Courage & Chrome
Posted on Mon Dec 31st, 2018 @ 6:32pm by Thane & Amare & G2-O7
Edited on on Fri Jan 4th, 2019 @ 11:57pm
3,382 words; about a 17 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Cavern system, within the Valley of the Dark Lords, Korriban
Timeline: 0100 Hours (Local Time), Day Two (After "Creature of Darkness")
Tags: terentatek, shyrack, tuk'ata
OLD
“Coda,” Bomoor said, “you should take G2 and carry on ahead. Try to get some distance from the creature while we keep it at bay.”
She wanted to stay and fight, but every instinct told her that Bomoor did not have to say it twice. This wasn't some old lumbering flying desert beast with stiff joints, deep scars, poor eyesight, and a sandstorm distracting it. There would be no jumping on the back of this creature and stabbing it relentlessly. She felt real, unadulterated vitality from this one, its aura radiating unbridled strength, ferocity and a shocking lack of fear.
The apex predator had come to feast.
"Let's go, buddy," Coda said quietly with a couple of quick taps on G2's dome with one hand, and taking hold of her lightsaber with the other. "We'll wait for you both at the temple," she said to her masters as she backed off into the shadows opposite from the monster with G2. "May the Force serve you well," she said hastily in parting, consciously unaware of the implication and darker meaning behind the way she recited the old Jedi farewell. She immediately felt sick and ashamed of herself for leaving them alone to fight. She may have committed her share of violent atrocities in recent months, but family trumped all else in her worried mind. To abandon them in the heat of danger felt far worse than murdering a stranger on some faraway dirthole of a planet. She feared she might never see them again.
NEW
With every hasty, breathless stride, the soles of Coda's soft black boots mashed down on ancient history. Every gasp of air once went through either a Sith Lord, a member of the original Sith species, or one of the many hellish monstrosities native to Korriban.
A gut-wrenching, bone-chilling wild roar was some distance behind as she wound her way through an old cramped cavern tunnel that seemed to open up to a wider subterranean passage.
"Hurry, G2!" Coda called out worriedly over her shoulder at her astromech droid friend.
The droid bleeped a string of binary in acknowledgement that it was roving as fast as it was designed to.
There was an echo reverberating through the tunnel denoting the sound of a hard lightsaber impact. It was a telltale sign that Thane and Bomoor were indeed fighting for their lives. Coda slowed to a stop and gave the droid a chance to catch up to her, and herself an opportunity to breathe again. She bent over forward and put hands on both knees.
"I wonder...if we should...go back..." she said to G2 between labored breaths. She felt her hearts thrumping away akin to a line of war drums pounding out the beat of a military march. "I could flank...the monster while they have it distracted. No, that's probably not what the master wants. We have to--"
An ominous fluttering sound was heard somewhere above, and Coda bit her tongue to silence herself and look up to see what it was. "Wait...what was that?"
G2 started scanning and caught something alive for a split second, but then almost instantly lost track of it. Its dome spun round to get a fix on what it was.
"I don't see anything," Coda remarked. Even with her low-light vision, it was still difficult to see through the dusty gloom alone the high cavern ceiling, like some kind of morning fog that tried to lift, but was denied passage to escape. "Maybe I'm just imagining things. We should go and--"
The high-pitched howl of a large winged creature about twice the size of a Loth-bat swooped down from above. It slashed one of its hooked razor-sharp arms at Coda.
"Aaah!" Coda cried out as she stumbled backwards to the ground, barely avoiding her face being ripped asunder. The beast, hovering just above the cave floor with heavy dust-kicking flaps of its leathery wings, inched closer as it took another deadly swipe at its amphibious prey, attempting to cut Coda's kneecaps as she quickly scrambled backwards with her arms, dragging herself away until her head tendrils made contact with solid rock behind her. At point blank distance, she could see its knobbed snout, incisors and mandibles drenched with saliva that eschewed a rotten sulfurous breath, and a disturbing lack of eyes with what seemed to be empty sockets. With its quarry cornered, the creature moved in for the kill with an arm poised for a quick decisive stab.
The response was a shout from the Nautolan with a thrusting open palm. "That's enough!" The winged creature was shoved back hard by an unseen power, making it tumble through the air several feet away, but wasn't enough to throw it to the floor. The creature, seemingly prepared for such an attack, managed to stay airborne, shake its head out of a daze, and shriek back in rage at Coda before making ready to dive for a second run.
The Nautloan Sith apprentice returned to her feet, grinding her teeth together with a furious scowl. "I've faced uglier things than you!" she taunted the hostile fauna as she drew her primary lightsaber with her right hand, igniting its golden blade with a quick slashing flourish, and took her shoto in the other hand and calmly bringing its short green plasma to life at her side. "C'mon!"
The creature hesitated, bellowing shorter shrieks, but seemingly not directly at Coda as it moved its head left and right. At the same time, G2 was making sounds that sounded like it was saying "Alert! Alert!" as it rolled past her at full and not stopping to watch what happened next.
"C'mon, I said!" Coda beckoned with frustration, as she considered whether to attack it first, or continue to stand her ground. "What're you--?"
Her answers appeared before the question was completed in the form of more of the winged monsters. First there were two, then four more. She then found herself facing a swarm of seven in all.
Coda's scowl melted into a defeated expression of fear and anxiety. "I guess fighting fair aren't part of the rules here," she muttered to herself as one foot took a cautious step back, followed by the other. With numbers on their side, the swarm squawked in a unison call to feast and swooped in for the onslaught.
Coda leaped back into the narrow passage behind her and could hear G2's bleeping to help her find her way to him. Moving backwards, Coda could hear a faint echo of a man's voice nearby.
"Make the Force be the eyes on the back of your head," said the disembodied voice. Another voice, a whispered one from a young female, said, "Never turn your back to a shyrack."
Coda put her Shii-Cho training into action with careful retreating steps. Keeping her lightsabers in front of her vertically, she relied on the basic defensive velocities she practiced with the Jedi on the Silver Sigil. The corridor she was back-stepping through was blessedly only wide and low enough to allow for only one of the creatures to face her at a time. One hooked armed slashed up and to her left, and she severed its front tip with a quick wrist flick to intercept with her shoto. It hissed angrily at her as it moved in to try and bite her directly. It chomped at air as Coda's golden blade swung wide and struck the wall to her right leaving a short yet scorching mark of vandalism to the old Sith hallway, then swung back defensively nicking the top of the shyrack's head, exposing bone. Its pain was short-lived as the shoto pierced its chitinous snout, the stab enough to touch brain matter forcing the thing to instantly cease flapping, falling flat to the floor to make way for the next of its kin to attack.
Coda's smooth footwork, however, was betrayed by both the environment and a momentary lapse of concentration as the heel of one of her boots struck a deep cracked groove in between stone tiles in the floor and caused her to fall onto her bum again. The safeties on her sabers caused them to turn off at the instant of her fall, but the latest shyrack to attack was quick on the initiative and slashed at her with a speed that exceed her ability to retaliate. Coda held up an arm to shield herself from what was sure to be extreme pain, or quick death.
As sharp claws were poised to tear into soft Nautolan flesh, a non-bestial wail arose from Coda’s left as a new fighter emerged. With as much mechanical exertion as it could muster, G2 charged forwards with its front compartment open and a fully-charged shock arm outstretched. The live metal appendage made contact with the shyrack at great speed, sending it veering off its course towards Coda and instead collapsing in a twitching mess of leathery wings against the wall of the passage.
Placing itself between Coda and the rest of the swarm, G2 opened a number of other compartments, baring various other mostly non-lethal components, but spinning them and screeching in Droidspeak in a very threatening manner for the modest-sized machine. The shyracks that had been preparing to swoop became wary and held back, examining the new threat and giving the fallen Sith apprentice time to get back up.
“Bwoo-waap!” G2 turned his dome around to stare towards Coda, seemingly ushering her to escape.
"Exactly what I was thinking!" Coda agreed with his call to run through rapid breathing. She wanted to thank him for saving her life having just narrowly escaped death with the help of the most valiant droid in the galaxy as far as she was concerned, but there would hopefully be time to rain hugs and kisses on the little droid later. She scrambled back up to her feet and slashed the air in front of her a few times with her long blade to hold off the carnivorous pests as she backed away from them, cutting more of the Sith stonework throwing sparks around the poorly lit hallway. With G2 having bugged out some distance behind her, she turned and burst into another full-on heart-pounding sprint to catch up with him, the shyracks in close pursuit of their next meal, loudly flapping their wings and voraciously howling as they gave chase.
Seeing Coda return to its side, G2-O7 seemed to regain some vigour and retracted its various attachments in order to divert all its energy to its wheel motors. The G2 models were not known for their high movement speeds but new updates Coda had patched in allowed for a more efficient power usage. Almost like popping in a brand-new power cell, the orange-plated astromech zipped off, buffeting a shyrack aside and into the wall of the cave as it went.
The droid had outpaced Coda by a fair way, moving at speeds never before seen on its regular routine about the Red Raptor, and chortled slightly at its newfound ability. However, its mirth was short-lived as the commotion of the Shyracks had captured the attention of another of Korriban’s fabled beasts: the Tuk’ata. A pack of the carnivorous spined hounds was blocking the way further ahead and G2 ground to a skidding halt, almost coming face-to-chassis with a row sharp blood-stained teeth.
“Dooo-WEEEP!!!” G2 squealed and span around, crying out to Coda back along the way it had just sped.
But the way was blocked by the Shyrack swarm buffeting their wings forcing the little droid to back off by Coda's side. They were surrounded, corralled into an octagonal stone chamber lit by cyan blue braziers near a tall stone slab on the opposite wall with ancient Sith inscriptions on it. There on the old cracked walls lined with mounted metal tubular torches with similar blue light that seemed destined to never lose their embers. There was also a distinct pungent smell of ozone mixed with burnt steak, something that reminded Coda of the Atlirith, the ship of her family, the Wolphs, where the airlock would have a similar smell after her father and brother had come back from a spacewalk to make repairs on the ship's hull. It was the same smell on the Silver Sigil after...
"We're surrounded!" Coda cried out, both lightsabers blazing and swinging in the omnipresent blue light, intermingling to create a soft turquoise colouration on her sweat-soaked blue skin. Nearly two dozen Shyracks and Tuk'atas snarled, howled, screed, hissed, and drooled over which would devour the most out of their Nautolan prey, and which would tear G2 apart and treat the remains of its dome like a chew toy. Coda wildly whirled about and swung like a maniac at the air, more than once nearly striking G2 as she made a desperate attempt to fend off the monsters. There seemed to be a bit of a standoff between Tuk'ata and Shyracks alike, and some were growling and snapping at each, like some animalistic to see which pack would get the spoils.
Coda managed to slash one Shyrack just as another avenged its brethren by cutting a shallow slash across her left upper thigh. She screamed out in pain and fell to her left knee. One of the Tuk'ata saw this, and was about to pounce for the kill...
The hunger. Or was it the thirst? Or was it both?
It did not know - not truly. The only real certainty was that it never abated; it was never sated, and it was never content, no matter how much sinew and gristle its claws and fangs tore away.
Hounds, flying beasts, beasts of burden... men and women from flying machines far above... No matter how many it clamped its jaws around, it was never satisfied, and the aching desire never left it. The bloodlust never ceased, and its mind never rested.
For many rotations, it had slumbered, eyes sealed shut and hearts beating but once per minute. Ages had passed it by and the dunes had shifted, grown and disappeared countless times, the changes innumerable and of no consequence to it. For even when it slept, it hungered.
That painful, all-consuming and soul-throbbing hunger was always there, even when it was not.
Those ages had passed it by without meaning for it, its very being both consumed by and connected all at once to the world about it. It did not understand it, nor did it have the capacity or inclination to understand it, this sense of unsettled belonging - the fact is it simply was, and it knew that.
It reflected only now on the recent turn of events briefly, skulking more slowly than was its norm now, letting a low growl escape as it favoured its burnt, weaker side. For unspoken aeons, or so it seemed, it had dwelt within its hollow, undisturbed by any shifts in its environment. That had all changed, however, when the three bright sparks now burning brightly within the ether of the endless desert had flickered into being, ending the nightmarish purgatory of its hibernation.
Like one of those insufferable pelko bugs that gnashed in vain at its warm-blooded feet in the desert dunes, it was drawn to the flame as they were to blood, the unceasing and maddening hunger compelling it to once more set its gaze upon the fury of its ancient home.
As before, it did not stop to think whether this was necessary, or whether its compulsions posed any risk to its well-being or longevity, for it was enough to know that they were here, and that they were its prey, completely and wholly.
It stalked, it crawled, it screamed, it hissed, for those were the things it did. And for all its cunning and ferocity, its prey had evaded death and even introduced it to a new experience, really quite alien to it.
It had felt something, something which had no name or comparison in its small mind, but that something had sped it on its way, away from the larger two of the burning flames - at least for now. For the hunger was not sated, the desire untamed, and its ire deep and infuriating.
But it could not take itself away, no matter how much pain or suffering it endured. Pain and suffering was, after all, its only known existence - and its purpose, pure and powerful. So now, despite the burns and shattered and torn gaps within its armour, it crept along these blackened and ancient caverns, talons searching the rocks as it followed the trail of the third, lonesome flame, which grew brighter with every lumbering, silent step in the dark.
Despite itself, drool oozed from its sharpened fangs, the warmth of the little flame lighting its eyes up with murderous glee, and it reached out, claws outstretched at the tender flesh before it...
A deafening roar that echoed through the chamber, which Coda and G2 now found themselves in, and reverberated throughout the room. Every last Tuk'ata and Shyrack instantly scrambled for safety through gaps in the ceiling and holes burrowed through the walls. They all feared hunger and death, but they feared this other behemoth far more.
Feeling a cold chill lancing down her spine, Coda picked herself back up to her feet, her left leg trembling involuntarily, adrenaline holding back the pain from her wounds, and started to back off towards the Sith stone slab.
"Do you know what that thing is?" Coda timorously asked the droid, hands unsteady and her thumping hearts filled with blood and dread, barely able to maintain her grip on her lightsabers.
It was then that she felt a beckoning rushing through her veins and arteries and touching her very soul. She turned to heed the call and look upon the stone slab behind her. To her eyes, the chiseled script was indecipherable, but the spirits around her seductively whispered the translated the words directly into her mind. Her face became expressionless as the slab compelled her attention utterly, approaching without feeling as if caught in a powerful mind trick.
As Coda spoke, the last of the lesser creatures had scurried away and all was quiet for a moment. In the silence, G2 let a fearful drone escape its metallic body and it rolled itself about to observe the various seemingly dark and empty passageways for some sign of the beast. But the pair knew that one of those passages was far from empty and the terrible creature that had attacked the group before was making its way towards them.
A horrible scuttling sound began to become audible, along with a laboured, wet breathing sound that grew louder and louder until it was right on top of them. At the same moment, both organic and droid turned their gazes upwards to the ceiling of the chamber, now spying a passageway hidden up high in the room. From that passageway, the muscular, leathery body of the terentatek slithered out and, with a feline-like twist of its body, it flipped itself around and fell to the ground before them, cracking the stone tiles of the chamber.
“Wo-WEEOW!” G2 exclaimed but was quickly drowned out by a returning cry from the great beast. Its cry was raspy, however, and the pair could see that it had suffered some injury to its chest, with several layers of its thick skin stripped away, revealing oozing, raw flesh.
Now backed up against the stone slab, the two off-worlders were now cut off from the exits by the terentatek. G2 looked towards Coda only to find, to its bewilderment, that the Nautolan was not focused on the threat but had instead knelt down beside the hunk of stone and seemed to be in some sort of meditative state (something which made no sense to the mechanic, particularly in a time like this).
Helpless and now left alone, G2’s motors went into a spasm and it seemed to tremble as the burly beast paced forwards, ready to finally consume its prey and find strength to engulf those who had bested it before.
TBC
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