Ben's shock and confusion actually overrode the pain in his knee. He stared at the man who
held him by the collar of his robes, turning his head from side-to-side, like a confused house
pet. Though Ben's hair stayed more down, the man's was up, nice and kept. His face was that of
a man who'd seen too much battle for his young age, but no doubt it was Ben's face.

   Ben's hand found it's way on the man's face, feeling around like a blind person. The man's
left eye twitched slightly in annoyance, then he slapped Ben's hand away with his own.

   "Who are you?" Ben asked.

   The man didn't answer right away, still baffled himself. Finally he spoke. "I'm-"

   A loud yell came from the side, and the two men's heads turn to it's source. The woman Ben
battled was on her feet, charging towards Ben with vibro-sword over her head and dried blood
on her lip. Reaching them, she stopped cold and her sword fell from her grip, landing on the
ground at her feet.

   "I'm Kane," the man continued, "And the woman you beat up is Lexi." He turned back to Ben.
"Your turn. Who are you, and why are you on Taren?"

   "I..." Ben was at a loss for words.

   Kane tightened his grip on the collar and brought the tip of his vibro-sword to Ben's neck.
"Talk before I puncture something."

   Ben swallowed, and he could feel his adam's apple brush against the tip. "My name is Ben Cole.
I am a Padawan in the Jedi Order."

   "And?"

   "And?" Ben wasn't sure what to do, or how much he should say. Should he tell these two of their plan?  He decided to keep it know-as-much-as-you-should-know. He looked behind Kane and  at the ship. His heart began to race. "Do you fave medical supplies?! A bacta tank on board??"

   "Supplies, yes" Lexi said, stepping closer. "Bacta tank, no."

   "My friend is badly hurt. I was heading to a city to get her help and when you attacked me."

   Kane let Ben down, slowly. Touching the ground under his feet, Ben's leg gave out, and he collapsed with a shriek. He clutched the knee with both hands.

   "Looks like you need some help yourself." said Kane.

   Ben's mind scattered, as most being's did with pain occured. A ringing filled his hearing,  drowning out all else. But beyond it, he heard a faint voice calling to him.

   Ben...friend...where?!

   The young man tried to scream, but was drowned out by the ring. He tried again, and he was sure it barely came out as a whisper. Cave. The voices came back after a moments delay.

   Get him...Raider...sedate...power...engines!

   A surge of terrible pain passed through-out his body, and Ben shrieked again, louder then before. He tried to move, but couldn't. Again he tried, this time only moving a thumb. No change. He opened his eyes and saw he was in what he assumed was a medical room, though not very staril or clean. He was laying on a make-shift table into bed, with Lexi sitting in a chair beside the bed, holding an empty saringe in hand as green liquid dripped from the needle. Four large straps
held down Ben from chest to toe.

   "What..." He managed to get out. The pain was beginning to dull, slowly being replaced with cold numbness.

   "Stay still." she instructed. "Let the medication take effect."

   He did as told. And soon his muscles loss little bit after little bit of feeling, until that
threshold was passed and his body from the neck down was numb. Ben tested his jaw, making sure it didn't reach that far. A rumbling came from under the bed that made his teeth shake  inside his mouth. "Where are we-"

   He stopped when her hand came up. "Don't worry," Lexi assured him. "we're just going to get your master"

   "My what?" He realized how dumb he sounded just then.

   "Don't give me that." She injected another needle, and though he could feel the needle, he couldn't really feel it. But knowing something was inside him still made him feel a little anxious. "Your a terrible liar."

   He'd been told that more times then he could count. "Oh,"

   "Don't worry, Kane is too."

   Ben grinned. "Really? Him?"

   "Yeah," She pulled the needle out, and took a rag off a small pull-out-table at her side and wiped off some blood on the needle. "It's the eyes. They give you away."

   Ben could hear faint tapping of footsteps on metal. Someone was coming towards them. Guess one looses track of time when locked in conversation. Kane came running through the door with a portable light in hand as Lexi dabbed some anti-infectant on a small cut on Ben's cheek he didn't even know he had. "We got a problem," Kane said, almost out of breath. "The caves empty."

   The padawan's head jerked up, and he was stopped by the restraints. "What!?" Ben blurted out.

   Kane threw his arms up in incompetence. "Hey, I'm just the informant. Maybe your friend was killed? Some nasty creatures live in some of these caves."

   "I would know have felt it if she died!" Ben yelled out, feeling his face begin to turn red. Even numbed down, Ben still tried to break free of his restraints. The straps barely wiggled.  "Let me out! I'll find her!"

   As Lexi began to unfold the leather straps, Ben's anger only rose. Their mission may mave been a failure, but dammed if he was going to loose his master too. The last strap was pulled off  and Ben managed to squirm himself ever so closer to the edge of the bed, and fell off. He hit the floor with a dead Thump.

   He lied on his stomach, and was feeling a strange lack of air. But still, he tried to get  his arms up to pull himself out the room. They didn't even budge. He felt something be injected in his right calf, and his numbed body began twitching without control, doing this for seconds before finally stopping. A cool wave of ice passed through his body, his limbs  freezing when it reached and and warming back up after it passed. But it was starting to cool down, and it took Ben a second to realize that he was feeling the metal floor below him. He could even
feel the nuts and bolts holding it together.

   Ben, getting to his feet, un-numbing as they went, began to stumble his way to the exit, tripping and falling more times then he actually stepped.

   But he finally got the hang of it and once able, sprinted toward the exit, running down the ramp without pause. The ship was stopped right infront of the entrance, leaving only a small gap  to the outside no longer then his arm.

   "Master!" His voice reaped, echoing deeper inside the cave. No responce came. "Master Gallai!" He tried again, and still nothing came.

   His heat was pounding. Where is she? Surely he would have felt if she died, wouldn't he? He proceeded further into the cave, reaching where the light ended. Ben reached down to his belt  the palm of his hand grazed against an empty belt clip. His lightsaber was still on the ground from where it had fallen in the fight. He needed to remember to grab it before they left.

   He inhaled as much as his lungs could capacity, then released it in the loudest scream he could muster. "Master!!"

   Nothing. He closed his eyes and strained his ears, hoping to catch anything, even just a faint breath. But there wasn't a soul. Not even the clicking of bugs against rock, or the dripping of water coming out a crack in the wall. "Please..." he wished under his breath. Just be alive....just stay alive.

   "Ben..." a weak voice called out, heard only by the echo of the cave. It came from inside the cave, deep in the shadows, and Ben was charging into darkness without thought or pause. His  heavy breathing and clamering footsteps culminated into one, filling his ears and pushing out the anticipation and worry and sub light engines of the Crimson Raider. Despite argument from his
legs, Ben increesed speed, stretching his legs out as far as they would with each step. Seconds later, after bringing his right leg down, he tripped over something solid. He hit the cool dirt face-first, his body following a second later. He clenched his hand into a fist, using it and his arm's support to get him to his feet. "Ben..." the voice called out again.

   Ben regained his balance and reached his hands out, feeling for what he had tripped over like a blind man, which, considering the situation, he was.

   His hands touched cloth, and he flinched. "Master?" he whispered out in the objects direction. His answer was in the form of a wet croak, like a being spilling blood from their mouth. He reached out again, going higher his time. His palm grazed against a point, and followed  said point until reaching the familiar feeling of strands of hair. "I  found her!" he screamed  out.

   He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, though if it was for her confort or his own he didn't know. Minutes later the shine of Kanes flashlight made Ben cringe back, blinking away bright dots. He returned his gaze, seeing Lexi behind holding a small, clean white box marked "Medical Emergency" in a variety of languages.

   The light shined on Niana, and she was worse then when Ben had left her. One of the cuts he thought patched had burst, and blood, some dry, some still wet, covered the entire front of her  robes. Black liquid poured from her mouth, and took Ben a second to realize it was old blood. Lexi crouched down beside her, box already open and pulling out gwa's to clean up the blood and a needle and thread to patch up the cut. Don't know where she learned all this, he thought. but I need to find out, and learn myself.

   She was done in minutes, after having patched her up, cleaned the blood, and stopping the bleeding in her mouth with a simple shot. She deposited the items and used gwa's back in the box. "Come on," she said, snapping the lid of the box shut. "get her on the ship. Were not out of this yet."

   They did as ordered, getting on both sides of the Jedi Master's body and lifting her off the ground at once. Grabbing the light, Lexi led the way, was Kane and Ben followed in her wake, holding Niana up with they're combined weight.

   Reaching the Crimson Raider, the two layed the Bothan on the medical bed Ben was on not even five minutes ago. Lexi walked past and stowed the case on a shelf above. Then turned to Ben. "Keep her conscious," she informed, obviously telling both of them. "In this state she could go into cardiac arrest or even a coma. I'm getting us back to base so she can get into a bacta
tank." She was gone before argument could be made.     

   Kane and Ben turned to each other, having no idea what to do. But looking into his own face on another person's body still made a chill quiver down his spine. Ben broke the connection,  returning to his master. He reached out to her shoulder and started to shake lightly. "Come on, Master, stay with me here." Her eyes inched ever so apart, soon opening to full gaze of Ben and Kane. Her expression did not falter in Ben's eyes. His eyes darted to Kane, searching for an answer to his confusion. Can she see us?

   "Ben," she said, her voice a whisper. "thank you."

   Ben's confusion only amplified as Kane jumped up from his spot and pointed at Gallia and said, "What was that?" The padwan looked up. "What was what?" he asked, his patience beginning to run thin.

   "Iv'e played enough Sabacc in my life to know a cover-up."

   "Cover-up?" Ben asked, keeping his attention on his master. Apparently Kane's eyes where more keen then his ever could be.

   "Yeah," Kane bent down closer to Gallia. "Don't you think we'd get more of a reaction? Or have you just not noticed our faces?" he said gesturing at him and Ben.

   Gallai didn't need to speak. The defiance was all in her eyes. "Well?" Kane asked.

   The ship rocked under them, and the whine of sub-light engines echoed through the halls, soon becoming a simple hum as they where air-born. With a grunt, Gallia sat herself up on the bed, to Ben's amazement."Trust me, young man. You don't want the knowledge I process." she said,  using her arms to hold her up.

   Kane pulled back. "I think I'll decide that for myself," he said, folding his arms. "Now talk."

   "Fine." Ben's vision began to blur, and blinking did noting to help. His master's voice remained, as his environment slowly changed from inside the Crimson Raider, to in the back of a speeder with dark smoke pouring from the front engine at sundown. "It was one of my first missions as a  Knight. Me and a strike force were sent to capture two Republic fugitives, Ganner and Elaina Cole."

   This vision was more intense then any of the others. The past visions showed them crashing  into a wall, with a baby's cry being the only thing he could hear, but they where still aloft in the air, though in a nose-dive. "Get those forward stabilizer's online now!" The man with baggy dark hair, wearing a simple shirt, jacket, and jeans, and sporting a goatee said to the woman in the co-pilot's seat. The woman had long blond hair that draped down to her shoulders. Her atire was different from the mans, sporting familiar dark robes of the Sith. She frantically
fiddled with wires popping out of an open panel infront of her. "I'm trying!" she replied.

   "Ganner," Gallai's voice boomed, over-riding the chaos in the speeder."was a Jedi Knight  gone rouge. He left the Order and fell into the hands of a Sith cult, one that had been there long before then when Revan and Malak fall. Ganner had revealed to them many of our Order's secrets, including hiddens bases of training and Holocron locations."

   "In months," she continued. "half a dozen training academy's had fallen. Death count was in the hundred's, both Jedi and non-Jedi. But a survivor broke free of one of their raids, and came to the council on Corusant. He had sliced into the mainframe on their ship, and discovered two key factors: Ganner was leading the attacks, and that his second in command was a woman named Elaina Hanis, another rouge."

   The man, Ganner, turned his body around, focused on what was behind Ben. He extended an arm and Lightning shot at his fingertips as he screamed, "Back, leave us be!"

   Gallai's voice came back, drowning anything else the man would have said. "From what we could figure, the two had seen the error of their actions, but assumed that they where beyond healing or redemption. So they ran. Even getting married in secret on Alderaan, months after the last attack. For years they were perused by both Jedi and Sith. Word got to the council that they were on Corusant, hiding in the slums in the undercity. We went to capture them, but it became much more...aggressive."

   "In persute, we damaged their speeder, not knowing what was in the back-seat." Elaina grabbed Ganner's shirt as he shot another bolt of lightning from his hands. "Ganner!" she screamed, her voice cracking slightly. "Look out!" She pointed ahead, but Ben couldn't see what.

   He swung around and immediately went for the controls, turning left as hard as the speeder would go. A wall came into Ben's view above the console, and the baby's crying drowned out all other  noise as they slammed into it and everything suddenly turned dark.

   "He had tried taking us down single-handedly, and didn't see that wall until it was too late." Like his eye-lid's opening for the first time, Ben found himself in the arms of a young Bothan female, dawned in Jedi robes as a powerful flame burning beside them. The crying did not stop, and Ben realized it was him. "I found you at the crash-site, Ben, wrapped in  a blanket. It's  probably what  saved you from the flames. The Force was strong in you, even  from such a young
age, and I vowed to be your teacher, and your protector, from then on."

   His vision blurred again, and he was back in the medical room onboard the Crimson Raider. Gallai was staring right at him, her expression a mix of regret and sorrow. Kane was leaning on the  wall, his right hand balled into a fist and leaning his forehead on it.

   "Ganner and Elaina were killed instantly, and though pressure tests on the seats showed there was a second child in the back, we simply assumed that he too died with the parents." Gallai turned herself to Kane. "Your turn."

   Kane exhaled a held breath before speaking. He kept his forehead pressed against his hand, and Ben was sure he saw moisture on his eyelids. "I was found by a Madalorian warrior named  Gonab Lors when I was an infant. He found me in a blanket at the bottom of a hill, crying. He  adopted me as his own, and taught me the tricks of the trade. So when he died last year," Kane  paused to swallow the lump in his throat. "I took over the Guild."

   The ship came to a halt and Ben's head suddenly felt light. They were landing inside the main base at Blood Bones Grove.





   The medical facility surprised Ben from it's steril cleanness. He watched as his master was lowered into a bacta tank by two of the nursing attendants, one Rodian, and one Gamorrian. Her robes were being cleaned by hand by a pair of Weequay behind Ben, lending her a pair of shorts and medical bra.

   The room was completely white, with powerful lights hanging from the ceiling, which only amplified the brightness to the point where Ben's eyes had to remain squinted shut. The smell of cleaning supplies and bacta made Ben breath through his mouth, but a hint of it stayed in the back of his mouth.

   Kane and Lexi sat next to each other in chairs on the other side of the room, him sipping caf out of a paper cup, staring out into space, and she wrapping Bacta-Wrap around her stomach  as Kane kept her shirt lifted up with his free hand. After seeing her finish, Ben walked over,  stopping infront of them. Lexi looked up, but Kane  remained in his own world. "Thank you," Ben  said.

   "For what?" Kane asked, his expression not faultering.

   "For this," Ben gestured at the room and the Bacta Tank. "For taking us in when we needed help  most."

   "Thats amazing," Kane said, the corner of his mouth curving into a smile. "you've completely forgot about us trying to kill you, less then an hour ago to boot."

   Ben smiled. "Well, since you bring it up..."

   A man, average height and build, mid-thirties with blond hair down to his neck, came bursting through the door, impatiently slipping through when it wasn't even half slid-open. "Kane!" the man managed to spit out. He sounded out of breath to Ben, and guessing by the perspiration  covering his face and his bright red cheeks, he'd been running at his top speed for a little too long. Kane was on his feet immediately, stopping the man by grabbing his shoulders. The man tried
to speak again, but either couldn't find the words, or the breath. "Breath, Faleur, breath," Kane comforted. "Then you tell me."

   The man, Faleur, did as instructed, breathing in and out several times in a row. His face face soon returned to it's original color, and the heavy breathing ceased. He looked back at Kane, meeting the other man's gaze. "We've got a problem." Faleur informed. He brought his hand up infront of Kane's face, holding a comnlink in his palm. Kane took it, bringing the device up to his mouth. "This is Kane."

   "Ah," the deep, rugged voice on the other end said. "finally, the person in charge. I do hope you haven't forgotten about us."

   "What do you want, trash?" Kane was in no mood for games or banter.

   "You violated the contract." The voice informed him, with a little raise in his voice as he said "Violated". "The hell I did." Kane said, standing to full height.

   "Really now?" The voice was definitely wasn't in the mood for games, or not anymore. "I know you took the Jedi survivor, and taking in a member of the Republic makes our contract  null and void."

   Ben almost asked about the contract, but forced himself not to aloud, not if it meant distracting Kane. He stepped over to Faleur, who'd never broke gaze of the comnlink. "Whats this contract?" Ben whispered into the other man's ear, putting his hand between them to try and hide the question. "And who is that guy?"

   Faleur flinched, just then realizing Ben was at his side asking him something. "The contract," Fauler said, whispering for Ben's sake. "is a treaty between us and the Sith. It states that  nobody from either party is allowed to set foot on the other's soil unless by invite only. The man he's talking to is called Viper, he leads the Sith base not even 5 klicks from us."

   "Why build so close to them?"

   "They built close to us. The Grove's been here for decades, long before Kane or his dad."

   "But I tell you what," Viper said with a pause. "hand them over, and I'll forget this ever happened."

   Kane lowered the comnlink, then looked up, glancing at Ben and Faleur, the bacta tank, then Lexi. For a long, agonizing minute, he simply stood there, his eyes closed and gripping the  device in his hand. He brought the comnlink back up to his mouth. "You want them?" Kane said, pausing to swallow. "Then come get 'em." And he closed the link.