The Will To Continue

Life held nothing for her; she was an empty shell, devoid of the light that had once brightened her world. She fought in the most horrific battles, survived terrifying encounters, and led the way to impossible victories in the Mandalorian War. But at the war's pinnacle, when she needed it most, the Force abandoned her. The pyhrric victory at Malachor V had destroyed her, left her barren and hollow. She felt the most terrible emptiness where she once felt the warmth of the Force.

After the catastrophe of Malachor V, General Kuryama Nari had returned, broken, to the Jedi Council on Coruscant. They pronounced her worse than a Sith. For rising to the unprovoked aggression of the Mandalorians and upholding her oath to defend the galaxy and the Republic the Jedi Masters cast her out, exiled her from the order and all that she once was.

But, truthfully, she no longer cared. For they were right; she was worse than Sith. At Malachor V, she came closer to destroying the Jedi than the Sith ever had. During the war, she became so embroiled in battle that she lost herself to it, took comfort from it. For anything was better than thinking of the millions that lay dead because of her; Mandalorians and innocents alike.

Death was death.

Since that last terrible battle, even life was death to her.

<>

Three years after the Mandalorian War

Kuryama was leaving Teman. Though she had spent only a scant few weeks on the planet, she knew the time to seek another world had come.

Teman, much like any of the other planets she had been to in her exile, held too many intolerable associations for her. It was a vibrant world, rich in culture and happiness; it was alive. Every second of every day she spent there was an agonizing reminder of what she had forfeited. She felt gray and dead amidst the colorful life of everything on Teman.

She was headed for Proteron on the Outer Rim.

A rocky world, Proteron had only a few struggling colonies on its wild, untamed surface. The harsh realities of life were clear-cut and obvious on unforgiving Proteron, necessitating the suspension of such distractions as happiness and fulfillment. Proteron dictated one thing to those souls hardy enough to make their living on its surface: If you can't adapt, you will die and no one will ever find your corpse. The planet was coming out of a century-long ice-age. Massive boulders carved by enormous glaciers stood exposed on newly formed plains and mountains lay stripped bare of all but the lifeless stone of which they were formed. From orbit, Proteron was as gray and blue as a dead planet, for very little vegetation had yet begun to grow back from the long years of planetary freeze.

In the aftermath of the Jedi Civil War many Outer Rim worlds were now in ruins. This caused renewed interest in the colonization of Proteron, despite its hard reputation. Kuryama had found a passenger shuttle that was ferrying colonists to the Outer Rim - Proteron included - departing from Morelek City, the capital of Teman. After bribing the captain she settled her things on an empty bunk in the rear section of the shuttle and let the waiting begin.

It would take over 50 standard hours to make the journey, even with the hyperdrive at maximum safe limits, for Proteron was on the other side of the galaxy from Teman. So the guests immediately set about getting comfortable for what was to be a long trip.

A mother and her son struggled with their luggage; a young couple held hands as they made their way to their small cabin; some Rodian mechanics milled about; a group of Twi'lek men discussed Teman politics. Everything was the same normal mash-up of relatively random occurrences; the guiding hand of the Force heartbreakingly absent.

Kuryama fit right in with the rest of the people. Her long years of Jedi training, the rigors of war, and her hard exile had given her a well-built body. She wore simple traveler's clothes that drew little attention. Her simple-cut black hair was unremarkable, as was her unadorned face. Her eyes, however, had a haunting quality acquired from years of inner deadness.

Kuryama's bunk - near the back and closer to the engines - vibrated in unison with rumble of the engines as they powered up. The physical sensation was comforting to Kuryama, for distractions were always welcome from the emptiness through which the heartbeat of the galaxy once flowed in her. For a split second before the gravitational dampeners were engaged, Kuryama also felt the intestine re-aligning sensation of rapid upward movement. The ship had received the all-clear signal and launched from its berth.

The brief but intense feeling as the ship lunged upward had been almost thrilling to her; she cherished those times when she experienced something besides the same numb oblivion she was accustomed to.

The voice of the captain came over the inter-ship comm line. "This is the captain speaking. We are now departing the Morelek City spaceport. Once we clear orbit, we will engage hyperdrive and be on our way to Proteron on the Outer Rim. Trip time is expected to be between forty-nine and fifty-two standard hours, so now is the time to start getting comfortable. Bridge out."

Kuryama would not be comfortable until she was off the shuttle and away from people. The danger of forming friendships and associations was too great for Kuryama to ever feel comfortable around others. Such things were another agony best avoided; they ripped open too many old wounds.

With the closest thing to contentment she had felt in a long time, Kuryama listened to the hum of the engines and the whine of the hyperdrive as it powered up. The ship was rising quickly through the atmosphere of Teman. It reached orbit within minutes.

There was a sudden onset turbulence, as of numerous small objects impacting the outer hull. The comm line buzzed to life again.

"This is the captain. It looks like we've got some debris up ahead. It may be a little bumpy until we clear the field. Bridge out."

The Jedi Civil War had visited Teman on several occasions; Republic and Sith fleets blasted away at each other in orbit while their grounds forces played out deadly tactical battles. The wreckage of many Republic and Sith ships was still trapped in orbit; awaiting the slow but inexorable pull of gravity to draw it, bit by bit, into the atmosphere where it would be consumed by the fires of reentry. It floated about in huge clusters; each representing a battle, the ratio of Republic-to-Sith debris often telling a clear story.

The Republic had never really had a chance. The Sith forces arrayed against them were too vast, too concrete, too invulnerable to be defeated in battle. The Republic was able to do little more than fight in a stalling tactic; hoping for a miracle. That miracle had come from the former Dark Lord of the Sith; Darth Revan. With much of his memory gone due to injuries sustained during a crippling Jedi attack on his flagship and his apprentice's typical Sith betrayal, Revan had sought the path back to the light. In the end, he punished Malak for his treachery by killing him in a lightsabre duel and destroying the Star Forge; the foundation of the Sith Lord's galactic power.

Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith, had been given a chance to make up for the atrocities committed by his hands and at his orders; she, a Jedi upholding her solemn oath, had not. Kuryama might have laughed at the irony of it all or railed against the injustices heaped upon her, but her feelings were long gone. She was not Revan, she was herself. And nothing could change that.

Suddenly, without warning, the ship shook violently from what could only have been an explosion on its outer hull. Kuryama was thrown from her bunk; some of the passengers screamed in fright as they, too, were tossed about. She heard the unmistakable sound of poorly-maintained ship-mounted blaster cannons and knew right away that they were being attacked by pirates or raiders.

The captain immediately threw the ship into evasive maneuvers in an effort to avoid more hits, causing yet more disturbance amongst the passengers as the ship rolled and lurched about. Kuryama grabbed hold of a cargo net that hung on the wall beside her bunk and held on to avoid to being thrown around by the fierce motions of the ship.

Just as suddenly as it began, it ended. With a final quake, the ship ceased its mad gyrations.

Their engines had been hit; now they were helpless.

The ship and its passengers waited for several agonizing minutes, drifting among the wreckage of ruined ships as the pirates closed in on them.

Passengers jumped at the grating sound of ship hulls grinding together as the pirates prepared to board the shuttle, bringing their raiding craft alongside. Within moments the entry port was blasted open and armed men stormed into the shuttle, shouting threats and leveling their blasters at anyone who moved.

It wasn't long before Kuryama was dragged from her bunk in the rear section and hauled into the main hold with the rest of the passengers and the few crew members. The captain was already dead; his head blown off by point-blank blaster rifle shots. Blood from his decapitated body had sprayed everywhere. The bleeding corpse formed a sickly pool on the floor.

The pirates were a group of rugged, savage-looking men with weapons of all kinds; it was clear they were scavengers, living off what they could find or steal. There were about ten to fifteen of them, and they all seemed to defer to one particularly grimy, muscle-bound man with shaggy black hair as dark as Kuryama's own. He was almost half again as big as any of the other pirates and had a pair of wicked eyes that seemed as if they could steal a person's very soul. His voice was enough to cow krayt dragon.

"You are all my prisoners now. All your possessions and your very lives now belong to me. Should you think to make things complicated, try to take things into your own hands, you will meet the same unfortunate fate as the poor captain did." As he made his statement, the eyes of everyone held captive in the main hold betrayed their mortal fear and absolute surety that he would not hesitate to carry out his threats.

All eyes but Kuryama's. She felt a tiny part of her - a fragment locked away deep inside her heart - remember the full truth of what she had once been. These were the people she had sworn to protect; they had no one else to come to their rescue.

Out of a sense of duty she had not felt in years, Kuryama looked the pirate leader in his steel eyes and attempted to negotiate.

"So take their possessions, take the ship. But let these people go; they are simple colonists and of no further value to you." She couldn't believe she was actually saying the words she heard in her mind; yet speaking she was.

The pirate leader turned towards her, turned his frightening gaze on her simple figure. He chuckled. "You might be surprised at the amount human lives can fetch in the right markets."

Kuryama's sense of deadness returned. Two thoughts entered her mind: The men were slavers, and they worked for the Exchange; the most brutal crime syndicate in the galaxy. None of them were getting out of this.

"A group of colonists - hardy, adaptive bodies - will frequently go for quite a sum. But surely none would be so grand as the price some would offer for you... Jedi," a broad grin deliberately betrayed his obvious recognition; he knew who she was - or rather, what she had been. Smiling wickedly, he went on; "In fact, I could probably net more credits on you than the whole rest of the crew and colonists combined. Which begs the question, why need I keep any of the rest alive if they are of inferior value? Certainly I can do without the ship's crew."

An offhand gesture to two of his men and they gunned down the seven crew members without hesitation. Colonists screamed as fresh blood rained down from the executions.

"But still, I would like to see how much I can get out of this endeavor. So perhaps I will spare the colonists, who still have value - little though it may be in comparison to what I expect to get from you." His grin grew even wider. "Get them in the stasis pods!"

People screamed as they were herded at blaster-point onto the pirates' ship through the blasted entry port.

Kuryama knew how horrible imprisonment and slavery under the Exchange was; countless occasions had seen her foiling Exchange bosses and shutting down drug and slaving operations on many worlds. She had seen the aftermath of such captivity; now she was about to experience it for herself. And despite her terrible emptiness and complete lack of feeling for herself, she feared for the colonists, what they, as well as she, would soon be forced to endure.

A heavy object hit the back of her head and she fell into the crushing blackness of the unconscious.

<>

When Kuryama came to she was being held in an open containment pod inside a force cage. Directly across a narrow walkway from her cage was a similar set-up; a person strapped to a pod in a force cage. Her peripheral vision told her that others were lined up beside her. She was in the ship's brig. The pirates had modified the compartment so it would hold twice as much force cages as it was designed to; the better to bring in a much larger haul of captives for the Exchange slave markets.

The man across from her force cage saw that she was awake. He scrunched his face in disgust.

"Finally awake, Jedi? I noticed you didn't try very hard to get us out of this. How can you possibly be so arrogant as to let something like this happen without some kind of fight? They killed the crew because of you. And you just stood there! Why do Jedi always assume they have the right to ruin people's lives at their whim? Your arrogance makes me sick!"

Kuryama could not bring herself to respond to him. The dead crew members were her fault; if she had kept her mouth shut she might have gone unnoticed until they loaded everyone into force cages. They might still be alive but for her...

"I guess it doesn't really matter now, anyway," the man mumbled, his bigoted ranting at an end. "They're taking us to the Exchange slave markets on Ilonus. Ilonians hate Jedi, so I suppose you'll only get what you deserve. We, on the other hand, are going into forced labor. I doubt boss Vyron will even give you that mercy."

Ilonus. That planet had been a battleground for the last two centuries. It was a world where the normally rare and valuable crystals required for lightsabre construction were as common as simple quartz-stone.

Exar Kun had occupied the world during his war on the Republic. The Mandalorians had besieged it during their march of conquests. Revan, and later, Malak, conquered the planet in turn; enslaving the entire population. It was then retaken by the Jedi, who were eager to secure its priceless resources, to the neglect of the impoverished people. At the end of the Jedi Civil War, the Ilonian government seceded from the Republic and banned all Jedi from its world under pain of execution.

The Ilonians hated Jedi even more than the Sith did.

Kuryama felt the ever-present hollowness of her heart - the echoes of the life she once had - raise its all-consuming voice through her being once again. The short-lived feeling of connection to the galaxy she felt during their capture had evaporated.

Oblivion engulfed her.

<>

Marking the passage of time was impossible for Kuryama confined in the force cage for hour after hour. She tried to sleep as much as possible to conserve energy and to avoid having to look in the eye the man in the force cage opposite hers. She knew Ilonus was only a twenty-hour trip from Teman; less than half of the trip time to Proteron. But locked in a force cage and kept in restraints with no way to tell what was going on outside the hold, the hours seemed to drag on for their own separate little eternities. Only twice did she notice one of the pirates take a stroll through the brig to check on the captives. They made vile promises to Kuryama of what they would do to her once they reached Ilonus.

She was indifferent to their oaths. The agony of having the Force wrenched from her at Malachor V was the pain of all pains. They could inflict nothing worse.

After seemingly a lifetime, the ship was jolted out of hyperspace and swooped in for landing; gravitational dampeners doing a poor job of covering the nauseating feeling as the ship swerved and dipped to make its berth at a spaceport.

It was only a matter of hours before the steel-eyed pirate captain made his way into the brig, followed by a well-built, silver-haired man with the air of an Onderonian beast trainer. He leered at the prisoners with colorless eyes. His expression was fixed in a calculating stare that showed no emotion whatsoever. Not even when he came to Kuryama's force cage and looked her over did his face change in the slightest.

"What are you asking for her?" He asked the pirate captain in an incongruously noble-sounding voice.

The captain, unflinching, made his response. "Two million credits."

The silver-haired man nodded his head as if thinking.

"Two million is not nearly enough for such a prize, comrade. I will give you seven and a half million for this one. Three million for the rest as a bonus for such a rare and valuable capture," he told the captain.

The pirate's expression melted into one of pure euphoria. "I believe we have a deal," he said, a delighted grin plastered on his face.

Turning toward Kuryama, the silver-haired man drew a truncated vibrostaff, activated it, and touched it to the force cage. When the cage fields interacted with the vibrostaff's volatile energy, the whole cage became electrified; filling Kuryama with paralyzing bolts of pain.

It was a shriveling, incapacitating kind of pain that snatched her breath away so she couldn't even scream in her agony. Kuryama imagined this was how it felt to be tortured by Force Lightning. With a kind of sick irony, she realized why the man had the air of a beast trainer. He was a beast trainer. But it was people he trained, not wild beasts.

When he withdrew the vibrostaff and Kuryama was able to draw a full breath, then the screaming started. The waves of residual pain lasted for long minutes afterward.

Between her screams of pain, the silver-haired man introduced himself.

"I am Vyron, Exchange boss on Ilonus. It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance. You are Jedi General Kuryama Nari. Yes, I followed the reports. I know the names of every last Jedi from Malachor; those dead and the few left alive. Here on Ilonus, we hate Jedi. Jedi have brought nothing but suffering and destruction to our world. They care nothing for our people, only for our planet's resources. The celebrations when we broke away from the dying corpse of the Republic were of such magnitude as have never been seen on Ilonus to date. Jedi are forbidden to walk the surface of our sacred world. And those we catch suffer for weeks before they die. I am not quite sure when we shall execute you, but I intend to use you for a long time yet. Don't disappoint me."

When he finished, he touched the vibrostaff to the cage again and Kuryama blacked out from the pain.

<>

"Now, now. Don't expect to die on me just yet. We haven't even gotten started."

Kuryama opened her eyes and her fuzzy vision told her she was no longer on the slaver's ship. In fact, she wasn't in the containment pod anymore, either. However, she was bound in force cuffs and being guarded by not less than four men with active vibrostaffs pointed at her.

As her vision started to clear, she saw just where she was. She was on a transport bus riding through what she guessed was the modest city of Ettirus; the capital of Ilonus. Night had fallen; the city lights glowed through the transport's windows.

Vyron was sitting on the other side of the transport, watching her with his colorless eyes. He cheerfully informed her of where they were headed.

"We're going to my estate, where I expect a large crowd will have gathered. There are a lot of people waiting to meet you," at her questioning expression he elaborated. "Oh, you didn't expect I would keep my find for myself? The people who so faithfully fund my operations deserve to share in the rewards of my trade."

Given what she knew of Ilonus, Kuryama knew that whatever he had in mind for her would be extremely painful.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the echo of life lost within her, shutting out the sights and sounds of Ettirus and the men holding her restrained. She could feel still the pain of Malachor; it had never left her. From the moment she felt the scream of the Force as hundreds of ships in orbit - Republic and Mandalorian - were crushed and smashed apart in the death throes of the planet.

It was a familiar emptiness, one with which she lived for three years; for she had been given no other choice.

The transport pulled through the middle of a teeming crowd that had gathered at the base of a tall building with a wide marble staircase at the front. When it came to a halt and the doors opened, the guards motioned her out of the transport with their vibrostaffs, surrounding her once again as she exited the vehicle. Vyron followed close behind as the guards marched her up to the middle of the white steps.

The crowd, held back only by a line of brutal-looking mercenaries of several different races, surged forward to the base of the stairs. Vyron began to speak, his voice amplified over speakers all around the stairs.

"Exar Kun, Darth Revan, Darth Malak; what have these names in common?" In a deafening roar, the crowd answered:

"JEDI!"

"They were Jedi, who thought they had a right over our world, our resources, our civilization, our very lives! What was it we swore to any Jedi we find on our sacred world?" The crowd answered again with one thunderous voice:

"Pain! Suffering! Despair! Death!"

"We have suffered enough at the hands of the Jedi to last hundreds of years, but we survived everything they brought upon us. And now, come into my hands is the very Jedi General who orchestrated the Malachor V massacre!" The crowd screamed all the more at Vyron's words, rapidly working themselves into a blood frenzy.

"Teach her the true meaning of pain, of suffering, of despair. Bring to her what she and her kind brought on us, but do not kill her; she must live to suffer for many days to come in recompense for what the Jedi have done." At his last words, he turned around to face the guards surrounding Kuryama and nodded his head.

Those in front of her stepped aside, her force cuffs suddenly became unlocked, and the man behind her jabbed his vibrostaff into her back.

Kuryama screamed at the sudden, sharp pain and fell forward down the steps, into the crowd.

Those closest ran forward, their eyes blind with rage, and set upon her.

She felt the first blow acutely. It was a marker, a telltale sign of what was to come. A heavy boot hit the side of her head, breaking through her blanket of non-feeling. The pain of the blunt-force trauma to her temples screamed out like the screech of a mynock through her numbness, pulling her out of her refuge of silent misery.

Before her body had completely registered the pain from the first blow, she was in the middle of the crowd.

Like nothing so much as a mob of drunken Gamorrians the crowd beat her.

She was thrown back and forth by the force of their vicious blows, knocked to the ground to be kicked at mercilessly, restrained by some while others took turns raining heavy hits on her. The pain was unimaginable, but Kuryama willed them to do their worst; they could not overcome the suffering of having the Force stripped from her. She felt bones break, ghastly cracking and popping that drove the crowd ever farther into their frenzy of mindless hate. Her arms each cracked several times, her shoulders were pulled out of joint, and the crowd wanted more, wanted her to suffer ever more. The pain was so great it was difficult to think of anything else. Her arms and legs felt like they were dipped in molten lava. Her whole body was in so much agony it felt like being ripped apart. Ribs cracked, making each and every breath an agony. Her lungs started to fill with blood. Kuryama felt consciousness slipping away. She wondered if Vyron would indeed keep them from killing her; he seemed to be letting them do whatever they wanted with her.

The human body was not meant to endure such damage. She could not live for long under this type of abuse. It was only a matter of time before something vital - her neck or her spine - was broken and it would be all over.

Kuryama had always imagined that death would be a release from the never-ending torture of life without the Force. She never imagined it would be so painful.

Her last, questioning thought before the darkness closed in completely surprised her; for she knew the answer.

What have I done to deserve this?

<>

When Kuryama came to her entire body felt as if it had been through a Coruscant waste compactor. She ached all over from her toes to her scalp. Her mouth and throat were numb and her chest, arms, and legs felt cottony and insensitive; the distinctive signs of kolto healing. Her broken bones were whole again.

It was morning and she was lying on a cot in a ramshackle building with poor lighting and simple furnishing. It was a single room no more than twelve by fifteen feet. Small as it was, Kuryama could tell that it served as a home. A similar cot lay next to hers in a corner, clean and dirty clothes were piled in baskets at the foot of the beds, along one wall was a rudimentary kitchen. There was a single window; it looked out over a field of gold and green. An outdated holoframe above the window showed the faces of a man and a woman; a husband and wife who lived here, Kuryama guessed.

As she lay there, Kuryama gradually began feel other things besides the overwhelming aching in her whole body. She must have been redressed, for she was in soft nightclothes underneath the coarse but warm blankets. She lifted an arm out from the covers and saw the bruisings where it had been broken; moving anything was painful but no longer unbearable. Kuryama was glad to still be alive.

That thought puzzled her: she was glad to be alive. Nothing had changed; she still felt the void of being cut off from the Force. And yet, she found herself happy that she had not died, despite knowing that death would have freed her from her inescapable desolation.

As the morning sun rose higher in the sky, a couple entered the small home. When the man saw her, a smile tugged at his face. "I told you she'd pull through, Jolene," he said, pleased to see her awake.

The woman, Jolene, immediately rushed to the bed-side. "How are you feeling?" She asked in a compassionate tone.

"My whole body aches. But I am alive," Kuryama answered, surprised at how weak her voice was. Jolene offered her water, which she took gratefully. Having moistened her dry mouth and throat, Kuryama continued in a stronger voice. "How did I get here? The last thing I remember is feeling my ribs crack and my lungs filling with blood." The memory was fresh enough still to give her shudders.

"After you lost consciousness, Vyron must have called the crowd off. I don't know how long you lay there on the street, stripped and beaten. But eventually, he called some of us field workers to come get you. You were in bad shape. I wasn't sure if you would even survive; Naren was, but I had my doubts," the husband smiled at this, "Naren and I, and several other of the field workers carried you here, to our home, so we could heal you."

Kuryama laboriously scooted herself into a sitting position, despite the aching pain. "Wait, how did you heal me?" She asked, "It could only have been done with kolto."

The husband, Naren, answered her question. "Vyron gives us field workers a small amount of kolto for emergencies. He prefers that we be able to take care of ourselves to some degree. Your wounds were far greater than anything we are expected to heal by ourselves, so a number of us pooled our reserves to help heal you. I am sorry you are still in pain, but we did all that we could for you."

"Why would you do such a thing for me, a Jedi?" Kuryama asked.

"We don't like to see anyone suffer the way Vyron made you suffer. Unlike the rest of the populace who were enslaved by Exar Kun and later the Sith, we have always been enslaved - by our own people. We slaves hold no grudge against Jedi. We saw you as one of us; someone suffering undue punishment for the amusement of the oppressors," Jolene explained.

"The simpler reason is that Vyron ordered us to. I am sorry to say that most likely he merely wanted you kept alive so he could continue to torture you," Naren remarked regretfully.

"Don't worry about me. I can endure his tortures. There is nothing he could do that would equal the pain with which I am already quite familiar," Kuryama responded.

Naren and Jolene clearly didn't understand, but she couldn't make them; it was impossible to describe losing the Force.

"I have to get back to the fields. Jolene, dear, would you help the woman get dressed?" Naren was headed back out the door.

"Of course," Jolene answered.

"What do they tend out in the fields?" Kuryama asked.

"Juki plant. It's the primary ingredient in split."

Split was a highly addictive and widely popular drug that was outlawed by the Republic for its dangerous side-effects.

"I see. Vyron has a big drug enterprise."

Both women were silent for a moment. Jolene offered Kuryama fresh clothes. "I think we'd better get you dressed."

<>

Kuryama spent an hour talking with Jolene in her humble home. Jolene seemed perfectly happy in her life with her husband Naren. Despite the fact that they lived as slaves to the Exchange, the couple were content with each other and their meager living. They made the most of what they had, and cherished their lives, no matter how hard that life might sometimes be. Kuryama could see the stark contrast in the way they lived to how she had spent her exile. She had concentrated solely on her own misery and the consuming emptiness of being without the Force; Jolene and Naren focused not on what they lacked but on those things they did have.

She supposed it must be easier for people who have never been Jedi to live without many things most take for granted.

Their conversation was suddenly cut short. A Devaronian and several armed Humans burst into the home. Both women sprang to their feet. The Devaronian leveled a blaster rifle at Jolene and fired. Her chest split open, flying blood leaving tendrils of red all about the small house and on Kuryama.

Kuryama was speechless with rage. It had all been so sudden, so brutal, so senseless. Murder without thought.

The Devaronian pointed his rifle at her, in warning. "You are to come with us," he commanded.

"Why did you kill her if you came for me?" Kuryama asked between gritted teeth as she strove to contain her fury.

He shrugged. "She was harboring a Jedi fugitive. Ilonian law states the punishment for harboring Jedi. I merely carried out the sentence." One of the Humans tossed him something; a vibrostaff. He pointed it at her. "Now let's go. Vyron's waiting."

The injustice screamed through Kuryama's brain. Part of her demanded for her to take responsibility for Jolene's murder; it was, after all, her fault that she was killed. The ingrained condemnations of the Jedi Masters and their warning of the consequences of every action tried to drown her newly discovered self-worth.

Another part, however, refused to be the Jedi's scapegoat anymore.

She let herself be dragged away as she battled her own mind.

The teachings of the Jedi Masters would hold her responsible for the unjust murder of Jolene. Every action has its consequences, they said. But what if this was just a convenient lie to cover the fact that they knew they were wrong? They were too afraid to enter into a galactic conflict that when resolved, because of their very inaction, ignited a far larger war. And rather than face up to the truth that they had been wrong in the first place, they had decided instead to chalk everything up to consequences. The Jedi Civil War was the fault of those Jedi who had chosen to help the Republic; the consequences of their actions were the catalyst. Thus did the Jedi Council teach, and remained comfortable in their own power.

Kuryama didn't believe that anymore. There was no one to blame for the destruction caused in the Mandalorian War but the Mandalorians. There was no one to blame for the Jedi Civil War but Revan and Malak. And no was to blame for Jolene's heartless murder but her murderer.

Consequences were a point of view. A lie with which she had allowed herself to be manipulated by the Jedi Council. She had taken the fall for their indecisiveness and inaction.

Kuryama refused to live this way anymore.

It was time to take her life back.

<>

The guards brought her to Vyron's bedchamber. She had very little doubt as to what he wanted from her. His command "Take off your clothes," served only to confirm her suspicions.

"Convince me," Kuryama spat, shrugging off the Devaronian's groping hands.

Vyron calmly drew a blaster pistol and pointed it at her head. "I would be perfectly content to defile your headless corpse should you refuse. Take off your clothes or I blow your head off and do it for you."

Kuryama glanced about quickly, taking note of the number of guards; they were minimal. Only the Devaronian and the two Humans. A plan began to form in her head.

Slowly, she began disrobing, Vyron still holding the gun to her head. "Gelor, dismiss the others. They can have their turns when I'm done with her."

The Devaronian, Gelor, nodded to the two Humans, indicating that they were to leave the room. Given her situation, Kuryama could not have asked for more perfect circumstances. With the two

Humans gone, that left only Vyron and Gelor to deal with. She had a particular score to settle with Gelor.

When she had finished undressing and stood naked and deceptively nonthreatening, Vyron shoved her onto the bed and lowered the blaster with which he had been threatening her, and began to unbuckle his belt. In that instant, using strength and speed gained from a lifetime of Jedi training and service in war, Kuryama lunged at Vyron. He was caught completely off-guard and she was snatched the blaster out of his hand. Her arm snagged his neck, gripping him in a choke-hold as she squeezed the barrel of his own blaster against his temple. Vyron struggled in her grip, but Kuryama's fury and resolve lent her with strength he was unprepared for.

Gelor had brought his own blaster rifle to bear the moment he saw Kuryama make her move, but he was not nearly as fast as she. Kuryama held Vyron in a death-grip, using him as a shield to ward against Gelor's gun. She shifted her aim from Vyron's head to train the sights on Gelor. Remorselessly, she aimed for his chest and fired off three shots.

The Devaronian fell to the floor as the blaster bolts ripped through his light armor and punched a triad of holes in his chest, which began to bleed profusely. He struggled to draw a breath, but ended up only coughing thick blood from his mouth as he twitched on the floor in a spreading pool.

Kuryama turned the blaster back to Vyron's head. "There isn't enough time to make you pay adequately for what you've done to me and countless others, so I'll have to make this quick. We'll see how long you can run the Exchange on Ilonus without any limbs."

With quick, ruthless precision, Kuryama shot off Vyron's arms at the shoulders and dropped him, screaming, to the floor. As he writhed about, his shoulder stumps left thick red streaks on the polished marble. She then shot him several times in the legs, severing them above the knees, which spilled more blood over the floor and raised his screams even louder.

Kuryama wondered why no one had responded to the noise. She guessed Vyron must have soundproofed the room.

Perfect. No one would therefore be prepared for her vengeful rampage.

Grabbing another blaster pistol from the body of the Devaronian, Kuryama stormed out of the room, her blood-soaked clothes forgotten in the rush.

<>

Gelor still clung precariously to consciousness after Kuryama left. He had lost a lot of blood. Too much. Moving anything was extremely painful. He winced in agony as he reached his hand to his belt and snagged a kolto injector. It was no substitute for proper medical treatment, but he hoped it might stop the bleeding.

With excruciating effort, he discharged the injector's contents over his chest wounds and passed out as the kolto went to work. His last conscious thoughts were of how much he would enjoy hunting her down for what she did to him.

<>

Vyron's security detail were utterly unprepared for the onslaught brought upon them by a single naked woman wielding a pair of blaster pistols.

Even without the Force Kuryama was still a formidable opponent. Her speed and reflexes were the match of any Force-assisted Jedi and more than enough to overwhelm the guards she came across. She blasted away at everything that moved. Rodians, Humans, and Twi'leks alike fell under her guns.

No more would she meekly submit to the unjust punishments they heaped upon her simply for being a Jedi, despite the fact that she no longer was Jedi. No more did the words of the Jedi Council ring in her ears every time she thought to take action to protect herself. No more was she their scapegoat.

Kuryama reached an armory without having taken a scratch from the security guards' blasters. She searched around for a suit of light armor that would fit her. She was going to need to get off the planet and couldn't afford to attract undue attention; which meant she had to find something to wear. A suit of Echani fiber-armor would do nicely.

She checked her blaster pistols, their charge was running low. She traded them for a pair of fully-charged particle repeater pistols and headed out of the room, laying waste to any and all resistance she came across on her way out of the estate.

<>

Two days later

Kuryama found Naren in the juki fields late in the afternoon. She had told him he was free to go, that Vyron couldn't keep his criminal organization on Ilonus together and he could be free if he wanted to. But Naren had said he wouldn't go anywhere without his wife, now dead. Kuryama worried that he might be contemplating suicide, and was relieved to find him.

"Naren, you need to let go of her and live your own life," she said as she approached him.

"Why? It's so hard without her," he said tonelessly.

"Naren, I lost more than you could ever imagine. I know what it's like to feel that your life has no purpose, no meaning. You and Jolene helped me see past that. You helped me see that life, in and of itself, is precious, even when you might feel as if it is useless to go on."

"What happened to you?" Naren asked.

"I lost the Force."

Naren gaped at her, his grief momentarily forgotten. "That is even possible?" He asked, unbelieving.

"I haven't felt the Force since the Malachor V massacre. It left an emptiness, a void, inside me like a wound that will never heal. You can't imagine how terrible a feeling it is. For years I let it consume me, it ate away at my very soul until I was convinced that life is meaningless without the Force," she looked very hard at Naren, "but you and Jolene opened my eyes to the truth. You made me see that life is worth living even just for its own sake. Naren, you gave me back the will to continue. I hope you will follow your own wisdom and find freedom beyond the juki fields."

Naren's eyes filled with tears"You're right. Jolene would want me to be happy even without her."

Kuryama smiled at him. "I'm glad you understand what you've helped me to see."

"Will I see you again?"

"I'm sorry, I do not know if we will ever meet again. I have both nowhere and everywhere to go. I have regained faith in myself but have yet to learn my new place in the galaxy. I must continue on my travels. But know that I wish you the best of fortunes."

Naren watched her leave with a small sense of peace. Kuryama looked calm and serene as she strode through the tall juki stalks, silhouetted by the red sun of Ilonus.