

I flung Visas aside, and even as my hand pulled it free, I recognized the dead man circuit I had ripped free. I closed my eyes, even though I knew we would be dead before I even recognized that I had-

"One five, one six-"

Wait a minute. The system should have cut in. We should be crushed by a million gravities...

"Two million, two million one. Ignition." The ship lurched backwards toward the core, but we were outside the kill zone. I staggered to my feet, staring at the screen. Malachor V had taken on a red tint, light running toward it faster than it had anywhere around us. The star flared, plasma rushing toward the core as it shifted in its orbit, both attracted to each other by the massive gravity well. I could see the core resisting, all of the energy infused in it struggling to survive even as it was dragged to it's death.

Still we ran. No one knew what happened if you accelerated a planetary sized mass to light speed. Would it try to tunnel into hyperspace and go plunging into the swirling lights forever? Or would it stubbornly refuse, striking the star at a large percentage of light speed?

The star bulged, then behind us it went into a nova. It exploded, but it was like a shaped charge, all of the energy vented in a cone with Malachor V in its focus. The core disappeared into the plasma and was gone.

I gasped. the voice in my head was gone. I staggered over to Brianna. "Oh, gods, my sister, I am sorry." I whispered.

"A neat trick." She coughed, holding her side. "I will have to remember that one."

Bao-Dur came aft, staring at us in shock. Both Brianna and Visas were battered, and bloody. I looked as if I had stuck my head in a wind tunnel.

"What happened?"

"The damn thing tried to call me back. Make me stay." I whispered. "But the dead man circuit didn't work!"

"Oh that?" He asked dead pan. "You could never lie very well, General. So I told you that it was a dead man circuit. It was just a heart monitor." He lifted his own wrist, and removed the one he wore. "If you died, I figured we wouldn't have a chance, so I rigged the dead man circuit into my cuff instead."

"You..." I stared at him. Brianna and Visas looked toward me. Mira had come from forward.

"Get him!" We all charged, tackling him.

End

Author's end note: For those interested, over at Lucasforums under the same screen name, I posted two full Star Wars novels set not in the times we remember, but back in the midst of time before the Republic was formed. The people I mentioned, Zardan Landru of Fondor when Kreia spoke to Atris, Breia Solo and Sienna Dodonna that are mentioned above, were in the second of those books, Republic Dawn, though Breia (And her parents and her Namesake from Echana) was first seen in Star Wars: The Beginning.

One thing I did that none of the game designers, or a lot of authors have done, is scale back the weapons in those books. I constantly denigrate the game's stealth fields and personal shields during the critiques I have done for the last eight years over at starwarsknights and lucasforums primarily because you don't see anything like them in any of the movies, and since the games are set four millenna earlier, it's unlikely they would have existed then. I had the same problem with the Shadow Mass Generator because the technology didn't exist until right before the Clone Wars. So it's like Gilgamesh using a Neutron Bomb in the ancient legends, or Ragnarok being fought with Anti-matter warheads.

Or on my own personal note, having my old D&D character from the 70s when I used to play (And DM that game) named Adlon the Accurate using his Barrett Murpheesboro 5-0 to shoot Orcs.

I stand by my comments made to one reader; When I wrote this, and wrote those books mentioned above Nothing beyond the name of the Echani race was in the Wookiepedia. What I did was create the Echani society, from their religion to their mores, and had a lot of fun doing it, rather than just make them a wannabe clone race as that gottverdamnt article author did. So he and whoever wrote the article can go hang for all I care; preferably over Beggar's Canyon on Tatooine, though over one of the pits on Nar Shaddaa will do in a pinch.

So if you want to see my version of the Echani people, read The Beginning.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did writing it, end especially editing it on the fly as I posted. If I can find an agent, maybe those two works and the third (Which is where the events Kreia alluded to actually happen) mentioned above might see paper rather than electrons...