Dark Disciple

by Christie Golden

  Theirs was a relationship that was unique in her experience. Before, the roles of both parties had been clearly defined as master and servant. Sometimes, as with her Jedi Master, Ky Narec, and Count Dooku, she had been the servant, the apprentice. In her early years, she had quite literally been a slave. When Savage Opress, the Zabrak Nightbrother whom she had shaped, used Nightsister dark side magicks in order to destroy Dooku, she had been the undisputed master. The hallmarks of all those interactions had been discipline and gravity.

  Vos was quite possibly the least serious person she’d ever met, except when he needed to be. He made her laugh, and she couldn’t remember laughing since her time with Ky Narec. There was an ease in Vos’s company she’d never found with anyone before, not even with the Nightsisters, and she realized she liked it.

  It wouldn’t last forever. None of her relationships did. But for now, Ventress decided, she would enjoy the ride.

  “Hey,” said Vos, in the seat behind her. “I just realized something.”

  “What’s that?” Ventress plotted a course and entered the coordinates. A second later the stars turned into long, bright streaks, and then they were in the blue-and-white hyperspace lane.

  “It’s our anniversary!”

  She peered around her chair at him. “What?”

  “Well, not an anniversary, I suppose,” he continued, “because it’s not a certain amount of time we’re celebrating. But. We have just successfully—wildly successfully, I might add—completed our fifth mission together. So…it’s that kind of anniversary. What’s that sort of thing called, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” Ventress replied. “We need to line up our next job.” She settled back into her seat and suited task to word, calling up the current list of bounties on a small screen.

  “Do you ever take your mind off the job? You know, relax a little?”

  “I have a term for people who relax.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  She clicked a few more bounty subjects. “Dead.”

  “You are so much fun,” Vos said.

  “I know.”

  “Oh, come on,” Vos said. He stepped around to her chair, leaning on the back of it. “Your friend Rhayme gave us a bottle of aged Tevraki whiskey. Let’s crack it open. We won’t be ready to do anything till tomorrow at the earliest, and we’re in hyperspace.”

  Ventress sighed. “You go ahead if you want.”

  “No deal. We’re partners. Split down the middle.”

  “I’d forgotten how persistent you were,” she said, rising. “All right.”

  There wasn’t much extra space aboard the Banshee, only two small cabins, a shared head, a tiny galley, and the cargo hold. They sat on the hard metal floor of the hold, opened the bottle, and Vos poured them each a shot.

  “To the next hunt,” Ventress said.

  “To partnership,” Vos replied, and they drank. The liquor burned like sweet fire, coating the tongue and sending warmth all through Ventress’s limbs. It was far too easy to drink, and Ventress knew she’d have to be careful. She never drank to get drunk.

  Vos’s eyes widened. “Your friends have good taste,” he said, his tone slightly tinged with awe. “Please let Captain Rhayme know that if she ever wants to hire us again, we’ll be there.”

  Ventress chuckled a little and took another sip, while Vos poured himself another shot. Normally they dissected a hunt afterward, discussing what had worked, what hadn’t, and what they might have done differently. This time, though, all had gone so smoothly there was nothing to criticize. So instead, Vos asked her about some of the weapons they were considering purchasing, and moves he’d seen her do. Ventress tensed slightly when he inquired about the lightsaber. By this point, her partner was a trifle worse—or better—for the alcohol, and she suspected it was making him less cautious. He’d never asked about her lightsaber before.

  “I thought only Jedi used them,” he said.

  “You thought wrong. You can find them on the black market easily enough. I would have thought you’d know that.”

  “Don’t need to trade in the black market,” he said. He waved a hand, indicating their stark vessel. “A simple existence, is ours.” He slurred his words slightly, drained his glass, and reached for the bottle.

  “You spill a single drop of that, it comes out of your pay,” Ventress warned. He laughed.

  “So,” he continued, pouring with great focus, “you got it on the black market. Who trained you?”

  “It’s a sword. I know how to use swords.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Vos stretched out on his back, using one arm for a pillow and propping the shot on his chest with the other. His gaze as he regarded her looked slightly unfocused.

  Ventress turned the tables. “What about you, Vos? What’s your story?”

  She was expecting some kind of wisecrack. Instead, Vos looked as if he had no idea how to answer. He turned his head, gazing up at nothing. “You know,” he said, his voice slightly slurred and touched with surprise, “I don’t think I have a story.”

  “Everyone has a story,” Ventress pressed, curious now.

  He raised his head, drained the glass, and set it down. “Not me. I mean…I’ve done things, seen things. Things have happened to me. But…I don’t think I have a story.”

  This had clearly never occurred to him. He seemed to be almost reeling from the revelation. Ventress wondered if it was the alcohol talking, or if Vos really did feel as lost as he sounded. “What about you?” he asked. “What’s your story? Or do you not have one, either?”

  “Oh, I have a story all right,” Ventress said. “Quite a lot of stories, actually.” The story of a girl given into slavery. Of a Jedi Padawan. Of a dark Master’s apprentice. Of a Nightsister. “But none of them end well.” She frowned into her glass. Maybe the delicious liquor was having an effect on her, too. She was seldom maudlin, and she didn’t like it.

  “I wonder,” Vos mused, turning again to look at her. “What’s worse…to have unhappy stories, or have no story at all?”

  “Tonight’s story ends with sleep.” Ventress was done. She got to her feet. Vos didn’t emulate her right away. “Vos? Can you get up?”

  “Yep,” he assured her.

  “Are you lying?”

  “…maybe?”

  —

  Vos had permitted Ventress to help him to the door of his cabin, where she told him he’d better not have a hangover in the morning. He assured her he wouldn’t, which was the truth, because he wasn’t drunk.

  It had been a necessity in undercover work to develop a strong tolerance for alcohol in order to blend in. The exquisite liquor so generously given to them by a pirate captain was strong, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He had exaggerated his intoxication in the hope of getting Ventress to reveal some things about herself. It hadn’t worked out quite as he’d intended.

  Her casual query, “What’s your story, Vos?” had blindsided him in a way he couldn’t possibly have imagined. Of course he couldn’t tell her the truth, but her word choice, story, made him realize that he truly didn’t have one. He had a series of events from his life that he could relate, but somehow, they were never about him; never his stories, simply things he’d done. The distinction was subtle, so subtle he’d never even thought about it. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the time he’d spent in Ventress’s company working as a team, but the realization shook him.

  So Vos had said exactly what had sprung into his mind, and then attempted to refocus attention on Ventress. For the second time that evening, he got a shock: He was willing to bet a million credits that Ventress, too, had replied honestly—and her answer had surprised and shaken her, just as Vos’s answer had rattled him.

  He rubbed his tired eyes. He was likely reading too much into everything tonight. His belly was still pleasantly warm from the alcohol, but his thoughts were discordant. Vos stretched out on the cot, but sleep would not come right away. The words he’d spoken kept running through
his brain: What’s worse…to have unhappy stories, or to have no story at all?

  Vos had no answer.

  “You’re late,” said the man who sat in the seedy, ill-lit Level 1313 bar. He wore a fur-lined vest, a tan jacket, and gear that pegged him as a bounty hunter. Sharp eyes gazed out from under a hood. His voice was smooth and cultured, the exact opposite of his disheveled and dirty appearance.

  “You’re impatient,” Vos replied. He waved at the bartender and pointed at the beverage his companion held in a grubby hand. A moment later a BD-3000 droid, her pale metal face smooth and her torso painted a garish scarlet, plunked a shot glass down in front of Vos. One articulated lid closed over a blank eye in a wink, then the droid sidled off.

  Vos took a sip. Predictably, the beverage wasn’t very strong. Obi-Wan Kenobi always eschewed the heavier stuff when he was on a mission.

  “I am, rather,” Kenobi said, “and I’m not alone. I’ve been getting pressure from the Council. How’s it coming with Ventress? Have you made any progress?”

  “Well, I’m her ‘partner’ now,” Vos said, draining the weak drink and motioning for another. “We’ve been scoring marks together—and making quite the payday, I might add. Hey,” he asked, keeping his face straight, “do I get to keep the money after this mission?”

  Kenobi rubbed his eyes and gave a long-suffering sigh. “You can’t play bounty hunter forever.”

  Vos mock-pouted, and winked at the BD-3000 as she set another glass of mostly water in front of him.

  “Now that the two of you have established a rapport,” Kenobi went on, “you must find a way to motivate her against Count Dooku.”

  Vos’s joviality ebbed. Quietly, he said, “She has plenty of motivation.”

  Obi-Wan feigned obliviousness to Vos’s sudden solemnity. “Well, then, help her tap into it. Soon.”

  “I’ll find a way.”

  “I’m sure you will.” Drink unfinished, Kenobi tossed a few credits on the table and rose. His hand descended on Vos’s shoulder for a moment. Then he was gone. Vos was alone in the crowded bar, staring into his glass.

  Vos ordered another shot and knocked it back, then rolled the glass between his fingers. Many Jedi would raise eyebrows at the thought of meditating in a bar, but Vos had done it before. It was simply a matter of being able to have part of his conscious mind alert while the rest of it sank deeper. And frankly, Vos sometimes wondered if other customers, crouched over their drinks and staring into them, weren’t trying their own versions of the same thing.

  He deliberately slowed his breathing and his heart rate, letting his gaze soften as he stared into the last few blue droplets in the glass.

  The essence of his task could be summed up in two words: Kill Dooku. It expanded from there to Get Asajj Ventress’s help to do so. Wider the ring spread, like ripples from a stone tossed into still water, to include, Without her knowledge.

  His even breathing caught for an instant, then resumed. That was where the conflict came. He had gained her trust—and even grown to like her. That happened, sometimes, in this line of work. But Ventress was unique. Even the Council knew it, or else they wouldn’t have asked him to pair up with her.

  What were his key values? What did he owe, to himself and to others? To the Jedi Order as a whole, to the Council—to his “partner”? He was a Jedi, all but born in the Temple. Surely, he owed them his absolute obedience. The task was a worthy one. If anyone in the universe needed to be stopped, it was Dooku. Vos let himself imagine all the people slain by Dooku in one place, and the image was so horrific he felt his gut twist with real, physical pain.

  But what about Ventress? She’d saved his life on more than one occasion during their bounty hunts. He owed her. And what about himself?

  The thought instantly snapped Vos out of his meditation. Jedi did not think about themselves—their own wants, or needs, or desires. Keep it together, he told himself. You’re using her, yes, but you’re not doing anything she doesn’t want. And you know when it comes down to it, she’s going to want to kill Dooku.

  Even his reasoning did not shake the feeling that he was doing something wrong, and he was unable to fall back into his meditation.

  He ordered another shot and sat at the table for a long time.

  —

  Ventress paused in her welding as Vos approached. She had needed to take a couple of hours in relative safety to install some modifications to the Banshee. They had opted to land here, on a platform extending from the inner curve of one of the massive portals that burrowed its way into the Coruscant undercity. Vos had taken advantage of the chance to restock their supplies. Ventress permitted herself to silently marvel at the fact that she had let someone else take her hard-earned credits—and that she hadn’t had a moment’s concern about whether he and the supplies would return. She flipped up the protective visor and gave him a smile.

  “You seem to be in a good mood,” he said.

  “I suppose I am,” she replied. “No reason not to be. We’re stocked up, the new modifications to the ship are almost complete—and I’ve managed to secure another job for us.” She extinguished the torch and removed the visor.

  Striding up the Banshee’s ramp, Vos caught up to her and they fell into an easy step together. “Oh? Where we headed?”

  “We’re going to Oba Diah. To see the Pykes.”

  Vos made a sour face. Ventress supposed she couldn’t blame him. Vos was almost annoyingly cheerful—no, she amended, strike the “almost”—and the Pykes were not anybody’s idea of fun. The Pyke Syndicate liked to call itself a family, but it was driven by anything other than familial love. It was a crime syndicate whose focus was on the distribution of highly illegal spice of all types, from the mild to the mind destroying.

  “A barrel of laughs, being your partner.”

  “No one says you need to stick around,” Ventress offered.

  “Ah, but you’d miss me. You know you would.”

  She didn’t reply, only arched a brow. But she had to admit, if only to herself…he was right.

  —

  “Looks like we’ve got a welcoming committee,” Vos observed. Oba Diah was a world as unwelcoming as its inhabitants. Wreathed in mist, the major city was carved out of the jutting obsidian crags of the inhospitable terrain. Centuries ago, the Pykes had built structures from material that resembled deep green smoked glass. From these looming yet eerily beautiful structures, the wealthy and powerful gazed from luminous blue-green windows down at those less fortunate. Ventress settled the Banshee down onto one of the many landing plaftorms erected on spokes that jutted out from the main Pyke citadel and peered out the viewport.

  “Fife,” she said. “He’s Marg Krim’s majordomo. I’ve worked with him before. Usually he thinks he’s more than enough to handle a situation. This should be interesting. Come on.”

  No fewer than eight heavily armed guards flanked the strutting Fife. Ventress strode forward, Vos just a step behind her, and came to a stop in front of the Pyke. No matter how often one interacted with them, the species always took getting used to. Taller and slighter than an average human, Pykes had long, spindly legs and arms that bore three fingers. Their heads were large, sleek, and elongated, with a tapered skull, yet their faces were undersized, small as a child’s. The overall effect was unsettling.

  “Fife,” she said coolly.

  He didn’t acknowledge her. His glowing magenta eyes were turned toward Vos, who stayed silent—thankfully, Ventress thought—though his arms were folded across his chest and he met Fife stare for stare.

  Ventress regarded Fife for a moment, then, hoping that a brief acknowledgment would be enough for the openly curious Pyke, said flatly, “My partner, Vos.”

  Fife’s head drew back in the characteristic Pyke gesture for surprise. He stared at Ventress. “A partner? You? That’s new.” He looked Vos up and down and said to him, “You must be pretty good for this one to trust you.”

  “I am,” Vos replied matter-of-factly.
/>
  Fife motioned for them to follow. The eight guards tramped in silent menace behind them as Fife led them through the halls of the Pyke Palace.

  They strode through a marble entrance, the warm, sand-colored stone floor flanked by massive dark pillars that emitted green illumination. While the design and artistry of the entranceway was beautiful, Ventress caught glimpses of languid movement in alcoves on each side and the brief gleam of glazed eyes. It was hard not to cough from the sickly sweet smell of spice. Attractive the place was, but what went on here was unpleasant indeed.

  She returned her attention to Fife. “We’ve known each other awhile,” she said, quickening her steps to keep pace with him. “Anything you can fill me in on before we hear it from your boss?”

  He looked at her for a moment, then spoke quietly. “What I can say is that Black Sun is trying to move in on the Pyke Syndicate. Marg Krim has been put in a terrible position. Much is on the line for him. Black Sun wants all his business. He risks both losing face with our syndicate and…well, the rest I will leave for him to share.”

  They reached the foot of the throne. Marg Krim blinked at them, his body twitching with anxiety. In the Force, worry, anger, and fear rolled off him. He wore the headdress that marked his station, a metallic mask affixed to his huge skull that looked like rays of the sun or the plumes of a bird.

  Fife bowed low, his gangly arms sweeping. “O Illustrious Imperator, Marg Krim,” he said, “I have brought the bounty seekers you requested.”

  Krim continued to stare at Vos and Ventress for so long that Ventress thought the Illustrious Imperator might be too heavily drugged to have a coherent conversation. Then he spoke, and he wasted not one word.

  “My mate and two younglings have been captured by Black Sun and taken to Mustafar.”

  “Oh, boy,” Vos muttered under his breath.

  “You will find them, and bring them back alive.” His voice quivered with emotion, and he took another puff on his hookah in an attempt to steady himself.