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seriousficEpisode 1.
After breakfast, Buffy pulled on one of Faith’s skirts and considered one of Faith’s sports bras before deciding her ribs precluded it. She put on one of Faith’s ten million tanktops, knowing that without a bra she was just asking to be ogled, then limped into the cockpit to sit down beside Faith. She self-consciously smoothed her skirt over her bandaged thigh, wondering if Faith would care.
“It’s weird, traveling like this.” Faith pointed at a star in the center of her view, tracking it with her finger as it slogged to the side. “Like being underwater,” she croaked, rubbing her throat.
Buffy noticed how inflamed it looked. “Are you okay?”
“Twi’lek vocal cords are different than humans’. ‘s why we’re such great singers; that and lung capacity. That Sith must’ve bruised something when he choked me.”
Buffy craned her head for a better look. “I could teach you to enter a healing trance. It would make the pain go away.”
Faith glanced over into her puppy dog eyes. “Sithspit, not like I have anything better to do.”
***
The key to a healing trance was to relax and let the Force in. Faith had never been much for that, even as a Padawan. Some concern always seemed to lunge for her attention and blockade the Force.
She knew she’d been born on Ryloth, a feral and squalid world. Her parents had been overjoyed to give her over to the Jedi. It was a chance at a better life, something usually only achieved by being sold into slavery. The Republic frowned upon it, but did nothing to stop either the exploitation or the poverty that drove Twi’leks to such desperation. Neither did the Jedi.
Had her parents understood they’d never see her again when they gave her up? Or had the Jedi deceived them on that account as well?
She felt Buffy’s hands move her lekku out of the way--bliss--and begin massaging her shoulders. “Hell, you’re tense. Let the Force flow through you, not arthritis.”
Buffy Summers. Everything she had once loved about the Jedi Order, and some attitude for flavor. Two broken ribs and she was the one giving Faith a massage. If only there were more like her, maybe Faith wouldn’t have had to leave.
“What are you thinking about?” Buffy asked, fixing Faith’s posture so the Force flowed more freely through her. Though she didn’t seem to know what to do with the lekku, nudging them to symmetry with the back of her hands.
“Kids.”
“Faith, we’re not even married.”
“It used to be that anyone could train to be a Jedi, if the Force chose them. Then Jedi started getting married, havin’ rugrats, and they trained the tykes to use the Force straight outta the womb.”
“Good,” Buffy pronounced.
“Not really. Because of how hard it was to locate Force-sensitives in those days, the Jedi-born outnumbered them in a manner of generations. They decided they were better than anyone else. And from then on, Jedi were raised by Jedi… even if they already had parents.”
“You’re making that up.”
“How do you think the Jedi started? Adults learned to use the Force, just as easily as children. They fell in love too. It’s all in the Jedi Archives. It’s just not required reading.”
Buffy never stopped kneading Faith’s flesh. “Having told me that, do you feel better?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then let the Force fill the emptiness you’ve created. Lay your demons to rest, just for a while.”
***
The atrium was the only room in the ship apart from the cockpit, captain’s cabin, and kitchen/lounge/holo-room/shooting range (a space Buffy found impossible to navigate). It was a series of interlocking circles, each three meters wide, with access to the cargo compartments below deck and the ship’s systems above deck. At the center was the hyperdrive room. They didn’t go in there unless they felt like wallowing in misery, it being all charred parts and bad smells.
Buffy walked the outermost ring, powering through the twinge in her leg. The healing trances had helped her musculature reknit, especially in communion with Faith, but she knew fearing the pain of recovery would prolong the process. She felt the Dark Side seeping into everything and wondered what the state of the universe would be when they finally reached their destination.
The fresher door opened, disgorging steam and a very wet, very naked Faith. Buffy caught a suggestion—a very suggesting suggestion—of full breasts and a deeper shade of red between toned legs before she jerked her head up to keep… abreast… of the private bits. But that just made her focus on a bead of water rolling down Faith’s head and off her lekku.
“You should be resting,” Faith said, completely comfortable with Buffy’s gaze.
“I just had to—you know—“ Buffy thrust her fist forward in the universal symbol of ‘go’, only to wonder if she hadn’t made a universal gesture for something else. She covered by summoning a towel to her outstretched hand with the Force and holding it out to Faith.
The Twi’lek took it graciously, but instead of wrapping herself in it as Buffy had hoped, she began to dry herself off right in front of the stunned Jedi. “B, we’re gonna be on this crate a while. We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. So, we can either try to enjoy ourselves, or we can not.” She tossed the towel to Buffy. “Shower’s yours.”
She walked off.
Buffy showered with water as cold as it could go.
***
Faith double-checked her rations stock. There was just enough to cover the trip, but she didn’t want to share it with mynocks or veeba bugs. Buffy came in just as she was cataloguing the third compartment, sitting in the edge of the access panel to the recessed compartment. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“Really? I wasn’t.”
“I get that you probably don’t want to talk about why you left the Jedi.”
“Right in one.”
“But if you’re willing, I’d like you to be my Padawan learner.”
Faith lost count of the food bins. “If you’re growing a sense of humor, you picked an awful time.”
“I’m serious. You have great power. Do you think the Force gave you that power to move spice…”
“I don’t touch spice!” Faith put an indignant hand to her chest. “And I don’t give a damn why I have this power! I wish I didn’t! You have no idea the bantha fodder I’ve gotten in because of your Force!”
“I know you’ve had it bad, but I’m different. And right now, you’re walking the edge of the Dark Side.”
“Really. You have a good reason I can’t zap someone with Force Lightning to save your life?”
“Because it’s wrong.”
“Wrong? What do you know about wrong? Have you ever missed a meal in your life? Have you ever had to kill, just to survive?”
“Have you ever done something just because it was the right thing to do?”
Faith’s rage cooled, lekku slumping down her front.
“I’m not judging you, I’m just saying you can be better.”
Faith swung up to sit on the ledge across from Buffy. “Do I get a lightsaber?”
Buffy unscrewed her own, pried out one of the three Ilum crystals, and tossed it to Faith.
The smuggler held it up to her eye. “What’s this?”
“A beginning.”
***
“Relax. Let the Force—“
“Flow through me. I do have this thing called a memory? And ya know, it’s telling me that I already learned a healing trance.”
“This is a meditative trance.”
”Ooooh.”
“Sarcasm is not part of the Jedi way.”
“Suuuure it’s not.”
“The healing trance lets the Force repair your body, the meditative trance lets it do the same for your mind. Let go of your fear, your doubt, your uncertainty, your stress. Let the Force fill the void and leave no room for despair.”
Faith popped an eye open to see Buffy was floating inches above the ground.
“Show-off.”
“Slacker.”
***
Buffy hit the ground in a disgruntled heap, bruised from their sparring match. “This shouldn’t be happening. The Force is my ally.”
“Yeah, I‘ve got allies too.” Faith held up her fists. “Mr. Punch and Mr. Crunch.”
“Jedi don’t name their fists.”
“That a hard and fast rule, B, cuz your left looks like a Luna to me.”
“You were supposed to try to use the Force, and fail, so I’d beat you.”
“That’s not a very good reason for me to use the Force.”
“Yes, your current… methods are effective. Crude, but effective. Did I mention crude?”
“Works, don’t it?”
“It would work better with the Force.”
“Not from where I’m standing, in the ass-kicking circle.”
“Could you just try doing things my way?”
“Why? Are you some kind of masochist?”
“No! But,” Buffy’s eyes lit up, “if you beat me, Force on Force, I’ll have sex with you.”
Faith’s lekku stiffened. “That sense of humor you grew? Ya might wanna send it back.”
“No joke. There’s nothing in the Jedi Code against cheap, meaningless sex. You just assumed I wasn’t into it.” Buffy leaned forward. “As younglings, Padawans are cautioned against assumption.”
Faith threw her lekku snugly around her neck. “This is going to be my easiest lay since I met that Tamaranian in heat.”
“Then you won’t mind a little something to keep us, i.e. you, honest.” Buffy held up a blindfold.
“You might wanna hang onto that, B. You never know when it might come in handy.”
***
To Faith, it felt like she had a thousand hands and they were all expanding from her, until she felt a subtle pressure against them, like she was holding her hand near a repulsorlift.
“What’s that?”
“Those are the walls,” Buffy said. “Move past them.”
Faith did. “It feels weird, like being underwater.”
“That’s because you’re still seeing with your senses, instead of the Force. Your eyes can deceive you: they only show you light reflected off shells. The Force shows you the truth of what something is, not how it looks or sounds.”
“So what does the Force show you when you look at me?”
“There aren’t words to describe it. But I like looking. Can you feel the spanner outside the door?”
”Yeah, it… it wants to help.”
“Of course, it’s one of your tools. Now pick it up—don’t force it—let it want to come up—now call it to you.”
The spanner thudded against the door. “I can’t! The door’s closed.”
“Then open it.”
“I can barely lift a spanner.”
“Everything is connected. Look through the eyes of the spanner and see the door. Opening it and bringing the spanner through are one action, autonomous. Trust the Force.”
Faith focused her mind, picturing the spanner coming to a rest at her feet. The door slid open. The spanner flew through, hitting the deck and sticking out of it like a blade.
“Which brings me to our seventh lesson.” Buffy took the blindfold off Faith. “Power is easy. Control is difficult. Any Padawan can beat up a bad guy, but the discretion to truly resolve a situation can only come from a fully-trained Jedi Knight with the Force as her ally.”
“Explaining the bang-up job you did back on Nar Jadica.”
“For a Padawan, you don’t show much respect for the will of the Force.”
“I’m only in it so I can call you mistress, B.”
***
Buffy held the blindfold in her hand when Faith stumbled out of the cockpit. The Twi’lek was battling a hangover that seemed to pull at her lekku like lead weights. Buffy glared at her every time she found a stash of liquor and did her little ritual, but she kept her mouth shut.
Faith pulled the blindfold over her eyes, but Buffy had to tie it. “Do we have to do this this morning?”
Buffy pulled extra-hard on the knot. “You mean this afternoon? It’s five o’clock, Faith. Sleep any later and you’ll go into hibernation.”
“What difference does it make? Nothing ever changes on this ship…”
“We change.” Buffy untied the blindfold, sorted it under Faith’s lekku, and retied it. “This time, you move the spanner and I’ll try to stop you.”
“Really? And where should I move it?”
“Other side of the room is fine.”
“Do you prefer me to move it fast or slow, mistress?”
“You have to get it up before you can move it, and that spanner isn’t even twitching.”
“I had a lot to drink last night—“
“You know who didn’t? The Force. Now cowboy up and make that spanner go.”
Faith forced her mind to bypass the alcohol, an easy skill once practiced, and brought the spanner up so high it clanged against the ceiling. Then she pushed it toward the far wall, but almost immediately the spanner slipped from her grip and whirled like a compass above a magnet.
“Before you ask,” Buffy said, “yes, I am going easy on you.”
“Don’t bother.” Faith had an easy connection to the Force, slick as a lucky sabacc deck, and all she had to do was breathe, then it was in her bloodstream like glimmerstim. One firm push and the spanner was flying through the air like a gundart-killer.
Buffy forced it, with the decaton resolve she’d built over a lifetime. The spanner crashed to the ground. At the same time, she ran a hand alluringly over Faith’s midriff.
“Hey!”
“Something wrong, my dear Padawan?” Buffy asked innocently.
“I’m not distracted if you’re not distracted, mistress.” Faith arced into the contact, skimming Buffy’s hand toward her breasts.
The spanner skipped, ricocheting, down the ceiling.
“Is it hot in here or is it just me?” Faith asked, leather lace whispering through copper eyelets as her jacket slithered off her.
She heard the accompanying hiss of Buffy’s robes coming undone. “It does seem a bit warm. You’d better check the cooling coils after we finish.”
“Do you think we’ll finish soon, B?”
“Call me mistress. I like it when you remember your position.”
“Maybe if we tried a new position, I could remember it better.”
The spanner flitted back and forth, like a dog being called by two masters.
Buffy’s hand ran down Faith’s arm, probing the lines of her muscles like a spreading flame. “Tell me, Faith, why is it that most of your skin… isn’t as soft as your lekku?” Her other hand stroked the lekku, one after another, and Faith shuddered in ecstasy as they curled.
The spanner jolted in random spurts like a shockball in full play.
“My lekku—very sensitive—special lotion.”
“It smells nice.” Faith felt Buffy’s warm breath caress the tips of her lekku. “Does it taste nice as well?”
”It’s made from a fruit—only on Ryloth—very sweet.”
Buffy took Faith’s right lekku in her mouth and that was her fatal mistake. Buffy was enthusiastic, but she had no knowledge of nerve striation or damp-glans. And Faith was no unbled Rodian to be impressed by mild suction.
She swirled the lekku in Buffy’s mouth like a tongue, angling to the back of her throat. The Jedi half-gagged, half-moaned, and the spanner shot across the room. Faith’s lekku popped out of Buffy’s mouth, trailing saliva.
”Looks like I win, B.” Faith fingered her blindfold up for a peek at her mistress. “But what do I win?”
Buffy had abandoned the shifts that once tapered down her body for more practical cloths. With her robe off, the gi she wore under it yawed open to reveal a gladiatrix bra. Faith flicked her finger either way and the gi split open at the Force’s urging.
“You’re learning,” Buffy said, holding her arms to let the gi slide partways off. “Now let’s see what you can teach yourself.”
Faith moved the gi’s jacket by inches, letting Buffy feel every thread as it was rolled off her. The jacket hit the ground along with the blindfold like so many falling leaves and Faith started on the trousers. Bare skin flowed into view as Faith pushed Buffy down into a chair and manipulated the fabric off her legs. Her panties were bright pink silk, which Faith was pretty sure had been left by a very horny Zebrek. Faith snapped her fingers and the catch on Buffy’s bra popped.
“You really have made remarkable progress, Faith,” Buffy praised.
“Not as much as I’m going to.”
Faith pulled the bra away from Buffy’s chest, revealing the quiver of her breasts and the wild hardness of her nipples. Thumbs stuffed into her belt loops, Faith approached Buffy in no particular hurry, as if the only reason for movement was getting a closer look at the slack lust on Buffy’s face.
Like a cat coming to a bowl of cream, Faith bent at the waist and closed her lips on Buffy’s left breast. Her right hand lazily batted at Buffy’s right breast, moving from light slaps to gropes as Buffy’s moans grew in irresistible volume. That left one hand free, and Faith held it in front of Buffy’s glazed eyes. The Jedi focused on Faith’s index finger as it curled and uncurled to the answering pulse between her legs. The ring finger crooked and the crotch of Buffy’s panties began to stir.
“Not bad!” Buffy gasped.
Faith smirked. “I’ve been practicing.”
“So I heard.”
Faith slowly closed her hand, making the panties ripple. “You were listening?”
“’The Very Best of Sluggo The Hutt’ gets old the five billionth time you’ve heard it. Faith…” Buffy forced her eyes open. “I want the real thing.”
Lekku twitching, Faith cracked her knuckles. “Your wish is my command, mistress.”
The blindfold flew up from the floor and tied around Buffy’s eyes. “Hey!”
Faith was already scooping her up in a fireman’s hold, rubbing her cheek against the soft silk of Buffy’s panties.
“Hey, Faith, what are you—?“
“Don’t you ever shut up?” Faith smacked each finger against her palm in turn, sending tremors deep into Buffy’s body.
Buffy bit her lip and decided anywhere Faith wanted to take her was fine by her. The next thing she knew, Faith was setting her down, in one of the cargo compartments from the acoustics. Buffy pushed up her blindfold. Faith had decorated it with Life Day lights and the warm glow from an Ithorian scent-candle. And some romantic kloo horn started up as Faith finished bending over a jukebox.
“No peeking,” Faith chastened, using the Force to pull Buffy’s blindfold back down.
“You’re getting good. Guess you just needed the right… encouragement.”
Faith pushed Buffy against the wall, adjusting her limbs, positioning her exactly as she wanted her. “I want this to be good for you.” Buffy listened to Faith’s jacket slide off. Weeks of hearing Faith’s ‘practicing’ carry through the ventilation system had given her extremely sensitive hearing. “There are a lot of things I haven’t gotten right.” Faith’s shirt hit the ground. Buffy knew from experience she didn’t wear a bra. Didn’t need one. “This, I want to be… perfect.” Buffy’s lips parted as she heard Krayt-dragon leather sliding off Twi’lek skin. The subtle scent of Faith’s arousal filled the air.
“It is perfect,” Buffy exhaled. She took a page from Faith’s book. “I hope you have lipgloss, because I like to be kissed a lot when I’m fucked.”
“Oh, I’m not going to fuck you.”
Buffy sighed poutily in disappointment.
“You couldn’t handle it. I’m just going to give you a lekkujob. “
“What’s a lekkujob?”
“B, you’ve spent way too much time at the Jedi Temple.”
Buffy thought she detected a hint of anxiety in the first kiss Faith gave her, the way her palms were slick with sweat when they cupped her face, but it quickly disappeared. She felt Faith’s body pressing against her, hands traveling over her body like they needed to hold every inch of skin before it slipped away. They crested her ass, groped her, then trailed off to fingertips when they touched the scarring on the back of her thighs.
“It’s okay, Faith,” Buffy assured her. “Please go on.”
Faith gave her one last kiss, full of nervousness and passion, then slipped downward. Buffy felt her briefly lathe at her left nipple, reluctantly pulling herself back, then going back for one last nibble on the right one, raking her teeth on the hardened flesh as she pulled away. Buffy whimpered in a combination of pain at the sharp teeth and relief at finally having something more to go on than a kiss. Then she felt something soft as liquid air brushing the top of her thighs.
“Faith…”
They circled around, sliding around her legs. Buffy felt Faith kiss her belly button before her lips dragged lower. She ripped off her blindfold to see Faith staring at her pussy like she was meditating on it, lekku tightening around her thighs. Faith breathed hotly on Buffy’s sex, enough to make her jump if the lekku weren’t holding her in place.
Faith smelled it deeply, her nose almost brushing Buffy’s swollen labia. “Want…” Her lips parted. “Take.”
Have echoed in Buffy’s mind as Faith went down on her, wild, almost fumbling in her enthusiasm, teeth rapping against her clit, tongue diving between her wet folds, lips smacking in the quarter-seconds between licks. Faith didn’t have the longest tongue Buffy had ever encountered—that was still the prehensile tongue on the half-Theelin Buffy had met during her training with Master Gile—but by the Force, did she know how to use it. Buffy tried to hold back her moans, figuring screaming out Faith’s name along with random cries for mercy would be against the Jedi Code, but no sooner had an appreciative Faith! escaped than she realized there was no one to hear her.
“Faith!!” Buffy cried out. She would’ve heard her strained voice echoing through the ship if she hadn’t moved on to random cries for mercy.
***
“Isn’t there something against this in the Jedi Handbook?”
“This?”
Faith turned her head, slapping a sweaty lekku across Buffy’s chest. “Ya know, the groiny-sweaty-moany thing.”
“The Jedi Code forbids love, not… affection.”
“A man came up with the code, didn’t he?”
“The Force writing through a man.”
“Interesting. So, what do I have to do to get that stick outta your ass and replaced with a stick that’s more… well-lubricated?”
“With smooth talking like that, why don’t you just take me now?”
Faith rolled toward her and Buffy pushed the Twi’lek back with the Force. “Build a lightsaber, hot lekku.”
***
It was easier than Faith would’ve thought. So many Jedi had built lightsabers and then become one with the Force that every step was tinged with déjà vu. With Buffy’s crystal as a baseline, Faith could construct the rest with tools from the machine shop. Buffy smiled with approval as Faith intricately slotted the parts together with the Force, like building a ship in a bottle. The saber’s first arc would weld it together irrevocably. Faith found Buffy’s approval a much more helpful guide. Despite her attitude, she respected the Jedi. It felt good to have that respect applied to herself.
“How’m I doing so far?”
Buffy closed her eyes. “You have the power routed directly into the capacitor. Turn it on like that and it’ll take out the entire ship.”
“So… don’t do that?”
Buffy grinned, then abruptly huddled over with a cry of pain. Faith abandoned the lightsaber to run to her. “Buffy, are you okay?”
Buffy waved her off. “I felt a disturbance in the Force, as if a million voices were singing in harmony and then silenced one by one.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I never feared what the galaxy would be like when we returned, but now—I feel like the Force has abandoned me.”
“I haven’t.”
Five months and counting.
***
A week later, the lightsaber snap-hissed with a vibrant green blade. A moment later, there was an echo, and Faith whirled around to meet Buffy’s sapphire-blue arc.
“You’re ready,” Buffy said, stepping back and raising her saber in a Form II stance.
Faith dutifully followed suit.
“There are two main attacks, thrusts and cuts, each with their own strengths and weaknesses…”
***
Faith cringed as the blaster bolt dug into her shoulder. Even at its lowest setting, it hurt like hell.
“Don’t try to deflect all of them,” Buffy said, lowering the blaster. “Seek the path of least resistance.”
“And what do I get if I avoid them all?” Faith licked her lips.
“I stop shooting you.”
***
Faith hit the ground as her saber flew away to be caught in Buffy’s Force grip. Buffy’s lightsaber hovered at Faith’s throat, before moving up to let the arc’s ionic charge wash over her lekku.
“Again,” Buffy said.
Faith slapped the deck.
Buffy undid her belt. “Later.”
***
Faith contorted her body to avoid the low-setting blaster bolts, lightsaber swaying like a metronome to deflect the unavoidable. The walls of the cargo compartment were matte-black from her training.
***
Faith would be hard-pressed to remember when she started sleeping with Buffy for reasons other than sex. It coincided with the nightmares, a hellish four days during which Buffy could only dream or think of death. Faith stayed with her day and night, occupying her mind with questions about the Jedi Order. They weren’t all bad. Some, like Nomi Sunrider and Revan, seemed like people Faith would buy drinks for if they weren’t stardust by then. But over time, the Jedi had come to value self-important mysticism over justice. Faith wondered if Buffy saw the irony. In opposing Sith imperialism, the Jedi had rendered themselves all but impotent.
***
“Have you given any thoughts to what you’ll do next week?” Buffy orbited around Faith to keep in eye contact with her, enjoying the grav-panel short that had given them an area of zero-G to ‘camp out’ in. Faith had puppy-dog-eyed Buffy into holding their training there; what with the other popular activity, it quickly became naked training, then Jedi foreplay, and now they only left to use the fresher. After eight months, the novelty was addictive.
“When we reach Calonia? I’m gonna eat a dozen Banthaburgers, hold the galaxy’s biggest orgy, dance at every nightclub on Coruscant, and for day two…”
“No, I mean—with your life.” Buffy stopped Faith’s rotation with a gentle hand. “What will you do with your life?”
“Use your creds, with interest, to buy a new ship, go to some sector I’ve never been before, open for business.”
“Have you given any thought to becoming a Jedi Knight?”
“When I need a laugh, sure.”
“I’m serious—“
“Shocker.”
“The Council could assign a master to complete your training, you could undergo the Trials, we could even team-up on my next assignment.”
Faith kicked away from Buffy, eyes closed as she bounded off the walls. “B, your brand of Jedi isn’t for everyone. I’d go nuts, meditating, takin’ orders, being a good girl… hey, B.” She opened her eyes and braced herself across from Buffy. “Where’d you say you were from, Alderaan? Let’s go there. Tell the Council you’re giving yourself time off for bad behavior and give me the guided tour. We’ll tell everyone it’s our honeymoon, it’ll be fun.”
“I’ll ask the Council,” Buffy said uncertainly.
“And what do ya think they’ll say?”
Buffy floated to the edge of gravity, where her robes were waiting. “Maybe it’d be easier if we said goodbye when we landed.”
Faith shifted her legs, covered her breasts with her arms. “How easy would it be to say goodbye now?”
Buffy slipped her lightsaber onto her belt. “Goodbye, Faith. You were a great student.”
By the time Faith had dried her eyes enough to emerge, Buffy had taken her few possessions out of their shared room.
They slowed to realspace on the outskirts of the Calonia system. Calonia IV and V moved past the Scythe like fat spiders that had built the web slowing the ship down. Calona 3 doubled in size repeatedly, until it hogged the windshield. But dwarfing it by virtue of forced perspective and sheer size was a ship Faith had never seen before.
It was an antiseptic white, with a sharply triangular shape. Scans had it crawling with turrets and shield generators. Hundreds of snubfighters patrolled in formation around it. Faith shuddered at the thought of one of those on her tail. In her day, the Republic Navy had nothing that big, especially not assigned to a nowhere spot like Calonia.
Buffy climbed into the co-pilot’s chair, robes freshly starched. It made Faith want to rend the oh-so-clean clothes into rags.
“We’re here,” Faith said in answer to Buffy’s silent question. “I didn’t want to bother you… nice cap-ship, huh? Very… big.”
“You feel it too, don’t you? The Dark Side lurks within that ship’s bones.”
“Or the spaceship equivalent.” Faith eased up the throttle. “Not our problem.”
“It’s my problem.”
“Like I said. Not our problem.”
They passed under the bleached bone ship and continued down to Calonia. Thankfully, the Outer Rim hadn’t changed that much. Landing Authority specified a dock and they landed there. The other hexes in the honeycomb port were filled with futuristic designs, even the ones covered in rust. Faith felt a little self-conscious of the Scythe’s antiquated design. She ran the air intake extra-loud to show all the whisper-quiet crafts what was what.
“I’ll see if I can scrounge up some parts for the hyperdrive!” Faith yelled over the roar of the engines.
“Try the local scrapyard,” Buffy said, letting herself be drowned out.
“Huh?”
“I said I’ll check the Holo-Net!”
Faith cut the engines, dropping the Scythe on its absorber-gears. “Be careful, B. Future ain’t what it used to be.”
***
If there was a universal constant to space-time, it would have to be Jawas. Faith suspected the little scavengers would survive a galactic war, if only by haggling Death into the ground.
“No, T-31 engine, one less than 32, one more than 30. Made by Cragg Space? Everyone’s heard of Cragg Space, don’t try to scam me!”
She looked to the heavens as if for aid and saw the Naval ship jump to hyperspace. Well, that was a load off her mind.
The Jawa brought a T-24 out of the sandcrawler. “Utini!”
It would have to do.
***
Buffy found the denizens of the spaceport giving her strange looks. She knew the Jedi were rare, but they treated her like a Rancor in drag. She finally got an Ugnaught to point her to the nearest Holo-Net terminal. It was on the back of a three-wheeled droid, in constant motion on its search for new customers. Buffy was delighted to find it had voice recognition hardware. Her future was getting brighter all the time.
“Hello, computer. Connect me to the Jedi Temple.”
“No such entry in this registry.”
“The Jedi Temple? On Coruscant?”
“No such entry in this registry.”
“Jedi Master Yoda.”
“No such entry in this registry.”
“Jedi Gile.”
“No such entry in this registry.”
“Are there any Jedi in your registry?”
“No such entry in this registry. Your session has been deemed a prank call and will be terminated for the convenience of our paying customers. Please vacate the immediate area.”
“Watch it, tin-boy, you’re not too big to short-circuit.” Stupid malfunctioning droid. She tried to think of an acquaintance who wasn’t a Jedi and all she could come up with was Faith. “I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry. Can you please connect me to the Summers family?”
“Only because you said please. Specify planet, please.”
“Alderaan.”
“No such entry in this registry.”
Buffy wondered if the laws on droid violence had changed in the last fifty years. Then she heard a squeal of fear to her left. A Chadra-Fan had dropped its drink, splattering the boots of three soldiers in all-encompassing white armor, the same color as the capital ship in orbit. The leader was shouting at it in a harshly digitalized voice, while his troops were kicking and shoving the alien as it tried to clean up the mess. Remembering Faith’s words, Buffy held her robes closed over her lightsaber as she went to confront them.
“Hey, I don’t understand what that little guy is saying, but I’m pretty sure it was an apology!”
Actually, at that moment the Chadra-Fan was saying that she was a girl and not little, but petite.
“Step back, lady! Imperial business!”
So they were with the government, or a government at any rate. That would make things easier.
“Jedi business. And I’d be very interested in speaking with your superiors.”
The troopers laughed, their helmets making the sound a cacophony. “She thinks she’s a Jedi!”
“If I’m not,” she took out her lightsaber, “then do you think I can get a refund on this?”
“She’s a Jedi! Shoot to kill!”
“What?! Whoa!” Buffy snapped her lightsaber on just in time to catch the snap-shot the leader took. It ricocheted and hit him in the chest. The other two were going for their blasters. Buffy slashed the rifles apart.
“Okay, now I definitely want to speak with your superiors.”
***
Faith towed the T-24 parts out of the junkyard to find a litter of Gamorrean younglings running past her, joining the general swell of the crowd around the spaceport, like a mob of gamblers waiting for shock-rat race. Faith recognized a dozen dialects’ variation on “The Jedi have returned!”
She was going to kill Buffy.
***
The corpses wore armor too clean and uniform to be anything but government. Faith examined them while Buffy tried to calm her new fan club. Their weapons were worn, but professionally tended to. You never knew when a future-gun could come in handy.
“B, think now’s a good time to vacate. Before more of your pale friends arrive?”
“I know! I just don’t want to abandon these people to an angry warlord.”
“So dial up the Jedi Council, send in the space marines.”
Buffy worked her way through the crowd, finally reaching Faith. She pulled their heads down, low and close. “I can’t reach the Jedi. I think something’s wrong.”
The mob quieted, as if transfixed by the vulnerability cracking Buffy’s Jedi calm. They parted as a stooped old alien, clutching a cane of Veenwood, entered the lobby.
“The Empire will revenge itself,” he said, pulling his stringy white hair out of his eyes. “You must come with me, hurriedly.”
***
They watched from the window of Ordo’s home as AT-STs and Imperial shuttles swept the city, like huge birds picking over a carcass.
Ordo closed the shutters in disgust. “This is but a taste of the Empire’s might.”
Ordo lived on the outskirts of the spaceport in a beehive-like hut, only the ground floor of which was accessible to the Jedi. The rest was a honeycombed ceiling that Ordo popped in and out of, navigating with ease. He was an elder of the native clan, which was used as slave labor by the Empire to service the local garrison. His clan had pooled their resources to buy his freedom. He looked forward to the chance to sort out what he saw as a karmic imbalance.
“How did it come to this?” Faith asked, her voice surprising Buffy with the loss it contained. Buffy wondered how much she had relied on the Jedi Order to define her, even if only as the light that cast the shadow.
“The same way evil always spreads. War.” Ordo laid it out: the clones, the Sith, the Purge, the Empire. His voice was dry, parched. Buffy heard it like a chisel chipping away at her. She was the last of the Jedi Order. There would never be another.
By the time Ordo got to what had happened to Alderaan, it felt like he was stabbing a phantom limb. Faith had already left. Buffy followed her out onto the hill overlooking the spaceport, two suns setting.
“What do we do?” Faith asked.
“I don’t know.”
***
It didn’t get dark. The two suns’ light skirted under the horizon, sending up dull flares in hypnotic patterns. Faith held Buffy in the dying light, feeling the bone and skin and cloth of Buffy in her arms.
“I’m going to fight,” Buffy said at last, her voice as full of broken glass as Faith’s had ever been. “You coming?”
“To the end.”
***
Ordo had enough sway to pull together a gathering of his clan. They were bleeding and sore from the day’s labors, but they listened. No one could do anything else when Buffy was talking.
“The Imperials are still in a state of shock, that’s why we have to move tonight. The garrison holds several lightspeed-capable carriers for deployment to outlying regions. We can use those to move the entire slave population off-world before reprisal.”
“Exile seven hundred souls into deep space? You’re mad!” someone shouted.
“I’m not the one who spent all day welding hull plating for two measly credits. This is a one-time offer. I’m going to that garrison, then I’m leaving. If you still want to be here when the Empire asks what happened to their base, no charge off my power pack. Now, are you with me?”
***
Regional Dictorate Lan Marloff looked out at the lights of the city blinking out in accordance with the Empire’s energy conservation plan. From the miles-high skyscraper that served as both Sith art and skyhook dock for the Victory-class Star Destroyer that policed his sector, his shadow was cast like a continental sun dial, always ticking with the flashes of the set suns.
He stroked the contours of his curlicued moustache, a familial affection. The stormtrooper murders of the afternoon bothered him and he couldn’t say why. They were only clones, after all, and the deaths were most likely the work of Rebel scum that had happened across an old lightsaber. No reason to worry. No cause for alarm.
His desk lit up, projecting a Stormtrooper in shades of blue. “Sir, the base had been penetrated. The front gate is… missing.”
“What?” Marloff demanded as the alarm sounded. “What do you mean, missing? It’s over twelve thousand kilos!”
“It appears to have been ripped away. We expect answers momentarily.” A lightsaber thrust through the Stormtrooper’s chest. The arc was too bright to look at, even in holographic form. The man crumpled and a cloaked figure took his place, turning the body over with its foot. It pulled back its hood. It was a blonde.
She looked at Marloff, waved her hand, and the hologram fritzed out.
Lan Marloff sat down and wondered how long it would take help to arrive.
***
The only light came from laser swords, blue and green, as they crackled and hissed through the air. Flashing as they burned through Stormtrooper armor. Then a solar flare crested the horizon and revealed two Jedi, fighting their way down the narrow kilometer-long drawbridge to the skyhook. All around was a sheer drop to the bedrock which served as the skyhook’s foundation. Buffy had already jammed the drawbridge’s mechanism with a landspeeder thrown into the gears.
As they relentlessly advanced on the defending Stormtroopers, knocking blaster bolts aside like they were shooing flies, a squad of Imperial Army troopers came down the bridge from the rear.
“B, we’re gonna have company!” Faith yelled.
“Buy me a sec.” Buffy flung her lightsaber, point out like a spear, at the stream of Stormtroopers issuing from the skyhook.
The Army troopers flanking them opened fire. Faith deflected the first shot, the second, the third. The Force was calling her. She whipped her saber in every direction, cutting apart multiple bolts with each stroke. Ricochets threw up fireworks at her feet and she nearly sliced off her own lekku, but she didn’t flinch. Jedi didn’t flinch.
Buffy reached out with the Force as her thrown saber intersected the Stormtroopers. It oscillated, twisted into a living infinity symbol that cut down Stormtroopers whether they ducked or jumped. Behind her, Buffy heard the powerful hum of Faith’s lightsaber in hyper-fast motion. With the Stormtroopers dispatched, Buffy called her saber back.
Faith grinned at her. They twisted in the same instant, dancing between the blaster bolts, and Pushed simultaneously. It was like a thermal detonator had gone off in the thick of the squad. They flew upward and dropped off the side of the bridge.
Faith was breathing hard, skin crisped by near-misses. “You okay?” Buffy asked.
“Five by five.”
***
Marloff found himself listening very intently to the hum of his office’s electronics. It seemed to him that all that noise could mask some other noise, like the sound of lightsabers closing in.
He turned off the electronics, but could still hear the noise. He turned something electronic back on.
***
“You have a plan, B?”
Buffy continued unrelentingly up the stairs.
“Glad to hear it.”
Faith paused at the end of the long climb to meditate, but Buffy marched right up to the imposing door into Marloff’s office. They flew open without a touch, opening into the kind of bureaucrat’s office that was the same under the Empire as it had been under the Republic. Behind the desk, a balding man in a sweat-soaked uniform, unbuttoned, fired three shots from a blaster pistol. Buffy held her saber in the way, angling it slightly to catch each shot.
Marloff looked at his blaster in disbelief. “Listen, you don’t want me, I was just doing my job!”
The lightsaber stayed between them. “Your job as a slaver!?”
Marloff fired at her again as a IG-100 MagnaGuard leapt down from the ceiling. A gift from Emperor Palpatine, it was in full working order.
Buffy deflected the bolt and Faith blocked the IG-100’s electrostaff. The droid reoriented on her, swiveling the other end of its staff up. Faith ducked back, circled her saber into attack position. “B, little help?”
Buffy uncaringly knocked another blaster bolt away. “You’re scum, from a society of scum. But scum can be cleansed.”
Faith, winded from the ascent, struggled to keep ahead of the electrostaff. Sparks flew as the staff tilled at furniture and walls. She saw an opening, kicked the droid, almost broke her foot. “Buffy!”
“Men like you tore down the Jedi Order and replaced it with lies.” Buffy batted another shot away. “Men like you blew Alderaan apart!”
Marloff’s blaster droned empty. “Oh, no, please don’t hurt me!”
“How many times has that been begged of you? How many times have you been deaf to it?” Buffy jerked Marloff up, using the Force as a noose.
“Buffy!” Faith overpowered the droid and put her saber through its processor. “Let him go, he hasn’t done anything!”
“He’s done nothing! That’s enough.” She maneuvered Marloff through the air, brushing him against the Quarren glass-wind art hanging from the ceiling.
“Buffy, use the Force, sense his aura! The Dark Side is weak in him. Killing him wouldn’t be justice, just revenge. What would the Jedi call that?”
Buffy thought it over. Then she Pushed, sending Marloff through several panes of glass before he finally crashed out the window, starting his long, screaming plummet to the ground. “A good start.”
***
Faith watched the last of the ships disappear into hyperspace. The slave population had commandeered every ship they could find and now they were fleeing into Wild Space to escape the Emperor’s wrath. Faith wished she could join them. Wherever they ended up, Faith could pretend she was on the far side of the Republic instead of nowhere.
But Buffy was fighting this thing. Before Marloff had even hit the ground, she was on the Holo-Net devouring everything she could about the Rebel Alliance. Faith stood watch over her in the skyhook, belatedly seeing her own reflection in the transparisteel. Don’t get involved, Faith.
“It’s strange,” Buffy said suddenly. Her voice was dry as Tattooine. “I sensed the Dark Side in that ‘Star Destroyer’, but not in any of this other Imperial sithspit.”
“We should get back to the Scythe before that ISD with extra Dark Side gets back. And thanks for the help with the crazy serial killer bot.”
“You’re a Jedi. Thought you could handle it.”
“Like you handled Marloff?”
Buffy faced the Twi’lek. Slowly she walked up to her, taking firm hold of Faith’s arms. “Are you with me? I need your help, but if you’re not with me then you’re no good to me.”
“I’m not losing you, B.” Faith had seen what the Dark Side could do to someone she loved. Even someone just and compassionate could be twisted beyond recognition. So she’d consigned everyone, darkness and all, to the trash compactor before they could betray her. She’d worked for herself and business had been good.
Now there was this beautiful girl in the same position as her old Master, thinking she could serve the Force by serving the Dark Side. And Faith, like an idiot, had broken the first rule of Ryloth: Look, but don’t touch. Jedi were supposed to protect people, but no one seemed to protect the Jedi. So Faith would do it, for this one Jedi Knight, so far from home. She’d do it because no one had done it for her. And she’d do it because she loved Buffy, and being her Padawan was the only way she could do it that Buffy would accept.
She kissed Buffy, her lekku looping around the back of the Jedi’s neck. The gesture meant nothing to Buffy, but everything to her.
***
The Master gestured and the holo-projector flickered off. So, two new Jedi had entered the game. While the Emperor and his stooges focused their attention on the son of Skywalker, he could turn those two lost little Padawans to his advantage.
With another gesture, he unmuted the Mandalorian. “—now, if every bounty hunter who said he was part of the Purge had been there, the Jedi Temple would’ve looked like Jabba’s palace. Now, Jabba’s palace I’ve been to. He’s got this bloody big monster right underneath his throne. Eats pretty girls. Gives you some right weird dreams, that.”
“Can you find the Jedi?”
“Absolutely. Because I’m the only bounty hunter in the ‘verse with a genuine dark Jedi.” He hugged a dark-haired woman to his chest. “Poor Dru here was driven mad in the Purge, but she’s still tied into the Force. Her visions will find your Jedi, or my name isn’t Spike Bludee.”
After breakfast, Buffy pulled on one of Faith’s skirts and considered one of Faith’s sports bras before deciding her ribs precluded it. She put on one of Faith’s ten million tanktops, knowing that without a bra she was just asking to be ogled, then limped into the cockpit to sit down beside Faith. She self-consciously smoothed her skirt over her bandaged thigh, wondering if Faith would care.
“It’s weird, traveling like this.” Faith pointed at a star in the center of her view, tracking it with her finger as it slogged to the side. “Like being underwater,” she croaked, rubbing her throat.
Buffy noticed how inflamed it looked. “Are you okay?”
“Twi’lek vocal cords are different than humans’. ‘s why we’re such great singers; that and lung capacity. That Sith must’ve bruised something when he choked me.”
Buffy craned her head for a better look. “I could teach you to enter a healing trance. It would make the pain go away.”
Faith glanced over into her puppy dog eyes. “Sithspit, not like I have anything better to do.”
***
The key to a healing trance was to relax and let the Force in. Faith had never been much for that, even as a Padawan. Some concern always seemed to lunge for her attention and blockade the Force.
She knew she’d been born on Ryloth, a feral and squalid world. Her parents had been overjoyed to give her over to the Jedi. It was a chance at a better life, something usually only achieved by being sold into slavery. The Republic frowned upon it, but did nothing to stop either the exploitation or the poverty that drove Twi’leks to such desperation. Neither did the Jedi.
Had her parents understood they’d never see her again when they gave her up? Or had the Jedi deceived them on that account as well?
She felt Buffy’s hands move her lekku out of the way--bliss--and begin massaging her shoulders. “Hell, you’re tense. Let the Force flow through you, not arthritis.”
Buffy Summers. Everything she had once loved about the Jedi Order, and some attitude for flavor. Two broken ribs and she was the one giving Faith a massage. If only there were more like her, maybe Faith wouldn’t have had to leave.
“What are you thinking about?” Buffy asked, fixing Faith’s posture so the Force flowed more freely through her. Though she didn’t seem to know what to do with the lekku, nudging them to symmetry with the back of her hands.
“Kids.”
“Faith, we’re not even married.”
“It used to be that anyone could train to be a Jedi, if the Force chose them. Then Jedi started getting married, havin’ rugrats, and they trained the tykes to use the Force straight outta the womb.”
“Good,” Buffy pronounced.
“Not really. Because of how hard it was to locate Force-sensitives in those days, the Jedi-born outnumbered them in a manner of generations. They decided they were better than anyone else. And from then on, Jedi were raised by Jedi… even if they already had parents.”
“You’re making that up.”
“How do you think the Jedi started? Adults learned to use the Force, just as easily as children. They fell in love too. It’s all in the Jedi Archives. It’s just not required reading.”
Buffy never stopped kneading Faith’s flesh. “Having told me that, do you feel better?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then let the Force fill the emptiness you’ve created. Lay your demons to rest, just for a while.”
***
The atrium was the only room in the ship apart from the cockpit, captain’s cabin, and kitchen/lounge/holo-room/shooting range (a space Buffy found impossible to navigate). It was a series of interlocking circles, each three meters wide, with access to the cargo compartments below deck and the ship’s systems above deck. At the center was the hyperdrive room. They didn’t go in there unless they felt like wallowing in misery, it being all charred parts and bad smells.
Buffy walked the outermost ring, powering through the twinge in her leg. The healing trances had helped her musculature reknit, especially in communion with Faith, but she knew fearing the pain of recovery would prolong the process. She felt the Dark Side seeping into everything and wondered what the state of the universe would be when they finally reached their destination.
The fresher door opened, disgorging steam and a very wet, very naked Faith. Buffy caught a suggestion—a very suggesting suggestion—of full breasts and a deeper shade of red between toned legs before she jerked her head up to keep… abreast… of the private bits. But that just made her focus on a bead of water rolling down Faith’s head and off her lekku.
“You should be resting,” Faith said, completely comfortable with Buffy’s gaze.
“I just had to—you know—“ Buffy thrust her fist forward in the universal symbol of ‘go’, only to wonder if she hadn’t made a universal gesture for something else. She covered by summoning a towel to her outstretched hand with the Force and holding it out to Faith.
The Twi’lek took it graciously, but instead of wrapping herself in it as Buffy had hoped, she began to dry herself off right in front of the stunned Jedi. “B, we’re gonna be on this crate a while. We’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. So, we can either try to enjoy ourselves, or we can not.” She tossed the towel to Buffy. “Shower’s yours.”
She walked off.
Buffy showered with water as cold as it could go.
***
Faith double-checked her rations stock. There was just enough to cover the trip, but she didn’t want to share it with mynocks or veeba bugs. Buffy came in just as she was cataloguing the third compartment, sitting in the edge of the access panel to the recessed compartment. “I’ve been thinking about what you said.”
“Really? I wasn’t.”
“I get that you probably don’t want to talk about why you left the Jedi.”
“Right in one.”
“But if you’re willing, I’d like you to be my Padawan learner.”
Faith lost count of the food bins. “If you’re growing a sense of humor, you picked an awful time.”
“I’m serious. You have great power. Do you think the Force gave you that power to move spice…”
“I don’t touch spice!” Faith put an indignant hand to her chest. “And I don’t give a damn why I have this power! I wish I didn’t! You have no idea the bantha fodder I’ve gotten in because of your Force!”
“I know you’ve had it bad, but I’m different. And right now, you’re walking the edge of the Dark Side.”
“Really. You have a good reason I can’t zap someone with Force Lightning to save your life?”
“Because it’s wrong.”
“Wrong? What do you know about wrong? Have you ever missed a meal in your life? Have you ever had to kill, just to survive?”
“Have you ever done something just because it was the right thing to do?”
Faith’s rage cooled, lekku slumping down her front.
“I’m not judging you, I’m just saying you can be better.”
Faith swung up to sit on the ledge across from Buffy. “Do I get a lightsaber?”
Buffy unscrewed her own, pried out one of the three Ilum crystals, and tossed it to Faith.
The smuggler held it up to her eye. “What’s this?”
“A beginning.”
***
“Relax. Let the Force—“
“Flow through me. I do have this thing called a memory? And ya know, it’s telling me that I already learned a healing trance.”
“This is a meditative trance.”
”Ooooh.”
“Sarcasm is not part of the Jedi way.”
“Suuuure it’s not.”
“The healing trance lets the Force repair your body, the meditative trance lets it do the same for your mind. Let go of your fear, your doubt, your uncertainty, your stress. Let the Force fill the void and leave no room for despair.”
Faith popped an eye open to see Buffy was floating inches above the ground.
“Show-off.”
“Slacker.”
***
Buffy hit the ground in a disgruntled heap, bruised from their sparring match. “This shouldn’t be happening. The Force is my ally.”
“Yeah, I‘ve got allies too.” Faith held up her fists. “Mr. Punch and Mr. Crunch.”
“Jedi don’t name their fists.”
“That a hard and fast rule, B, cuz your left looks like a Luna to me.”
“You were supposed to try to use the Force, and fail, so I’d beat you.”
“That’s not a very good reason for me to use the Force.”
“Yes, your current… methods are effective. Crude, but effective. Did I mention crude?”
“Works, don’t it?”
“It would work better with the Force.”
“Not from where I’m standing, in the ass-kicking circle.”
“Could you just try doing things my way?”
“Why? Are you some kind of masochist?”
“No! But,” Buffy’s eyes lit up, “if you beat me, Force on Force, I’ll have sex with you.”
Faith’s lekku stiffened. “That sense of humor you grew? Ya might wanna send it back.”
“No joke. There’s nothing in the Jedi Code against cheap, meaningless sex. You just assumed I wasn’t into it.” Buffy leaned forward. “As younglings, Padawans are cautioned against assumption.”
Faith threw her lekku snugly around her neck. “This is going to be my easiest lay since I met that Tamaranian in heat.”
“Then you won’t mind a little something to keep us, i.e. you, honest.” Buffy held up a blindfold.
“You might wanna hang onto that, B. You never know when it might come in handy.”
***
To Faith, it felt like she had a thousand hands and they were all expanding from her, until she felt a subtle pressure against them, like she was holding her hand near a repulsorlift.
“What’s that?”
“Those are the walls,” Buffy said. “Move past them.”
Faith did. “It feels weird, like being underwater.”
“That’s because you’re still seeing with your senses, instead of the Force. Your eyes can deceive you: they only show you light reflected off shells. The Force shows you the truth of what something is, not how it looks or sounds.”
“So what does the Force show you when you look at me?”
“There aren’t words to describe it. But I like looking. Can you feel the spanner outside the door?”
”Yeah, it… it wants to help.”
“Of course, it’s one of your tools. Now pick it up—don’t force it—let it want to come up—now call it to you.”
The spanner thudded against the door. “I can’t! The door’s closed.”
“Then open it.”
“I can barely lift a spanner.”
“Everything is connected. Look through the eyes of the spanner and see the door. Opening it and bringing the spanner through are one action, autonomous. Trust the Force.”
Faith focused her mind, picturing the spanner coming to a rest at her feet. The door slid open. The spanner flew through, hitting the deck and sticking out of it like a blade.
“Which brings me to our seventh lesson.” Buffy took the blindfold off Faith. “Power is easy. Control is difficult. Any Padawan can beat up a bad guy, but the discretion to truly resolve a situation can only come from a fully-trained Jedi Knight with the Force as her ally.”
“Explaining the bang-up job you did back on Nar Jadica.”
“For a Padawan, you don’t show much respect for the will of the Force.”
“I’m only in it so I can call you mistress, B.”
***
Buffy held the blindfold in her hand when Faith stumbled out of the cockpit. The Twi’lek was battling a hangover that seemed to pull at her lekku like lead weights. Buffy glared at her every time she found a stash of liquor and did her little ritual, but she kept her mouth shut.
Faith pulled the blindfold over her eyes, but Buffy had to tie it. “Do we have to do this this morning?”
Buffy pulled extra-hard on the knot. “You mean this afternoon? It’s five o’clock, Faith. Sleep any later and you’ll go into hibernation.”
“What difference does it make? Nothing ever changes on this ship…”
“We change.” Buffy untied the blindfold, sorted it under Faith’s lekku, and retied it. “This time, you move the spanner and I’ll try to stop you.”
“Really? And where should I move it?”
“Other side of the room is fine.”
“Do you prefer me to move it fast or slow, mistress?”
“You have to get it up before you can move it, and that spanner isn’t even twitching.”
“I had a lot to drink last night—“
“You know who didn’t? The Force. Now cowboy up and make that spanner go.”
Faith forced her mind to bypass the alcohol, an easy skill once practiced, and brought the spanner up so high it clanged against the ceiling. Then she pushed it toward the far wall, but almost immediately the spanner slipped from her grip and whirled like a compass above a magnet.
“Before you ask,” Buffy said, “yes, I am going easy on you.”
“Don’t bother.” Faith had an easy connection to the Force, slick as a lucky sabacc deck, and all she had to do was breathe, then it was in her bloodstream like glimmerstim. One firm push and the spanner was flying through the air like a gundart-killer.
Buffy forced it, with the decaton resolve she’d built over a lifetime. The spanner crashed to the ground. At the same time, she ran a hand alluringly over Faith’s midriff.
“Hey!”
“Something wrong, my dear Padawan?” Buffy asked innocently.
“I’m not distracted if you’re not distracted, mistress.” Faith arced into the contact, skimming Buffy’s hand toward her breasts.
The spanner skipped, ricocheting, down the ceiling.
“Is it hot in here or is it just me?” Faith asked, leather lace whispering through copper eyelets as her jacket slithered off her.
She heard the accompanying hiss of Buffy’s robes coming undone. “It does seem a bit warm. You’d better check the cooling coils after we finish.”
“Do you think we’ll finish soon, B?”
“Call me mistress. I like it when you remember your position.”
“Maybe if we tried a new position, I could remember it better.”
The spanner flitted back and forth, like a dog being called by two masters.
Buffy’s hand ran down Faith’s arm, probing the lines of her muscles like a spreading flame. “Tell me, Faith, why is it that most of your skin… isn’t as soft as your lekku?” Her other hand stroked the lekku, one after another, and Faith shuddered in ecstasy as they curled.
The spanner jolted in random spurts like a shockball in full play.
“My lekku—very sensitive—special lotion.”
“It smells nice.” Faith felt Buffy’s warm breath caress the tips of her lekku. “Does it taste nice as well?”
”It’s made from a fruit—only on Ryloth—very sweet.”
Buffy took Faith’s right lekku in her mouth and that was her fatal mistake. Buffy was enthusiastic, but she had no knowledge of nerve striation or damp-glans. And Faith was no unbled Rodian to be impressed by mild suction.
She swirled the lekku in Buffy’s mouth like a tongue, angling to the back of her throat. The Jedi half-gagged, half-moaned, and the spanner shot across the room. Faith’s lekku popped out of Buffy’s mouth, trailing saliva.
”Looks like I win, B.” Faith fingered her blindfold up for a peek at her mistress. “But what do I win?”
Buffy had abandoned the shifts that once tapered down her body for more practical cloths. With her robe off, the gi she wore under it yawed open to reveal a gladiatrix bra. Faith flicked her finger either way and the gi split open at the Force’s urging.
“You’re learning,” Buffy said, holding her arms to let the gi slide partways off. “Now let’s see what you can teach yourself.”
Faith moved the gi’s jacket by inches, letting Buffy feel every thread as it was rolled off her. The jacket hit the ground along with the blindfold like so many falling leaves and Faith started on the trousers. Bare skin flowed into view as Faith pushed Buffy down into a chair and manipulated the fabric off her legs. Her panties were bright pink silk, which Faith was pretty sure had been left by a very horny Zebrek. Faith snapped her fingers and the catch on Buffy’s bra popped.
“You really have made remarkable progress, Faith,” Buffy praised.
“Not as much as I’m going to.”
Faith pulled the bra away from Buffy’s chest, revealing the quiver of her breasts and the wild hardness of her nipples. Thumbs stuffed into her belt loops, Faith approached Buffy in no particular hurry, as if the only reason for movement was getting a closer look at the slack lust on Buffy’s face.
Like a cat coming to a bowl of cream, Faith bent at the waist and closed her lips on Buffy’s left breast. Her right hand lazily batted at Buffy’s right breast, moving from light slaps to gropes as Buffy’s moans grew in irresistible volume. That left one hand free, and Faith held it in front of Buffy’s glazed eyes. The Jedi focused on Faith’s index finger as it curled and uncurled to the answering pulse between her legs. The ring finger crooked and the crotch of Buffy’s panties began to stir.
“Not bad!” Buffy gasped.
Faith smirked. “I’ve been practicing.”
“So I heard.”
Faith slowly closed her hand, making the panties ripple. “You were listening?”
“’The Very Best of Sluggo The Hutt’ gets old the five billionth time you’ve heard it. Faith…” Buffy forced her eyes open. “I want the real thing.”
Lekku twitching, Faith cracked her knuckles. “Your wish is my command, mistress.”
The blindfold flew up from the floor and tied around Buffy’s eyes. “Hey!”
Faith was already scooping her up in a fireman’s hold, rubbing her cheek against the soft silk of Buffy’s panties.
“Hey, Faith, what are you—?“
“Don’t you ever shut up?” Faith smacked each finger against her palm in turn, sending tremors deep into Buffy’s body.
Buffy bit her lip and decided anywhere Faith wanted to take her was fine by her. The next thing she knew, Faith was setting her down, in one of the cargo compartments from the acoustics. Buffy pushed up her blindfold. Faith had decorated it with Life Day lights and the warm glow from an Ithorian scent-candle. And some romantic kloo horn started up as Faith finished bending over a jukebox.
“No peeking,” Faith chastened, using the Force to pull Buffy’s blindfold back down.
“You’re getting good. Guess you just needed the right… encouragement.”
Faith pushed Buffy against the wall, adjusting her limbs, positioning her exactly as she wanted her. “I want this to be good for you.” Buffy listened to Faith’s jacket slide off. Weeks of hearing Faith’s ‘practicing’ carry through the ventilation system had given her extremely sensitive hearing. “There are a lot of things I haven’t gotten right.” Faith’s shirt hit the ground. Buffy knew from experience she didn’t wear a bra. Didn’t need one. “This, I want to be… perfect.” Buffy’s lips parted as she heard Krayt-dragon leather sliding off Twi’lek skin. The subtle scent of Faith’s arousal filled the air.
“It is perfect,” Buffy exhaled. She took a page from Faith’s book. “I hope you have lipgloss, because I like to be kissed a lot when I’m fucked.”
“Oh, I’m not going to fuck you.”
Buffy sighed poutily in disappointment.
“You couldn’t handle it. I’m just going to give you a lekkujob. “
“What’s a lekkujob?”
“B, you’ve spent way too much time at the Jedi Temple.”
Buffy thought she detected a hint of anxiety in the first kiss Faith gave her, the way her palms were slick with sweat when they cupped her face, but it quickly disappeared. She felt Faith’s body pressing against her, hands traveling over her body like they needed to hold every inch of skin before it slipped away. They crested her ass, groped her, then trailed off to fingertips when they touched the scarring on the back of her thighs.
“It’s okay, Faith,” Buffy assured her. “Please go on.”
Faith gave her one last kiss, full of nervousness and passion, then slipped downward. Buffy felt her briefly lathe at her left nipple, reluctantly pulling herself back, then going back for one last nibble on the right one, raking her teeth on the hardened flesh as she pulled away. Buffy whimpered in a combination of pain at the sharp teeth and relief at finally having something more to go on than a kiss. Then she felt something soft as liquid air brushing the top of her thighs.
“Faith…”
They circled around, sliding around her legs. Buffy felt Faith kiss her belly button before her lips dragged lower. She ripped off her blindfold to see Faith staring at her pussy like she was meditating on it, lekku tightening around her thighs. Faith breathed hotly on Buffy’s sex, enough to make her jump if the lekku weren’t holding her in place.
Faith smelled it deeply, her nose almost brushing Buffy’s swollen labia. “Want…” Her lips parted. “Take.”
Have echoed in Buffy’s mind as Faith went down on her, wild, almost fumbling in her enthusiasm, teeth rapping against her clit, tongue diving between her wet folds, lips smacking in the quarter-seconds between licks. Faith didn’t have the longest tongue Buffy had ever encountered—that was still the prehensile tongue on the half-Theelin Buffy had met during her training with Master Gile—but by the Force, did she know how to use it. Buffy tried to hold back her moans, figuring screaming out Faith’s name along with random cries for mercy would be against the Jedi Code, but no sooner had an appreciative Faith! escaped than she realized there was no one to hear her.
“Faith!!” Buffy cried out. She would’ve heard her strained voice echoing through the ship if she hadn’t moved on to random cries for mercy.
***
“Isn’t there something against this in the Jedi Handbook?”
“This?”
Faith turned her head, slapping a sweaty lekku across Buffy’s chest. “Ya know, the groiny-sweaty-moany thing.”
“The Jedi Code forbids love, not… affection.”
“A man came up with the code, didn’t he?”
“The Force writing through a man.”
“Interesting. So, what do I have to do to get that stick outta your ass and replaced with a stick that’s more… well-lubricated?”
“With smooth talking like that, why don’t you just take me now?”
Faith rolled toward her and Buffy pushed the Twi’lek back with the Force. “Build a lightsaber, hot lekku.”
***
It was easier than Faith would’ve thought. So many Jedi had built lightsabers and then become one with the Force that every step was tinged with déjà vu. With Buffy’s crystal as a baseline, Faith could construct the rest with tools from the machine shop. Buffy smiled with approval as Faith intricately slotted the parts together with the Force, like building a ship in a bottle. The saber’s first arc would weld it together irrevocably. Faith found Buffy’s approval a much more helpful guide. Despite her attitude, she respected the Jedi. It felt good to have that respect applied to herself.
“How’m I doing so far?”
Buffy closed her eyes. “You have the power routed directly into the capacitor. Turn it on like that and it’ll take out the entire ship.”
“So… don’t do that?”
Buffy grinned, then abruptly huddled over with a cry of pain. Faith abandoned the lightsaber to run to her. “Buffy, are you okay?”
Buffy waved her off. “I felt a disturbance in the Force, as if a million voices were singing in harmony and then silenced one by one.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I never feared what the galaxy would be like when we returned, but now—I feel like the Force has abandoned me.”
“I haven’t.”
Five months and counting.
***
A week later, the lightsaber snap-hissed with a vibrant green blade. A moment later, there was an echo, and Faith whirled around to meet Buffy’s sapphire-blue arc.
“You’re ready,” Buffy said, stepping back and raising her saber in a Form II stance.
Faith dutifully followed suit.
“There are two main attacks, thrusts and cuts, each with their own strengths and weaknesses…”
***
Faith cringed as the blaster bolt dug into her shoulder. Even at its lowest setting, it hurt like hell.
“Don’t try to deflect all of them,” Buffy said, lowering the blaster. “Seek the path of least resistance.”
“And what do I get if I avoid them all?” Faith licked her lips.
“I stop shooting you.”
***
Faith hit the ground as her saber flew away to be caught in Buffy’s Force grip. Buffy’s lightsaber hovered at Faith’s throat, before moving up to let the arc’s ionic charge wash over her lekku.
“Again,” Buffy said.
Faith slapped the deck.
Buffy undid her belt. “Later.”
***
Faith contorted her body to avoid the low-setting blaster bolts, lightsaber swaying like a metronome to deflect the unavoidable. The walls of the cargo compartment were matte-black from her training.
***
Faith would be hard-pressed to remember when she started sleeping with Buffy for reasons other than sex. It coincided with the nightmares, a hellish four days during which Buffy could only dream or think of death. Faith stayed with her day and night, occupying her mind with questions about the Jedi Order. They weren’t all bad. Some, like Nomi Sunrider and Revan, seemed like people Faith would buy drinks for if they weren’t stardust by then. But over time, the Jedi had come to value self-important mysticism over justice. Faith wondered if Buffy saw the irony. In opposing Sith imperialism, the Jedi had rendered themselves all but impotent.
***
“Have you given any thoughts to what you’ll do next week?” Buffy orbited around Faith to keep in eye contact with her, enjoying the grav-panel short that had given them an area of zero-G to ‘camp out’ in. Faith had puppy-dog-eyed Buffy into holding their training there; what with the other popular activity, it quickly became naked training, then Jedi foreplay, and now they only left to use the fresher. After eight months, the novelty was addictive.
“When we reach Calonia? I’m gonna eat a dozen Banthaburgers, hold the galaxy’s biggest orgy, dance at every nightclub on Coruscant, and for day two…”
“No, I mean—with your life.” Buffy stopped Faith’s rotation with a gentle hand. “What will you do with your life?”
“Use your creds, with interest, to buy a new ship, go to some sector I’ve never been before, open for business.”
“Have you given any thought to becoming a Jedi Knight?”
“When I need a laugh, sure.”
“I’m serious—“
“Shocker.”
“The Council could assign a master to complete your training, you could undergo the Trials, we could even team-up on my next assignment.”
Faith kicked away from Buffy, eyes closed as she bounded off the walls. “B, your brand of Jedi isn’t for everyone. I’d go nuts, meditating, takin’ orders, being a good girl… hey, B.” She opened her eyes and braced herself across from Buffy. “Where’d you say you were from, Alderaan? Let’s go there. Tell the Council you’re giving yourself time off for bad behavior and give me the guided tour. We’ll tell everyone it’s our honeymoon, it’ll be fun.”
“I’ll ask the Council,” Buffy said uncertainly.
“And what do ya think they’ll say?”
Buffy floated to the edge of gravity, where her robes were waiting. “Maybe it’d be easier if we said goodbye when we landed.”
Faith shifted her legs, covered her breasts with her arms. “How easy would it be to say goodbye now?”
Buffy slipped her lightsaber onto her belt. “Goodbye, Faith. You were a great student.”
By the time Faith had dried her eyes enough to emerge, Buffy had taken her few possessions out of their shared room.
They slowed to realspace on the outskirts of the Calonia system. Calonia IV and V moved past the Scythe like fat spiders that had built the web slowing the ship down. Calona 3 doubled in size repeatedly, until it hogged the windshield. But dwarfing it by virtue of forced perspective and sheer size was a ship Faith had never seen before.
It was an antiseptic white, with a sharply triangular shape. Scans had it crawling with turrets and shield generators. Hundreds of snubfighters patrolled in formation around it. Faith shuddered at the thought of one of those on her tail. In her day, the Republic Navy had nothing that big, especially not assigned to a nowhere spot like Calonia.
Buffy climbed into the co-pilot’s chair, robes freshly starched. It made Faith want to rend the oh-so-clean clothes into rags.
“We’re here,” Faith said in answer to Buffy’s silent question. “I didn’t want to bother you… nice cap-ship, huh? Very… big.”
“You feel it too, don’t you? The Dark Side lurks within that ship’s bones.”
“Or the spaceship equivalent.” Faith eased up the throttle. “Not our problem.”
“It’s my problem.”
“Like I said. Not our problem.”
They passed under the bleached bone ship and continued down to Calonia. Thankfully, the Outer Rim hadn’t changed that much. Landing Authority specified a dock and they landed there. The other hexes in the honeycomb port were filled with futuristic designs, even the ones covered in rust. Faith felt a little self-conscious of the Scythe’s antiquated design. She ran the air intake extra-loud to show all the whisper-quiet crafts what was what.
“I’ll see if I can scrounge up some parts for the hyperdrive!” Faith yelled over the roar of the engines.
“Try the local scrapyard,” Buffy said, letting herself be drowned out.
“Huh?”
“I said I’ll check the Holo-Net!”
Faith cut the engines, dropping the Scythe on its absorber-gears. “Be careful, B. Future ain’t what it used to be.”
***
If there was a universal constant to space-time, it would have to be Jawas. Faith suspected the little scavengers would survive a galactic war, if only by haggling Death into the ground.
“No, T-31 engine, one less than 32, one more than 30. Made by Cragg Space? Everyone’s heard of Cragg Space, don’t try to scam me!”
She looked to the heavens as if for aid and saw the Naval ship jump to hyperspace. Well, that was a load off her mind.
The Jawa brought a T-24 out of the sandcrawler. “Utini!”
It would have to do.
***
Buffy found the denizens of the spaceport giving her strange looks. She knew the Jedi were rare, but they treated her like a Rancor in drag. She finally got an Ugnaught to point her to the nearest Holo-Net terminal. It was on the back of a three-wheeled droid, in constant motion on its search for new customers. Buffy was delighted to find it had voice recognition hardware. Her future was getting brighter all the time.
“Hello, computer. Connect me to the Jedi Temple.”
“No such entry in this registry.”
“The Jedi Temple? On Coruscant?”
“No such entry in this registry.”
“Jedi Master Yoda.”
“No such entry in this registry.”
“Jedi Gile.”
“No such entry in this registry.”
“Are there any Jedi in your registry?”
“No such entry in this registry. Your session has been deemed a prank call and will be terminated for the convenience of our paying customers. Please vacate the immediate area.”
“Watch it, tin-boy, you’re not too big to short-circuit.” Stupid malfunctioning droid. She tried to think of an acquaintance who wasn’t a Jedi and all she could come up with was Faith. “I didn’t mean that, I’m sorry. Can you please connect me to the Summers family?”
“Only because you said please. Specify planet, please.”
“Alderaan.”
“No such entry in this registry.”
Buffy wondered if the laws on droid violence had changed in the last fifty years. Then she heard a squeal of fear to her left. A Chadra-Fan had dropped its drink, splattering the boots of three soldiers in all-encompassing white armor, the same color as the capital ship in orbit. The leader was shouting at it in a harshly digitalized voice, while his troops were kicking and shoving the alien as it tried to clean up the mess. Remembering Faith’s words, Buffy held her robes closed over her lightsaber as she went to confront them.
“Hey, I don’t understand what that little guy is saying, but I’m pretty sure it was an apology!”
Actually, at that moment the Chadra-Fan was saying that she was a girl and not little, but petite.
“Step back, lady! Imperial business!”
So they were with the government, or a government at any rate. That would make things easier.
“Jedi business. And I’d be very interested in speaking with your superiors.”
The troopers laughed, their helmets making the sound a cacophony. “She thinks she’s a Jedi!”
“If I’m not,” she took out her lightsaber, “then do you think I can get a refund on this?”
“She’s a Jedi! Shoot to kill!”
“What?! Whoa!” Buffy snapped her lightsaber on just in time to catch the snap-shot the leader took. It ricocheted and hit him in the chest. The other two were going for their blasters. Buffy slashed the rifles apart.
“Okay, now I definitely want to speak with your superiors.”
***
Faith towed the T-24 parts out of the junkyard to find a litter of Gamorrean younglings running past her, joining the general swell of the crowd around the spaceport, like a mob of gamblers waiting for shock-rat race. Faith recognized a dozen dialects’ variation on “The Jedi have returned!”
She was going to kill Buffy.
***
The corpses wore armor too clean and uniform to be anything but government. Faith examined them while Buffy tried to calm her new fan club. Their weapons were worn, but professionally tended to. You never knew when a future-gun could come in handy.
“B, think now’s a good time to vacate. Before more of your pale friends arrive?”
“I know! I just don’t want to abandon these people to an angry warlord.”
“So dial up the Jedi Council, send in the space marines.”
Buffy worked her way through the crowd, finally reaching Faith. She pulled their heads down, low and close. “I can’t reach the Jedi. I think something’s wrong.”
The mob quieted, as if transfixed by the vulnerability cracking Buffy’s Jedi calm. They parted as a stooped old alien, clutching a cane of Veenwood, entered the lobby.
“The Empire will revenge itself,” he said, pulling his stringy white hair out of his eyes. “You must come with me, hurriedly.”
***
They watched from the window of Ordo’s home as AT-STs and Imperial shuttles swept the city, like huge birds picking over a carcass.
Ordo closed the shutters in disgust. “This is but a taste of the Empire’s might.”
Ordo lived on the outskirts of the spaceport in a beehive-like hut, only the ground floor of which was accessible to the Jedi. The rest was a honeycombed ceiling that Ordo popped in and out of, navigating with ease. He was an elder of the native clan, which was used as slave labor by the Empire to service the local garrison. His clan had pooled their resources to buy his freedom. He looked forward to the chance to sort out what he saw as a karmic imbalance.
“How did it come to this?” Faith asked, her voice surprising Buffy with the loss it contained. Buffy wondered how much she had relied on the Jedi Order to define her, even if only as the light that cast the shadow.
“The same way evil always spreads. War.” Ordo laid it out: the clones, the Sith, the Purge, the Empire. His voice was dry, parched. Buffy heard it like a chisel chipping away at her. She was the last of the Jedi Order. There would never be another.
By the time Ordo got to what had happened to Alderaan, it felt like he was stabbing a phantom limb. Faith had already left. Buffy followed her out onto the hill overlooking the spaceport, two suns setting.
“What do we do?” Faith asked.
“I don’t know.”
***
It didn’t get dark. The two suns’ light skirted under the horizon, sending up dull flares in hypnotic patterns. Faith held Buffy in the dying light, feeling the bone and skin and cloth of Buffy in her arms.
“I’m going to fight,” Buffy said at last, her voice as full of broken glass as Faith’s had ever been. “You coming?”
“To the end.”
***
Ordo had enough sway to pull together a gathering of his clan. They were bleeding and sore from the day’s labors, but they listened. No one could do anything else when Buffy was talking.
“The Imperials are still in a state of shock, that’s why we have to move tonight. The garrison holds several lightspeed-capable carriers for deployment to outlying regions. We can use those to move the entire slave population off-world before reprisal.”
“Exile seven hundred souls into deep space? You’re mad!” someone shouted.
“I’m not the one who spent all day welding hull plating for two measly credits. This is a one-time offer. I’m going to that garrison, then I’m leaving. If you still want to be here when the Empire asks what happened to their base, no charge off my power pack. Now, are you with me?”
***
Regional Dictorate Lan Marloff looked out at the lights of the city blinking out in accordance with the Empire’s energy conservation plan. From the miles-high skyscraper that served as both Sith art and skyhook dock for the Victory-class Star Destroyer that policed his sector, his shadow was cast like a continental sun dial, always ticking with the flashes of the set suns.
He stroked the contours of his curlicued moustache, a familial affection. The stormtrooper murders of the afternoon bothered him and he couldn’t say why. They were only clones, after all, and the deaths were most likely the work of Rebel scum that had happened across an old lightsaber. No reason to worry. No cause for alarm.
His desk lit up, projecting a Stormtrooper in shades of blue. “Sir, the base had been penetrated. The front gate is… missing.”
“What?” Marloff demanded as the alarm sounded. “What do you mean, missing? It’s over twelve thousand kilos!”
“It appears to have been ripped away. We expect answers momentarily.” A lightsaber thrust through the Stormtrooper’s chest. The arc was too bright to look at, even in holographic form. The man crumpled and a cloaked figure took his place, turning the body over with its foot. It pulled back its hood. It was a blonde.
She looked at Marloff, waved her hand, and the hologram fritzed out.
Lan Marloff sat down and wondered how long it would take help to arrive.
***
The only light came from laser swords, blue and green, as they crackled and hissed through the air. Flashing as they burned through Stormtrooper armor. Then a solar flare crested the horizon and revealed two Jedi, fighting their way down the narrow kilometer-long drawbridge to the skyhook. All around was a sheer drop to the bedrock which served as the skyhook’s foundation. Buffy had already jammed the drawbridge’s mechanism with a landspeeder thrown into the gears.
As they relentlessly advanced on the defending Stormtroopers, knocking blaster bolts aside like they were shooing flies, a squad of Imperial Army troopers came down the bridge from the rear.
“B, we’re gonna have company!” Faith yelled.
“Buy me a sec.” Buffy flung her lightsaber, point out like a spear, at the stream of Stormtroopers issuing from the skyhook.
The Army troopers flanking them opened fire. Faith deflected the first shot, the second, the third. The Force was calling her. She whipped her saber in every direction, cutting apart multiple bolts with each stroke. Ricochets threw up fireworks at her feet and she nearly sliced off her own lekku, but she didn’t flinch. Jedi didn’t flinch.
Buffy reached out with the Force as her thrown saber intersected the Stormtroopers. It oscillated, twisted into a living infinity symbol that cut down Stormtroopers whether they ducked or jumped. Behind her, Buffy heard the powerful hum of Faith’s lightsaber in hyper-fast motion. With the Stormtroopers dispatched, Buffy called her saber back.
Faith grinned at her. They twisted in the same instant, dancing between the blaster bolts, and Pushed simultaneously. It was like a thermal detonator had gone off in the thick of the squad. They flew upward and dropped off the side of the bridge.
Faith was breathing hard, skin crisped by near-misses. “You okay?” Buffy asked.
“Five by five.”
***
Marloff found himself listening very intently to the hum of his office’s electronics. It seemed to him that all that noise could mask some other noise, like the sound of lightsabers closing in.
He turned off the electronics, but could still hear the noise. He turned something electronic back on.
***
“You have a plan, B?”
Buffy continued unrelentingly up the stairs.
“Glad to hear it.”
Faith paused at the end of the long climb to meditate, but Buffy marched right up to the imposing door into Marloff’s office. They flew open without a touch, opening into the kind of bureaucrat’s office that was the same under the Empire as it had been under the Republic. Behind the desk, a balding man in a sweat-soaked uniform, unbuttoned, fired three shots from a blaster pistol. Buffy held her saber in the way, angling it slightly to catch each shot.
Marloff looked at his blaster in disbelief. “Listen, you don’t want me, I was just doing my job!”
The lightsaber stayed between them. “Your job as a slaver!?”
Marloff fired at her again as a IG-100 MagnaGuard leapt down from the ceiling. A gift from Emperor Palpatine, it was in full working order.
Buffy deflected the bolt and Faith blocked the IG-100’s electrostaff. The droid reoriented on her, swiveling the other end of its staff up. Faith ducked back, circled her saber into attack position. “B, little help?”
Buffy uncaringly knocked another blaster bolt away. “You’re scum, from a society of scum. But scum can be cleansed.”
Faith, winded from the ascent, struggled to keep ahead of the electrostaff. Sparks flew as the staff tilled at furniture and walls. She saw an opening, kicked the droid, almost broke her foot. “Buffy!”
“Men like you tore down the Jedi Order and replaced it with lies.” Buffy batted another shot away. “Men like you blew Alderaan apart!”
Marloff’s blaster droned empty. “Oh, no, please don’t hurt me!”
“How many times has that been begged of you? How many times have you been deaf to it?” Buffy jerked Marloff up, using the Force as a noose.
“Buffy!” Faith overpowered the droid and put her saber through its processor. “Let him go, he hasn’t done anything!”
“He’s done nothing! That’s enough.” She maneuvered Marloff through the air, brushing him against the Quarren glass-wind art hanging from the ceiling.
“Buffy, use the Force, sense his aura! The Dark Side is weak in him. Killing him wouldn’t be justice, just revenge. What would the Jedi call that?”
Buffy thought it over. Then she Pushed, sending Marloff through several panes of glass before he finally crashed out the window, starting his long, screaming plummet to the ground. “A good start.”
***
Faith watched the last of the ships disappear into hyperspace. The slave population had commandeered every ship they could find and now they were fleeing into Wild Space to escape the Emperor’s wrath. Faith wished she could join them. Wherever they ended up, Faith could pretend she was on the far side of the Republic instead of nowhere.
But Buffy was fighting this thing. Before Marloff had even hit the ground, she was on the Holo-Net devouring everything she could about the Rebel Alliance. Faith stood watch over her in the skyhook, belatedly seeing her own reflection in the transparisteel. Don’t get involved, Faith.
“It’s strange,” Buffy said suddenly. Her voice was dry as Tattooine. “I sensed the Dark Side in that ‘Star Destroyer’, but not in any of this other Imperial sithspit.”
“We should get back to the Scythe before that ISD with extra Dark Side gets back. And thanks for the help with the crazy serial killer bot.”
“You’re a Jedi. Thought you could handle it.”
“Like you handled Marloff?”
Buffy faced the Twi’lek. Slowly she walked up to her, taking firm hold of Faith’s arms. “Are you with me? I need your help, but if you’re not with me then you’re no good to me.”
“I’m not losing you, B.” Faith had seen what the Dark Side could do to someone she loved. Even someone just and compassionate could be twisted beyond recognition. So she’d consigned everyone, darkness and all, to the trash compactor before they could betray her. She’d worked for herself and business had been good.
Now there was this beautiful girl in the same position as her old Master, thinking she could serve the Force by serving the Dark Side. And Faith, like an idiot, had broken the first rule of Ryloth: Look, but don’t touch. Jedi were supposed to protect people, but no one seemed to protect the Jedi. So Faith would do it, for this one Jedi Knight, so far from home. She’d do it because no one had done it for her. And she’d do it because she loved Buffy, and being her Padawan was the only way she could do it that Buffy would accept.
She kissed Buffy, her lekku looping around the back of the Jedi’s neck. The gesture meant nothing to Buffy, but everything to her.
***
The Master gestured and the holo-projector flickered off. So, two new Jedi had entered the game. While the Emperor and his stooges focused their attention on the son of Skywalker, he could turn those two lost little Padawans to his advantage.
With another gesture, he unmuted the Mandalorian. “—now, if every bounty hunter who said he was part of the Purge had been there, the Jedi Temple would’ve looked like Jabba’s palace. Now, Jabba’s palace I’ve been to. He’s got this bloody big monster right underneath his throne. Eats pretty girls. Gives you some right weird dreams, that.”
“Can you find the Jedi?”
“Absolutely. Because I’m the only bounty hunter in the ‘verse with a genuine dark Jedi.” He hugged a dark-haired woman to his chest. “Poor Dru here was driven mad in the Purge, but she’s still tied into the Force. Her visions will find your Jedi, or my name isn’t Spike Bludee.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-16 10:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-17 05:57 am (UTC)She kissed Buffy, her lekku looping around the back of the Jedi’s neck. The gesture meant nothing to Buffy, but everything to her.
That entire scene was kind of heartbreaking.
Please tell me you were thinking of writing more of this.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-17 08:24 pm (UTC)I vastly enjoyed what you did here, and the rapport (and snark) Buffy and Faith have going is rather awesome.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-18 12:32 am (UTC)Looks like the Force is my home boy,” Buffy noted smugly for T4-R4’s benefit.
Had me in fits.
She kissed Buffy, her lekku looping around the back of the Jedi’s neck. The gesture meant nothing to Buffy, but everything to her.
Faith & Buffy's relationship is intriguing and I'm interested to see where you'll go with that.
“The Sith Library. Every Sith Lord since Darth Bane has inscribed his knowledge of the Dark Side on this pagan idol. All the secrets the Jedi Council are too frightened to teach you. Glorious.”
Also, you get props for mentioning Darth Bane in the first chapter.
The Librarian fight was really good. I had the whole thing pictured in my head.
And lastly, Spike as a bounty hunter = genius.
So yeah, can't wait for the next chapter! :D
no subject
Date: 2009-07-18 01:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 03:30 am (UTC)Erin
no subject
Date: 2009-07-31 04:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-10 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-05 01:37 pm (UTC)