Undaunted

[Serena Laran]

When the meeting finally ended, when she could calmly excuse herself from the building and leave, Serena started walking. Perhaps Solomon was trying to catch up with her - she had a sense of him in the distance - but she could not wait. She simply had to. Get. Away.

She found herself outside her ship, and she keyed into it and strode to the cockpit, flipping switches and starting the repulsors with the Force as she sat down. Without waiting for permission from the Alliance men and women who regulated the traffic to and from Ossus, nor completing any preflight checks, she took the controls and poured power to the repulsors. Gaoth Argus Domhain lifted its bulk gracefully into the air and she left the Jedi village behind.

In truth she had no destination in mind, just a claustrophobic feeling that even the open sky was not curing. The freighter lifted above the highest clouds and she flew with the three suns as her companions...yet her thoughts were still dark. The clouds thinned and disappeared, and the oceans were beneath her, glittering in the sunlight.

She flew on.

When she reached the far continent, and the great gash in the earth that had touched the sea, she worked the controls and brought the ship down, landing on a patch of bare earth near what had become a deep bay. Leaving the Gaoth behind, Serena walked slowly toward the water.

She passed a simple stone monument, a durasteel plaque bolted to it, etched with the names of the fallen. Good men and women, loyal to a man who had betrayed their trust and stolen their free will. As she drew nearer to the blackened and jagged cliff's edge, she could feel a Darkness on the area; a lingering curse that would not soon dissipate.

Serena sat near the cliff, looking blankly out at the unnatural inlet, and past it toward the still untouched horizon.

[Rev Solomon]

Serena had a head start on him, and a TL-1800 light freighter's sublights were significantly faster than a thirty-year-old Theta-variant medical shuttle. Solomon could only track Gaoth's progress from a high orbital position and hope it didn't disappear to the far side of Ossus, out of sight and out of reach of Exodus's modest means. When he saw where the freighter had begun its descent, his heart sank right along with it. A Jedi feared not the dead, but that didn't mean they had to go baiting their own personal ghosts. He lay in a pursuit course with the best speed his atmospheric engines could give him.

As he made his approach, he spotted her as a tiny figure on a crop of stone reaching into the sparkling water. From this vantage, he could see the massive shadow looming beneath the gleaming surface, like a monster lying in wait. He chased the image from his mind and located a clear landing spot not far from where Gaoth had settled.

Once he was on the ground, he crossed toward the shore, his long, nerfhide coat billowing in the stiff sea breeze. It was cooler here than in Sanctuary One, especially with two of the three suns already setting over the sea before them. The glare over the water obliterated any sign of the leviathan lurking underneath, covering over its shadow in glittering streaks of light that capped every wave in the bay. Solomon didn't announce his presence, and didn't try to hide it, either. He simply walked to a point next to Serena and joined her in sitting on the rocky slope overlooking the sea.

[Serena Laran]

He sat beside her, and she tilted her head toward him, the shoulder hunching up a little to meet it as she continued to stare out toward the setting suns. Silence reigned for a few more minutes, the wind lessening, though a few flyaway strands of hair still escaped from her braid.

"I don't know if I can do this anymore," Serena said, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. "Everyone looks at me like I am a font of wisdom..." Her voice trailed off.

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon looped his arm around Serena's shoulders and held her close. She felt small and fragile at his side, a perception that was difficult to square with the incredible power, the incredible poise he'd seen her command in the face of grievous danger. But love meant sharing every vulnerability.

"Wisdom doesn't mean knowing all the answers," he said. "And strength doesn't mean you bear your burdens alone."

He leaned in and kissed the top of her head.

"Tell me what's on your mind."

[Serena Laran]

She shook her head against his shoulder, resisting the embrace only nominally before leaning against him. "I thought I had placed it well behind me, my time with the Inquisition. And yet this man appears among us and I feel as though ...as though my heart was being sandpapered. It is raw once more, and I can see now that what I thought had healed to a scar was just a scab. I almost attacked Mr. Etanial, to prove a point."

Serena lifted her head a bit, so she wasn't mumbling into folded arms. "I cannot forgive them, Sol. We speak of redemption and ...I am not strong enough to offer it."

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon gently rubbed her shoulder as he carefully weighed his thoughts. The last thing he wanted was to deepen her pain with a few poorly chosen words.

"Forgiveness doesn't mean calling evil something it's not. And it doesn't mean turning a blind eye to threats in our midst. You can't blame yourself for your feelings, Serena."

[Serena Laran]

"Thank you...for what you did in the meeting. You helped me keep it to together." Serena uncrossed her arms and covered her face with her hands. "I haven't spoken of what they did to me, not really. I thought... I mean, I know talking about things helps, but perhaps I was ashamed. Healer, heal thyself, or something like that. "

Her voice trailed off, and Sol just sat quietly, waiting for her to continue, a warm presence at her side. "Do you know what a scan grid is, Sol?"

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon frowned, sensing they were about to journey together down a dark path.

"It's a geological instrument of some kind," he said. "There were several in the mines of Geonosis."

[Serena Laran]

"The Inquisitorate uses them as torture devices." She felt disconnected from her words, as if someone else was saying them. "It is... extremely painful. To be suspended above one, drugs in my system disconnecting me from the Force... for days... sleep bringing only nightmares and no relief...

"If I had not been rescued when I had been, I am certain there would have been nothing of me left in this body."

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon's arm unconsciously tightened around her, as if in guarantee against her ever being torn away from his side again. Horror, anger, and sorrow rolled over his soul in equal measure, all of them emotions that, he knew, given their way, would pull him down toward darkness. He could only imagine how they seethed in Serena's spirit, like corruption in an old wound, keeping it open and searing, and threatening to overtake all the health she had left.

"You're safe," he whispered. "We're together. Tell me anything you need to."

[Serena Laran]

"For much of it they didn't even ask me any questions. And when they finally did..." Serena's voice broke, and she paused to collect herself. "I only resisted telling them exactly where the other Jedi were because I literally didn't know. A convoy of ships... I told them everything. Everything! I gave up the planet I sheltered on after the Purge. You saw the results of that - increased Imperial presence, oppression..."

Her voice sounded thin, and tired. "I saw friends from the past in my nightmares. You, A'na... my master. All dead...all grasping to pull me down... And I wanted to join you. I thought I had, when I saw you, after I was rescued." The first sun slipped below the horizon, streaks of red and orange fighting with the remaining suns for dominance in the sky.

"I thought I was better," Serena said. "But I fear I am broken, Sol. Zem brings this man into our midst...and he welcomes Loklorien back with open arms. She murdered children." Hot tears spilled from her eyes, but she didn't dash them away. "Am I wrong?" She looked up at him. "I cannot forget their names...but their faces are fading. To welcome her back..." She didn't even know how to finish the sentence.

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon felt a new surge of pain at the mention of A'na's name, like a thorn prick in his heart, a monument to his own sins. Part of him wished to bury it - after all, this was Serena's time now, and he didn't wish to cause her more pain. Another part said, you should have told her long ago.

Whether for kindness or for cowardice, he pushed the accusing voice away and anchored himself in Serena's words.

"You grieve because of your compassion. You long for justice because you are just. And you hurt because you have been grievously wronged. These are normal feelings, Serena. I feel them. I'm sure Zem does as well."

Solomon lost himself in the brilliance of the sky as he sought for purchase on these thoughts and feelings. He'd been down this road before, but every time he returned felt like he was forging a brand new path.

"When I heard that Anakin Skywalker had turned back, in the end, I didn't want to believe," he said. "A deathbed conversion, after all he did, all he helped the Empire to do... What good are regrets after a lifetime of murder and betrayal? Any common criminal could say the same in the hour of his execution."

His voice had taken a bitter edge, even now, as he peeled back the veil he'd cast over those memories.

"But there he stood, just as you saw me on Generis, one with the Force in death. Not because he had atoned for his sins in some grand act of sacrifice, but because, in the Light Side, in the love of his son, in the balance of the Force, he had been regenerated, given new life. And I realized then, more clearly than ever, that his redemption... was the same as my redemption."

[Serena Laran]

The same as my redemption.

Serena closed her eyes, the tears drying up as she pressed her face into his chest, leaning more fully against his warm body. This...this was not something she wanted to talk about. Of course she knew intellectually that Solomon had fallen to the Dark side after the fall of the Republic and the destruction of the Jedi Order. He had been forthright with that information, and she had brushed it away. It doesn't matter, she'd said. You're here now. You came back to the light.

She could see now that she had simply refused to acknowledge the terrible truth that lurked behind his confession. What difference was there between Sol or Loklorien? Everything.

Nothing.

The only difference was that Sol's journey had happened in the distant past. She had never seen him as something... else. It was easy to pretend he was the same now as he had been when she had first met him; as he had been on Xagobah. Serena's cheeks heated at the memory of their time on that planet, in the thick of the Clone Wars. And he was the same, merely older, as she was. Yet he insisted that he had been touched by the Dark side. It was why he had sought out Loklorien on Generis, after all. A kinship he felt with her...because their struggles were the same.

Lok had left him for dead. Serena's heart hardened at the memory, of how she had found him, in a cave... near death. How she had struggled and poured herself into bringing him back from the brink. Lok had caused that. He bore the scars of that encounter still, in his stubbornness and refusal of a prosthetic arm. She had often wondered why, but he had never been forthcoming with his reasoning.

Perhaps in some twisted sense of penance he wanted the constant reminder of his failure. His failure with Loklorien...and his failure in the past. For Serena his missing arm was a saw blade, biting into her heart. Any shred of forgiveness she might have offered to Lok was stripped away with a glance at his missing limb.

The silence stretched on between them, and she realized she'd become lost in her thoughts. Serena took in a juddering breath, twisting until her back was against him and she was holding his existing arm against her body. She had hidden from this hard truth for far too long.

"Tell me."

[Rev Solomon]

There was nothing for it now - it was time to lay all accounts bare. Solomon inhaled a long, purposeful breath, feeling Serena's weight against him as his chest expanded, and contracted once more. She was a warm and reassuring presence at his side, and anchor of light as he journeyed back to the darkest chapter of his life.

"The Dark Side doesn't take you all at once," he said. "You go by pieces. And you go willingly, every step of the way, one reasonable decision at a time. Until one day, you look up and see how far you've gone, and by then you've fooled yourself into thinking it doesn't matter anymore."

Solomon stared out over the sparkling sea, a canopy of ethereal beauty hiding something dark and sinister beneath the waves. "When Command 66 came, at first I thought it was a new Separatist weapon that had turned the clones against us. Master Tau and I were on Geonosis. He pulled a hive entrance down on top of himself to shut the clones out, or we both would have been overwhelmed. I spent the next three weeks surviving in the tunnels. Stealing food and supplies. Killing to stay alive."

His eyes fell away from the breathtaking suns-set on the horizon to the scuffed stone at their feet. "I killed so many clones on Geonosis. At first it was self-preservation. I acted out of fear. Then anger. And revenge. I learned from their comm chatter that they were hunting Jedi across the galaxy. All Jedi. I blocked up entire tunnels with their bodies. Hid among them to defeat their scans. I told myself it didn't matter - they were only clones, artificial beings following their programming, not that different from droids. I thought I knew my limits.

"I was wrong."

[Sol Iman]

Every tunnel in this twisted warren looked the same - porous rock shored up by cells of organic resin, gloom scarcely tempered by guttering light panels that even in their prime hadn't been designed for the human visual spectrum. Only the pilfered signal scanner at Sol Iman's hip gave him any kind of direction at all, and that was thready. But it was more hope than he'd had in the last three weeks of thievery and murder.

A ship.

He'd found many Geonosian vessels scattered through the hive already. Fighters, construction pods, freighters. All of them slagged, either by Republic weaponsfire or by the Geonosians themselves, to keep their airpower out of the enemy's hands. But just two days ago he'd picked up an active power source buried deep in the hive, a power source with a hypermatter signature - a hyperdrive. Which meant not just passage off this planet, but escape from this system.

Sol didn't know where he'd go. Didn't know if there was anywhere in the galaxy that was not being ravaged by clones in search of Jedi survivors. But he could figure that out once he was safe in the black. First he needed to find the ship before the clones did.

He didn't know who was more surprised when he turned the corner - him, or the armored Geonosian soldier patrolling the other way. It was a big specimen, almost human weight, covered in heavy plates of chitinous armor and armed with a sonic blaster and a coiled confessor's whip. But Sol's reflexes, aided by the Force, were faster, and the insectoid could only manage a chirp of alarm before the padawan's blazing blue lightsaber split him in two.

Sol was never far from his Battlemind training these days, and without looking he'd already sounded out the room with his higher senses - it was a roughly rounded chamber some twenty meters across, recently excavated given the luster of the rock faces and the slipshod nature of the support beams holding up the ceiling. The room was fed by multiple tunnels, and it was full of cargo crates, a supply storehouse, or a staging area for a launch. Sol was already diving behind one of these crates when a pair of sonic blasts thundered overhead, peppering him with rocky spall as they impacted the far wall.

Two more soldiers had entered the room, their fluttering wings a basso drone as they sought a higher vantage. Sol rose out of his cover and threw one hand to the sky - a heavy barrel rocketed straight up, high-centered one of the flying Geonosians, and smashed him to the ceiling in a burst of armor plates and gushing ichor. Then he leapt, boosting himself off the nearest crate, and intercepted the other soldier in the air, casting him down to the dusty ground and sending his head spinning into the shadows.

There would be more, he knew. His lightsaber bathed the tunnels in a baleful blue glow as he charged along into the next chamber, the one that held his prize - a sleek Geonosian transport, a graceful, organic thing shaped like an inverted teardrop, its engine cowls already glowing with potential. Its loading ramp was down and surrounded by more crates, supplies already gathered for a hasty escape and a long exile. It was a stroke of good fortune, the first Sol had seen in what now seemed like a lifetime.

Three more Geonosians came at him, armed with smaller chemical blasters, and he only dimly registered that they were not soldiers, but workers, as he slew them. Another worker was crushed fatally to the wall by an invisible hand, and a fifth trembled before him, the towering avatar of destruction with a tongue of blue flame in hand, before throwing its weapon to the ground and bowing at his feet.

"No!" it clicked. "No! No! No! Treasure."

"You speak Basic?" Sol said as he stepped closer. He sensed no more threats skulking around the launch bay, only this cowering insect with pulsing spiracles and shuddering wings who gestured frantically to the open cargo bay of the transport.

"Treasure," it pleaded. "Colony's treasure. Please."

"You think you can bribe me?" Sol spat. "I don't give a damn about your treasure. I just want off this Force-forsaken rock!"

"No!" the Geonosian cried, and as Sol moved for the cargo bay, it seized up its weapon again. One stroke of Sol's lightsaber ended its protests. And then the padawan marched up the cargo ramp to claim his prize.

It was a large bay, for the size of the ship. Later he'd realize that several bulkheads had been removed to make more room, so the ship could be loaded beyond capacity. On either side of the bay, on shelves stacked to the ceiling, wrapped carefully in nests of resin and silk, were dozens upon dozens of translucent white globes. And on the floor, wrapped in silken chrysalises and staring up with wide, plaintive, segmented eyes, were over thirty Geonosian larvae.

Sol tried not to think about what had to happen now. Didn't even want to justify it. He'd killed the last adults in the colony already. He had no way of caring for a hundred Geonosian young. The universe was cruel. They were dead anyway.

He tried moving them safely at first. Cradling the pupae one at time. Two. Loading them on a sled. But with the clones closing, he had to work fast. And he still had no usable supplies on board.

Only the eggs remained. Were they still alive? He had no way of knowing. He dashed into the cockpit and started up the pre-flight cycles, then returned to the cargo bay to move whole shelving units. The eggs were packed securely in their nests. Even as they jostled, not one of them fell.

He could hear jackboots in the corridor, hurrying to the sound of idling repulsorlifts. They would be slowed down by the barricade of crates he'd thrown together, but not for long. He'd maneuvered another unit to the cargo ramp, but in his haste, it slipped off the edge. The whole thing toppled over, spilling eggs to the duracrete floor in a spreading pool of vital juices.

Plasma cutters hissed at the tunnel door, the final barrier between him and a column of clones. He threw away his last pretenses, seized the final rack of eggs with the Force, and flung it from the cargo bay. One of the larvae raised a keening cry. He tried not to hear it as he shut the loading ramp and lunged back to the cockpit.

When the clone troopers finally broke through, it was to a massacre of Geonosian infants and the fading roar of engines down the launch tunnel.

[Serena Laran]

She'd tried to stay strong while he recounted the tale of his escape from Geonosis, but her calm was already cracked from the events of the day. Silent tears rolled down her cheeks, her face hidden from his sight, but she pressed her face to his sleeve as she hugged his arm to her chest. After he finished, there was a stretch of silence between them.

Serena sniffed, reaching up at last to attempt to dry her cheeks before she dampened his sleeve too much. "I... I didn't know. But we all did what we had to, to survive. They were dark days." Hollow platitudes, empty excuses. No doubt Sol knew them for what they were: mere words.

And he had come through his dark days back to the light. She felt like her heart would break if she heard more - was there more? - but now they had started down the path together. She would see it through.

"I cannot see how anyone would justify the murder of padawans as a reasonable decision," Serena whispered. "Even if it were one step after years of steps into the dark. What reason could she give? And that she somehow knew she was falling; she was able to somehow hide a piece of herself away, ruining a man's life in the process...if she was that aware, she should have told someone." Serena realized then that she felt resentment toward Zem, as well, for not getting others involved from the beginning, when he suspected something was wrong.

Most of all she felt a deep, deep shame. She, who had been called banfaith, a prophetess, had seen no vision of Lok's betrayals.

[Rev Solomon]

Solomon held her tightly, lending her strength and also drawing strength from her in ways she probably didn't even realize.

"This isn't the first time I've told this story," he said. "I made my confessions to Father Eli at the monastery on Generis, oh, a little more than thirty years ago now. He was a clone, like Brother Jan. And he listened to how I'd slaughtered his brothers by the hundreds. Not just on Geonosis, but afterward, too, all part of a misguided crusade to exact my own personal brand of justice. They may have looked like men, but many of them were no older than the children Loklorien killed."

He kissed her hair again, breathed deeply from her scent, and embraced her trembling essence in the Force with his own. He knew what it was to be cut to the heart, lying exposed, pained, and vulnerable. He'd been there twice in his life - once it had led him to madness, and finally to healing.

"But there is a reason the Sith operate in pairs. The darkness of one soul in pain pales before the darkness of two souls, equally lost, feeding on one another's misery and desperation. Loklorien had a master who had spent centuries practicing the arts of corruption and deceit. I... I found someone else, too."

[Serena Laran]

His spirit was strong, like a rock beside her, a dissonance between his essence and his words of darkness. She did not want to ask.

Putting her head into the sand was not an acceptable response. Serena looked out over the sea, the glittering water shining like a jewel above where the bulk of the Dauntless rested. His confession of killing clones, objectively no older than children...yet still she could find a reason for it. Clones were the enemy. Of course it did not excuse murder. But she could see the logic in it, the cold, hard logic. Killing padawans, however... there was an evil logic there too, for the destruction of the Jedi.

She did not want to ask.

"Who was it?"

[Sol Iman]

The Geonosian transport crashed out of hyperspace within a cosmic spitting distance of the other vessel, a feat that should have been impossible, even for a computer. Sol Iman took it as a sign of the Force's blessing. For the past week he'd been tracking it, intercepting its coded transmissions, mirroring its increasingly circuitous series of jumps through the interstellar backwaters of the Outer Rim, and now, hanging placidly over the frigid skies of Ilum, it had been delivered to him like a dove in a snare: a GX-1 Short Hauler, kitted as a diplomatic transport, and even with its IFF scrambled, its Jedi Temple livery was unmistakable at this range. A survivor.

That was what his hope told him. But he'd not had much use for hope since the clone army had started murdering Jedi all across the galaxy. His stolen transport was equipped for interdiction and assault, and had likely seized dozens of Republic vessels over the course of the war. Sol grasped the tractor beam controls and found them handy enough, and before the other ship's pilot could fire up her engines and flee, he'd wrenched the short hauler off her course and reeled her in like a writhing opee on a harpoon.

As the pinioned transport drew nearer, Sol closed his eyes and stretched his feelings across the void that separated them. He could sense bright notes of panic and desperation from the other ship, not the leaden, unthinking resolve he was used to sensing from clones under fire. There was power in that sort of fear, he'd recently learned. Friend or foe, he would have to approach them cautiously.

With a wave of his finger, he flipped the com switch on the other side of the cockpit and opened a short-range channel. "Jedi transport, I have seized your vessel by the authority of the Galactic Republic. Prepare to be boarded, and consider your loyalties carefully."

Just as abruptly, he closed the channel and stooped out of the cockpit down the center corridor to the boarding hatch. Running on automation, the Geonosian transport would pull the short hauler against its concave underbelly and mate its own docking cowl to its prey, forcibly if necessary. A tremor ran through both ships as the passageway was joined and sealed, and as magnetic clamps forced the short hauler's aft hatch open with a terrible grinding of gears.

As the hatch screamed open, Sol Iman stood there in his bloodstained armor and tattered robes like an avenging wraith, his lightsaber humming in his hand.

[A'na Eldhil]

No sooner had the doors opened but A'na flung herself at the boarding party, her lightsaber flashing as she used her Juyo to bring everything she had to bear against the intruders. The precious cargo she was protecting would not fall into the hands of the Republic.