Love...Honor...Obey

[Andreus Makaryk]

Lightning flashed up ahead. Driving rain and small hail pounded and thwacked across a Jedi padawan's windshield. His insignificant starfighter bounced about, battered by wind gusts up to ninety-five knots. Violent downdrafts, too. The wind couldn't seem to decide what to do. Other than try and make the padawan's stomach churn at thirty-six thousand feet, of course. The padawan thought he saw a waterspout beginning to form, deep inside the massive cloud he happened to be flying through at the moment. Tornadic activity was always fun. At thirty-six thousand feet, the padawan, inexperienced as a Jedi but highly experienced as a pilot, had flown directly into the heart of the storm. His Master would've considered such action foolish. As would any of his former commercial flight instructors, mostly because the padawan had shut most of his instruments off. But he was flying solo today, and besides, the storms around here were somewhat...unavoidable.

Andreus Makaryk would have it no other way. He had to refine his abilities and senses in the Force somehow.

Kamino was as good a place to meditate as any. Fourteen hours' journey from any of the major Jedi Temples, it was far away from the reaches or care of galactic politics, or as Andreus preferred to describe such concepts, poly-ticks. The world's climate posed challenging conditions. There was lots of available, clear airspace in which to hone his skills. While most Jedi might find peace and tranquility in the gardens at Tython or some such locale, Andreus found himself most able to relax in his natural habitat...a cockpit. Storms such as these provided ideal meditation opportunities--instead of constantly checking instruments all the time, he calculated his position by sensing inertial changes with the Force. That was why he had shut off most of his instruments, much to the bewilderment of his astromech droid. He had to sense the changes in wind speed and direction coming up ahead of time.

All of this kept him a busy pilot at thirty-six thousand feet. Keeping his E-wing in stable, level flight without looking at his artificial horizon when perhaps he should have been was a bit of a challenge, especially as eighty knots on the nose suddenly became a hundred-knot crosswind, but nevertheless doable. With his Master usually busy with duties on the Jedi Council, Andreus had lots of time to teach himself the groundwork of Force Navigation.

He focused his mind on all of this, on maintaining his holding pattern in a patch of empty airspace eighty-three nautical miles from Tipoca City, the planetary capital. Since there wasn't anything else worth mentioning for thousands of miles except ocean, water, and more ocean, eighty-three nautical miles allowed plenty of distance between him and city traffic that might otherwise collide with him if he wasn't paying close enough attention. However, Andreus still kept an open ear out for collision-imminent warnings from his transponder, which he had left on. Regulations didn't permit him to turn that off.

Of course, his ship's comms were also routed through the transponder, so Space Control could still contact him and such. But the padawan didn't know that someone else had come way the kriff out here. That someone also had interest in contacting him...

 

[D.C.]

The Sith Lord awoke with a shock. He had such a terrible headache and his heart was pounding, as if it tried to beat itself a way out of his chest. He clutched his head in both hands, feeling his wet blonde hair. Where was he? What's happened?

He glanced around and saw that he was lying on a metal floor, just outside a small dark room where nobody seemed to come. The rain crashed down on him and he knew that if he wouldn't find shelter from the rain, he'd get sick.

He rose to a stand and he had a black out for a moment. He stood still, closed his eyes and breathed slowly, waiting patiently for the headache to fade away. He turned to the entrance to the abandoned room and slipped inside, pulling up his black hood. He wore a black longcoat and his face was hidden inside the hood, just so he wouldn't get recognized... not that there were many people who would recognize him in Tipoca.

He realized why he had awakened, but he couldn't remember how he ended up outside. He decided it did not matter for now, because time was of the essence. He had sensed a familiar presence in the Force; someone he had tried to contact. Someone he used to know.

For the first time in years, he felt a little bit nervous. There were but a few people he actually cared about. Being a Sith Lord doesn't mean you can't care about others, after all.

He strode down the hallways. Fortunately he was already close to the space port and he managed to get there pretty fast. The doors opened before him and he rushed onto the landing pad, back into the rain. He looked up to the sky, but didn't see anything initially. He reached out in the Force and concentrated on the Force presence, the one that had led him to this landing pad. He closed his eyes and concentrated until he could see a vision of an E-wing in his mind's eye. He knew that inside that E-wing, sat the one he was trying to contact. The one he wanted to talk to.

'There you are...' Oseth whispered. He knew he had to make that man land, or this would all be for nothing. He had to make him land and tell him what he needed to know. The dark man bit his lip and quickly glanced over to the communications center up there. He saw a couple of Kaminoans sitting there, he could see them through the glass.

The man in black summoned the ancient magic, which he had been using throughout all his life, and concentrated it one of the two long-necked aliens. He entered the one's mind and whispered to him: ~Make that E-wing land. Giving him immediate clearance and order him to come down before he crashes down into the city. Do it now.~

The Kaminoan, who apparently didn't even realize he was being mindtricked, turned to his partner and they seemed to discuss something. Then Oseth could see the Kaminoan reaching for the communications system to contact the E-wing, to order the pilot to land on the platform.

Oseth looked back to the vessel that was flying straight through the storm and summoned even more of his mystical powers in case he had to save the pilot from crashing down. He wouldn't hesitate to step in if something happened to Andreus Makaryk.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

"Juliet-Sierra-Niner-Whiskey, turn left heading two-niner-zero, expedite landing, cleared to land Docking Pad Thirteen-A."

That was an unusual instruction. Andreus was now eighty-five nautical miles from that docking pad. Traffic Control just didn't hand out landing clearances that far ahead, nor when the pilot was still at 36,000 feet. Not to mention he had never requested landing clearance, and the controller had never specified a descent pattern. It was highly unusual for traffic authorities to order spacecraft to land without the pilot first requesting clearance, unless that pilot had broken some regulation. So unusual, in fact, that Andreus had never heard of it happening.

The pilot tapped his headset. "Juliet-Sierra-Niner-Whiskey, say again?"

"Turn left heading two-niner-zero, expedite landing, cleared to land Docking Pad Thirteen-A."

Despite the rarity of the situation, Andreus nevertheless was obliged to obey the controller's instruction. He turned left, due west-northwest, towards Tipoca on the heading ordered by the controller, somewhat confused. He still needed to get down, and given he had flown his holding pattern at three hundred fifty knots, he needed to drop airspeed as well. Even with the instruction to expedite arrival, it would still take him a short while, perhaps fifteen to twenty minutes, to reach his docking pad. He was simply too far out to be prompt, and Oseth would be kept waiting.

As he turned, he reduced power to the engines and deployed speed brakes; as the E-wing was rated for atmospheric flight, it had some atmospheric control surfaces to work with. Speed brakes would not only help him slow down, but lose altitude faster without having to mess with repulsorlift settings, and besides, they could be retracted more quickly than repulsorlift power and balance settings could be altered.

The small E-wing bounced about, testing the fortitude of Andreus' stomach in the process. Nevertheless, Andreus would be fine. He had made some special modifications to his starfighter, and in the process practically ripped it apart and reassembled it from its constituent components to ensure it was both airworthy and spaceworthy. Unlike his famed landing at Coruscant, this time everything worked. His precognition allowed him a second or so of warning of upcoming nasty wind gusts, their direction, and a general idea of their speed. Numbers also filled his mind. The Force could be incredibly precise, if one was properly attuned to it, and as this kind of flying had been Andreus' primary mode of meditation, he was. He hadn't quite perfected it to the level of his instruments yet, but having Force-indicated altitude correct to within a hundred feet and Force-indicated airspeed correct within five knots was no small accomplishment. Andreus wondered if he could actually land on the Force alone.

A lot of pilots would have called him crazy if he would've said that out loud, over comms where everyone could hear. He didn't.

Eighteen thousand feet, two hundred seventy knots. Forty-two nautical miles. Andreus was getting closer. Oseth would feel it, though Andreus hadn't sensed Oseth quite yet.

More lightning flashes. Another waterspout. The storm was getting worse.

Andreus reflexively closed his eyes, just in time to avoid getting blinded by a direct lightning strike. Though watching that through the Force might make Oseth wince, the only practical effect it had was forcing Andreus to close his eyes to avoid temporarily getting blinded, as it passed harmlessly through the spacecraft. Spacecraft were designed to survive lightning strikes, as most that were flown with frequency got struck at least once every other year. Stormy worlds were like that. Though Andreus might have to replace a couple spent static discharge wicks after he landed.

Eight thousand feet, two hundred ten knots, twenty nautical miles...

Andreus began to feel uneasy. He started to sense something, something very dark. He didn't know what yet, but it seemed vaguely familiar. Not long-ago familiar, but recently familiar. A bad feeling permeated his stomach, which would normally have been nigh impervious to the turbulence Andreus had to fly through. Not anymore. His stomach wrenched with every bump of turbulence now.

He was getting closer. Only a couple more minutes. Andreus lowered his landing gear.

The bad feeling intensified, the darkness grew more well-defined. Like Andreus was flying into the well-defined eye of a very strong hurricane. A hurricane of darkness. Wait a minute...that would explain the unusual instructions from Traffic Control. Perhaps they had been compromised.

One nautical mile, sixty knots, two hundred feet. Andreus was using the repulsorlifts to brake for landing, by now, but he was unsure of whether he should. Suddenly, all doubt in his mind vanished, as he realized that 1) this was the same dark presence that had tried to kill him and more than six hundred others on Flight 391, and 2) that dark presence was present on his landing pad. He was just certain that dark presence was still hunting him, that it wanted to kill him.

He pulled his nose up, reached for his throttle and put power on. Lots of power on, including his afterburners. His engines rumbled, then roared, a deep, thundering bass that violated every noise abatement regulation in the book and made the ground vibrate a hundred feet below. The engines strained to gobble up all available power; they sucked it out of the ship's capacitor when the reactor couldn't quite produce enough to feed them. Windows on the ground shook. Andreus went from sixty knots to sonic boom in six seconds. It didn't take his engines long to give him a beastly vertical airspeed of eighteen thousand feet per minute.

"Juliet-Sierra-Niner-Whiskey, executing missed approach, docking pad incursion!" The controller would have to strain to hear his voice over the roaring sound of the engines, but that was true. Darth Oseth wasn't supposed to be on Andreus' docking pad.

 

[D.C.]

No! Not that! If Makaryk could get away now, that would ruin everything! The Sith Lord reached out with a hand and almost pulled the E-wing out of the sky, but he immediately let his hand fall to his side again. He was no fool and he wouldn't allow his impulses to control him. Well, most of the time he was completely driven by impulse, but this time he couldn't afford it. No, not this time!

'Kriff!' he cursed. He was almost knocked off his feet when the E-wing sped up and the deafening sound caused him to feel dizzy. He almost got that black out again, and though he managed to let it fade away, the headache returned.

He knew he had to be careful. He had almost killed Makaryk, but at the time he didn't know who Makaryk really was. Andreus had probably sensed him, or maybe he'd even seen him, and thought that he wanted to try and kill him. That wasn't true. Not at all. But how could Andreus know? How could he possibly know? It was only natural that he distrusted Oseth and took off immediately when he realized the Sith Lord was standing on his landing pad.

Oseth cursed himself and knew he should've hidden until Andreus would've landed. He watched the E-wing fly into the sky and he could only think of one thing. Maybe it wouldn't work, but he had to try. He just had to. If he would fail at this, he would never be able to forgive himself. Even though he was a kriffing Sith Lord.

He collected the almighty Force and concentrated it all on the E-wing, high in the sky. He closed his eyes and once again saw a vision of the vessel in his mind's eye, and this time he saw it clearer. He could even see into the cockpit and saw the man with the tattoos. Oseth's heart raced when he saw it, but he wouldn't let it distract him. He concentrated on Andreus Makaryk and whispered into his mind, just like he did back on that dark day on Coruscant.

Perhaps he had already blown it by blowing up the shuttle, but he just had to try.

~Andreus,~ he said, ~stop! I'm not here to hurt you! I'm here because... because I hold information about your... your father. Come down and I'll tell you. You have my word I won't hurt you. I promise. Please...~

He doubted Andreus would believe him and it made him feel so sick. If it had been anyone else, he probably could've persuaded them to come down, because he was quite the intimidating figure, but he couldn't do that to Andreus. He just couldn't.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Andreus didn't need to keep the power on for long. After only twenty seconds, he broke through five thousand feet, and was several nautical miles from the spaceport, speeding away. Given the Force indicated an airspeed of one thousand, one hundred seventy knots to him, he cut the engine power all the way back to idle. That was more than enough airspeed, well above the E-wings maximum rated atmospheric airspeed rating of seven hundred knots in fact. He was going so fast, he didn't really need engine power at the moment; in fact the starfighter vibrated and shook as every bit of turbulence felt like a hard punch to the gut at this insane airspeed. Andreus knew he would have to closely inspect his ship for hairline cracks when he landed. He should have put the landing gear up at two hundred knots, but he had accelerated so quickly he had just blown through that point. So he retracted the landing gear now.

The dark presence contacted him. It wanted him to land. Andreus hadn't learned how to use telepathy yet, so he couldn't reply. But he didn't believe the assurance that no harm would come to him. Nothing good ever came out of trusting Sith. Especially Sith that had already tried to kill you. It wouldn't be difficult for Oseth to crush him. Not at all. Andreus had only been in the Jedi Order for a couple of weeks. He barely knew how to wield the lightsaber clipped to his belt, and certainly not very effectively. It wasn't even technically his. He had grabbed it out of one of the spare lightsaber storage bins aboard the Will of the Force.

As the raging storm delivered more punches to Andreus' gut, the padawan considered his options. The most obvious one was high-tailing it to space and getting the kriff out of here. That was also the most appealing option, although since Darth Oseth was hunting him, it would only delay the inevitable. It had only taken a couple of weeks for Oseth to find him again after that dark night over Coruscant, so fleeing might not even buy him that much time.

The next option was to contact Traffic Control, and ask them to give a comlink frequency to the man standing on his docking pad, since Andreus couldn't reply using telepathy. Then he could find out what the Sith Lord wanted without risking getting splattered all over the docking platform and crushed, too much. He supposed there still might be a risk Oseth would reach out and crush his starfighter and him with it from many miles away, but that didn't seem likely. Because then he would have just crushed the shuttle over Coruscant and finished his job to begin with. But there was a problem with this idea. Someone would actually have to go out and deliver the comlink frequency to the man standing on Andreus' docking platform. And Andreus was just certain that man wanted to kill somebody. If he didn't get to kill Andreus, he would probably kill whoever Andreus sent out with his contact information. No, a Jedi couldn't ask an innocent person to give his life to save his own hide like that.

Then Andreus remembered the moment in his training, flying through another storm on this very planet, when he had tried to touch his connection with the Force for the first time he could remember. He had found something dark back there, in the deep recesses of his mind. He had pulled away from it. He wasn't ready to deal with it yet, and Master Avara had told him the time would come when Andreus must confront whatever it was that happened in his past. He must, or he would be forever tainted. He hadn't expected the will of the Force to thrust that moment upon him only two short weeks later, however. He had barely had time for any training at all!

It took balls of durasteel for the padawan, with only two weeks of training under his belt, to reach the inescapable conclusion: that he must face a Sith Lord, alone. A Sith Lord that he just knew wanted to kill him. Even if the Sith Lord for some unfathomable reason spared him, his Master would most assuredly kill him when he got back. The young Jedi clung to the first line of the old Jedi Code: There is no emotion, there is peace. It was all he had to still his mind.

In the few minutes it had taken him to evaluate his options, Andreus had already coasted a bit more than a hundred nautical miles. Though his engines were on idle, the Force still indicated his airspeed to be eight hundred fifty knots. He didn't want to turn around quite yet. He now knew that he shouldn't engage the afterburners for take-off-go-around procedure--they were simply overkill. He had accelerated the ship so quickly, that now he wasn't completely sure it could take the stress of a turn back to Tipoca. Andreus was a test pilot now, and he would have to slow his starfighter down. It would take the better part of an hour for Andreus to slow down and make his way back. Unless he was willing to make use of reverse thrust on his repulsorlift--but he was in no hurry. Though he had reached his conclusion, there was little point in rushing his own imminent death.

At a hundred twenty nautical miles away from his docking platform, Andreus had slowed enough to make the turn without having to worry about overstressing his starfighter's structure. He would have to do wind tunnel testing to learn what his E-wing could really handle in atmosphere, but that was besides the point. He hesitated. His throttle beckoned, begged to be opened. Oseth was far away, and Andreus was tempted to make that distance even farther, temporary as such a maneuver might prove to be. But...he couldn't. His Master had warned him this day would come.

He turned around. He just knew that no matter what Oseth promised him, he was going to die.

There is no death...there is the Force.

Andreus certainly hoped so. This was by far the closest he had come to death since memorizing that line. The Sith Lord that awaited him had also had quite a hand in his last close call with death, shortly before Master Avara had recited that line to him. He had vaguely heard of past Jedi "becoming one with the Force," but he wasn't sure what that meant. He hoped it was a good thing, though didn't that only happen to the Masters when they died? He didn't think he knew enough about the Force to become one with it. He would have to clear that up with the Loremaster. If he survived.

Long minutes ticked by. Andreus just knew these were the final minutes of his life. What a short life it had been. He wasn't even completely sure he had attained the age of thirty, because he had no way of knowing when exactly he had been born. Doctors could only estimate his age. As the tortured, uncertain moments rolled by, Andreus' life flashed before him, or at least what he could remember of it.

Not all of the memories were good. He recalled the relentless bullying when he was mute as a kid. He had once been retarded, literally. His IQ had only been 25 then, his mind completely destroyed by something completely unknown to him. Might that have been the action of the same Sith Lord that awaited him now? Would Darth Oseth gleefully crush his mind, and remake him in his own image? Andreus shuddered. He hoped not. He didn't want to bomb innocent people.

But not all of the memories that flashed through his mind were so horrible. Someone had adopted him, someone who cared. Someone who had the patience to try to work with a kid that had an IQ of 25, even if he had had no education in developmental disabilities whatsoever. Andreus' adoptive father had tried everything to nurture his son. He was an engineer, so he had lots of blueprints. Eventually, not knowing what else to do, he had shown Andreus a blueprint, and tried to explain it using really simple words. Andreus didn't understand the words, but he understood some of the concepts behind the words for reasons neither he nor his adoptive father knew. Now, in hindsight, that might have been the Force. But his adoptive father devoted years of his life teaching his son how to use the most basic of language, once he finally figured out how his son's messed-up and scrambled brain worked. His adoptive father had spent years repairing the damage, re-teaching his son. That damage had probably been caused by the Sith, given that the dark taint still lingered somewhere in the back of his mind, shattered into millions of little pieces. Probably even this Sith.

The flashbacks diminished, but only for a moment, just long enough for him to focus on the numbers running through his head. He still had not turned his instruments back on; instead, he continued to rely upon the Force. Fifty nautical miles, three hundred eighty knots, four thousand feet. He activated his speed brakes again and pitched the nose up a bit. He had been flying level, but four thousand feet was sufficiently low for him to ascend to help him drop excess airspeed.

With those ever-changing numbers confined to a corner in his mind, albeit a prominent one, the flashbacks of his life, soon to end, began anew. The day he announced at school that he had earned a full scholarship to flight school had filled his heart with joy. His biological father, whoever he was, had missed that moment, the moment he finally demonstrated to his tormentors and former tormentors that his life had purpose. That the guy who once had 25 IQ would still do something in his life and contribute to society. In hindsight, the Jedi would say that pride was bad, because it fed arrogance and led to the darkside. But at that moment, Andreus couldn't help but be proud of his (and his adoptive father's) attempts to pull himself from the abyss of being mute and completely mentally paralyzed. Then, Andreus had felt his contribution to society would be as a commercial pilot. Now, it was as a Jedi. It looked to be a short contribution.

He summoned the will to block out the flashback of why he had become a Jedi. It was traumatic, and he had already lived it hundreds of times, if not thousands. So, he didn't allow those vivid and blood-curdling memories to refresh his mind, for he had gone through them enough. He just knew that the Sith Lord that awaited him had a lot to do with those memories. Also, said Sith Lord wanted to kill him.

He slowed down as he approached Docking Platform 13-A. He knew that he had to confront his past...that he had to confront this Sith Lord. He had hoped to defer this moment years into the future, when he was better trained to handle it. But so far, he had scarcely been trained at all, other than some basic grounding in Jedi tenets. And close-combat beatings, although those were irrelevant. Oseth would crush him regardless of how well Jedi Knight Sorran Ven-Olar had tried to prepare him for encountering Sith. Two weeks wasn't even enough time for the Battlemaster to impart that kind of training, much less a Jedi Knight. Master Avara simply hadn't had the time, with his diplomatic duties and all. Andreus wondered briefly if Master Avara would come to regret that.

He couldn't dwell on it. The crosswinds were harsh, and demanded his attention. He was close now, and though he was in no hurry to land, he would have to eventually. He could only put it off for so long. Many pilots would need the autopilot on to compensate for the massive and unpredictable gusts. Not Andreus. He was crazy enough to try landing using the Force alone in this muck. Even if that was slightly suicidal, he would die soon after he landed anyways.

The padawan lowered the landing gear again, knowing confrontation with one of the most powerful Sith Lords in the galaxy was imminent. Oseth was waiting, and to say that Andreus had a Bad Feeling was the understatement of the millennium. Three lights illuminated green, indicating the landing gear had locked...same as his destiny.

The E-wing settled down on the docking platform with a heavy thud, only a few meters away from the awaiting Sith. Andreus had kept him waiting, but the Jedi was in no rush. He took his sweet time meticulously going through the after-landing checklist, savoring the last few fleeting moments of his short life. Even after he exhausted the checklist and had no reason to stay inside the starfighter other than the person who awaited him, he stalled for time. When he opened his canopy, got out, and closed the canopy so his cockpit wouldn't get flooded, he didn't even bother to say hi.

Instead, Andreus began inspecting his E-wing for hairline cracks that might have formed from the stresses of the aborted landing and pushing the craft well above its rated atmospheric limits. It was a check that had to be done, although Andreus did it hoping to forestall his own death more than to check the spaceworthiness of his ship. He pretended, rather unconvincingly, that Darth Oseth wasn't even there.

 

[D.C.]

For a moment he thought Andreus was really going to take off, but then it turned out the pilot came back to Tipoca anyway. He watched the E-wing land and took a deep breath. He wondered how this would play out; would Andreus believe him?

The canopy of the cockpit opened up and Oseth saw the pilot checking his vessel for scratches. The Sith Lord couldn't help but feel bad as he saw that Andreus ignored him. Maybe it was odd for a Sith Lord to behave like that, but if only you knew what was going on here, you'd understand.

Everything within Oseth screamed at him to approach Andreus and speak to him, but he stayed in control and stood still.

He folded his hands behind his back and waited, though impatiently, until Andreus was done and was ready to meet him.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Andreus produced a flashlight from one of his flight suit's many pockets. He knew better than to wear Jedi robes to Kamino, as they didn't offer much protection against the wind and driving rain, whereas flight suits were watertight. He needed the flashlights to help him find the tiny cracks he was looking for. Darth Oseth might not know this, but cracks that were missed early tended to grow. If they grew big enough, they could cause a ship's structure to catastrophically fail in midair, or worse, in the vacuum of space. Surely the Sith could appreciate that such a fate was bad, and should be avoided if possible. But it shouldn't have mattered to Andreus. He remained certain he would not stay alive long enough to matter, even though the Sith Lord waited for some odd and unknowable reason.

Sure enough, his inspection revealed a tiny, hairline crack where the Number One engine pylon joined up with the ship's wing. To Oseth, it would seem insignificant, for it was less than two millimeters long and about the width of a human hair. Nevertheless, it had to be sealed. Andreus produced a tube of nanite repair paste, an epoxy-like material that would fill the crack and harden to the same hardness of the metal. It was very much a temporary repair, meant only for a few flights, but it would get him back to a full Jedi maintenance facility. If he survived. Then, he produced a tiny syringe, meant for injecting nanite repair paste into tiny places. Andreus had to concentrate; the wing offered him partial cover from the driving wind and rain. He had to concentrate because filling a crack that small with the tools he had available to him demanded about the same precision from his hands that building a lightsaber would have. When he was done, he carefully covered the crack with duct tape. Doing so would help protect the sealant from the moisture and weather as it hardened, help to act as a very temporary doubler, lending a small bit of strength to the repair, and make it easier for him to find the site later when he needed to replace his temporary job with a more permanent repair.

But after continuing, and finishing, his inspection of the ship, he was out of time. It was time to die. He couldn't stall for time anymore, as he was all out of checklists and such, checklists that had bought precious few moments for him to live. But he wasn't sure he wanted to live much longer in the presence of a Sith Lord like Darth Oseth, who wanted to kill him. Although the Sith Lord had somehow managed to control himself so far, he wasn't doing much about the aura of gratuitous death he emanated. Andreus could sense that he enjoyed killing people. A lot. The padawan just knew Oseth would enjoy crushing him. Even if he had said otherwise, the Jedi had no reason whatsoever to believe the assurances of a Sith.

Finally, out of options to prolong his life, Andreus turned around to face Oseth. The Sith Lord would doubtlessly recognize the tattoos on his face, especially up close. He could sense them, and had sensed them. The Jedi took a few steps toward the Sith, but didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. Nor did he know what the Sith Lord wanted. Andreus stopped about four paces short of him, and for some reason found himself slightly surprised that he was actually looking down into the eyes of the man who would kill him. But Andreus didn't want to give Oseth a reason to kill him, other than just entertainment and satisfaction of sadism, which he really couldn't do much about. So he left the lightsaber hanging from his utility belt alone, in spite of his certainty of impending death. He barely knew how to use it, anyway.

 

[D.C.]

Oseth watched Andreus come closer and he wasn't really surprised to see that the man was huge. A lot taller than he was. Of course, size meant nothing to him. He saw the tattoos on Andreus' face again, but this time he saw them with his own eyes instead of in some kind of vision.

'Andreus,' he called. He had to raise his voice if he wanted Andreus to be able to hear him. The rain poured down from the grey clouds and crashed down all around them. Sometimes thunder roared and flashed up there, lighting up the landing pad.

He wanted to say something, but he wasn't sure what to tell the pilot. He could sense the Light Side swirling around Andreus and he saw the lightsaber clipped to Andreus' belt. He had done research on this man, and he had discovered that Andreus indeed had joined the Jedi Order. He was a Padawan now, and that made things just a tad complicated.

'We may belong to opposing factions,' Oseth told Andreus, 'but today we are not at war, you and I. I don't seek to kill you, I want to talk instead. There are... certain things... you must know. Leo—I mean Andreus... We go way back, you might have forgotten, but we do. Can you recall anything of your past? Before... Before your mind...'

He couldn't say it. He bit his lip and blinked each time another rain drop fell into his eyes. He wanted to pull the hood farther over his head, but he didn't, because that would shroud his face. He wanted Andreus to be able to look him in the eye, and it was also a matter of respect.

'Trust me, if only for today. Tomorrow we might be enemies again, and tomorrow you might fight me with all you've got... but today I want to talk to you as if we were friends. Is that possible, Andreus?'

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Andreus saw lightning strike in front of him, less than a hundred meters away. The bright flash was followed immediately by an ear-splitting clap of thunder. Andreus didn't care about the lightning. The lightning wasn't what would kill him, although it did illuminate his facial tattoos nicely. Andreus didn't yet know how he got those tattoos; he didn't yet know that he would soon learn.

The wind howled so loudly that even a Sith Lord felt the need to raise his voice, just to be heard over the wind. The wind that drove a ninety-knot horizontal sheet of water directly into Andreus' face. While Oseth thought about putting up his hood and decided against it, the Jedi didn't even have a hood. Or umbrella. It didn't take long for the rain to completely soak and mat the padawan's brown hair. But the padawan didn't care about the rain so much as he cared about the wind, the wind that drove all that rain straight into his eyes.

But Andreus didn't realize that he had power. Though he was still almost completely untrained, he had lots and lots of power. That might help explain why Darth Oseth hadn't killed him the first time, with everything in the Sith Lord's favor, why someone who hadn't touched the Force in at least two decades had been able to land his spacecraft in the face of the Sith Lord's Force storm. Andreus didn't know it yet, but that power had allowed Oseth to breathe a sigh of relief once he realized just whom he had tried to kill. For now, he only knew this wind-driven rain straight into his face, his eyes, was an annoyance. A major annoyance. The Sith Lord apparently respected him enough to hold eye contact, so Andreus couldn't just look away. That would be disrespectful.

He didn't even realize his power.

He did, however, notice when the wind turned a hundred eighty degrees, to his back. That was much, much more tolerable. Now the rain wouldn't get in the Jedi's eyes. The padawan had no kriffing clue that he was powerful enough to literally change the winds. He had just performed a feat the Jedi called Whirlwind, without even knowing it. It probably helped that his flying made him spend so much time and effort tracking the wind and shifts therein. Piloting forced Andreus to be more closely attuned to the weather than most Jedi.

However, now the wind blew the rain straight into the Sith Lord's face, and Andreus didn't want the driving rain in his eyes, either. He would rather the wind just settle down, but he couldn't control the weather. Well, actually, he was influencing it, but he didn't know it, and he couldn't control it. He couldn't control what he didn't know. So Andreus took a couple more steps toward the Sith Lord, though he didn't intend to invade the Sith Lord's space. Not at all. He intended to use his physical size to help shield Oseth from some of the wind and rain, so he stopped only one footfall short of the Sith Lord. Then he looked almost straight down, directly into the Sith Lord's eyes. Hopefully Oseth would understand.

Andreus considered what the Sith Lord had yelled over the rain. He didn't trust Oseth's words as far as he could throw Oseth. But, he was right about one thing, the Jedi and Sith weren't at war yet. Even if Oseth did intend to kill Andreus, he might be waiting until the war started. Andreus wasn't here to start that war.

In response to Oseth's other question, Andreus performed a cursory search of his thoughts, his memories. He had memories back to the point right after what had happened to his mind, memories of running away. But not before. Not even Darth Oseth seemed quite able to mention it. But the padawan concluded that the dark recesses and shards of his mind might well contain some of what Oseth sought. But he wasn't ready for that yet, so he was not going to pick at the mental scabs that had covered whatever-it-was that was dark back there. Andreus didn't know who the kriff this Leo guy was. He was confused.

Unlike Darth Oseth, Andreus Makaryk felt no reason whatsoever to raise his voice. It was naturally deep and commanding enough to be heard, even over a howling ninety-knot wind. So after a couple moments of thought, when the padawan finally did open his mouth, his voice sounded little different than it normally would.

"No, the Jedi and Sith are not at war yet. I will be honest in saying I did not come here to start one, so if you are indeed telling the truth, today neither of us will raise our weapons against the other." Andreus honestly didn't know about his past, so he didn't know about his past connections...so that would have to suffice for being friends. The padawan would trust a Sith's actions over his words. "But honestly, who the kriff is Leo? And why did you--that was you over Coruscant, wasn't it?--try to kill my passengers and me?"

 

[D.C.]

Andreus came to stand in front of the Sith Lord, shielding him from the rain. Oseth was a little surprised at first, for no-one's ever shown sympathy to the Sith... or at least not to him. Life in the Sith Order was all about lying, killing and stabbing one another in the back. Sympathy was a rare thing, something Oseth wasn't quite used to.

It was then that he realized just how big the padawan was. He stood almost two meters tall. It was a result of intensive training Andreus received when he was still a boy. If only the padawan had the slightest idea of the power he held, the things he'd already been taught... but all that knowledge was gone. Destroyed by a man who was now dead. Killed by Oseth himself.

Perhaps Andreus stepped into his space, but Oseth stood still and didn't move an inch away. He thought that Andreus had to be a real Jedi, if he even wanted to shield a Sith from rain with his own body. He wondered if Andreus was afraid to get so close to him, or not. It was true that Oseth could easily destroy him if he tried anything... but he didn't think he'd be able to.

Not this time.

Oseth did not answer the question immediately. He just stared back into Andreus' eyes, as the rain poured down all around him. He mustered some of the mysterious energy that existed in the galaxy, and let it run through his veins. He drove out the cold, and it was replaced by warmth. He felt better, but he was still getting soaked. He wondered for a moment if he was getting sick, but then decided it didn't matter. Not now.

So, why had he attacked the shuttle?

'Because I'm...' Sith, he wanted to say, but that wouldn't make sense. Being a Sith didn't mean you'd have to kill random innocent people. No, that was no reason.

'Because it's all part of the plan,' he said instead. That didn't make sense either, but it sounded a lot better. He didn't bother to elaborate and changed the subject. If they would go on about the shuttle, Andreus might just turn away in anger and this would be for nothing after all. Oseth did not want that.

'And Leo? That's you.' He pointed at the pilot. 'You are Leonidas. That is your real name. The name you've been given by... by your Da.'

Maybe Andreus would realize now who Oseth was. Maybe not. Oseth found it difficult to explain Andreus' past, because it would most likely come as a shock to the padawan. He considered not telling and just walking off, leaving Andreus behind to spare him the shock. It might change Andreus, might turn him into a depressed person; a broken shadow. But Andreus had the right to know. He had to know.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Andreus stood right over the same Sith Lord who had tried to kill him. The winds were harsh; they tried to blow Andreus' body straight into the Sith Lord. The padawan had risked a lot to comfort a Sith, but maybe for him the risk was moot because he thought the Sith would just kill him anyway. Should the strength of Andreus' legs so much as twitch, the wind at his back--with gusts up to a hundred ten knots--would blow him a few steps forward. Right into the Sith Lord. And the Sith Lord might easily construe getting bumped into and possibly knocked over like that as an attack, and crush him. But despite the risk to self, that Sith was still fundamentally a person stuck outside in a storm, and he wasn't really doing anything too...Sith-like at the moment. So Andreus had done what he could to alleviate the discomfort of that person, even if that person was a Sith.

But Andreus didn't realize his strength. Nor did he realize he had been...made for it, in more ways than one. His legs did not fail him, not even under the crushing force of the wind and the wall of water it constantly drove into his back. The platform was slick, but it didn't matter, because it had just about had an extra durasteel support beam drilled through it. That beam was Andreus.

But Andreus was confused. He still didn't really understand who Leonidas was, nor was he really pleased with the Sith Lord's answer about the shuttle...but he could tell the Sith Lord didn't really want to talk about that. Talking about the shuttle would probably get Andreus killed, for no really compelling reason. So he tried to figure out just what Darth Oseth meant by calling him Leonidas. He had to have had an identity of some sort before his memory got crushed and turned into little shards of dark obsidian in his brain that seemed to scrape across something he tried to do in the here and now sometimes. Logically, Leonidas was probably that identity. But that identity would be difficult to retrieve; it would require Andreus to destroy his mind all over again to retrieve its corrupted foundation. Andreus didn't want to disturb it too much. He wasn't ready yet. As long as he was unwilling to crush and splatter his own mind to search for his old identity within, he couldn't really make any kind of connection to it, other than an extremely theoretical and tenuous one based on the kind of cold, dispassionate logical conclusion a droid might reach.

More lightning flashed. Only four inches from Darth Oseth's face, Andreus' tattoos clashed vividly with the flash of light. They seemed...black. Normally they would be blue. But these were special tattoos, yes they were. Andreus didn't have a clue about their origins. He only remembered looking in a mirror for the first time after he had...escaped. After his mindwipe. His reaction: Who the kriff did that to my face!? Andreus waited for the clap of thunder to dissipate before speaking.

His words were direct and simple, his voice deep and clear enough to be heard even over the howling wind. And his words acknowledged something that Oseth had been trying to tiptoe around. Something too painful for even a Sith Lord, apparently.

"I do not remember. My memories were destroyed."

He couldn't escape the conclusion that the Sith had destroyed them. That he had, twenty years earlier, run away from the Sith. Appending that thought to what he had just said, saying that out loud to a Sith Lord's face...that was probably suicidal. Then again, the mere act of landing had probably been suicidal, when Andreus had done it. Darth Oseth would have to give himself a bit of credit. Leonidas had had balls of durasteel. He had had to, to survive back then. And that was one thing the mindwipe hadn't destroyed.

"Probably by the Sith."

 

[D.C.]

The Sith. There had indeed been a Sith who had wiped Andreus' memories. Oseth never looked away from Andreus, not even when the lightning flashed. He didn't close his eyes; he looked at the padawan before him. He looked at the tattoos and remembered the day when Andreus got those tattoos so well.

'There was a Sith Lord once, years ago,' he said. 'That Sith had the idea to create his own powerful weapon. A soldier of the Dark Side, who would be forever loyal to him and who would carry out certain tasks. Dark tasks, things the Sith Lord could not do himself because he was too busy... or perhaps for other reasons.

'The soldier wasn't a soldier right from the start. No, in the beginning he was a boy, raised by the Sith Lord. In the beginning he saw the boy as nothing more than a tool, that would be—when grown up—the greatest assassin ever lived in this wretched galaxy. However, he learned to love the boy and soon he saw the boy as his own son. The Sith Lord actually cared for the boy, and called him Leonidas.

'Leonidas grew quite fond of his father as well,' Oseth continued, 'and the two spent lots of time training together; with as well the sword as the Force. They talked a lot and Leonidas slowly began to understand what being a Sith meant, and he probably would have made a great Sith Lord if his father didn't keep him a secret. You see, Andreus, if the Lord would've told the other Sith about his son, they probably would have killed the boy. The Sith Lord wanted to protect the only thing he cared about. The only thing in his life that was worth at least something to him.

'On his fourth, the boy learned to handle a blaster. The Sith Lord taught him to shoot and in the same year he began to teach the boy how to wield a lightsaber. Soon, the Force swirled around the boy like a tornado so great, and the boy showed talent in all skills. He was a promising student and proved to become the best killer ever.

'The boy learned to crush his opponents through the Force at 6. As years passed by he grew stronger and better; faster and smarter, but alas... that didn't last long. The plan was he'd go on his first mission at age 18, but due to certain circumstances that never happened.

'One unfortunate day, another Sith Lord found out about Leonidas and as the father had expected, the other Sith wanted to kill Leonidas...'

Oseth paused there. He sighed and looked away from Andreus for a moment. He gazed out over the ocean. The storm was getting heavier and one had to be crazy to go out flying in such weather. Well, perhaps Andreus would pull it off, but that wasn't too surprising considering Andreus' talent.

'Andreus,' he said, looking back to the pilot, 'this is what happened...'

* * *​

Leonidas remained in the safehouse, he and his father shared, alone. His father was not at home, but that did not surprise the young apprentice. His father often went away for Sith business. Leonidas walked into his own room and sat down on his bed. He was tired, but he felt fine. He had been working real hard to become strong, like his da.

A dark figure, donned in black robes, had gained entrance to the safehouse, his signature in the Force concealed, and so Leonidas sensed the intruder too late. The man stormed into Leo's room, with lightsaber in hand, and snatched Leo's throat by the Force. There was a struggle, but it was the Sith Lord who managed to defeat the apprentice.

The Sith Lord dragged the boy out of the safehouse, back to the speeder which he'd used to travel to the safehouse. The Sith sped back to his own base and there he locked up the boy inside a holding cell.

The Sith Lord concentrated on Leo's mind, preparing his mindshard.

Meanwhile, the father hurried back home. The other Sith Lord had threatened to kill Leonidas, and the father knew all too well that that was the Sith way. They killed each other just like that, as if it didn't mean anything. The father cursed himself for not hiding Leonidas better and wondered how the other Sith had found out. It all didn't matter, though, because the Sith Lord could already be inside the safehouse, killing Leo.

Leo's screams filled the room as his mind was being wiped by the other Sith Lord. Leonidas had to die, because Leo was a threat to the Sith Lord and to others as well. The Sith Lord couldn't let Leo live, and so he dealt with the problem. The mindshard was mainly because the Sith Lord was a sadistic bastard, and he enjoyed wiping the minds of his victims before killing them.

After the mindshard that shattered Leonidas' mind, Leo lost his consciousness.

Days later, the father finally found the Sith Lord's base. He ran into the room with the holding cells, finding the Sith Lord there who had tried to kill Leo. There was an exhange of words, and then sabers flashed, but the 'duel' lasted only for a moment. The father concentrated his magical abilities on the Sith and blasted him straight through the wall. The father sprung out of the hole and in mid-air he unleashed the power of the Dark Side. Lightning erupted from his fingertips and consumed the Sith Lord slowly, burning his skin. It did not end there.

The father landed on the ground and ran over to the fallen Sith Lord. He grabbed the man's smoking collar and pulled him onto his knees. 'What did you do to my son!?' the father hissed. 'He's gone!' the Sith spat back, meaning Leo had somehow managed to escape. The father misinterpreted the other Sith Lord's words and in an act of rage he lifted him off the ground and cut him into two with a slash of his lightsaber, brutally taking the life of a man who had once been his colleague.

Of course the father had tried to track down his son, but he never found him again...

* * *​

Oseth was silent for a while after he had told that story. Rain never stopped pouring down from the sky and thunder flashed once again, like it always did. It was as if the world around them grew darker, despite the lightning flashes, and Oseth felt his stomach turn upside down. He could only hope that Andreus would take it well, and not lose his mind.

'You are Leo,' Oseth said slowly. He looked the pilot straight in the eye. 'And I, Leo...'

Thunder roared in the sky at the same time as he spoke the four words. It was as if the thunder emphasized it. But even though the thunder and lightning flashed and roared, lighting up the entire landing pad, and the rain still kept on pouring down, the words were loud and clear. They were like pounds from a warhammer. They were the truth.

'I am your father.'​

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Usually, the Sith Lord Oseth might enjoy such things as slamming the people who stood before him into parked starfighters, slowly crushing each and every bone in his victims' bodies, tossing them up tens of meters in the air and laughing as they flailed back down to the ground only to splatter upon it, choking his victims, bludgeoning their eyes out by telekinetically ramming their heads into the parked starfighter's laser cannons, carving their bodies into elaborate sculpture with his lightsaber, and topping it all off with a voiciferous "WOOOAAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" of death.

Not this time.

The Sith Lord couldn't quite bring himself to do that to the person who had turned back and flown back a hundred twenty-five nautical miles to talk to him instead of just fleeing his presence. Not when he considered that someone his son. Or maybe he could. But he didn't.

But the practical effect of his words upon Andreus Makaryk was much the same.

I am a Sith Weapon? Designed specifically to kill people? The thought disturbed him. Crushed him. The latent shards of darkness in his mind surged, tried to reassemble themselves, to coalesce. The Dark Side within Andreus wanted to run free. To be liberated. It demanded he kill. It demanded Andreus tear apart his own kriffing mind, to rebuild what existed in the first eight years of his life, to reconstruct the lessons that Oseth had taught him. Then it demanded he crush and brutalize every kriffing sentient on Tipoca. It demanded Andreus Makaryk make the ocean swell red with the blood of Kamino. Including the one who had come up with such a sick and repugnant conception. Including Darth Oseth. That was the way of the Sith, after all.

The dark thoughts, the evil rushing through his mind gave him a brain-splitting migraine the likes of which he had only experienced once before--precisely when this other Sith had mindwiped him and blasted what remained into about thirty-seven trillion little pieces.

But he couldn't wipe out all the life on Kamino. He just couldn't. It hadn't attacked him. It hadn't done anything to him. Not even Darth Oseth did anything that would justify slaughter, at least not right now. Besides, Andreus couldn't lift a finger against Oseth, because Oseth would crush him, not only mentally as he already had, but also physically, splattering his life into the winds of the storm, that it might blow tiny droplets of his blood around for miles. Besides, that would be a revenge killing. He knew once he allowed the darkness coursing through his mind to consume him...that path had only one ending, the destruction of all life in the galaxy. The destruction of the Force itself--without life to sustain it, it would decay as a white dwarf. Thankfully, no Sith had become that powerful to date. They always seemed to cut each other down before any one could attain that level of power. However, one had come close, and destroyed quite enough. He'd wiped out entire worlds, like the oily, inky, black thoughts contaminating Andreus' mind urged him to do. The thought made Andreus shudder. Even if he didn't destroy all life in the galaxy, the damage done trying would be quite enough.

The padawan tried to center his thoughts on something more peaceful. He had to strain to keep the darkness from overcoming him. His nature had been...engineered. By Darth Oseth. To kill. After the mindwipe, Andreus had fled. After bouncing around in Corellia's foster system for a while, he had found an adoptive father who cared. An adoptive father who nurtured him and tried to put his shattered mind back together. Andreus had built a mind of light--atop a shattered foundation of darkness. Somehow, he needed to replace that corrupted foundation.

Andreus didn't really know how. He'd only been with the Jedi for two weeks. Two weeks hadn't been a lot of time for the Jedi to teach him; he only had a rudimentary, rote understanding of the Jedi Code. He was inexperienced at meditation, at mental exercises. Much less tearing out whole sections of his mind and reconstructing them. The padawan knew he would have to seek the wisdom of the Masters...soon.

For now, though, he restrained himself from acting upon his darkened thoughts. It took a lot of effort and concentration. His origins wanted to consume him, oh so very badly. But Andreus couldn't let them. He had a Sith Lord standing almost directly underneath his face. If he so much as twitched towards his weapon, he would die.

So, instead, he completed the circle. As Oseth had told his 'son'--Andreus couldn't really be sure that was the right word if he was some engineered creation of Sith alchemy or something like that--about the first years of his life before the mindwipe, Andreus began to tell his Sith 'father' what had happened after he escaped.

Lightning struck the building directly behind Oseth right as Andreus opened his mouth, as if Andreus had foreseen it. He could feel the residual heat left by the stroke, the millions of volts discharged and grounded into the building. The thunder that exploded only a hundredth of a second later, if that, would've split the ears of a normal person. Not Andreus. Probably not Oseth. His tattoos seemed to capture a tiny fraction of the huge energy generated by the lightning strike. They shifted again...from black to a very dimly glowing red before slowly darkening towards black again.

"...The boy escaped, driven only by instinct. There was nothing left. The boy was an animal. A weak animal. An animal that couldn't defend himself, because all his knowledge of defense had been wiped out. The animal's connection to the Force was severed, probably by total flashburn. The animal was of no use to the Sith. Weak. Defenseless. Mute. Retarded. Had the father found him, he would have been all but obligated to slaughter him. Just like an animal. For that is the way of the Sith...to destroy weakness."

"But the Sith didn't find him. Someone else did. Someone who cared. Someone who, instead of wishing to purge weakness, wanted to nurture it back to health and strength. He wanted to rebuild that animal's brain so the animal could return to sentience. He named that animal Andreus. Andreus Makaryk."

Recounting the story of his adoption helped to calm Andreus' mind a bit. These were...calming memories, memories that had helped shape him into the Jedi he was now. Andreus could even sense...that this Sith wasn't going to immediately kill him. Maybe there was a wisp of good in him. Maybe the padawan could plant a seed by telling his half of the story.

"The animal couldn't talk, nor could it understand speech. Its adoptive father spent months just trying to figure out how to communicate with it. He tried everything he could think of. He was an engineer, so eventually he tried showing the animal blueprints when he couldn't think of anything else. The animal couldn't understand the words, but he did visualize the pictures in his head. And that gave the engineer just enough knowledge of how the animal's brain worked, to work with him. To teach him."

"The engineer, the adoptive father, began to teach his son Basic. He pushed his son hard. The boy had nine years of cognitive deficit to make up. The boy had to learn twice as fast as others to catch up by the time he became an adult. The engineer pushed Andreus hard, made him study a lot. Almost every waking moment, Andreus spent studying. Neither Andreus nor his adoptive father had any way of knowing about the Force. So the study centered upon rebuilding his intelligence. His capacity to think. That which Andreus knew had been destroyed."

"The boy turned eighteen, and became an adult. Though he hadn't killed anyone with the strength of his hands in a decade, his hard work did earn him a full scholarship to flight school. At last, that base animal had found purpose in his life. It might not have been what its...engineer had intended, but he had no way of knowing that."

"Another dozen years later, the man sat in the captain's seat of a large passenger spaceliner for the first time. Before, he had been first officer, but today, he was being tested for promotion to captain. It was to be the proudest day of his life, the day when he reached the pinnacle of his profession."

Andreus stopped, as if to let the lightning that flickered nearby, illuminating his face again, to pass.

"That...that was when the Sith Lord found Andreus. He bombed his spacecraft. The bomb tore through all four of the ship's hydraulic lines, and shredded the wiring that carries power from the reactors to both repulsorlifts. No hydraulics meant no steering. No repulsorlifts meant no thrust vectoring to compensate for the lack of steering. That made the spacecraft unflyable. No one had landed a spacecraft that badly damaged safely. Ever."

"The crew was scared. No one had ever trained for that. They just knew they were going to die. But Andreus tried something new, something for which there was no procedure. He managed to restart two of the three sublight engines, though one was damaged. And he managed to pull the spacecraft out of a suicidal dive and right it again. He might have a chance. Although because his only control of the spacecraft came through his engines, and he couldn't use his steering to go up and down, he couldn't control his speed independently of altitude."

"But the Sith Lord must not have wanted that spacecraft to land. It was difficult enough to fly in clear and calm conditions, what with the required differential thrust to keep it level and all. So the Sith Lord decided to whip up a bit of wind. And fog. Andreus--he hadn't used the Force in more than twenty years. His only knowledge of it came from news stories about the Jedi and such. He was just a pilot. Somehow, a civilian pilot had to best a Sith Lord."

"The winds the Sith Lord whipped up were as bad as the winds crashing into us now. Four times the legal maximum crosswind limit to land, in fact. Visibility was worse than it is now. Only eight hundred feet. Legal minimum is twenty-four hundred. The Sith Lord...he very much wanted that spacecraft dead. Wanted Andreus dead. And from the complete and total weakness of being totally mute and knowing nothing--Andreus had been nurtured so he could find the strength to best the Sith Lord. Maybe not in direct combat--but to outfly a Sith Lord's storm."

"The Sith would have killed the weak, dumb animal that would later become Andreus. Kriff, they tried to kill Andreus. The Jedi...they didn't know about Andreus, but they would have done the same as the engineer who adopted him did. And taught him how to defend himself from a position of strength on the side."

Lightning flashed again. It lit up Andreus' tattoos again...their color had receded back to their normal blue. For the moment.

"That is why I became a Jedi."

 

[D.C.]

It was as if the world around them stopped spinning, and Oseth found it harder and harder to breathe. His 'son', standing right in front of him, had chosen an entirely different path and there was no way in Hell they could be Father and Son again; Master and Apprentice. No; they were enemies, they really were.

Oseth found himself balancing on a tightrope. Something inside him screamed at him with the ferocious howls of a wolf to kill the Jedi padawan. Something else begged him to let go of the Sith ways and to join Andreus on the path of Light. But the latter was impossible, if only because Oseth was a predator. A killer. Even now he had to bite back the urge to tear open Andreus' chest and to rip out his heart.

Leonidas... or Andreus, was his son. His apprentice. His soldier. He cared for the man and did not want him to get hurt. He took a deep breath, inhaling the cold night air of Kamino. He wanted to look away, to cast his eyes down to the ground in shame, but he could not. His stare was locked with Andreus'. He had to face his lost son now, or he would regret later.

Lightning struck the building, but Oseth didn't move an inch. If he would've been stricken by any lightning, the Force—that swirled around him like a protective shield—would absorb the damage. His eyes grew slightly wider when he saw Andreus' tattoos turning red, only for the briefest of moments. Oseth thought he had imagined it, but that wasn't so. He had really seen it and he wasn't sure what to make of it.

He could sense the anger boiling within the pilot; whether the man himself was aware of it or not. Oseth instantly recognized the predator's instinct; the urge to slaughter—to kill the man who'd engineered him to be the most terrible weapon in galaxy's history.

Oseth hoped sincerely Andreus would not give in to the call of the Dark Side; he hoped Andreus would not attack. Oseth would be forced to kill his own 'son' if Andreus did. It would be something Oseth'd regret for the rest of his life. A mistake he could never set right. Never. Even if he turned to Sith Alchemy to revive his dead son, Andreus would not be the same. He would turn into a mindless beast, even worse than Andreus had been in the time after his mind got emptied by the black magics of an old Sith Lord.

He shuddered, not of the cold—for the Force kept him warm—but of the dark thoughts that clouded his mind. Again he felt the urge to cast his eyes down, ashamed of whom he was and what he had become. And then the anger and pain boiled within him. He quaked with unrivaled rage at what he had become.

A monster.

A ****ing monster.

Was he a coward? A thief? Did he grieve the damage done? O, kriff yes he did.

Andreus finished the story, the final chapters about a boy who was destined to become a Sith Lord's personal assassin. Like an Emperor's Hand, but better. Stronger. Faster. Deadlier.

Instead of becoming what Oseth had wanted him to be; the boy died. Leonidas died. Andreus was born and became something far greater than an assassin. A man with a purpose; a captain! And that... all that... Oseth had taken all that away in a selfish act of sadism. He'd destroyed a shuttle full of what he believed to be weak idiots who deserved nothing but to die. How could he possibly know at the time that Andreus was his lost son?

He clenched his hands to fists, buried his nails deep in his own flesh, drawing blood. Crimson blood. It fell from his hands like tears from one's eyes, falling down to the ground into the pool of water. He found himself trembling, shuddering.

Quaking.

Quaking with ****ing rage.

'A JEDI!' he screamed. 'A JEDI!!' He was a wolf, howling to the moon. 'If only the other Lords saw me like this; if only the kriffing emperor himself saw me like this! They'd kill me right where I stand!' His voice, once beautiful and haunting—enchanting women and luring them into his bed; paralyzing men so he could snap their necks and get drunk on their red hot blood—was now a desperate cry for mercy. He was a Sith Lord, but acted unlike one.

'You are right,' his voice a raspy whisper, 'I would've killed you had I found you after the mindshard. I would've killed you because I would've found myself forced to do it. It would tear me apart, but I would do it. I am sorry for what I've done, I've ruined it all for you. I've blown it! Literally! If only I had known it was you... No, I might've done the same thing. I might have killed you after all.

'Andreus,' he voice was even softer, but somehow still audible through the storm, 'I wish I could change this. I wish I could undo the things I've done. But I can't... I just can't...'

Then he finally cast his eyes down to the floor. The rain crashed down on him, like a deluge of endless sorrow. He stood like an apprentice, lost in shame, before a master... yet this was still different, of course. Andreus could not kill him. He could not because Oseth was the stronger warrior. If Andreus would try to slay the Wolf, the Wolf would kill him first.

'I may be Sith,' he said, 'but I'm still proud of you.' He looked back to Andreus' face. 'Train hard, Andreus Makaryk. Become a Jedi. Become the best. Don't let the Dark Side get to you, not even after what I've told you, even though it's the most sickening truth you could think of. Embrace the Light with everything you've got and make this galaxy a safe place. Whatever you do, know that I, for what it's worth, am proud.

'And now,' he concluded, 'we will go our own ways. Next time we meet I might be forced to kill you, even if I don't want to, but it's the Way of the Sith. I can't turn away from it no more, I can't. It ent just something to leave behind. I'm still a predator, Andreus, a kriffing monster always so thirsty for blood. Next time we meet we may be enemies... I... I'm sorry for what I've done.'

The thunder roared and flashed once again, lighting up their faces. Oseth's wolf-like features and his emerald eyes. Andreus' dark tattoos and his brown eyes.

Oseth had the feeling he had to vomit. The thirst for blood became even stronger, to a point where it almost took over his senses. Once Andreus would leave, he'd find himself a victim. He'd suck the victim dry as if he's a vampire come straight from hell itself. He'd drench himself in crimson, thick blood and bathe like never before. He'd smear it all over the walls and he'd tear everything and everyone apart.

Once Andreus would be gone, Oseth would dive back into the eternal, consuming pits of darkness...

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Andreus could only watch as the Sith Lord broke down before him. A kriffing Sith Lord. Waves of shame and guilt radiated out from the Sith Lord, so intense that the padawan standing above him could sense it almost as easily as the Sith had sensed the padawan's initial flare-up of anger. There was conflict there...part of the Sith Lord wanted to join Andreus on the side of the Light. Part of the Sith Lord wanted to crush Andreus, per general Sith expectations. But Darth Oseth thought he was so far gone that he was beyond redemption.

The padawan remained calm for now, immersed fully in the Light, even as the Sith Lord raged. At himself. Andreus' recollection of the last half of his life, post-mindwipe--why he had become a Jedi--had helped him to dissipate his earlier flash of anger. And yet, how many people had Andreus gleefully crushed under Oseth's tutelage? Not even combatants--innocents that he had used to practice, to hone his lightsaber precision and Force powers? As a kriffing kid!? The answer lay buried somewhere deep within the darkened shards of Andreus' mind, but he instinctively knew that the answer was somewhere around a kriffing lot. And here he stood, a Jedi, with a Sith Lord telling him to continue down that path of Light, because that Sith Lord couldn't stand what he himself had become...

"Before you go--"

Andreus stopped. Darth Oseth wanted to leave, to escape this situation which utterly defied logic. But Andreus had to say something--if only because the Sith Lord was so kriffing angry at himself that he was certain to take that anger out somewhere. Also, his own Master had told him that Andreus must confront his own past. His own demons. The padawan interpreted that to mean all of them. There was something more he must know.

"--It might have been by base instinct alone, but I escaped the darkness and eventually built a mind of Light over it. And I was pretty kriffing far gone. Even wiped of its power by that other Sith, all that darkness was still there. Is still there, somewhere underneath. I still had instincts, and hate was one of those instincts--even if the only thing left for me to do about it was escape it. Now, I must confront it again, this time knowingly. You saw my flash of anger, you saw me quell it...but I have a fourteen-hour return journey to take. Alone. I won't even be able to seek the wisdom of my Master, or any Master, for that matter. That's fourteen hours for the darkness to try to resurface, but I'm gonna fight it. I don't want to have the burden of constantly worrying if my colleagues intend to kill me, as you have now. I might well have to carry the burden of my own darkness--the darkness you ingrained in me--and constantly fight it the rest of my kriffing life. Don't ever say it's not possible--it is possible, and if it wasn't possible, I wouldn't be standing awash in the Light Side right now. You might have to fight your way out, to kill your attackers in defense, but you have a kriffing choice."

Privately, Andreus wasn't sure that he could hold out those fourteen hours. He'd never needed to calm his emotions since joining the Jedi, not quite like this. The methods taught him so far were rudimentary at best, those taught to the most novice of students. He simply hadn't had the time to learn anything really advanced yet, to calm his mind in heavy situations such as he faced this day. He might be able to shorten the lonesome trip a bit by shortening the takeoff and approach/landing phases of the flight as much as possible. Doing so would allow him to reach the guidance he so desperately needed that much sooner. Oh, he seemed fine now. His Master might even deem his words unusually wise for a padawan who had only studied in the Order for two weeks. But, with more than half a standard day alone and without guidance ahead of him, the padawan knew that his dark past had plenty of time to resurface. To try to overwhelm him. He wasn't looking forward to it, he wasn't entirely sure he was ready for it, but nevertheless, confront it he must.

"I need to know precisely what it is that I confront. How was I...made?"

 

[D.C.]

No. He couldn't answer that question. It was too ... too shocking. The Sith Lord gritted his teeth and contemplated for a while, standing tall in silence, in the rain storm.

But he has the right to know.

He rubbed his eyes, as if he was really tired, and looked back to Andreus. 'I will tell you,' he told him, 'but reckon it'll tear at your soul after I tell you. It will be hard to take in. I warn you beforehand.

'Back then I experimented with Sith Alchemy. I wrote down everything I desired in a weapon, and I created a cell that had all those things. I continued working on that cell and I cloned it. The cell... it became a Human being. A Human with all the skills of the best assassin in the galaxy. Everything it'd need to be the perfect weapon.

'The weapon had to be a stealth expert, able to bypass any security and become one with the shadows; the weapon had to be able to use all kinds of weapons, ranging from blasters to swords to lightsabers and even heavy weapons such as grenade launchers; the weapon of course had to be a Force Sensitive, one so powerful that he rivaled my own power and could even become stronger than myself; the weapon had to be able to speak multiple languages and through manipulation I managed to give him the skill to learn those languages; the weapon had to become a strong man, towering like a gladiator, while still agile and nimble. He had to have a sense of the Dark Side as well. A natural connection to it...'

He hesitated for a while, for the following words would have some impact. He knew this. He knew that it would do at least some damage to Andreus' mind. Not the kind of damage the mindshard did, but it would kriff with his head when he'd travel back to the Jedi Order.

'You are the product of Sith Alchemy, Andreus. That's how you were made. That's what you are. That's the truth.'

Right when he said truth the thunder roared and flashed.

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

Andreus wasn't terribly surprised. Ever since Darth Oseth had let it slip earlier in the conversation that Andreus was to be his weapon, Andreus had somewhat expected something like this. He had suspected something like Sith Alchemy, or something of a similarly dark nature. But hearing the Sith Lord confirm it...

Yes, yes. Andreus had to get back to the Jedi Order as soon as possible. Suddenly, the isolation of Kamino became a curse rather than a blessing. He would be alone to let this revelation stew in his mind for an awfully long time. The padawan hoped he could hold out long enough to make it back, what with the state of shock he found himself in, the darkness that lingered to seize his weakest moment and all. But his weakest moment wasn't here. Not at all. Ironically, here he had the company of a Sith Lord--one that wanted him to become a Jedi of all things. But Andreus had to go.

He stared down at the Sith Lord, fervently hoping that one day he might also walk the path of the Light. Given that Andreus had been so certain that Darth Oseth would gleefully crush him and kill him, and instead they had a conversation--one in which the Sith Lord had apologized(!) for the damage he had done--perhaps Andreus had reason to hope. Just a little. But he had to hope he could make it back to the guidance of the Jedi Masters before his own demons consumed him, too.

"I have to go now." The last part was a bit harder for the padawan to say, even if he had just had the durasteel balls to tell the Sith why he had joined the Jedi and urge him to abandon the Dark Side. "May the Force be with you...Father."

With that, Andreus backed away to leave. He had stood a step in front of, and practically right over, the Sith Lord the entire conversation, to try to shield him from the driving force of the wind and rain. Now, once again, the typhoon blew sheets of water straight at Oseth instead of into Andreus' back.

Andreus...Leonidas...waved goodbye to the Sith Lord one last time as he climbed into his cockpit, underneath the protection of his canopy. He hoped the Sith Lord considered what he had said, his own return from the darkness, but he had to go. He really had to go. If he couldn't make it back in time, before the darkness within wore down his strength and resolve, he knew he risked plunging back into darkness. Quickly, the padawan restarted his ship's reactor and subsystems.

As the E-wing's repulsorlifts came to life and began to lift the starfighter just a few inches off the docking platform, Andreus watched in awe as the largest flock of anything he had ever seen burst forth from the ocean. Aiwhas. Hundreds of them. Enough of them to blot out most of the wind and rain, if only for a fleeting moment. They burst forth from the water, and launched themselves in the air, rising on the raging storm's violent updrafts. Not a care in the galaxy, they had. Perhaps they were some sort of omen...

As the aiwhas took to the sky, and passed, Andreus aligned his own starfighter, only a foot or so off the ground, into the headwind. His repulsorlift seemed to struggle to keep the starfighter in place amidst all the windshear; however, his proximity to the ground made the problem look far worse than it really was. At a foot off the ground, the worst that could happen was an unintended but controlled landing with a bit of a thud. With storms like this, it would be much easier, and safer, to take off into the headwind.

Andreus didn't waste time, for he had none to waste. Aligned with the most favorable winds he could get from this storm, Andreus pushed the throttle to full power. The ship accelerated into the sky...into the storm. Positive rate of climb...landing gear up...afterburners on. Andreus needed to get there as soon as possible, and once again, the throbbing roar of the E-wing's modified propulsion assembly filled the night Kamino sky for a few miles. Sonic booms followed only a few seconds after.

As he accelerated away from Tipoca, pressed back into his seat by a twenty-five thousand foot per minute climb, Andreus already began programming his navicomputer for shortest route to Empress Teta. That was the closest of the Jedi Temples, and he needed to start his calculations early. He planned on invoking emergency procedures to reduce his flight time--namely, to cut more than an hour between leaving Kamino's gravity well and approaching Empress Teta. Time spent accelerating and decelerating was vital time wasted, time he wasn't sure he had before his mind began to falter. He was of clear and sound mind now, but didn't know how long that would last. It was best he create his flight plan now--so he could alert his Master to expect him before jumping into hyperspace.

 

[D.C.]

Father.​

That word echoed in his mind for a while. He was torn apart, he didn't want his son to go, but at the same time he wanted to be as far away from Andreus as possible. Andreus wouldn't be safe in his presence, not as long as he was surrounded by the Dark Side of the Force.

He watched Andreus go, watched him back away to his ship. The rain spattered into his face again, but this time he did not blink. It stung his eyes, but he did not care. He wanted to see his son take off, back to space, back to the Order. He wanted to see his son for as long as it was still possible.

Andreus had told him he had a choice, but he wasn't so sure about that. He had fallen to so deep, so deep into that pool of blackness. For a moment or two he considered trying to swim back to the surface, and to crawl out of it, but he couldn't and he wouldn't. The Dark Side was calling out to him, begging for him to give in and quench his thirst. And o, he was so thirsty. Ever so thirsty. He was a drunkard, always addicted to blood and the darkness that had already consumed him wholly.

Don't go! he wanted to shout, but he held his tongue. He stood tall in the night, in the rain, and watched his son stand beside his ship. He waved at him and Oseth raised a hand. He did not wave, but the hand was enough of a greeting. He tried to say something, but no words came to him. He was speechless. A lump in his throat.

Perhaps he had a choice. Maybe he could go back to the Light. And that made him wonder if he even had stood in the Light before he gave in to the Dark. The Dark Side was all he had ever known...

With an aching heart he watched Andreus take off, and he knew that if the other Lords found out, they'd have to kill him. He could only hope that Andreus would not mention Oseth's name to the Jedi Masters. He watched Andreus' ship fly away and out of sight.

The lone wolf remained on the landing pad. Soaking wet. Torn apart by doubt. Yet that doubt only lasted for a moment, for the next he knew who he was and what he was again. It was the Dark Side that tapped him on the shoulder to draw his attention, and then whispered into his ear that it was time to leave.

He closed his eyes and let the rain fall down on him. He let go of the Force that kept him warm and the next moment he shuddered in the cold. He tilted his head upwards, to face the clouded sky, though his eyes were still shut.

No, he was beyond redemption. He was way beyond that. He was too addicted... couldn't let go. He was too addicted to tearing apart the flesh of a victim, to rip out their hearts and squeeze all life out of them. He was too addicted to the power... the chaos. The strength. The passion.

When he opened his eyes again they twinkled and then he heard a soft, distant singing. It was serene and held such dark beauty that he instantly got hypnotized by it. It was the darkness. The evil. The power that always swirled around him and drove him ever onwards, on the path of destruction. He would leave chaos in his wake. It was the voice of the Dark Side...

... and the Dark Side was calling.

He turned around. He couldn't take it anymore; the urge to take it all out on someone... anyone. He strode away from the landing pad, back into the hallway, and pulled up his hood, shrouding his face. He strode down through the hallway and he realized just how thirsty he was. For a moment back there he had almost seen the Light, but that was gone now.

The Dark Side was calling.

The Wolf had to quench his thirst.

O, how the Dark Side was calling...

 

[Andreus Makaryk]

As Andreus ascended through the upper levels of the atmosphere, the doubts began to gnaw. It didn't take long. Not at all.

What now? What do Jedi do with Sith creations--dispose of them? Will the Jedi kill me? Expose me, and leave me to fall to the Dark Side? The thoughts, the doubts, ate away at him and corroded his very soul. Andreus could already feel the inky, oily, black darkness in his mind spreading. Leaching. He didn't like that. Not at all. Yet somehow, with only a basic understanding of the way of the Jedi, of calm, only a youngling's understanding, really, he had to control it so he wouldn't be consumed by it. He had known he wasn't yet ready for this day. Yet, the Force itself had demanded it. The Force had demanded he face his past long before the Jedi was ready.

The E-wing's capacitor steadily emptied itself into the ship's propulsion. Normally, Andreus would've reduced thrust to standard climb settings long ago. Not this time. He knew he had to race time, to race his own demons, to try to get to help before they could consume him because he had not the knowledge or wisdom to expunge them himself. So the vibrations of both engines and afterburners--all of it--sucking full power from both reactor and capacitor alike filled the ship with a deep, rich throbbing. A reassuring noise filled the starfighter, almost as if the ship itself intended to see Andreus arrive. But in what condition? That was what Andreus was worried about.

He looked down to his navicomputer, which indicated he could make Empress Teta and land there in twelve hours, thirty-seven minutes if he pulled out all the stops. All of them. To do that, Andreus would have to risk his very life, for to arrive and land that quickly required he virtually eliminate the time spent approaching the planet after dropping back into realspace and descending. To do that, he would have to enter the planet's atmosphere just a bit more than a thousand nautical miles from the Jedi Temple, at a velocity of about eighteen thousand knots, at an angle to the horizon of about 4.8 degrees. Doing so would cut approach and landing from about seventy-three minutes to twelve. It might also well kill him, for it risked incineration in the planet's upper atmosphere--he would need atmospheric friction to slow down, or he could also violently crash into the ground if he couldn't stop in time. But just for a moment, Andreus considered what Darth Oseth had intended him to be. He knew that if he did not make it in time, many, an untold number, would die.

On the surface, it might appear reckless. Rash. Given the rarity of such high-velocity, atmospheric-braking approaches, perhaps even attention-seeking. None of those were traits the Jedi espoused. But, each hour that passed without him reaching the wisdom of the Jedi Masters on how to correct his condition increased his chance of falling; he knew that. He would take that risk. He would risk his own life to increase his chances of reaching the help he so desperately needed to reach. He would risk his own life to reduce the risk of him later inflicting untold suffering and carnage upon others.

He thumbed his comlink to Master Avara's personal frequency. Not surprisingly, there wasn't much signal out here in Wild Space. He had to use his ship's avionics as a signal repeater. He got a busy signal. Master Avara had his comlink off, probably because he happened to be in a diplomatic meeting of some sort. That was the life of the Prime Envoy. His padawan would have to leave a message, like anyone else.

He flicked the switch to record a message. The very first thing his Master would hear was the noise--the deep, bass throbbing of his engines on maximum, non-overloaded power, afterburners included. That alone would suggest something urgent. That the padawan needed to hurry. He had briefed his Master on his starfighter's upgraded propulsion--there was no need for him to use his starfighter's full propulsion just to fly out of a gravity well. Its use would strongly suggest either combat or some other emergency.

His voice naturally rang deep and clear, even over the immense engine noise, with chilling clarity.

"Master Avara, I will be landing at Empress Teta in twelve hours, thirty-five minutes. Be there. Bring the Loremaster if you can. This is a full emergency."

Master Avara would also know there was something wrong with that flight time, given the location the transmission was sent from. It should've been just a bit under fourteen hours. He had made that same flight with his padawan just more than a week ago. That his padawan would shorten the flight time so much suggested he intended to take drastic measures to speed his arrival, that he was desperate. Or expected to be.

Andreus clicked off the recording and transmitted it, before hearing a chime, but only just. That chime meant his ship had broken free of Kamino's gravity well, and it was now safe for him to enter hyperspace.

The padawan just knew that every second counted. He pulled the lever, and stars elongated into starlines...

He was all alone now. Alone with his demons.

 

[Brand]

Galak's comlink chimed as he sat in his temporary quarters on Empress Teta. A thought of worry sprang unbidden to his mind at just the tone of his voice over the whine of the engine. This was urgent, and it was time to act.

The flight time was off, and Galak knew this meant that the E-Wing would be pushed far beyond it's limits; normally this alone would've worried Galak, but he had already had enough experience with the Padawan to recognize his intuition in the matter of flight was formidable enough to take care of himself.

Galak saved the message to his comlink before rising. "Master Lechammeon, meet me in the hangar in about twelve and a half hours. I'm coming to you now so we can meet and contemplate this on our own; Andreus has contacted me, and I sense his mind is in grave turmoil. We must move swiftly to avert... disaster."