Star Wars: Darklight
by AB
Chapter 2
Escape into unlikely Mentors
"All crew to docking stations, we are arriving in Geonosis, let's get this done with. I do not want to stay in this barren, wasteland of a rock any more than we have to." Tern heard the captain tell his crew. He was cramped up in a cargo container, he had not drunk or eaten anything for three days now and he had had little sleep.
He waited for the containers to be offloaded and then he used the force to "scan" for nearby life forms. Making sure that no one was around he got out of the container and walked off to the main port's area.
He felt like his blood froze. For a month now the Sith Assassins had been hunting him. For a month now he would arrive at a planet and a day or two later they would arrive as well, at first he had thought it a coincidence but after the first few planets it became less of a coincidence and more of a certainty they were after him. This time was the first they had arrived there before him. He was hungry, thirsty, sleep deprived, had not had a shower in almost a month and he was beyond desperate.
His eyes darted left and right trying to find a different cargo container to hide in, or another way off the planet, but he could find nothing and the Assassins seemed to had covered every way in and out of the spaceport.
"How… how do they do this? I must get out of here, maybe they'll lose me in the next planet… " His trail of thoughts was broken by someone asking him for his travel papers.
He looked up to see one of them, one of the Sith Assassins.
"Eehhh… don't have them on me, forgot them in the spaceship, mum has them, I can go back and get them if you want?"
"I'll come with you, we are looking for someone, a boy your age, your family lets you be this unclean?" The Sith stopped him by his elbow.
"Uhm… yeah, not much time to clean up when dodging pirates and the like, we're here for a short stop to resupply and clean up actually, I seem to have lost my way, but I think that way," He showed a corridor on the other end of the large spaceport chamber. "is the way to go." He tried to smile but the Sith would not let go of him. His heart was pounding in his chest and there was sweat covering his forehead.
"Let's go together then." The Sith offered, a hand lowering to his lightsaber. Tern was about to lose it and force-push the Sith Assassin away when a voice coming from behind him addressed them and him specifically.
"Here you are, god you smell like a bantha, you should really shower more often bro! Now come along or mum will be furious." Tern turned to see a brunette wavy haired boy with amber eyes and a short lean but athletic figure.
"You know how she is, Volun do this and Volun do that… you get off easy." Tern's eyes were full of questions but answers would have to wait for when he was not about to do battle with a Sith Assassin.
Volun shoved his shoulder playfully, "now where the fuck have you been…?" Tern got the point, Volun had left it void in the end for him to tell him his name.
"You think you have it easy? Mum always makes me offload the damn cargo… Tern you do that your brother is not strong enough… bah!" He fired trying to sound mirthful and happy to see his brother.
"She always underestimates me doesn't she? Shall we go now?" Volun grinned and turned to leave but the Sith would not let go so easily.
"The ID cards, where are your papers?"
"Oh, yeah right, here you go." Volun gave the man two ID Holo-cards. Tern's eyes bulged. There was no way the ID holo-card would or could show his face and name, he was not actually Volun's brother after all. And yet when the Sith Assassin turned on the hologram projector in the ID holo-cards it showed his name and his figure.
A very disappointed-looking Sith waved them off giving the ID cards back to Volun. Tern wanted to practically run the other way and never look back. Volun on the other hand held him with a hand around his shoulder and walked casually as if nothing was the matter.
"How…? Why…?" Tern was completely and utterly perplexed, why had the amber-eyed boy helped him and how on the force he had managed to make the ID card show his figure and name.
"The galaxy is dark enough, you looked like you needed help so I helped. As for the ID cards, the Sith's attention was so much on you that it was no problem for me to scan you as I approached and you turned around, and to input your name with my surname after." Volun shrugged as if what he had just described was the easiest and most natural thing in the whole galaxy.
"By the way… you stink like something died in there… follow me." Volun led him to his ship, a freighter class corvette. He pressed a button in his communicator and the ship's trap-door entrance opened. They walked in and the trap-door closed behind them.
"Volun Antari! Where have you been? And who is this… boy?" A woman in her mid-thirties asked Volun who grinned impishly.
"Not the time, we must go. I'll explain later." Volun replied and left the cargo bay.
"Cyra Antari, make yourself useful, will you? Secure the containers and make sure the hyperdrive is okay, we took some damage in the last run." Tern nodded, how on the Galaxy was he supposed to know if the hyperdrive was okay? "Well… if it looks ok and doesn't explode when I open it… ," he thought and started securing the various cargo containers. He finished just as he felt the ship lift off from the ground vertically. He exited the cargo hold to see a man and a woman run about their duties.
He walked to the core and checked on the hyperdrive. He knew next to nothing about this sort of stuff, but the drive looked okay and there were no explosions when he opened and closed it, loud or otherwise so he shrugged and walked to what looked like the communal area of the ship. He sat on one of the chairs around a large metal table and waited.
The man, a Zabrak, tall with large horns around his head entered the room and sat on a chair near him while the woman, a Balosar, sat opposite to him. There was silence in the room until Cyra entered it.
"We are going to drop you off at the next habitable planet we stop at." She announced to Tern.
Tern turned white as a sheet, "What? Why?" He asked in a trembling voice.
"I do not want force-sensitive individuals near me or my son."
"I am not one of them." Tern denied it fervently making Cyra eye him sternly. Volun entered the room.
"I… " Tern began to reply but he stopped, there was no point. He closed his eyes and released a long deep breath before opening his eyes.
"I used to be a youngling in the Jedi Temple and Academy of Tython." He said resigned, he was tired, exhausted in fact, he did not want to run anymore, if they were going to drop him off in a habitable world he would just wait there for the Sith and fight them to whatever outcome.
"Used to?" Cyra asked, a brow raised in question.
"Tython was attacked about a month ago, everyone inside it died… except me, I managed to escape and have been running since." Tern replied, pushing his long, dirty hair out of his face.
"I see… " Cyra seemed more surprised than Tern would have thought. "We have heard nothing of this."
"Just as I jumped to hyperspace I saw various large cruiser-class starships blockade the planet, maybe no one has been allowed in… or out. the Temple I was in was not the only one in Tython." Tern shrugged, Cyra nodded.
"Where's your lightsaber?"
"I haven't got one."
"You must have passed your initiate trials?"
"Yes… and no. I passed them but the crystal cave in Illum gave me no crystal to build my lightsaber with. I was to try again next year, the Masters looked… strange when I came out of the cave and told them that I had found no crystal, that no crystal had sung or shown itself to me."
"I see… answer me honestly, have you used any abilities of the dark side?" Cyra pressed on.
"Yes, I have been running for my life for a month now. I've been shot at, almost killed more than twice already, a tavern owner in a desert planet tried to rape me as a payment for a ticket on a smuggler ship. Another smuggler tried to sell me as a slave to the Sith after a week or two of me having joined his crew and I've been on the run from the Sith ever since… so yes, I've had to survive and protect myself and I have been angry and afraid and in so much despair I could feel this ship with it so I have used the dark side where I had to. I will not apologise for it but at the same time I am not about to go on a rampage, declare my undying servitude to the Sith and kill everyone in my path." Tern spoke passionately and without fear or regret. In truth he was beyond tired and wanted to lay it all in the table and know where he stands with this new crew.
Volun thought he detected a very faint smirk in his mother's lips for a moment, "Come on mum… we can't abandon him, we have to take him with us until we can find a Jedi person or temple… it is the right thing to do and you know it." Cyra almost laughed.
"Fine, but endanger the life of my son or of my crew and I will kill you myself." She told Tern and left the communal area.
Volun grinned widely and sat next Tern, "Don't worry she's not bad. She's actually kind of a sweetheart once you get past the hard exterior shell." He told Tern and served himself some kind of orange-blue liquid.
"This is Ura Vakari, she loves… liberating items from people and her underworld connections are… interesting. That grumpy, witty man is Alkon Radash he knows every weapon in the galaxy and he absolutely loves to make things go BOOM." Volun grinned introducing Tern to the other two.
"I do not trust force sensitives." Ura said returning to her food.
"That's not entirely true is it?" Volun fired at her.
She did not even look at him, "there is always an exception to the rule. When someone saves your life for no other reason than to do a good thing, you tend to trust them afterwards."
Volun rolled his eyes.
"Welcome to the crew Tern. Know how to handle a lightsaber?" Alkon asked him.
"Not really." Tern replied.
"There are things I cannot teach you, for those you need a Jedi but a lightsaber is a weapon, and I know weapons. There are things I can teach you." Alkon offered and "hired" himself as Tern's sword-fighting instructor with a grin on his face.
"So how did you… find yourself in this situation?" Volun asked.
Tern told them of all that had transpired from the assault on Tython. Well some of that, there was stuff he couldn't tell them yet, then how he escaped, and everything after it."… and somehow they keep finding me… " Tern finished.
"Are the Sith Assassins force sensitive?" Volun asked him.
"Not all… most are not, some can be if their Master teaches them in the ways of the force." Tern replied shrugging his shoulders.
Volun grabbed him by his elbow and practically ran him to his room. "Remove your clothes." Volun ordered him.
"I hurt the last guy who ordered me to do this… tried to force himself on me."
Volun laughed shaking his head. "No, no, no, someone must have placed a tracker in your clothes or in you, so I want you to remove your clothes. They are super filthy after all, so I can throw them out of an airlock, clean you up and taze you with a small dosage of electricity to destroy any tracker they may have placed in you." Tern blushed and rubbed his hair in embarrassment of his assumptions.
"How do you know it's a tracker?"
"Easy, if they were sensing you by way of the force that Sith Assassin would have detected you in a second. He didn't, they always arrive in the planet after you… so they probably have a tracker that tells them even through hyperspace in which solar system you are in, but not where on the planet. What else can it be?" Volun asked Tern as the boy started removing garments.
"Ah… " Tern continued removing garments until he was completely naked.
Volun had to swallow hard as Tern's bruised, famished body revealed slowly before his eyes. Volun knew that if Tern was well fed and rested his body would bloom again, his scrawny, malnourished leg and arms would fill up with young firm muscle, his torso would buff up and his face would not look like a mummy after a few years in a tomb. Tern had the deepest-looking cyan-red-ish eye hues Volun had ever seen and his wildly grown mop of black hair were everywhere.
Volun's eyes remained on Tern's crotch and his dangling jewels. Tern's penis seemed to be a three inch flaccid with two grape sized testicles below it, his pubic area was bare as of yet.
"How… old are you?" Volun asked Tern, a lump at his throat.
"Twelve, you?" Tern was unsure why this information was required, he could not think
"Same, thirteen in five months." Volun beamed. "Okay, have a wash, bathroom is over there." Volun pointed at a room in the back of the corridor across his room and left. "I'll be right back." He yelled as he turned round the corner of the corridor.
"Hey, Garos, drop out of hyperspace in five minutes, okay?" Volun asked the pilot, a human in his twenties.
"Sure, why?"
"Have to jettison some stuff out the airlock." Volun grinned.
Six minutes later they were back in hyperspace. "Well that's that then." He rubbed his hands together as if to remove something from them and walked back to his room.
"Mum, Tern has a nasty scar on his shoulder, can you take a look at it?" Volun asked his mother as he crossed her room on his way to his.
"Sure honey, but… never mind… let's go." She sounded hesitant about something.
"Ok, wait here to make sure he's not… naked." Volun told her and peeked through the sliding door.
He gasped at the sight of Tern now clean and dressed in a pair of tight-shorts and a blouse that tied cross his torso with an auto-zip. He had cut his hair to a long ponytail that tied to the top of his head and had removed the small things that hang from Padawans' hair to demonstrate to the world they were Padawans.
"Oh, hey." Tern said trying to smile.
"Hey, mum is going to try heal your shoulder some." Volun told him and motioned for his mum to enter the room.
"Lie down, Tern." Cyra told him and motioned for the bed.
She took a syringe and a machine, shot the syringe at his injured shoulder and applied the machine to it.
"We don't have a med-bot here so this will have to do. I had not heard that Tython had been attacked. I know that Illum and Vrogas Vas are under siege for a year now."
Tern grimaced feeling tingling pain in his shoulder, "I must surely find my brethren then, I must help in the fight against the rising Sith."
Cyra looked at her son and back to Tern, "It may prove difficult if Tython is under a siege no one seems to know about, and with at least two if not more temple planets under siege, but we will find out a way, will you join us until then?"
"I don't have to be a force-sensitive kid to know that you are more than simple pirates or smugglers. Sure I'll join you until then, but I want to know who you are."
Cyra sighed and locked eyes with him before speaking. "We are rebels of a sort. Ever since New Alderaan fell and the Republic forces scattered, the Sith have been left almost unchecked to pick anyone they want and take us out one by one. There isn't any kind of organised opposition. I, we want to change this. We are trading favours and gathering information and contacts so that we manage to unify the various factions into one coherent force. If we can get the Jedi Order remnants to join us, then we may actually have a chance." She told him nervously.
"Who are you?" Tern asked her astonished.
"I am no one, I am no one important yet but I will create and lead this movement, be it the last thing I do." Cyra responded with confidence and an unrelenting look on her face.
"Then how do you figure you'll convince them to work together?" Tern asked more surprised by the moment.
"We have been at this for a year since the collapse of the New Republic and before that I was a general in the Republic. I was there when New Alderaan fell."
"Then you are not no one."
"I am no general anymore, I am not royalty, I am no one but this will change. Do you join us?"
Tern nodded, "Yes, at least until I am reunified with my Order."
Cyra nodded, "Fine, now you need to rest, how did this happen?" She pointed at his shoulder.
"I had a disagreement with a blaster rifle… twice." Tern replied making Volun giggle.
Cyra left closing the door behind them.
Tern tried to get up with Volun pressing a hand on his torso. "What are you doing? You need to rest."
"I need to get naked… I don't like sleeping in clothes and it's not like I was injured today. I've been like this for a month, I won't die if I stand for a moment."
Volun's eyes bulged at the information and his hand shot straight for his cloth-covered package for a second without even realising it, re-adjusting it at the mere thought of seeing Tern naked again and sleeping in the same bed with a naked boy. His mind raced at the possibilities.
"You disposed of my clothes?" Tern asked him as he removed, again, his clothes in front of Volun.
"Yeah that should be that," Volun replied, trying his best not to overtly ogle at his new crew mate and friend's naked body.
"And you're sure that the tracker was in my clothes?" Tern asked looking somewhat concerned.
"Well… I could conduct a body inspection and find out if you want." Volun quipped back at Tern, bringing their faces and bodies closer together, feeling adrenaline pump in his veins as his heart increased its speed.
"I don't think you can handle that." Tern tried to keep a serious face but he failed miserably, a grin appearing on his face.
"You sure about that?" Volun brought their faces even closer, close enough to feel and smell each other's breaths.
"No, not really at the moment to be honest." Tern disengaged and lay back on the bed, within seconds he was asleep.
Volun walked to his mother's room and rang the inter-com bell. She opened the door. Volun sat on the edge of the bed, she was writing in the Captain's log in her metallic table.
"Can you train him?"
"I am not a Jedi."
"Yes, I know but… can you train him until he is reunited with the Jedi?"
"I'll see what I can do… I feel something differently about this boy. Please try to not get too emotionally attached to him. The future is uncertain what with the Sith onslaught and the collapse of the Republic."
"I know, mum, I feel something differently about him as well." Somehow Cyra knew that the "different" she and her son meant were two completely different things but she could not do much other than abandon Tern in an inhabitable planet and she would not do that.
"I will do what I can Volun, but you must accept that when we manage to find a Jedi he will leave us, okay?" She asked him, turning around to see him.
"We will cross that hyper-jump when we get to it." Volun replied hopefully.
"Fair enough but if we don't unify the various factions and start pushing back it won't matter much… the Galaxy will enter another thousand years of Sith Empire or more. The Sith have abandoned Darth Bane's rule of two and the Sith once more are unleashed unto the Galaxy from Korriban like in the days of old, the Jedi are in retreat and the Galaxy is changing." Cyra stated.
"That's not yet verified mum, there's no intelligence that shows Korriban is active again after almost twenty thousand years." Volun tried to rebuke his mother's information.
"I know, and yet he told us that the rule of two had been abandoned by the Master of his Master." Cyra continued, sadness painted on her face.
"Yes, and yet… they crashed the Republic forces, took a few planets, seized New Alderaan and are besieging Jedi Temple planets but… why are they not just sweeping across the Galaxy? The individual factions on their own do not pose a threat." Volun was desperately trying not to accept the future that was coming.
"Perhaps they have sustained damage greater than what we see? Or perhaps they are preparing for something, consolidating their power, now unobstructed by Jedi and New Republic forces. One big push to scatter the enemy and then sit back and consolidate and father the full force of your forces. I do not know yet, but something tells me we will soon find out. We should get some shut-eye… we arrive in Dolathon in a few hours and you know how the pirates are there. We'll need some rest.
Volun nodded, got up and left.
"Rise and shine sunshines!" Alkon woke them up with a grin. "We have arrived at Dolathon. We need to get started, sell the Cargo and get away with our lives." Tern looked at him with a worried look.
"Never let your guard down, not against pirates, Sith or anyone else. We have a rapport with these guys but pirates' loyalty sways faster than shifting sands. After Dolathon we head to a planet we know of that is not in the star-charts to rest and start on your training."
"Training? Why not find the Jedi? Go to Illum? Or elsewhere?" Tern asked perplexed.
"Because Illum and elsewhere is blockaded and besieged by the Sith. Those Jedi that are not besieged are deep in missions. We'll need to find a way to contact them without bringing the whole of the Sith Order down on us which could take a day or a year. Now get up and get dressed, we have work to do." Alkon explained before leaving the room.
Tern groaned and got up from the bed. A few minutes later they were ready and grabbing what they could eat in the communal area.
Cyra entered the room and extended her hand to Tern. "Take this, you'll need it, it was my elder son's." Tern saw her holding a lightsaber.
"Your elder son was a Jedi?" He asked completely astonished.
"Yes and no, he's dead. Take it, you'll need it." Cyra replied sharply but Volun looked none too pleased.
"No, mum, he's not dead, why not tell the truth? You've always told me that a half truth is worse than a lie." He confronted her.
"He's dead to me. Now, don't forget to grab your blaster, I don't want to abuse our welcome here. We sell, we get our money and leave. Ura, how much time do you think you'll need to… liberate what we really came here for?"
"I don't know, depends on how well secured she is. I'll scan the planet as we enter the atmosphere." Ura replied and headed for the cockpit. Cyra followed her and Alkon headed for the armoury.
"He's not dead, my brother… but he might as well be… " Volun sounded pained and sad.
"What happened?" Tern asked. He wanted to hug Volun's pain away but he restrained himself.
"I don't really know but one day… he was never in any Jedi academy you see… mum tried her best to raise and teach him of his abilities on her own… he turned to the dark side. You know him I think… at least by name."
"What? How can I know him?"
"He's Darth Solus, he is at the center of it all. He and his Master Darth Incendius are amongst the leaders of this new rising Sith Empire." Tears flowed down Volun's cheeks and Tern could no longer restrain himself as he wrapped his arms around his friend and hugged him.
"I wonder where these guys get their names." Tern chuckled as he tried to lighten the mood.
"My brother's name comes from Sol or Sun, he thinks he is a dark sun, a black hole of dark energy that destroys all life in its path. His Master's name comes from the word incendiary… he who burns, Incendius." Volun pulled back to see surprise in Tern's face. "Intel we have acquired." He shrugged his shoulders.
Tern held the lightsaber in his hand and looked at it, it felt foreign and strange. He fired it up, the famliar sound emitting as the blade surged forth from the emitter. A bright green colour. He knew Volun was not telling him everything but he decided not to push more for now. When Volun was ready he'd tell him.
He pressed the button turning the lightsaber off and placed it on the inside of his leather jacket out of sight.
"Shall we?" He asked Volun who nodded with a smile.
It took nearly five hours for Cyra and Alkon to negotiate their payment for the cargo, in truth Tern knew they were stalling for Ura to do what she was supposed to do, whatever that was.
Then five hours later she appeared, bought a drink and nodded to Cyra who shortly afterwards concluded the negotiations. She stood up and shook the pirate captain's hand in agreement. Alkon received their payment and they left.
"Fire up the engines and tell Garo to get us out of here before they realise what we have done." Cyra told her son in the most casual way she could, as if commenting the weather. Volun nodded and the moment he was out of eyesight of the outside he ran to the cockpit.
"So what is this about? What did Ura steal?" Tern asked intrigued, they were exiting the atmosphere.
"Not steal, free. The pirates were holding the daughter of one of the leaders of one of the Rebel Factions. They want her freedom for joining in on the Alliance when the time comes." Cyra answered.
"She must have been guarded well, how did you manage that?" Tern directed his question at Ura who replied in her usual emotionless face.
"No man no matter how powerful or strong can withstand the effects of agent-78, a most potent sleeping agent, plus some tricks of the trade I am not going to share. She's in my room."
"Uhhh mum… they know." Volun yelled through the intercom speakers as the ship shook from an external explosion. Fighters were pursuing them.
"What? They are cleverer than they look." Cyra walked to the cockpit. "Jump to Hyperspace as soon as you can." She told Garo. Alkon and Tern manned two of the turrets with Alkon destroying two of the fighters and Tern damaging one more before they finally jumped to Hyperspace.
"Are you okay? They didn't hurt you did they?" Cyra asked the woman they had just freed from the pirates when things calmed down.
"Yes, I am okay. My father sent you?"
"Yes, we'll land in an uncharted planet we know and contact your father to arrange things."
"Right, you have to get your bounty mustn't you?"
"No, we are not bounty hunters and we will not receive any credits for this, our reward is different. When the time is right your father will join us with his forces against the Sith."
"I see, I am sorry for my manners then. You resist the Sith?"
"Aren't we all?" Cyra asked her as if asking for the obvious.
"No, not all, these pirates are not. I overheard their leader brag how they were being paid by some Sith to hold me there to keep the Rebel factions disorganised, to keep my father loyal to not engaging the Sith."
"I see, well we shall have to make sure the Sith know not of this then."
"Won't the pirates tell her?"
"No, they tell the Sith who hired them… she? She'll kill them all for their failure, they'll try to keep it a secret for as long as possible before making a run for it with whatever credits she has given them until then." Cyra smiled. "We have food and water and you can sleep as much as you need. When we arrive at Planet 34 and make contact with your father, I'll come fetch you." Cyra told her. Tern and Volun left them and headed for their room. Once there Volun closed himself in the bathroom and Tern heard him turn on the Ion shower. A few minutes later he heard through the buzzing noise of the ion shower the familiar slapping sounds of skin against skin. He had to giggle at the knowledge of what Volun was doing in there. It made him hard picturing the cute, athletic boy play with himself in that way, his hand wrapped around his penis pulling and tugging at it, his chest heaving and panting as his body filled with teenage hormones desiring release. He had not even realised it but his own fist was around his pecker toying with it slowly.
He heard a groan from within the bathroom and the ion shower turn off. He stopped instantly and sat on the bed trying to look inconspicuous. A few minutes later Volun came out with a silly grin and lay on the bed placing his hands behind his head.
"I'll… uhm, I'll go have a shower then." Tern darted for the bathroom hoping Volun would not see his erection. Once there he turned on the ion shower and proceeded to jerk off as fast as he could. It had been a month or more since the last time he had managed to satisfy his own teenage needs, what with all that had happened this need had been suppressed until now.
It took him only a few tugs at his cock before it sprayed his youthful offerings on the shower wall. He saw as the ion scrubber made fast work of it, turned the ion shower off and exited the bathroom.
He lay next to Volun and under the sheets. He had intended to talk with his new friend but he was still so incredibly tired from the whole ordeal of the past month that sleep overtook him within seconds.
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