Chapter 9: The Twin Suns of Tatooine

The twin suns rose over Tatooine. For the past few days, Bella Rose had grown used to the sight of this desert world’s dawn. Once she would have thought it one of the few jewels this desolate planet had to offer. Now on the day of her reckoning, she realized it might be the last sunrise she would ever see.

She awakened before any of the other slave girls. Last night when she finally fell to slumber, her mind and body was wracked with contentment from the satisfaction of so much ecstasy. Now it was plagued with fear.

She looked over at Oola. So young and vulnerable, much like her own daughter had been. The Twi’lek girl was still sleeping soundly. She thought to wake her, to say something to her, to consummate another round with her.

But she could not. No amount of lovemaking would be able to calm her nerves. In spite of the strange path of a Jedi Sentinel, something so foreign and unorthodox compared to the cloistered regimented life of a councilmember, she was still a Jedi. She had engaged in a life of wanton lust and had come here solely because of her attachment to her daughter, and she was still a Jedi. She still knew enough.

In only the little clothes of a dancer, she sat cross legged and closed her eyes. She breathed in and out. Living in the imperial era, she had long used her Jedi training for survival, for combat, and had used her power in the blade and her training to take down both the criminals who recognized her as a fugitive and the stormtroopers trained to kill her on sight. It had been too long since she had simply let the force flow through her.

It felt almost nostalgic. She felt like a mere padawan again, someone who had yet to travel down those dark streets on Coruscant and indeed the rest of the galaxy. She wondered if things would have been better that way. She very well may have never had a daughter that way, just sticking to the safe path of living in the temple.

Then again, she would have likely died that fateful night when Vader descended upon the temple. The wonderful serenity of the force flowed through her, and compared to the rough living for the past two decades, now in this moment of peace, she wondered if things would have been better that way. She felt better now than she had in so long. Better to die than to live what seemed like a never ending nightmare.

That thought was interrupted when she was hit by a parAliciazing sense of dread. She was beginning to sweat as she felt so many emotions, fear, shame, and the sense of something that was totally intertwined with her, something she could never escape. It was not a mere emotion. It was a someone, a presence in the force.

Vader? No, she knew it wasn’t him. The aura of the Dark Lord of the Sith was something she had felt before and would never forget for as long as she lived, but she knew even before she could identify what this thing was that though it resembled his shade, the terror she felt now was something far more personal than what she felt that day she lost her daughter to him.

Her most apt padawan, her dearest daughter.Aly?

Hello Master.

It flattered Bella to hear her say that. After seeing that video of her kneeling at Vader’s feet, of hearing her in his service, a Sith as much as him and the darksiders of Confederacy of Independent Systems still fresh in her mind decades later, maybe even as much as the unknown Lord Sidious who had been the scourge of the Republic in it’s final days and now the scourge of the galaxy as he sat upon it’s throne, it pleased her to have her call her master. So many memories flooded to the surface, delight and joy, even that long pained memory of their parting rising up like any other did not seem painful. She did not hear the tone in which it was said from Alicia’s psychic voice, only that it was said at all. It’s you.

Bella suddenly opened her eyes. She was still sitting in that cross legged position. It was only a force meditation, but it felt like she had woken up from a dream, that’s how different her trance had felt from her waking reality. She was shaking, her whole body covered in a cold sweat.

There was a loud clanging noise in the distance. It was the Gamorrean guards come to wake the dancer girls. The rest of them got up, they were long since inured to it. Bella herself had long grown used to it in her time staying here. At first, it was just another discomfort in the string of wretchedness of her life. As she had become more comfortable, it became another sound as much as the hoots and hollers of the customers that came here to Jabba’s palace.

But now it’s tenor was as harsh as the executioner’s bell. The other girls were already leaving. She on the other hand, was still in that position. She couldn’t find the strength to leave.

“Master Jedi?” It was Oola. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I am ... I’ll...”

“You’re pale. Are you sick?”

Bella took a deep breathed and swallowed a lump in her throat. “No I’ll be fine.” She stood up. She looked down at the lightsaber by her side. It was her daughter’s, and yet now it felt so alien to her. She was long used to the feeling of the dark side nearby, whether it was the Inquisitors hunting after her, the drudges of living day to day in the new order, or past memories haunting her. When she first took this saber as a war trophy after killing that moff, the stain of darkness on it’s hilt was nothing to her. Now that she knew it’s source, it made her shudder.

Oola was already leaving. Bella slowly followed behind her, not abandoning her weapon. There were worse things in this galaxy than one’s own feelings of falling to the dark side. She would not go out unarmed.

“Let’s stay together, alright?” said Oola.

“Sure...”

There were already men vying for Oola’s attention. She waved to them and smiled but did not go to them. She looked back at Bella who was still visibly shaken.

Bella tried to calm herself. She would do a show for these men with Oola. Something that took her time to get used to now seemed so mundane by comparison.

The two of them started kissing instantly. This time, it was Bella who was nervous. She seemed chaotic, frantic, her kisses were sloppy and she was feeling weirdly all over the Twi’lek woman. It worried Oola but the men were liking it more than ever and cheering them on.

With that bit of encouragement, Oola moved to get more into it. Bella wanted nothing more than to sink into that familiar passion, that lust. But the more she tried to distract herself, the more it reminded her of what was to come.

Then she felt her girlfriend’s hand touch her naked pussy. The Twi’lek girl’s finger had just went inside her vagina, she was playing with her beloved’s clit. Her body was going crazy, and it wasn’t long before she came, releasing her juices all over Oola’s fingers.

It was nice. But it wasn’t enough. Her familiar touch so ordinarily comforting now seemed like a buzzing gnat that was just getting in her way. There was no putting it off any longer. The lovely sight of Oola licking her fingers clean of juice made the reality of today so much more apparent. She broke away from Oola.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” Bella said. She was so nervous that she didn’t even switch to the Twi’lek tongue for her girlfriend’s convenience. Then she was gone.

Bella found Jabba on his usual seat. He was eating something when she caught his eye. The Hutt smiled.

“Well met,” he said in Basic. A sign of his respect. He looked at the two Gamorrean guards flanking him.”Leave us,”he said in Huttese for them.

They did. As soon as they were gone, he said, “Did you enjoy last night?” He laughed.

That laughter would have once filled her up with disgust. Now it made her smile. “Yes. Very much.” The memories resurfaced in her mind like it had been so long ago and yet it was only hours. She was filled up with pleasure and right now she was so tense that she needed something to take her mind off that palaver with Alicia. Part of her wanted to ask the Hutt to swallow her whole and drown out her senses and make everything go away. To feel that same heat she felt again last night.

But as much as she had enjoyed it, that pleasure was pushed aside for something else. She was reminded of the all too apparent reality of her daughter coming here. This kind of tension would not go away so soon.

“She will be here soon,” Bella said.

“Your padawan?”

“Yes. She said she wants to complete her training. In the dark side. You should not be here when she arrives.” Bella was talking fast.

“How do you know...?”

“I can sense her! I feel her hatred, her power. If I fall in battle, there will be nothing to stop her. That’s why you should go. Now.”

He studied her with his great red Hutt eyes and stroked his chin. Then he nodded. He made a loud grunt and the Gamorreans returned. Then they lifted up his platform and escorted him elsewhere.

That left Bella alone. She could still see around her, the familiar smells of the palace and the noise behind her. In the main area of the den behind her, the customers were enjoying themselves, oblivious at what was to come next. The Gamorreans were trying to escort them out but the more rowdy of them weren’t having it. But that was nothing compared to her current perception with the force. She felt Alicia’s darkness as much as a smuggler on these very same sands would hear the roar of a krayt dragon to hunt them down like the prey they were.

Bella did not know if her next action was a good one. Many associated the lightsaber with a cutting thing of pure energy and indeed it could only be a weapon. But there was one way to modify it, a program that only skilled technicians or those who were required to construct their own lightsaber as so many Jedi and Sith apprentices like her and many more before her had done. She did just that.

Then she sat down and entered the trance of a Jedi. Now alone with herself, she focused entirely on her daughter’s presence. She knew Alicia was feeling her in turn. Closer and closer, time seemed like a raging rapid that was going too fast for her to comprehend and yet too slow like a disaster in motion. This turn of events was what she had wanted, and yet with that wish came so much fear.

Then she opened her eyes. Alicia was there. Her new clothes betrayed her new allegiance, nothing like the consulars cloistered in the temple ages ago or the long flowing drapery of the true darkside mystics that enveloped them with darkness that drowned out their shadows, instead the practical robes of a Sith assassin, enough to conceal but also enough to let them move quick and fast. She was standing upright much like Vader, she was looking down at her old master, her mother she didn’t know she had. They locked eyes.

Bella could only think that she looked painfully beautiful. Her skin was almost marble in it’s whiteness, too flawless to be real. The last time Alicia had seen her, it was that video of her as Jabba’s dancer. Up close, she could see every feature in real time, her full lips so kissable, she remembered that one they shared before they were separated for years, and she yearned to taste them again if only so she would know that she loved her again. She saw so much of herself in those features, the only real normal difference being that Alicia’s dark hair was tied back into a ponytail unlike her mother’s free flowing locks. Yet her face was blank, it was looking at a mannequin or golem possessed by an evil spirit. She could not to make her heart from stopping with dread and loss.

Her eyes were an icy blue. Bella could feel the bloodlust radiating from them. It was the same ferocity that inspired her to take up her weapon and take the fight to Vader so long ago, that fury that made her put her own life on the line for her master. It was a totally different thing to be on the receiving end of them. But they were not yet the unholy xanthous hue of so many of the Sith and the darksiders that had preceded them, basked in a corruption all too borne of murder and sacrifice bordering on the ancient mysticism of so many bloodletting tribes whose names were forgotten to the galaxy. That gave her comfort.

Then Alicia flipped out the hilt of her sword and ignited the bloodred blade. In that instant, Bella still had enough time to draw the lightsaber at her side, her own daughter’s weapon as a padawan, and igniting the blue edge, raised it up high before their weapons clashed. Their blades were locked for several long seconds. Both of them holding their grips two handed, neither one gave way, no matter how much Alicia tried to push down against her mother, holding herself up on her knees. They did not look away from each other’s eyes.

Then Alicia pushed harder against Bella. It was enough to push the Jedi back but not enough to break the stalemate between them. In that instant, Bella saw her daughter’s weapon was a curved hilt weapon, something reserved only for elite duelists. She knew it on the spot, it was one of the lightsabers used by Asajj Ventress. She always felt some bit of guilt for not fighting on the front lines in the Clone Wars. But it also meant that she and her padawan were safe from dealing with Dooku and his elite killers.

Bella was facing that karma now. She didn’t have much time to think on it. Alicia’s spun around as their blades were still locked, pushing Bella back, and then she lunged at her again. Bella was standing now and parried that strike too.

Then much to her surprise, Alicia actually moved back. It wasn’t the typical move of a Sith to run from a fight, let alone, not one who had come here with the express intent of severing her past through sacrificing someone still important to her. That only meant she had something else in mind.

Her weapon still lit up, Alicia came at Bella again. She did not run forth and strike. Instead she jumped up in the air, moving her body in sophisticated acrobatic stances. Bella barely countered it, and then Alicia came at her again in another movement much like that one. Again Bella blocked it, but Alicia was not pushed back.

And she came at her again, spinning at her in the air with her blade like a spiked tire. Bella was familiar with the stance of Ataru. Quick acrobatic motions, it was as effective as a maestro twirling their baton as a skilled user’s movements were often too fast to parry. Bella was not so slow as that and as her whirling opponent came at her, struck at the crimson blade.