When Raezyr emerged from his steam, the ship was already in
hyperspace. He found his brother in his normal seat, nursing an ale.
On the table was several more, with just a few empty.
"Well?" The larger Sith asked.
Trychon
didn't make eye contact, which wasn't unusual due to their bond. His
facial expression was a bit more rare, as he was clearly upset. He
popped the top off of one of the bottles on the table and slid it across
towards Raezyr's normal seat.
Raezyr closed the
distance to the table and caught the bottle as it reached the edge. He
took a drink before grabbing an empty tankard to pour it in and sitting
in the chair.
"Well?"
"One." Trychon gloomily whispered.
Raezyr repeated the word back to him as a question. "I don't get it."
"One ship." Trychon finally made eye contact. "One ship got out of the second group. That's all."
Raezyr looked down at his large mug. "Could be worse."
"Could be worse? Could be worse?"
Trychon laughed, though his voice was cold. "Things could always be
worse. We specialize in that." He downed the rest of his drink and
watched the foam settle and dissipate at the bottom.
"We
frelled up, Raez. Bad." He shook his head as he grabbed another two
bottles, sliding another across the table after opening them and pouring
one for himself. He didn't notice or didn't care that his brother
hadn't finished his first drink.
Raezyr waited patiently for his brother to continue.
"This whole kriffing mess was our fault."
The big Sith took a swig from his drink and eyed his older sibling questioningly. "How so?"
"We got complacent, Raez. We got so secure and relaxed that we forgot we were vulnerable. When Tyr and Anya ran off on their own, we should have gone after them. We should have tracked them down to the ends of the Galaxy, and either made them pay for their betrayal or at the very least ensured they could never tell a living soul where we were.
"Instead, we let them go, trusting that two frakking Sith who were angry with us and too stupid not to draw attention to themselves could wander around the Galaxy until the Jedi finally caught up with them and that they would not give us up to save their sorry asses," Trychon said through clenched teeth. "No, this was our fault.
"On top of all that, there's the fact that when the inevitable Republic arrival finally happened, we had no better escape plan that to scatter like a bunch of Kowakian monkey lizards. No, there had to have been something we
could have done differently on that end as well. Had to be."
"Trych, if you want to play that game, I can do it too," Raezyr responded. "And it all goes right back to the Jedi, in the end. Had they taken a young girl into their Order... had they not murdered my Master... had Tyr's Jedi father given two shakes about what happened to him... had that Padawan not stuck her damn nose where it didn't belong... none of this would have happened. Don't you agree?
"I don't know," Trychon responded. "What I do know is that we let ourselves grow weak, and left ourselves open to attack out of some sort of misguided feeling that we were beholden to someone other than ourselves. What I know is that it won't happen again. It's you and me versus the Galaxy."
In
silence, they raised their glasses to each other and to nobody in
particular, hoping that they weren't raising them in honor of a friend
lost forever.
After a few minutes of silence, Trychon spoke up. "Damn... I just realized that I was so caught up in analyzing what went wrong that I never bothered to ask: How did you fare? Or rather, how did the Jedi fare?"
"Well,
the fish did better than I would have liked...." He paused to rephrase
his answer. "I mean, I completely obliterated her, but she was
annoyingly ok with it. Took her way too long to call her alien buddy
down to help."
Trychon chuckled before Raez continued.
"By
the time he came down, I wasn't ready for him. He's quite a bit
stronger than the girl, and he uses a double bladed saber. I was
already pretty spent when he landed, and I didn't realize it. Add in
the storm and cold... I wouldn't have lasted much longer. Honestly, he
would be a strong opponent even on a fair battleground."
"Here's
to next time!" Trychon raised his glass again, and struck it briefly
against Raezyr's, "And to not believing in fair battlegrounds!"
"Uh... yeah," Raezyr added. "Next time!"
Then
he took his turn staring into the dissipating froth at the bottom of
his mug while trying to ignore the nagging doubt in his head.
The hesitation wasn't lost on Trychon either.
No comments:
Post a Comment