“Jabba,” Vosa said, staring into the hologram. “Why am I not surprised to find you in the middle of this?”
The holovid of the Hutt perched above her, glaring down at her through baleful eyes. His henchmen—the remaining Gamorreans who hadn’t followed the newly released prisoners on a looting spree through Cog Hive Seven—aimed their blasters at the Bando Gora standing behind her.
“Komari Vosa,” the crime lord snarled in Huttese, his no-longer-amused gaze traveling across the group of skull-masked Gora soldiers. “What are you and your brain-dead army of minions doing here?”
“We were summoned here.” Vosa gestured across the hangar. “I trust you’ll let us pass?”
Jabba cursed, uttering a phlegmy oath in Huttese. “You trust wrong, insect! I will crush you like the foul infection that you are!”
“You’ll try.” Reaching down, Vosa withdrew the twin curved-hilt lightsabers that she wore at her hips, activating both blades simultaneously, filling the air around her with an electrifying vibrational hiss.
The effect—even on Jabba himself—was immediate and impressive. The holo flickered, and when it returned, he gestured to the Gamorreans flanking him, grunting out an order of execution. “Dugway! Keepuna!”
The Gamorreans opened fire from either side, but Vosa moved faster than they could shoot, faster even than the naked eye could see. Adapting the Form One style of Soresu, she whirled her lightsabers in front of her, their blades absorbing and deflecting the blasts easily from all sides.
The outcome was never truly in doubt. Darting forward, she slashed the blaster directly from the hand of the nearest thug, piston-kicked him backward, and spun to bisect the Trandoshan behind her neatly at the waist. Throughout it all, the expression on her face—focused yet unhurried, almost relaxed—revealed virtually nothing about what was happening inside her mind, nor about the true purpose of her visit here.
Heads down, Bando Gora soldiers charged forward to overtake Jabba’s entourage, their staffs blazing with greenish balls of fire that arced and exploded in the faces of the startled Gamorreans. Within seconds, they’d decimated the Hutt’s hired muscle, leaving their bodies splayed limp on the floor of the hangar.
“Now,” Vosa said, deactivating the lightsabers as she made her way toward the holovid, “since we’ve dispatched with the unpleasantries, I take it you’ll allow me to complete my work here?”
“You fight well for a Jedi whore,” Jabba told her, arms upraised in a gesture of mock surrender. “I see that you’ve lost none of your skills.”
“Jedi?” Vosa frowned, a single wrinkle creasing her forehead, as if the word itself triggered its own private dose of pain. “That word is blasphemy to me.”
“Is it?” Jabba chuckled, probing more deeply. “And what of your beloved Master Dooku? Surely as his former Padawan, there must be a lingering warmth in your heart for him still, after all that he did for you?”
“Dooku.” Vosa’s lips tightened, and all the easy confidence that she’d displayed just seconds earlier began to ebb away. The tightness that replaced it made her face appear angular, and her yellow eyes blazed. “You dare not speak that obscenity before me now or ever.”
“Ah.” Emboldened by her response, Jabba pushed on. “And yet I wonder. Have you considered that he may yet harbor feelings for you? That in time, he could possibly come and join you to lead your army of—”
“Enough!” The word burst from Vosa’s lips, and in a fusillade of inarticulate pain and rage, she lunged forward, swinging both lightsabers outward at the holovid, the blades sweeping through his image.
The Hutt chuckled with appreciation. “You do contain great depths, Komari Vosa. Perhaps you would consider an alliance?”
“The Bando Gora allies with no one.”
“You’ve associated with Gardulla Besadii in the past. Help me get rid of her, and perhaps I’ll let you leave this prison alive.”
Vosa shook her head. “Never.”
“Foolish to the last.” The Hutt nodded, unperturbed. “Make no mistake, scum. I will exterminate you in due time. Just not this time.”
“Or ever.”
“We’ll see.” Waving one hand at the berthing dock from which Vosa and her army had emerged, Jabba’s holovid image settled back on the repulsor platform with a faint smirk. It was the indulgent expression of a singularly untrustworthy uncle whose favor was merely an indication of profound treachery to come. “My business here is through. Be on your way.”
But Vosa was already gone, storming across the hangar, followed by her army, toward what awaited them on the upper levels. She moved quickly, as if there were something else pursuing her, something that she alone could see.
And so it was.
Ensconced in her private darkness, Vosa had always moved with a speed and purpose unmitigated by the weakness of human emotion. Back in the hangar, the holovid image of the Hutt had touched upon it briefly but agonizingly, with his flagrant evocation of the Order and the one whose name still caused her unspeakable pain.
Vosa hated herself for the way she’d responded. Her first and most enduring instinct—to bury that pain, sinking it so deeply into her unconscious mind that it could no longer touch her—had not worked as it should.
It wasn’t supposed to hurt like this anymore.
Making her way up through the empty corridors of Cog Hive Seven, she felt cracks forming in her resolve.
Yes. That was all that mattered. The Order was dead to her now, a crumbling artifact of her distant past. As was her former Master, her sworn enemy, whom she now thought of only as an abomination before everything that mattered … although the memory of his face and their times together still held powerful sway over her. When she thought of him, Vosa felt something moving inside her chest, a gravitational shift that took hold of her most basic emotions. Curse the Hutt for mentioning him, dredging those thoughts up now.
But it was too late to stop. With an uncharacteristic twinge of masochism, Vosa allowed herself to think on the name consciously, touching on it like the tip of the tongue to an infected tooth, just once—Dooku—and pushed it aside.
Glancing back at the captain who’d followed her with unfailing loyalty and the skull-masked fighters gathered behind her, Vosa reassured herself that this was right. She had a new alliance, new blood oaths, as leader of an unstoppable army of fighters who would willingly lay down their lives for her.
It was enough.