Their Watch Has Ended
Posted on Thu May 16th, 2019 @ 10:03pm by Nala Sao & Mange & Tolmin Voq & Kelderesh jai Nektus
4,861 words; about a 24 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter V: Unbound
Location: Korriban Orbital Station, Horuset system
Timeline: After "Rage Against the Light"
OLD
The Half-Bothan did not move immediately, he simply glared down at the various humanoid races that had embraced the darkness and come on this day to reclaim their world of shadow. So very different in form and culture and yet the Dark side always had that same cruelness. He looked down at the fried remains of the man he had called friend, who, like himself, had sworn to defend the station against this evil. If there was any honour he could grant him after all those long nights of sabaac and companionship, it was to complete their mission aboard this station.
He gave a low growl of grief and anger before turning away and dashing with great speed down the corridor. There was still time to stop them getting any further. Even having lost all their non-Jedi crew and Orys, this station had been built for this one purpose and they had many hands left to play before the day was lost.
They Cult of Axion felt the rush of the kill. It was unbelievable, but there it was: the corpse of an actual Jedi. The thrill of the kill wasn't lost on a single cultist in that corridor. The dark side was with them, and it was powerful and full of homicidal ecstasy. If they acted swiftly, the Jedi wouldn't stand a chance.
NEW
"We should split up," Voq suggested to Nala. "I need to get to the main power core. I can cut off automated security from there and wire the whole place to blow."
Nala regarded the newly-made corpse splayed before the cultists, its body broken and twisted, still steaming from Nektus' unholy crippling blow. It was not the first Jedi she had felled, but rarely had their attacks against the Order ever been so brazen.
The occasional spark of electricity still surged through the cyborg's augmentations, either as a remnant of the Force lightning the Kaleesh had unleashed or as the last ailing attempts of the machinery to remain functional - Nala was unsure, nor did she especially care. For all the Jedi's poetic recital of their ridiculous anti-death rhetoric, it did nothing to save his pitiful existence.
The Jedi were delusional in their beliefs and dedication to the Republic, fanatical in their own right. To her, they were no better than the thralls caught within the Force-imbued seductions of her and their Dark Master; their nature was sickening to Nala, especially in light of the power they refused to wield, so blindly wedded were they to their mantras, and their absolute denial of the true and carnal pleasures of their mundane plane. With a brief side glance to her fellow cultists, she also mused that it was not just the thralls that they often reminded her of.
"Dear Voq," she purred, knowing that the handsome Devaronian, at least, knew to take pleasure in his work. "The things you do with your hands would set even the coldest Chistori's heart aflame. Go; give these monks a late New Year Fete fireworks display they won't soon forget." Her bulbous eyes fell forwards to where the hoofed Jedi coward had scarpered. Beside her, Mange took two lumbering steps forward, his hulk heaving with eat wet breath of rage, and a sick smile slipped across Nala's thin lips. "We have a party to get to."
“We cannot wait for the power to return any longer!” Falorn announced to Tal, now the only two remaining within the control centre. He could feel the fear rising in his padawan as they sensed the dark presence of the intruders approaching down the corridor, but he could offer little comfort to the young Kel Dor in this moment.
“You must control your fear,” he ordered, his wispy brown hairs standing on end as he too swallowed his emotions, having felt the death of Orys just moments ago, “Let us quickly trigger the manual locking mechanism on the door so they cannot get in.”
The diminutive Jedi Master flew forwards to the right side of the door and opened the panel next to it before grasping the lever within, beckoning his apprentice to do the same.
Tal did not hesitate to follow suit on the other panel. It was an in-tandem emergency manual override. "Ready," she said taking the other lever. Falorn nodded and they both applied a little bit of the Force and some old fashioned elbow grease to pull down on the heavy industrial switches. There was a harsh metal grind, however, that indicated a problem...a very big problem. Neither Jedi could pull the levers entirely. There was intense resistance, and both defenders of the light knew it wasn't a mechanical problem. They drew upon the Force with more intensity, risking a breakage of the override mechanism. They more telekinesis applied to augment their pull on the levers, the greater the resistance. On the other side of the door was the presence of the dark side, but it was raw, fearless, and accompanied with the deep guttural growls and roars of a Wookiee filled with rising blood rage.
"It's...too...strong!" Tal cried, both hands on her switch, her entire body shaking as she fought to channel every ounce of power she had in her. "I...c-can't...ungh!"
Falorn knew they had been a moment too late and their delay had sealed his fate. The invaders had already scaled the turbolift shaft to the control room and had entered the powered-down turbolift car that was stuck just behind the door they were attempting to lock. He could hear the muffled groans of some terrible beast just inches away as it worked against them to pull open the door. But it was not the end for the old Master's, so long as he passed the candle onwards to another defender against the darkness.
“Tal, my child,” his voice was strained, still fighting the resistance being applied to the other end of the mechanism, "When I tell you, let go of your switch and let the door swing open. In that moment, I will shoot through and push back the invaders. You will then have no resistance and just enough time to pull both switches with the Force."
In her moment of weakness, a deep cascade of dread had fallen over Tal upon realizing what it was her master was telling her to do. If not for her protective metal eye goggles, Falorn would have seen the palpable fear in Tal's widening eyes. "Master...I--"
"This is the end of my guard," Falorn found he was holding back tears he had never experienced in all his time serving as a shadow, "But you must not lose faith: the Force will save me as it will save you from the darkness. Be prepared..."
With the shortest of nods, Tal resigned herself to her master's wisdom. It was all she had left short of going mad with terror. I will do what I must, she reminded herself, centering her spirit in the Force. It was an old Jedi maxim; simple words with the power to summon the necessary courage to face the darkness.
Falorn closed his eyes for a moment, feeling for his opponent behind the door and sensing the structure of the turbolift beyond, "...now! Release it!"
They released their grip and the door swung open, pulled apart by two dirty-white hairy hands. But no more of the beast, Mange, was allowed through as a Force-powered kick from Falorn sent the hulking Wookiee backwards into the turbolift car. Falorn had judged his attack well and the attacker and the attackee both flew down through the opened maintenance panel the cultists had entered through.
A loud and fleshy crash served as the final crescendo to the pair's tumultuous plummet through the station's turbolift shaft.
Remarkably, but more as not likely courtesy of the duo's depth of Force connection, neither had struck any objects during their descent, although the only sound that had preempted their final collapse had been the earsplitting roar of the enraged Wookiee, whose eyes had bored into the Jedi's, twin pins of flaming-red murderous intent against a backwash of bloodied albino fur, thick and matted.
It had been the last sight of the venerated Jedi Master, who had served with such distinction during his years as a Jedi Shadow within the Reborn Order, as the gnashing teeth of the vile monster atop him had snapped at his face whilst the Wookiee's claws had scraped their way across his once-elegant features. Falorn's final moments passed with a vain and frantic instinctive effort to thrust away the beast's claws, perhaps hoping for some peace in his assured and self-chosen demise. As those yellowed claws successfully found their way into Falorn's eye sockets without any hint of restraint, the Half-Bothan's eyes were pushed backwards into his skull, the immense and uncompromising pressure piercing and destroying the fragile organs in a matter of seconds.
By the time his body finally hit the ground, an even more heavily-bloodstained Mange straddled atop it, Jedi Master Falorn had become one with the Force, and a Wookiee's mad screams serenaded his passing in the world beyond.
Nala and Kelderesh had been momentarily stunned as they watched the pair fly down the short shaft but quickly turned their attention back to the door, which was now flying shut again. Baring her teeth in frustration, the Nautolan hissed as she ignited her magenta blade, plunging it into the metal standing between them and their lone Jedi quarry.
Tal Omna sensed the instant of Master Falorn's end. It struck her hard enough to wrack her heart with momentary pain. She had felt the brutality...the suddenness of death...the hatred of that Wookie. It was unimaginable. The Reborn Order had prepared her for a great many things, but nothing quite so intense and savage and...final. This was the dark side all her instructors warned her about. It was the sum of all Jedi fears, and it was the reason why Jedi like her had to learn to control their fear, lest they become no different than the dark ones that assaulted their space station.
With no time to mourn, Tal had a decision to make. She grasped the hilt of her lightsaber with one hand and glanced away from the magenta blade melting its way through the door to get a good look at the console projecting the holographic image of Korriban. The planetary sensors had been fixed on the landing site of the Crimson Craaw with a green digital reticle marking the area and status indicators next to the highlighted site. She committed the coordinates to memory and moved over to the command and control console. While an attempt to send out a distress call had been made before the officer had been neutralized by the Force, the hostiles' ship was actively jamming communications from the primary comm array.
With time running short, Tal used her security codes and brought the battery-powered emergency contingencies online. With Falorn and Orys gone, Tal was recognized by the computer as the acting commanding officer of the watch. There was no power to the weapons, but there was a proton torpedo tube running on independent power in case of extreme circumstances. She opened the tube and fired the warhead which raced out several dozen kilometers away from the station before releasing its payload consisting of a clustered collection of small secondary comm transmitters. She redirected the primary distress signal to the new comm units that were self-positioning themselves around Korriban using a difficult-to-jam shortwave signal. Once the signal reached one of the units, it bounced and amplified the message continuously to all the others generating a wide-band network to broadcast the distress signal out of the star system and hopefully make it to the Republic. Satisfied that it was working as intended, Tal turned and proceeded to the escape hatch, but her time was up, and her way was blocked when the door was compromised. She lit up her lightsaber holding it at chest level and to the side in a classic Ataru stance, the last living beacon of hope for the station, all alone in the night.
"Three little Jedi, all alone in the deepest recesses of ignored space," came the sing-song voice of the invaders' lithe Nautolan leader, the ruby lipstick lining her mouth a stark contrast to her pale, enticing features. A magenta plasma blade was pointed directly at Tal, and beside her stood her Kaleesh companion. "Charged with the protection of the ancient and absent wonders of the almost-forgotten Sith. No one to call for help - no one to save them when the true dark side comes calling." Nala grinned. "Your masters are either negligently shortsighted, or dangerously arrogant. I sincerely hope you are not, little one."
"You forget one thing, murderer," Tal said as she backed off slowly, the C&C console to her side, her tone soft and even, yet seasoned with a spicy peppering of cold antipathy. "A Jedi always has something to call upon." She took one hand off her lightsaber, and in the same motion threw a gust of telekinetic force at the console activating two rapid-fire blaster turrets on opposite ends of the control center, both targeting the cultists. Tal dove and took cover behind the console. She hoped the dark siders were untrained or inexperienced in dealing with blasters, but expected they were capable enough given the success they had taking out two of the Order's best Shadows. She just needed to distract them long enough to circle around and get into the escape hatch. The Republic was soon to be alerted of the attack, but she still needed to warn the Crimson Craaw visitors on Korriban and get them to safety, or at least try to make a stand there until reinforcements arrived.
The blaster fire from across the room bore down upon the cultists who shielded the blasts with their magenta and vermilion blades. Kelderesh began to pace towards them, shielding Nala from the blast, "Cut down that child and let us end this," he snarled over his shoulder.
Nala looked at the sorcerer with daggers in her glowing eyes as her lightsaber form dropped into a reverse-grip shien posture, her slender arms twisting and contorting in quite the unnatural fashion to deftly spin away the oncoming blaster fire. As if suddenly discovering her impetus at Kelderesh' unwanted 'encouragement', the Nautolan and her lightsaber, a pure extension of her body, began dancing their way through the storm of plasma, weaving this way and that until she was wholly upon the Kel Dor survivor once more.
As quickly as Axion's apprentice had fallen into Form V, the sharp hilt of her weapon now spun back into a standard grip as Nala reached her target, the lightsaber's brilliant-but-irregularly-coloured blade arcing down towards the padawan's exposed weapon arm in the perfect execution of a Makashi cho sun slice.
The Kel Dor barely managed to bat aside the smooth strike with a basic deflection, but not before the magenta blade bit into the sleeve of her robes and lightly on the epidermis layer of her skin. The white hot pain was intense, but not a concern to focus on as a follow-up slash came at her. This one she deflected in a single motion in mid-air whilst performing a no-hands side cartwheel flip. She landed easily on both feet, and had her back to the wide observation window, and Kelderesh to her front and left, and the vicious Nautolan minion to her right in pursuit.
Reaching through the laser fire, Kelderesh clenched his claw and crushed one of the turrets before flinging it to one side to knock into the other. The second damaged turret flailed around and spat lasers wildly before the Kaleesh drew forwards and severed its remaining connection to the control panel. With the laser fire subsided, the sound of a com chime could be heard and then a fatigued gravelly voice came through the speakers.
"Is anyone still in the control room?" came the voice of Lameer, the last fully-fledged Jedi on the station still alive, "One of these bastard killers has followed me to the power core. He caught me with some kind of explosive, but I'm alright. I have him locked out for now. Look, I've replaced the fried couplings down here, but the system keeps telling me the power conversion matrix is misaligned. Tal, if you're there, please help!"
"Lameer!" Tal cried out, panicking. Oh no, he's in trouble! she thought worriedly as Nala pressed the attack. Why couldn't I sense him before? She couldn't help him, and had almost no chance of helping herself. These Dark Jedi were immensely powerful, and it was only by the grace of her advanced Shadow training that she could barely hold off the angry Nautolan, but her Ataru was faltering under the sophisticated Makashi onslaught, and the Kaleesh was about to join his evil comrade and stack the odds against the valiant Padawan. The escape hatch was too far away, and Tal had no tricks to spare. This was it. The Force was about to take her from this life. I failed you, Master Falorn. I failed us all.
“Tal! You’re still there!” Lameer’s voice echoed back, distorted on the backup coms channel, “What’s going on up there? Wait, never mind, how do I re-align the power matrix?”
“Your young friend is too busy to help you, Jedi,” Kelderesh shouted towards the microphone, while keeping his burning yellow eyes fixed on the Kel Dor apprentice, “I respect your desire to cling to life, but you have been outmatched so simply accept your fate. We claim this station in the name of Axion and his continued glory.”
“Axion?” Lameer repeated, trying to recall, “The Cult of Axion? Your master is not Sith, what do you want with the forbidden world?”
The banter between the Kaleesh and Lameer had caused a brief distracted lull in the Nautolan's offense, and there was a bit of a tense standoff. The passage of time had accounted for but a mere few seconds, but it was long enough for Tal to hear the luminous call of the Force. She could feel its enlightening influence come over her, guiding her, bringing her a moment of fleeting peace greater than any she'd felt in many years. Her next action was one she would never had dared conceive of, or attempt on her own, but she had no choice but surrender all her faith in the power that enveloped her mind as the Force gave her body the impulse to whirl around with almost supernatural celerity and hurl her lightsaber like a javelin at the reinforced glass of the observation window.
Her Nautolan adversary had seen what she was going to do, and ferociously slashed Tal's extended throwing arm clean off, but it was already too late as the triumphant Padawan screamed in agony as she collapsed to the floor. The blade of the Kel Dor's gleaming blue lightsaber met its mark and was firmly embedded into the glass, quickly burning through the transparent metal coating whilst the glass around the impact site was fracturing with widening and expanding cracks. The warriors of both light and darkness had only seconds before the great equalizer, the vacuum of space, consumed all life and air in the room.
Although the overwhelming desire to end the young Jedi's miserable life compelled Nala to thrust her lightsaber through Tal's gut, her excessive sense of self-preservation almost called her away without taking any retribution against her one-armed foe. However, not one to avoid a certain element of self-indulgence, she permitted herself one deft swipe of the blade up and across the surface of the Kel Dor's back, all part of the same spinning motion she used to fling herself at a nearby terminal, its archaic design sporting a protrusion she was able to cling on to in just enough time before the glass finally shattered. Across the room, Kelderesh had been just as savvy, his claws wrapped tightly around his own hastily-found handle.
A great whoosh accompanied the creation of the new hole in the Korriban orbital station, the mind-numbing noise and stellar stresses of the sudden shift drowning out the blaring klaxons, redundantly informing the few remaining occupants on the station of Tal's daring gambit.
Nala tried to scream across at the Kaleesh, the emergency override system closer to his position than her own, but the loss of atmosphere and chaos now tearing this section of the station asunder left her inaudible, her rage within the Force her only true presence against the encroaching calamity of space's life-ending nothingness.
The apprentice of Axion would not die this way, she swore to herself, vengeance swelling within her. Not from suffocation. Not because of a child. The face of the traitor Mentis briefly flashed across her mind, incensing her in this moment as a cause for this near-catastrophe. For all her understanding of the pale weasel's plight, she would revenge herself upon him tenfold for this fiasco.
“Tal!” Lumeer shouted down the com channel as he heard a terrible clattering then distortion from the other side before the line turned to static, “Oh Tal…”
In the Force, he could feel her frantic life essence had faded somewhat but still clung to life. But he could no longer speak to her and certainly not reach her in his current predicament. Having failed to obtain the information he required he looked around the chamber he had sealed himself in to find something that might help him realign the power matrix.
This was the control room for the main power generator, which lay on the other side of heavily reinforced transparisteel. He could still partially see the cybernetic Devaronian that had followed him down to the power core. He was around the other side of the generator, tinkering with some contraption behind the door Lameer had hastily sealed behind himself. If he did restore power, the door would probably spring back open, but it was a risk he had to take to have any chance of rescuing Tal and mounting a final defence against these dark-siders.
A small droid maintenance hatch allowed generator access for machines, but it seemed as though none of the regular astromechs were docked there. He had seen a few droid parts littered about the station; it seemed that a number of machines and robots had been sabotaged by the crew when their minds were breached by the invaders. However, there was one little astroprobe droid in its cradle that was left intact.
Lameer jumped down to the lower level, where the docking stations were: his hooves clattered against the solid metallic flooring as he landed. He plucked out the droid, which on closer inspection was a J3 series, and set it down beside him; it was a tiny droid, normally used alongside a larger, more specialised model but it seemed to be his only hope of restoring power to the station.
He tapped its head and it rocked on its axis slightly, “Hey, little droid. Wake up: the station is in danger.”
With an uncomfortable low-level binary response, the droid chirped back to life and looked up at Lameer before posing a question in the machine language.
“Up here,” Lameer grabbed the droid again and jumped up to the computer console once more, which caused the atroprobe to let out an uncomfortable squeal, “We need to realign the power matrix. How in the known galaxy do we do that?”
Now beside the monitor, the droid produced an extended interface arm from its miniature form and plugged into the console, still running on backup power. It considered for a moment, just long enough for Lameer to give another uneasy glance across at the Devaronian before turning back to the console as it began to flash:
POWER MATRIX RE-ALIGNMENT COMPLETE. GENERATOR ACTIVATION IN 3…2…1…
With a groan of effort and a heavy shaking of the surroundings, the generator whirred back to life and lights began to return as power flowed back to the station.
“You did it already!” he expressed his surprise towards the tiny droid, “But that means…”
He spun around and, as feared, the Devaronian had already sped into the room and stood with a smirk between him and the exit.
"Thanks, 'Patch'," Tolmin Voq said casually with a nickname he made up on the fly as he directed the Force straight onto Lameer's throat. Voq had trouble figuring how to choke with his power, or do anything to others beyond the surface level. So he instead used it to snag the throat and quickly hoist his target off the floor a few feet, then let go of the neck and followed up with heavy telekinetic blow to the gut sending the half-Bothan back hard against the power core housing and falling face-first to the floor. "You just made my job so much easier."
He then saw Lameer reach for his lightsaber. As the weapon rolled across the floor to its owner's mental call, it was intercepted with a hard downward cleave from one of Voq's double crimson red plasma blades, rending the Jedi's weapon in two. "Nice try, bud. You got spunk, I'll give you that. Now...hold still." He switched off his saberstaff and put a swift steel-toed boot to Lameer's face to kick him over onto his back. He then grabbed the winded Jedi by the collar of his guardian's outfit and pull him up to meet him face-to-face. "It's your lucky day, my friend." A metal knuckle sandwich jabbed Lameer's face drawing blood and making the Jedi see stars. "I'm not gonna kill you just yet."
Voq hooked his hands under Lameer's arms, reached up to the back of his head and put him into a full-Nelson hold, and forced him to stand up wit the might of his cyber-enhanced strength. "You see, I like a captive audience," he hissed in Lameer's right ear just as he kicked the back of the half-Bothan's left knee, shattering it at the joint. Voq, ignoring Lameer's cries of pain, lowered his victim to his knees, and in a military police maneuver, pulled the Jedi's arms down and behind his back and quickly zip-tied his wrists together, then was thrown down to his side and had the same binding done to his ankles. "You're gonna lay here and watch me work. This will be my magnum opus. My biggest boom yet! You'll get a front-row view of the fireworks. In fact, you're gonna be part of the show! Hahahaha!"
Tal had never known exposure to the vacuum of space until today. As she was blown out the command deck, losing consciousness from the wicked plasma slash on her back courtesy of that heartless aquatic female, the young Kel Dor woman had just enough strength in her to notice that it was true what the zero-G training instructor back on Coruscant had said about the smell of space: it reeked of the vague stench of burnt Gizka steak, although some thought it smelled a bit like burnt toast or the breath of a bantha. She didn't, however, have enough in her to notice her utility belt automatically trigger its trio of magnetized hook harnesses to fire at the station's hull.
She slipped into unconsciousness as she soared through the perfectly silent void, but was snapped back to reality when her inertia was slowed and then halted suddenly when the small harness lines reached their tension limit. Gradually, as she was being drawn back to the station by her gadget and turned in time to see the emergency blast shutters sealing off the command deck. There was, however, no signs of the invaders out in space with her. As a Kel Dor, she enjoyed the benefit of having a slim chance to survive in space for a minute or two thanks to her respirator and physiology. She, however, was grievously wounded, lacking an arm, and had a severe back injury that may lessen her survival time. On her own, she was doomed. All she had left was the Force. As she started to lose consciousness again, she begged the Force for help. She just needed enough to work her way to the droid maintenance hatch which led to the escape pod she originally sought before Lameer's voice came up on the comm system.
Lameer...he was fading from the Force now. Someone got to him too. Tal turned to Korriban, and cursed that wretched world. Still, she had to get there. She had to get those people to safety, or at least warn them to leave before it was too late, even if it was the last thing she ever did.
Meanwhile, little did Tal know, that other starships were inbound to the system, and they were not the reinforcements from the Republic she signaled for...
TBC
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