Blood from a Stone

Posted on Sun Mar 29th, 2015 @ 3:14am by Thane & Bomoor Thort & Morgo Le'Shaad

3,920 words; about a 20 minute read

Chapter: Chapter IV: Rezer's Edge
Location: Cells, Jericho
Timeline: After "Anger. Fear and rage..."

OLD

Looking down at Thane, Morgo was reminded of how young he really was. His face smeared with dirt and blood, Thane looked like boy who’d picked one fight too many, and was now being stripped and punished for his insolence. Blinking, Morgo twisted open a jar of bacta, and ran a finger along the inner lid, her maroon finger coming away wet with the translucent gel.

If any spite remained in Morgo’s mind, one look into the red eyes of Thane was enough to soothe its residual heat. For within his sunken eyes, defeat showed clearer than any rage, blended with a dark, crushing shame that had nothing to do with his nakedness. Upon his shoulders seemed to sit the heavy yoke of failure, his posture a far cry from the proud man she had first seen in the opera house on Coruscant. And so it was with a silent sort of awareness that Morgo stepped closer to him, brushing away a matted lock of his brown hair to smear bacta upon the deeper cuts of his forehead and face—satisfied with knowing that no amount of her censure would inflict the kind of pain Thane was already inflicting upon himself.

NEW

With every brush of her finger, Thane’s red blood smeared like paint on the canvas of his skin, the bacta leaving a glistening trail across his wounds, like a snail would along a garden stone. Within her other hand, the dermal regenerator whirred to life, its melodic hum like a gentle note of music in the silence around in the prison block. Hovering the healing device over Thane’s abdomen, the red of his open wounds knitted themselves together instantly, replaced by new, unmottled flesh. Rounding on his back, Morgo knelt to better reach the wounds on his posterior flank, ignoring the ripe odor that wafted her way with her fluid movements.

“What do you remember of your capture?” Morgo prompted into a particularly deep wound in Thane’s side, digging out the debris with her little finger, unconcerned with Thane’s flinch. Revisiting Thane and Bomoor’s spectacular failure promised to be unpleasant for them both, but nonetheless served a purpose. From her position with one knee on the ground, Morgo looked up at the man and then the Ithorian, gaze expectant and unimpressed.

Wincing, Thane did what he could to not make a noise at the Dromachean's handiwork, the largest pain coming when he instinctively went to clench his right hand. "Enough," he replied to her question, not feeling talkative nor caring to elaborate on that particular subject at this juncture; there would be time enough to speak of what transpired prior to their incarceration if they escaped. If their primitive knowledge of Jericho's layout or the inhabitants' tactics be needed, it could be volunteered when appropriate, he decided.

"Where are the others?" He decided to ask, preferring to focus on the matter at hand, both as a means to avoid mental pain and to distract from the physical pain he was undergoing, as soothing as the knitting of the bacta was now proving to be. Even the merest consideration of restoration of his body was giving him heart, though he relented it was still slower without the added connection of the Force. Whilst he could not deny it provided him some insight into how others not touched as the Jedi were by the Force coped, he was nevertheless frustrated by it. Arguably, he was disgusted by it.

Sore eyes not focused upon the woman attending him, they instead focused upon the constructions overhead, as they had done for an unknown amount of time. Having grown used to the sight, Thane was now perplexed by how far up this particular chamber went. Whilst the cells' bars were tall enough to prevent any form of escape, they nevertheless did not reach any ceiling. Instead, a darkness hanged above them, struts and metal beams jutting at various angles, whilst an ancient ventilation system whirred painfully somewhere amongst them.

Left unattended for periods of time and entirely uncared for by its Exile caretakers, Thane assumed Jericho's original design had been forgotten, adapted and broken numerous times over the centuries, having become little more than a hub for the profane and pathetic. Whilst engineers and mechanics would no doubt be counted amongst Zrad's men, none would possess the technological know-how to restore Jericho to life. In many ways, it was amazing the station continued to exist as it did at all. They probably did not expect to reside here so long for that to occur.

At considering that, Thane, not for the first time, wondered how long Jericho would last with the likes of these Mandalorians serving as caretakers; how long would it be before the station decided to rebel and claim their lives, cutting their ridiculous crusade short? Not soon enough, he had naturally deduced. It would require assistance.

Morgo scoffed under her breathe at Thane's artless evasion of her question, standing as she circled back to face him, eyes hard.

"It is not simply 'enough' to know that you and Bomoor failed, Verus." She said harshly, gripping the wrist of his mangled hand and bringing his the red stumps of his fingers eye level, "How you were caught, how quickly you were overwhelmed, and by how many soldiers are all important if we are to avoid the same fate twice. Where the others are won't matter if we don't ever reach them." Morgo admonished, narrowing her eyes at him as she brought her scalpel to Thane's hand, opening up the pockets of pus and infection where Thane's fingers used to be, with quick cuts.

This time as he winced, Morgo did not feel sympathy, the greenish yellow fluid draining from his fingers like putrefied pig slop. Perhaps he was not in his right mind, but avoiding a subject simply because one was not in the mood to see the how one might learn from the mistakes was puerile. Had Thane learned nothing from his capture?

As Thane's fingers bled, Morgo made quick work of the necrotic tissue and applied a patch of synthflesh to knit the open wound together. Lips thin with irritation, Morgo abruptly turned her face to Bomoor, finishing with Thane.

"Bomoor." Morgo called to the Ithorian, hoping he was in a more helpful mood than Thane, "Tell me what you know."

Even knowledge of how many men had subdued them, what weapons they had used, or even the presence of an alarm system could aid their escape.

Resting an arm upon the side of the table, Bomoor had been absorbed in Morgo’s work. While he was a strong practitioner of healing through the force, he was still always amazed at the feats that could be accomplished with chemicals, tools and a precise hand. Were he to have the strength and ability at this moment, he would be doing all he could to complement Morgo’s work by projecting a healing aura upon her patient.

He had forgotten how useless he was without the Force, now that he saw such great work being performed without it. Morgo was the opposite of the two Jedi in this regard, having a complete reliance on that which rested in the physical realm to live and work. Her question was a further reminder of how inadequately prepared they had been to lose the Force, both in this mission and throughout their whole lives.

“I fear that our weakness will be of little relevance to you, Morgo,” Bomoor commented, raising his gaze from the table and back to the Dromachean, “We had planned well for infiltrating Jericho and had no trouble masking our presence when we boarded the Exile ship. This station has existed for a very long time and plans for the layout were relatively simple to obtain. Our information was correct and valid but it was what hid within the walls that we failed to plan for…”

He thought of the strange lizard-like creatures spread out on thin branches, like veins throughout the central facility, “The ysalamiri, as I am sure you know, are what stopped us from putting up a fight. Many of the men that overcame us were poorly armed; some with only simple stun batons but I recall that being enough when several of them surrounded me, cutting me off from Thane.”

He remembered that piercing cold shock as he was struck again and again, feeling the full force of attack for the first time, “However, the effects of the ysalamiri were not instant and we were not strongly affected until we were deeper into the facility, about half-way between the hanger and Zrad’s throne room. It was a clever deception as we both passed the initial sensations off as some kind of disturbance in the Force.”

Wiping the pus and blood from her blade on her glove, Morgo flicked Thane’s infection fluids from her hand with the ease of one who was accustomed to blood wet hands, her mind running through the new information Bomoor had offered her. Now, they knew where the throne room was situated. In the event that the ysalamiri could not be slain, Morgo adjusted her mental objectives. Getting Thane and Bomoor to at least the half-way point between the hangar and the throne room was now a priority. The Force restored would bring the advantage back to them.

“If it’s all the same to you, Bomoor, I think I will decide what is relevant and irrelevant to me.” She said to the Ithorian, not unkindly, before she flicked a speck of dirt from Thane’s ear, redirecting her wry gaze to the dirty man, “I imagine there are spare clothes in the plasteel footlockers around the corner, Verus. Feel free to gird your loins.”

Having spent her and the Ithorian's conversation more interested in flexing his treated hand, Thane's increasingly-intense gaze only passed over Morgo for a moment before he gave a slow, silent nod. Rising, he mused that their loss had been no great victory for these honour-hunting barbarians; their sheer numbers and a twist of nature had secured their success over the interloping Jedi. Even so, as with any successful general or tactician, they had certainly caught them off-guard, using an unexpected edge.

Still, such ingenuity was wasted on these Exiles.

The woman threw her blonde, haphazardly chopped hair behind her shoulder as she made her way to Bomoor, her eyes scanning his brown skin. The Ithorian was the only one on the ship that truly dwarfed her in height, and she found her neck aching a bit as she looked up to examine his eye stalks. Fingers already swiping bacta across the cuts of his skin, Morgo raised the dermal regenerator to Bomoor’s lips, knitting shut a particularly bad split. For the most part, though, Morgo was pleased to see that Bomoor’s thick skin had protected him from the amount of damage Thane had sustained. And as the device on her hand sang quietly as it worked, Morgo’s spared a glance up at the Ithorian, his warm, brown skin no longer tinged by the grey of death. Finding him watching her heal his wounds brought a half smile to her lips.

“You watch like you have never seen a doctor work before.”

Bomoor loosened his neck muscles to form a weary smile on one side, finding the motion slightly less uncomfortable now that his flesh was less exposed, “I am always the student to those with more knowledge than myself,” he noted, “The focus of medical science is quite different to that of Jedi healing. I am afraid my own skills go little beyond first aid but it is something I have always wanted to improve in case…well, in case my Force abilities should fail me as they have for me here.”

With Morgo finished picking out the debris and patching the flesh on his right arm, the Ithorian raised it up to admire the work. Flecks of lighter, more-reddish flesh marked points where the dermal regenerator had fashioned new, thin skin over the wounds he had suffered. The newly-regenerated patches felt dull, as nerve endings were yet to form. Alongside the bacta-infusion, Bomoor began to feel somewhat lighter as if the burden of his flesh no longer concerned him.

“I feel a lot better already,” he noted, craning down to see where Morgo was currently situated around his hulking frame, “Not perfect, but I think that will take a good while yet. If Thane is also up to it, it would seem wise to start moving. While many of Zrad’s men are not up to much, it only takes one to find us and sound the alarm and I would rather not repeat the events I just described.”

Morgo nodded as she snapped her dark red gloves from her hands, discarding them atop the nearby corpse of the Trandoshan. They fell into his abdominal cavity with a wet plop.

"My work here is done." She sighed, looking to to the doorway of their escape, "It's up to you both now to get us out. I might've bested two injured wardens, but the Exile soldiers out there are beyond me."

Approaching one of the plasteel footlockers, Morgo crouched as she sifted through a jumble of things before wrapping her hand around an old blaster, small but still in working order. Through her hair, she glanced at Bomoor and Thane, hoping that she had not miscalculated. Many Jedi relied on the Force for to fight effectively. The reflexes and senses needed to wield a beam of pure, weightless energy was beyond that of the ordinary lay-man, and Morgo did not doubt that with the Force, Thane and Bomoor were forces to be reckoned with. Without the Force as their crutch, however...

Morgo licked her dry lips and stood. Time would tell if the Jedi proved to be useless.

Between the contents of two of the lockers, Thane had managed to scramble together enough oddments of clothing to cover his naked form. The rotten and tattered rags of his dark robes had been replaced with slightly ripped brown trousers and what appeared to a Republic naval uniform, its indicative blue tones faded and the insignia patches torn. In his hand, Thane considered a dark brown spacer's jacket slightly too large for the Human's lighter frame, although he promptly threw it to one side, considering the additional weight would probably cause his bruised body further upset.

Having passed some other miscellaneous articles of material to his friend, trusting it to be ample enough to cover his large frame and provide some measure of relief upon his thick and healing hide, Thane now stepped over to the ravaged corpses of his and Bomoor's former wardens. The odour emanating from their recently-deceased bodies struck him anew, a ripe, rich smell that put Thane in mind of the collection of ancient coins one of the Jedi instructors had kept at the Temple on Coruscant.

Whenever the sun struck the impressive horde of long-forgotten currency, the smell would thrust its way across his chambers and into the nasal passages of any students under his care at the time. Whilst this particular aroma of death left that to pale by comparison, the rancid smells Thane himself had contributed to in the cells came together to repel the beleaguered Caanan. Whilst he had never grown used to the smell, his rejuvenating body, be it through chemicals or Morgo's treatment, had left him more sensitive to the assault on his senses, and so he forced himself to quickly clutch the fallen Trandoshan's sabre.

"Where are the others?" Thane decided to query once again, only this time in a softer voice that almost wavered on the edge of deference.

Since the gradual recovery of his mental faculties, he had tried to deduce what scheme Morgo and the others had put together to bring her here before them. With the way she carried herself, he had no doubts in his mind that whatever plan had been formulated was largely proceeding as expected, which gave him a surprising sensation of comfort - and displeasure, knowing their shipmates had put themselves in this position for his oversights. Looking at the woman before him, a figure he both reviled and admired, he struggled with the feelings of gratitude and dismay tugging at his conscience.

Thane clutched the sabre more tightly. Grasped in his left hand, its weight, whilst heavier and unlike a lightsaber hilt entirely, seemed more alien to him than he expected.

Morgo cast her eyes about the dim cell block as the sound of Bomoor tearing a rough cloth tunic to fit his frame filled the silence. Swallowing, the dryness of her throat was only quenched only by the heavy, metal taste of her own blood.

"Last I left them, Sev was planning a party with Zrad." Morgo sighed as she ran her left hand along the cool glass of the only hypospray she had left, a house brew of poison, "Berry remains on the ship, and I imagine Nimo is rather occupied with fending off veritable molestation at the hands of Zrad."

At the back of her mind, something whispered and Morgo caught herself with a tired frown, "Oh that's right, you've never met Nimo, have you? Well, all you need know is that he's a pirate friend of dear Berry, and he tried to kill me." She said casually, as if she were commenting on the weather, "But we've come to an understanding."

Bomoor narrowed his eyes. While he had come around to the belief that Morgo’s allegiance was indeed with them, at least for now, the recruitment of yet another unknown entity seemed like an unnecessary risk. He had managed to glean some of Berry’s past but knew little of her previous companions. This Nimo character, whom Morgo had so casually introduced, had already shown a willingness to switch sides, having gone from Morgo’s bounty hunter to her ally. Who could say how ready he was to face the kind of torture that Zrad Rezer could inflict; he could potentially switch sides once again to be behind the man with the wealth and power? That was, after all, the pirate way.

From the way Thane cast a glance towards his hulking companion, it was clear similar thoughts were traipsing his own mind, cautious of yet another unknown entity. Of course, they had initially hunted Sev only for circumstances to then bring them together, and this Nimo appeared to be assisting in concluding their captivity.

Once more, thinking of another involved in this sordid affair of a 'rescue', he grimaced.

Bomoor had just-about fitted a cheap grey pair of synthatex trousers over his legs and had picked up the spacer’s jacket Thane had discarded which, although comfortable, did not quite reach his waist. He was also pleased to find a black courseweave cloak that could cover the areas neglected by his other garments. He now joined Thane and Morgo, who were waiting for him to finish dressing.

“We will have time to meet Berry’s friend properly later. For now, you will simply have to point him out so we do not accidentally kill him during our escape, assuming we are up to such things." The Ithorian noted the sabre Thane now held, “Speaking of which, it might be good to find some more weapons. There was an armoury on the plans we obtained but whether it is still used as such by Zrad is anyone’s guess.”

Morgo looked to the Ithorian, his garments ill fitted and awkward, but still managing to cover skin. Working her jaw wordlessly as she thought herself, Morgo's voice was considering.

"I do not think our chances at besting anyone in combat are very high." She said warily, thinking of Thane and Bomoor's swift defeat even at the height of health, "But if you believe you might benefit from a detour to the armory, lead the way. Berry's pirate is a lean man of purple hair, hard to miss even from a distance. If we should encounter either him or Sev, keep in mind that they are under cover. I suggest we keep any joyful reunions to a minimum."

Morgo did not add that if they should spot a stain of green, streaking about the halls, they should ignore it. Last Morgo left her, Berry was supposed to be aboard the ship, awaiting their return. Yet Morgo had her suspicions of Berry's ability to follow instruction. Thinking of the little Velusian girl brought a frown to Morgo's face. If she had to deal with corralling Berry along with trying to escape this miserable rock, Morgo was going to cut someone.

"The armoury is not the greatest of detours from our path to the hangar," Thane commented, already pacing towards their exit. As much as the prospect of being free from confinement enthused him, it was simply knowing he was to see beyond these four walls and rusted bars that brought him the greatest relief and pleasure. Of course, the stain of defeat remained embarrassing, and the fight was far from over, but at the very least some measure of his screaming claustrophobia would be soon alleviated.

"It is only a short distance away from these prison cells. An oversight, perhaps, to place arms so near to the one remaining cell block that retains its original purpose in this place," he mused, voice still dry but recovering, "should a prison escape occur."

Although Morgo had proven herself capable in the way she dispatched the jailers - in a brutal, yet almost beautiful manner Thane could not help but admire the near-majesty of (something he noted to query with the holocrons, should they survive the coming strife) - he nevertheless walked ahead of his fellows, reaching the doorway he had not left since he and Bomoor had been forced to mutilate one another for the Exiles' amusement.

Bringing his hand down upon the switch at the side, Thane stopped, letting his crippled palm hover over the ancient button. All at once, a fear gripped him as to what lay beyond, as much facing those who had come for him as those who had put him here, the truth to himself being that he put him here. Equally, beyond this door lay both redemption and revenge, for what difference may or may not exist between those two subjects.

Finally, feeling, despite his lack of Force connection, Morgo's eyes boring into the back of his head, analysing this marked hesitation, he let hand press against the switch. Focusing ahead on his atonement at the expense of these Mandalorians, of reclaiming his existence and path, the fear began to ebb away and his resolve materialised.

As the doors parted, a rush of fresher air surged forth to greet the three intruders, although the scent of burnt ozone tingled the senses. Taking one step forward, Thane suddenly stopped himself, as what little colour remained his pale face drained and all of his newfound spirit evaporated.

Just beyond the doorway, a golden blade of shimmering light held high and humming, stood a leather-clad female figure just shy of the rogue Jedi's height, the barest hint of a smile playing across her lips as she sighted him. "Hello, Thane."

"Loren."

TBC

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