Medical Mystery

Posted on Fri Jul 29th, 2022 @ 8:56pm by Thane & Bomoor Thort & Amare & Valavai Tarses

3,534 words; about a 18 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VI: The Last Bastion
Location: Infirmary, Disra Palace, Bastion
Timeline: Follows "The Plot is Afoot"

OLD

Tarses released the button and continued staring harshly at Thane. "It seems I underestimated your ability to control your apprentice," he said, maintaining his characteristic self-control. "She has already killed several of my men back in the research lab. I let that go and ignored her surly attitude because of the bigger picture and that most of them had disgraceful records to say the least. But this has crossed the line." He rose to his feet and added, "Bomoor may come and assist if you wish, but you wear our uniform now, and as her commanding officer, responsibility for this incident falls on you and you alone. Bastion law requires you to bring order to this chaos immediately. Surely you understand the paramount importance of maintaining order and discipline, yes?"

A shadow had fallen over Thane's expression, his pale, chalky pallor seeming to have grown colder in the preceding moments, and much of the blue in his eyes seemed lost in a thick swirl of unnatural gold. The look of fury that he had offered to match Tarses' own had not dissipated, although he seemed to be looking directly through the grand moff rather than at him. When he finally spoke, his voice carried an arcane timbre. "I bear no responsibility for the actions of a Sith, Grand Moff," he said. "But, she will learn the lessons from this latest failure."

NEW

When Valavai Tarses, Thane, and Bomoor arrived at the heavily guarded sealed door to the infirmary, they could hear the shouting match from inside over the comm system.

"Let me be perfectly clear to you, doctor," Amare could be heard with bitter enmity, "my secrets are Sith secrets. It is not for you or any scientist to take from my body that which does not belong to you."

"Please, madam," the research physician plead squeamishly, "let the sergeant go. These men will not fire. You have my word."

"Do you take me for a fool?!" Amare shouted at him. "You already lied to me once. You said it was a kolto pain blocker, but it was anesthetic. You tried to knock me out when I told you I wanted to be awake for the surgery! Now, where is Thane? This man's life is forfeit if he is not here within the next minute. If I have to cut my way through this entire facility, then--"

"That's enough," Tarses said as he struck the nearby wall panel to shut off the comm. "Open the door."

The security technician allowed herself no hesitation when given the word and the way into infirmary was open. Tarses took the lead, hands casually at his back as he entered with Thane and Bomoor following in. Amare anxiously took notice at the old man's arrival and visibly tensed up, her right hand inching her active shoto plasma blade perilously closer to the sergeant's throat whose back was against the wall. In her left hand was the sergeant's blaster pistol aimed at the three guards who in turn had their pistols trained on her. Doctor Lamelle had his hands up and another guard was passed out on the floor from his arm nearly being sliced off at the shoulder, but was still breathing.

Tarses assessed the situation, his inner fury held back barely by a thread.

"Master!" Amare exclaimed with relief, but also was deeply concerned by his potential reaction to her actions. "They tried to imprison me against my will! This Doctor Lamelle wanted to put me back into the container in the lab that I escaped after they captured us and the Raptor."

"For her own safety," Lamelle clarified to Tarses. "She has some kind of...enzymatic anomaly in her body. A parasite or symbiont. We're not sure. We need to learn more about it to be certain of what we're dealing with, not to mention the effects it is having on her wounds."

Tarses, while losing patience, stood aloof to their claims. He had already made clear to Thane and Bomoor what was expected of them, especially to the former. He awaited to see how Sith deal with one of their own who dared to step out of line.

Thane said nothing initially, the unnatural glean of his eyes focused entirely on Amare. He seemed to pay no attention to the others that were present, as if he not even noticed they were there or recognised their words. He had paused in his track when he first entered, examining his apprentice with a cold ire, but he now stepped forward, boots clipping loudly on the sterile floor of the infirmary, walking between the stand-off between the Imperials and Amare.

As he began pacing closer, each of the guards stiffened up when, quite suddenly, their blasters were torn from their grip and brought to suspend in the air before them, the barrels trained on each of their heads, although Thane's eyes did not deviate from Amare as he concluded his advance. Now, as he stood before her, the gun she had trained on the doctor began to shake in her grip, before that, too, was torn away. However, as Doctor Lamelle tried to move, that same power pressed him against the wall, arms and legs pinned, albeit he was able to breathe and move his head. At the same time, the wrist of Amare's hand that was holding the shoto began to judder, as the rudimentary Force barriers she employed struggled against the tide of power from her master.

Slowly, but surely, as Amare could be seen straining and tensing against the telekinetic force acting upon her limb, the blade came away from the sergeant's throat and moved awkwardly towards her own, its off-green sheen casting a sickly shade across her blue, alien feature - although the sergeant, too, remained pinned in position, the three victims of the would-be Dark Lord crushed beside one another in a row, incapable of controlling their own bodies.

Throughout it all, Thane did not raise a hand.

The sergeant, still pinned against the wall, was now beyond his ability to self-control himself and was actively wetting his trousers finding Thane's presence and power far more frightful and insane than even the enraged Nautolan lass. The other officers, now disarmed, each lost more than a little colour in their faces, the lieutenant swallowing back his fear having never seen such a telekinetic display in his life. Not even the most brutal Mandalorian champion could inspire such nerve-wracking tension and fear of death.

"Is this what you think it means," he said, voice slow but dripping with venom, as he echoed the words he had uttered to her on Yavin, "to be a Sith?"

Amare recognized those words, and they made her blood boil. The tension of the memory Thane's seething inspired in the apprentice's veins feeling like a sutured wound that was ready to burst again with added salt thrown in for good measure.

"I acted to uphold our code, master," she answered through gritting teeth as fire was building in her forearm and wrist as she kept fighting against Thane's power to keep her own hand from slashing her throat with her shoto. "These men attempted to chain me down against my will. Would you not fight if someone attempted to rob you of your freedom...your life? I was defending mysel--unnaaaghh!"

She screamed just as she felt something rip inside her body. With her other hand divorced of the pistol it held, she clutched at her abdomen and slowly fell to one knee, the pain not of Thane's doing. The azoth in her bloodstream held back the doctor's anesthesia as long as it could, but the dose was heavy, enough to knock out a young bantha, and she was wavering. She struggled to try and press the power trigger on the shoto, but couldn't move her thumb far enough to reach it.

"Your life was never in any danger!" Dr. Lamelle cut in, barely to speak, and completely powerless to move. "We performed the scan...found the shrapnel. She's close to a major arterial rupture if we don't remove it right away...or it may be too late."

"Don't...need...your help..." Amare struggled to rebuff the doctor's words as clear serosanguinous goo slipped past her guarding hand. Her extremities were nearly cold as ice, and the colour in her face was reaching levels of pallor close to that of a certain famous (and long dead) Sith Emperor.

Tarses, visibly or tonally unperturbed by Thane's might, turned to the security technician and spoke softly, but Bomoor was close enough to hear. "Have the droids transmit the footage of the incident here and check the logs for security authorizations around the time the scan was taken. I want to know if someone gave the order to subdue the Nautolan."

The tech nodded vigorously and scrambled out of the room past Bomoor to carry out her orders wanting to be as far from that crazy Sith magic as possible.

Tarses had a hunch that the evidence he needed to counter Anthark was in the medical records. He had his suspicions about Dr. Lamelle for some time, and given the good physician's defensiveness, it seemed a strong possibility he was acting under Anthark's direction.

Thane's eyes narrowed, his attention more clearly split between the different tangents unfolding around him. He glanced around the room, although still paid little heed to the unarmed guards still held back by their telekinetically purloined weapons. The room was filled with advanced equipment, rivalling even the most sophisticated laboratories offered by the Third Republic and Reborn Jedi Order, but Amare's conflict with her attendants had left it in disarray - a regular feature since the arrival of the Red Raptor crew.

Finally, he released the hovering blasters and he summoned Amare's lightsaber rapidly, catching and deactivating it in one swift movement, releasing both her hands to cradle herself. The sergeant was thrust away through the Force, towards Tarses and Bomoor, whilst Lamelle remained struggling against the cold wall.

Thane stepped within arm's reach of Amare and looked down at her. The initial rage that had punctuated his arrival had begun to diminish but his focus remained sharp.

"I do not resent you seeking to defend yourself," he said, tone still dry and accusatory, even as he regarded the suffering Nautolan, "but you must learn when and how to have these battles. Your rage and hubris, coupled with your current state of injury, has left you locked in a temporary stalemate. You might have killed these individuals - senseless murders, beneath us - and you may have escaped down a corridor, but it would have only been a matter of time before your wounds or the sheer numbers of your foes felled you. In that same process, you could have ended all that is stood to be gained here, for your lack of control. Do not forget: you are heir to Sith - you are invaluable."

His eyes now shifted to the doctor finally, whom he regarded sceptically and did not release from the invisible bonds binding him to the wall. The man's fear was palpable, even to non-Force users, yet the origin of that destructive emotion remained elusive. Saying nothing to Lamelle, Thane instead knelt beside Amare and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Your rage... your rage at them, at me, for what I said, for what I have done - for reminding you of your last punishment... Use it." Thane drew his head down, in an attempt to prompt Amare to make eye contact with him. "Purge yourself of the chemical. Burn it from your blood and muscles. Seize control of your body; as with all things, bring the Force to heel and excise the rot."

Tarses casually walked over to where Lamelle was, hands still behind his back in typical military fashion, and stood tall and looming over the doctor, gazing down harshly at him.

"I will ask this only once," Tarses said firmly, "who gave the order to sedate Amare?"

Lamelle was already in a state of panic, but he knew that look in Tarses' steely green eyes, the cold terror-inspiring kind that indicated an uncompromising ultimatum. A sizable number of very powerful people over the years died to the consequences of being under that hard gaze, and a few times by the vintage DE-22 pistol at the Grand Moff's side. The situation had gone completely sideways for the doctor. If he honestly answered the question, he was done for. If he refused to answer, it was likely over as well. If he lied...well, it was possible that pistol would claim another victim right on the spot. Tarses was a principled man of law and order, but he had been known to bend and break the rules when the situation deemed it permissible, including public executions.

Amare's face was a mess of sweat mixed with tears, doing as her master commanded, but her focus was more immediate on what was causing her the most harm. Gnashing her teeth together, she dipped two fingers into her wound, expecting a world of hurt, but instead found it surprisingly numb. Breathing heavily, she closed her eyes, probed with the Force to get a feel for the location of the foreign object in her body, and started counting softly between breaths.

"One...two...three...aaahhh!"

And just like that, her wound gave birth to a gnarly jagged little chunk of bloody soaked shuttle bulkhead. She gingerly removed it and held it in her palm in front of her for Thane to see.

"That Thendleton schutta...I'll rip...rip him...to pieces...unngh..." She swooned and collapsed against the wall, sitting against it for support as she coughed up some blood away from Thane. "Leave me, master...I'll be...I'll be right as rain soon..." She was starting to lose consciousness as she muttered, "Too soon to die...have to kill you first... remember?" She chuckled weakly at him, finding the whole situation with him and the Rule of Two absurd, but it was reason enough to go on for Thane's sake at the very least. She'd come too far to just give up living for the Sith dream so soon.

The metal fragment parted from Amare’s grasp and floated up to halt in the air and be examined by Bomoor, who had now approached where Amare lay.

“Thendleton was indeed an awful man,” the Ithorian’s voice spoke gravely as he rotated the piece before him to examine before willing it to sit atop a nearby counter, “But he may not be that man anymore. He will certainly do you no more harm today so leave him be.”

Kneeling down at her side, Bomoor placed a palm over the open wound, now seeping fresh blood from where Amare had reached in to pull out the metal.

He turned to face Thane, “Go, you sort out this incident with the doctor and Tarses. I am still not quite myself, but I will try to heal the wound as best I can.”

"My thanks," Amare shared her gratitude to Bomoor in barely more than a whisper. "I...missed this side of you. Your face...it's changed a little...I saw what you did to Thendleton. Perhaps you're...nngh...more Sith than I am."

Bomoor cast a worried look at the young woman like a troubled parent observing their wayward child, “Perhaps we should worry less about how Sith we are and just focus on keeping each other safe,” he spoke more softly, allowing what healing energy he could to flow through his palm and begin stemming the bleeding and further encouraging Amare’s already-miraculous healing ability. In spite of the trauma he had recently inflicted himself and the young woman’s own reckless violence, a warmth still shone through his actions towards her.

As he continued tending to her, Tarses took a step forwards and pointed a stern finger towards Doctor Lamelle.

"Silence is an unacceptable answer, doctor," Tarses said with narrowing eyes as he saw Lamelle stammering and hesitant to answer, appearing to be on the verge of a panic attack.

It was then that young security yeoman arrived, saluted with a "sir!" and handed the Grand Moff a datapad. Tarses, still holding his glare at the miscreant physician, held up a hand, accepted the pad, and signed off on it. The yeoman saluted and left the medbay as Tarses viewed the contents for a moment and then passed it over to Thane.

"Evidence," the Grand Moff stated, returning his gaze to Lamelle. "It confirms your apprentice's claims. She was indeed defending herself from an unauthorised medical procedure. Seems the doctor was given the order from a military intelligence agent using one of their anonymous clearance designations."

"The second attempt in one day on the lives of my friends," Thane said slowly, a dour expression on his face as he loosely observed Bomoor's treatment of Amare and regarded Lamelle. "The reach of this Moff Anthark and his Company allies cannot be belittled or underestimated; our circumstances have already propelled them to attempt two murders - and within the palace itself."

Tarses turned to the three security officers that just rearmed themselves after Thane had unceremoniously showed them just how useless they were in the face of the Force. "Place Doctor Lamelle under arrest for assault, attempted kidnapping, and conspiracy to harm an officer of Bastion." He looked down at the other security grunt still writhing in pain on the floor with his lightsaber wound to the shoulder. "Nurse, tend to this man's injuries on the double!"

The guards stepped forward to seize control of the wayward physician, although at least two of them initially hesitated, as even their strict training and decorum wavered at the dark figure standing between them and Lamelle, and how quickly the circumstances had shifted focus from the Nautolan to their fellow citizen. Regardless of these unspoken considerations and concerns, they followed their orders and arrested Doctor Lamelle.

"I am new to your country, Grand Moff," Thane spoke, briefly offering dark glances to Bomoor and Amare before turning his physical attention to Tarses, his voice quiet enough for just the four of them hear, "but I have to wonder what the currency may be between the good soldiers and officers of Bastion. "Loyalty, perhaps, but to a man, or to a regime... or a concept?" To add plan meaning and obvious context to his words, he glanced at the departing soldiers and their prisoner with gold-rimmed eyes. "The Sith have returned, Your Excellency. Let that be the deciding factor."

"Your dark abilities are indeed potent," Tarses admitted evenly, gazing into the Caanan's eerie gold-altered eyes, "but I urge you never to underestimate the power of politics. Heed this old man's advice: on Bastion, there is always a knife at the back of every man and woman here. Sometimes those knives are tangible, most times it's political. If you don't learn how to evade them, you will most certainly die." He turned to glance at Amare who was defiantly trying to force herself back onto her feet with Bomoor's assistance and switched his gaze back to Thane once more. He then departed the room to attend to urgent business elsewhere.

"Knives..." Amare spat between groans as she was slowly getting back to her feet, a hand still guarding her wound. "...He should try missiles. Heh...if I ever became that old...and...ungh...jaded, I'd shoot myself on general principle. Masters..." now addressing both Thane and Bomoor, "I...I know coming to this place was important to you, and I'll support you as long as you need me to, but...ugh...as you can see, we're targets now. I'm starting to feel we had better odds on Korriban."

Bomoor started to ease his support of Amare as she could hold herself upright under her own steam. He then stood back beside Thane, casing a brief glance over towards where Thendleton lay tossing and turning towards the rear of the Medbay.

“The very fact that we have been targeted means that Anthark’s allies believe we pose a genuine threat to their corruption on this old Imperial world,” he turned back towards the injured young woman, “If we abandon it now and allow the corruption to run its course, then the ripples of those actions may lead us to a far darker future. Besides, we have already committed ourselves through our words and actions here. We must see this through to the bitter end.”

Initially, Thane's eyes had followed Tarses as he left the room, glowering after the powerful officer with a dark expression. Listening to his friend speak, he turned his ethereal gaze, which was only now beginning to vaguely susbide, towards Bomoor and Amare.

"No doubt," he agreed with Bomoor, his posture stiff and manner cold, irritated and focused. "We are a threat to their corruption. Here, and across all the Third Republic." As Amare's eyes came to look upon him, he gave a small nod to her. "To the bitter end."

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