KotOR: Grey - Chapter 4

Was it Dantooine?

He didn't think so, but his mind couldn't place the way the light slanted over them from a warm, yellow sun. There was grass. He could smell it, a rich, earthy scent that comforted in ways he couldn't even begin to think about.

His eyes were closed against the afternoon light, but he could sense her hovering over him – serious, yet full of mischief. It startled him, this sense of fun that he'd never guessed lurked within her.

"Can I help you?" He opened one eye and squinted up at her, adopting an air of mild annoyance.

"Are you just going to sleep here all day?"

"I just might, you know. Can't think of any good reason to move just now …"

"No? Not one good reason?"

How she managed to arch that single brow so high was a trick he'd never learned.

"Why? You got somewhere pressing to be at the moment?"

Her smile was brilliant.

"No. There's absolutely nowhere else I have to be at the moment."

He reached for her and wondered at the little jolt of surprise when his hands touched her sun-warmed flesh. She didn't resist as he pulled her down to him, and his chest locked tight around his heart as her mouth met his.

Her black hair tumbled down around his face and he closed his eyes, his breath lodged in his throat as his heart thundered. He explored the soft pressure of her mouth. She tasted like exotic citrus yellow – bright and tart and sweet. Eyes closed, his hands followed her body's solid curves, memorizing everything – how her hip moulded into his belly, just so. How her leg slid between his, perfectly. How the low growl in her throat rumbled against his chest. How she panted for breath between kisses.

He moved to push midnight tendrils away from her face, but his long fingers tangled in it, clutched at it. Soft, black strands wrapped around his hands and wrists, grabbing, burrowing under his skin. He writhed beneath her, suddenly desperate to see her face, lost in the shadow of her hair. But, as he plunged deeper, he only found more darkness.

His body shook as he opened his eyes to the leaden morning. His hands clutched at the edges of the bed beneath him. A few gulping breaths and he began to steady his heart and ease the pain that lanced through his chest. Morning was the worst time, with fluttering edges of memory pulling on his mind. He counted the cracks on the stained ceiling until the last flashes of sunlight dimmed and went out.

He sat on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, and splashed tepid water from his canister over his head.

He had a job.

That's why he was here. That's why he was awake. That's why he was alive.

He knew next to nothing about his mark. Only a name. Names can change. A gender. Rumour about appearance, tattoos. And a planet on the very edge of known space.

Ulicia.

He had touched down yesterday. His mind registered everything of importance. Run-down mining community. Low socio-economic demography. They might be easy to bribe. Mixed population. Some Twi'lek, some Rodian, some Duros. They were immaterial. He was hunting a human. He was hunting a Sith.

They would be here. They fed on the disaffected. Which means the cantina. Of course.

Atton waited in a dark corner of the smelly little dive. In a community like this, the lowest of the low would always end up here, to drink and gamble and fight – or to kick others while they were down.

Either way, they were his best chance.

The dimly lit cantina was awash in dust and grime that settled on his skin like mist.

He was sure the place had to reek of Dark presence, but he didn't reach for it. The Force held only pain for him. It threatened his very control, threatened to overwhelm him in memory. Sometimes he could feel it banging on the grey shields … very far away. But those incidents were becoming more infrequent. Even here, so close to a Sith base that was rumoured to be as vile a crucible as had ever been created, it barely rippled across the surface of his awareness.

As it should be.

As it must be.

Atton took stock of the small space. A rounded counter in the middle housed a bartender and an ever-changing mass of serving girls – human and Twi'lek. A ramp extended out into the bar's patrons and dancers moved cautiously across the rickety stage, in perpetual danger of tripping over a loose plank or plunging through the corroded material altogether.

Nearby, one almost skeletal human dancer was busily prying a man's blunt-fingered hand from her thigh while he propositioned her in a voice that sounded like rocks rolling over each other.

"Aw c'mon, babe. Dun be like that."

When the woman kept moving past him, the miner's hand snaked out, catching her ankle and sending her crashing onto the stage with a shriek.

"Bitch! Think yer worth sumthin', do ya?"

The scuffle faded in Atton's consciousness as the cantina door swung open. Even without the Force, he would have known the instant Tremen stepped into the room. As he watched the grey Twi'lek cross to the bar, Atton weighed the pros and cons of approaching his old … friend.

On one hand, if anyone was going to know about the upper echelons of the Sith academy, it would be Tremen. On the other hand, the Twi'lek would probably be very interested in killing him.

Well then, a win-win situation.

With that in mind, Atton pulled a vibroblade from his boot and hurled it at the back of Tremen's head in one smooth motion. The Sith spun, plucking the blade out of the air, launched himself backwards and slid across a nearby table, upending drinks and patrons alike.

Atton was struck by the sudden silence that fell over the cantina. Nobody screamed. Nobody bemoaned the loss of their beverage. They simply fell to the floor, found what shelter they could and held their breath. Three serving girls and the bartender were huddled behind the bar. One more waitress was slowly inching towards the door. Most of the dancers had taken shelter behind the stage, except for the one who had been accosted by the man next to him. Tears poured down her face – and not because of the ankle that was twisted at an unnatural angle.

Tremen was shielded by the table he had recently turned over. Almost casually, Atton rolled to his side and to his feet, reaching out with his right arm.

Stunned by the blur of motion around him and throat nestled in the crook of Atton's arm, the gravelly voiced patron sputtered and choked as the assassin's elbow held him tighter than an iron collar. "P…please…no!" the man rasped through a windpipe that was slowly constricting.

In the end, however, breathing didn't really matter. As his body spun, propelled by the assassin's momentum, a dozen razor-sharp – and poisoned – darts ripped through the man's chest. He was dead before Atton released him.

In the heartbeats that it took for his shield to slump to the ground, Atton dove sideways behind a stray table as a dozen more darts clattered against the wall where he had just been. He rolled over on his shoulder and used on arm to launch himself in a graceful arc and back onto his feet. His other hand produced a small, fragile vial, seemingly out of nowhere. Another dive, and the glass container sailed towards Tremen only to be snatched by a gloved hand.

That glove saved the Twi'lek's life, as the glass shattered releasing a contact toxin known for its ability to stop a charging rancor – dead – in its tracks.

Even so, Tremen had to waste precious seconds peeling the glove off before the poison managed to saturate the thick leather. Precious seconds that his foe used to disappear.

Tremen's body stilled as he reached out with all of his senses, desperate for some sign of where the next attack would come from. His agile mind tried to take stock of his opponent – fast, merciless, treacherous, possible Force sensitive. He pushed out with his rage and hatred, and his fear, aiming his thoughts toward the door.

Then, as he took his first step towards that escape, a dark blur of motion emerged from behind the dancers' stage, cutting off his route. Tremen couldn't help but smile a little as he spun neatly on his left foot and rolled his right shoulder in to absorb the blow. One deft turn of his wrist and the shadowy form was drawn into the Sith assassin's rotation and thrown hard against the stage. Tremen's knee lifted the man again, driving up into his solar plexus, as his elbow drove down onto the back of an unprotected neck.

With his opponent limp and gasping, Tremen lifted the man up by his jaw and pinned the ragged form, forcing it backwards over the stage. The Twi'lek stared at the human face, skin as grey as his own and blood flowing freely from nose and mouth.

"Jaq?"

The man's thin lips twisted into a bloody smile. "Hey, Tremen. Long time no see."

Tremen's next blow rocked Atton's head to the left, but the human caught the third one, managing to partially block the lethal force. The Sith merely allowed the swing to go wide and followed through by planting his forearm on Atton's throat.

"You're getting soft in your old age, Jaq."

Tremen's grin was easy, familiar. Atton's smile felt alien as it crawled across his face, but he nurtured it and convinced it to stay as he spread his hands wide.

"What can I say? I thought for sure the poison had ya. You've gotten quicker … maybe smarter, huh?"

"You look like shit."

"The universe isn't a kind place, Trem. A man's gotta work for his creds out here."

Tremen's forearm tightened across his throat. "Creds? Someone put a price on me?"

Atton choked as the pressure on his trachea increased. He tried for a casual shrug, but it was hampered somewhat by the hard corner of the stage digging between his shoulder blades.

"You? Hey, no. You're just … um … part of a package. The real target's just a little harder to get to at the moment."

Atton heard his own voice from a long way off, heard his jibes and arguments, insinuations. It all flowed so freely, without effort. A reflex. An echo of a dead man.

"Fact is, Trem, I don't know much about the real target … but I figured if I could show some results, I could keep the client off my back, y'know?"

Tremen's skin, a pale shade of charcoal next to his captive's pallid jaw, flushed. "Your bad luck to cross my path first, then, isn't it?" Atton's own vibroblade appeared in the Twi'lek's hand. The blade hummed quietly, placed as it was under his ear. A few layers of skin parted effortlessly and blood began to pool on the stage beneath his head.

"C'mon, there's no reason for this. Work is work, right?"

Another slice and he could feel the warmth caking and sticking to the day's growth of stubble on his scalp.

"Knowledge is power, Trem, and you never could resist power, right? Now, we both know I'm not giving anything up with a knife to my throat. I talk, I die – bad bet on my part… and I might be getting soft, but we both know that pain isn't going to work."

Tremen's grin grew a little wider.

"Hey, there's nothing to say that you even need to prevent me from getting to my target. I might be doing you a favour. You're no-one's guardian angel…"

The pressure on his throat eased by the barest of increments. The knife disappeared.

"Talk, then," Tremen said as he pushed himself off the battered man beneath him, pleased at the way his eyes closed briefly with relief.

"I don't know a lot, really. I was offered an obscene amount of credits to kill someone they didn't even really have a lot of information on. Doesn't make much sense, but I'm not often in a position to look too closely at the intricacies of where the next meal is coming from, you know?" His eyes wandered over the Twi'lek's muscled, well-kept body. "Well, umm, maybe you don't know, now. But you remember what it was like, don't you?"

"I remember because it keeps me strong, Jaq."

"Eh, you always were one to hold a grudge, Trem." He aimed a friendly punch at the other's shoulder, but his wrist was trapped in an iron grip. "Yeah, well, so, this mark…the only info I have is that it's a woman, with some funky tattoos. Dark hair, dark eyes, but those things can change."

"A name, Jaq?"

"Oh, yeah, a name … V'loren something or other … I've got it on a datapad here somewhere…"

"V'loren? You think you can take her? Jaq, she's one of us."

Atton's head came up like a hound's. "What? Not possible. The only women in our squad were Jrelia and Odona and they both died before Revan fell into the Jedi's hands."

Tremen's lip curled. "She says she was trained on Korriban, with a separate unit, while we were on Malachor. They were trained in case any of us decided to step out of line." He grabbed Atton's thin shirt by the collar. "Now, I wonder why they'd be worried about that?"

"Hey, I … wait…you mean she's here? On Ulicia?"

Tremen spat. "She bunks across the hall from me."

Atton's mouth curved into a slow smile. "You don't like her much, do you? Look, just forget you ever saw me, and I'll return the favour by removing a thorn in your side…"

In a heartbeat he was pressed back against the decrepit stage.

"I deal with my own debts, Jaq. All of them." The knife was back in Tremen's hand. "Despite what you may have heard, the Sith are still strong … and we haven't softened our policy on traitors and deserters."

The blade was descending faster than the eye could follow. "Never figured you for this stupid, Jaq."

But he wasn't there.

Had he still possessed the ability to move, Tremen would have cursed himself. Only a Force-sensitive could have fallen for his trap earlier, could have felt the blast of emotions thrown out for the feint. As it was, the Twi'lek could only stare as the affable, cajoling Jaq melted away, leaving a grey, gaunt face, without any trace of the man he'd grown up with.

"You can warn her, or not, Tremen. Makes no difference to me. She's going to die. If you stand in my way, you die too. It's what I do."