Coruscant, Wednesday Fandom Time
Feb. 25th, 2009 05:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weetuskenraiderBefore they'd left Borleias, Tahiri had opted not to be there when Han and Leia had taken the Jedi students, along with a few civilian children and baby Ben, off to a new safe hiding place. She knew some people suspected that she wanted to avoid seeing Tarc, but even if it did hurt to look at him she'd paid the boy whose face had been changed to look just like a young Anakin's no mind, other than feeling sorry for him for having the poor luck to end up a pawn in Viqi Shesh's attempt to kidnap Ben. Mostly she just wanted some time to herself, because if she was going to spend the next Force-only-knew how many days around Luke and Mara, she didn't need the extra flustered discomfort of saying goodbye to a tiny, tiny version of her boyfriend.
It had been a good call, because while the Wraiths were an interesting group, Tahiri was finding that they -- Kell Tainer especially -- got on her nerves. She guessed that in their line of work, constant wisecracks were just a way of coping, a guess backed up by the fact that they'd made landfall on Coruscant by riding in individual, unpilotable pods that had burned up on re-entry. Tallin might have thought it was fun, but Tahiri never wanted to do that again, thanks very much.
She'd only ever been to Coruscant a handful of times before it had fallen to the Yuuzhan Vong, and she'd always felt lost in its planetwide forest of skyscrapers, but looking at it now, the buildings abandoned, the holographic ads dark, the sky empty of airspeeders and spacecraft, all of it starting to give way to vegetation that ate through duracrete and metal, it was completely foreign to her. She had to keep fighting down the small voice in her mind whispering that it would be better this way, once it was purged of the abomination of machinery.
She was on rearguard, trailing the rest of the group; all of them were disguised as Yuuzhan Vong warriors, even though she and Luke, especially, looked far too short even by the standards of the relatively diminutive shaper caste. But members of the shaper caste wouldn't be armed the way they were anyway, or sport the kind of facial alterations their makeup and ooglith masquers did. Some of the others had opted for makeup and fake vonduun crab armor, and Tahiri had to hand it to the Wraiths' engineer, Baljos Arnjak, for doing such a good job with the synthetic equipment. Hers was real, though, live and occasionally twitching, as was the (albeit altered) ooglith masquer that gave her the appearance of four sharp nail-like spikes protruding from each cheek and deep, red crisscross scar patterns on her jaws and neck.
Up ahead, at the front of the group, came a yell in the guttural snarls of the Yuuzhan Vong language; unlike the others, Tahiri didn't need a tizowyrm to translate it for her: "Stop where you are! Tell me your name, domain, and mission!"
"I am Faka Rann," came the reply -- Face Loran, the Wraiths' leader. While it was a good impression the inflection came off just the slightest bit wrong to her. "My mission is the destruction of abominations and the training of my warriors. Do not hinder me."
As she and Kell -- and wow, did she ever feel short next to him -- came up to flank Face, Luke and Mara on his other side, she could see seven Yuuzhan Vong warriors, most with their amphistaffs already at the ready. Face uncoiled the fake amphistaff from around his own waist and snapped it into rigidity; it was a very good imitation of the real thing.
The oncoming unit of warriors halted ten meters away and the leader looked at them. "This is our designated zone," he said. "Who has commanded you to hunt here?"
"No one has commanded us!" Face's tone was sharp and mocking, even to Tahiri's Yuuzhan Vong-attuned ear, and she could see why he was so good at what he did. "We are not on duty. We seek personal glory."
"If you are not on duty, your mission is subordinate to ours. Make way."
Tahiri cringed. That wouldn't go over well at all with any Yuuzhan Vong warrior, and she'd briefed the team on this kind of behavior; there was going to be a fight now. It was practically required. She shifted so that her lightsaber was in position to draw it easily from beneath the armor, knowing that Luke and Mara were probably doing the same.
"If you are on duty," Face said, "then your mission is less important than ours, for you hunt only at your superiors' orders, while we hunt because it makes us great. You make way."
The enemy stared at him -- it was a stalemate that lasted for just a few seconds, and then the warriors charged. Tahiri saw Kell grab the leader, spin him around, and slam him into a transparisteel panel whose restraints gave way, sending the warrior tumbling from the walkway. A split second later she heard the snap-hiss of two lightsabers igniting along with her own.
As Luke parried an amphistaff blow, his opponent screamed, "Jeedai!" Other voices in the crowd picked up the cry until it was almost deafening.
Tahiri saw Luke take a wild swing at one of the warriors, who ducked out of the way; the blow continued onto the arm of the warrior she was facing and severed it when the blade found the unprotected elbow joint. He roared, more in anger than in pain, as his arm and amphistaff dropped to the walkway floor. Tahiri took advantage of the moment to kick him -- she'd learned from that encounter back on Borleias and added an extra Force shove to the motion -- knocking the warrior back into the second line of fighters.
Of course it couldn't be that easy. All of a sudden there were at least twenty warriors charging them from the opposite building, and more swarming from the walkway opening. Most of them were screaming "Jeedai!"
For the briefest moment, as Kell turned and ran, Tahiri felt a surge of startled betrayal. She ducked an amphistaff swing, and blasterfire crackled over her head before she could stand, dropping her opponent with a smoking hole in his throat.
Then the next wave of warriors reached them, and suddenly there were too many amphistaffs, thud bugs, razor bugs, and knifelike coufees to stand firm against. The Wraiths were firing for all they were worth, and she, Luke, and Mara were batting razor bugs out of the air with every swing that wasn't blocking an amphistaff.
"Fighting retreat!" Luke shouted.
Something -- a hand-sized black box with glowing figures on one side -- arced between Luke and Mara from behind. "Suggest we retreat fast," Kell shouted, pouring blasterfire down into the Yuuzhan Vong. "Ten."
"What was that?" Luke asked, chopping off a Yuuzhan Vong warrior's hand at the wrist.
"You know what it was. Seven. Six."
Tahiri and Mara kept pace as Luke began to back away fast, and Face and Kell kept pumping blaster bolts into the crowd.
They'd almost backed into the opening to the building when Kell's explosive charge detonated, except now the walkway was a wall of fire rushing toward them.
Tahiri felt a sharp Force tug as Luke hurled himself backward, taking her and Mara with him. They landed several meters back in the building corridor, still deflecting thrown thud bugs and razor bugs. Then the fiery flash from the explosion roared across the intervening Yuuzhan Vong and past the Jedi, momentarily blinding them, hammering them backward. Once the blinding light of the explosion had faded, Tahiri caught sight of Luke's lightsaber whirling in a spectacular defensive motion to block yet another amphistaff. Blasterfire from the Wraiths and Danni Quee was pouring all around them.
By the time they'd finished off the last few stragglers, the walkway was gone. Only smoke and the jagged edges where it had once joined the building suggested it had ever been there. Even with their ears ringing from the explosion, they could hear the smashing, grinding noise as its wreckage descended three or four hundred meters to the boulevard below.
They stood panting for a moment, Jedi, Wraiths, and scientist, staring at one another. Finally Luke said, "Anyone hurt?"
"I got grazed by a thud bug," Danni said. "But it hit the armor. It only knocked me down."
"Something of a disastrous encounter," Luke decided. "But at least we don't have any injuries."
"It was a very successful encounter," Face said. "Very promising." Tahiri decided right then and there that all the Wraiths were crazy.
Luke frowned. "How so? Now they know we're here. That Jedi are here."
"No. First, I think they were all on the walkway. So no one alive knows that Jedi are here."
"Until they find the bodies," Mara pointed out. "With distinctive lightsaber burns on them."
Face shrugged. "You have me on that one. But second, more important, until those lightsabers came out, they believed we were Vong. The disguises, and my extraordinary diligence in learning some conversational Yuuzhan Vong during the last couple of years, are working. We can expect them to work again."
"Good point."
Face's tone became professionally worried. "So, does that count as my turn, or do I have to check out the next walkway?"
Luke grinned. "It counts as your turn."
"The next one," Kell said, "will be twenty or thirty flights down. We'd better get to it."
Bhindi slapped the back of Kell's helmet. "That one is going to have been hit by debris from this one, Explosion Boy. We go up."
His tone subdued, Kell said, "I knew that."
Tahiri just groaned, and tried not to roll her eyes too hard behind her faceplate.
[OOC: Still with the NFI/NFB/OOC-okay dance. Dialogue and some narrative taken and/or adapted from Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston, who needs to write more of the Wraiths, dammit, because I loves them. This is the first of two posts from me today, so, um, sorry? Only one tomorrow though, promise.]
It had been a good call, because while the Wraiths were an interesting group, Tahiri was finding that they -- Kell Tainer especially -- got on her nerves. She guessed that in their line of work, constant wisecracks were just a way of coping, a guess backed up by the fact that they'd made landfall on Coruscant by riding in individual, unpilotable pods that had burned up on re-entry. Tallin might have thought it was fun, but Tahiri never wanted to do that again, thanks very much.
She'd only ever been to Coruscant a handful of times before it had fallen to the Yuuzhan Vong, and she'd always felt lost in its planetwide forest of skyscrapers, but looking at it now, the buildings abandoned, the holographic ads dark, the sky empty of airspeeders and spacecraft, all of it starting to give way to vegetation that ate through duracrete and metal, it was completely foreign to her. She had to keep fighting down the small voice in her mind whispering that it would be better this way, once it was purged of the abomination of machinery.
She was on rearguard, trailing the rest of the group; all of them were disguised as Yuuzhan Vong warriors, even though she and Luke, especially, looked far too short even by the standards of the relatively diminutive shaper caste. But members of the shaper caste wouldn't be armed the way they were anyway, or sport the kind of facial alterations their makeup and ooglith masquers did. Some of the others had opted for makeup and fake vonduun crab armor, and Tahiri had to hand it to the Wraiths' engineer, Baljos Arnjak, for doing such a good job with the synthetic equipment. Hers was real, though, live and occasionally twitching, as was the (albeit altered) ooglith masquer that gave her the appearance of four sharp nail-like spikes protruding from each cheek and deep, red crisscross scar patterns on her jaws and neck.
Up ahead, at the front of the group, came a yell in the guttural snarls of the Yuuzhan Vong language; unlike the others, Tahiri didn't need a tizowyrm to translate it for her: "Stop where you are! Tell me your name, domain, and mission!"
"I am Faka Rann," came the reply -- Face Loran, the Wraiths' leader. While it was a good impression the inflection came off just the slightest bit wrong to her. "My mission is the destruction of abominations and the training of my warriors. Do not hinder me."
As she and Kell -- and wow, did she ever feel short next to him -- came up to flank Face, Luke and Mara on his other side, she could see seven Yuuzhan Vong warriors, most with their amphistaffs already at the ready. Face uncoiled the fake amphistaff from around his own waist and snapped it into rigidity; it was a very good imitation of the real thing.
The oncoming unit of warriors halted ten meters away and the leader looked at them. "This is our designated zone," he said. "Who has commanded you to hunt here?"
"No one has commanded us!" Face's tone was sharp and mocking, even to Tahiri's Yuuzhan Vong-attuned ear, and she could see why he was so good at what he did. "We are not on duty. We seek personal glory."
"If you are not on duty, your mission is subordinate to ours. Make way."
Tahiri cringed. That wouldn't go over well at all with any Yuuzhan Vong warrior, and she'd briefed the team on this kind of behavior; there was going to be a fight now. It was practically required. She shifted so that her lightsaber was in position to draw it easily from beneath the armor, knowing that Luke and Mara were probably doing the same.
"If you are on duty," Face said, "then your mission is less important than ours, for you hunt only at your superiors' orders, while we hunt because it makes us great. You make way."
The enemy stared at him -- it was a stalemate that lasted for just a few seconds, and then the warriors charged. Tahiri saw Kell grab the leader, spin him around, and slam him into a transparisteel panel whose restraints gave way, sending the warrior tumbling from the walkway. A split second later she heard the snap-hiss of two lightsabers igniting along with her own.
As Luke parried an amphistaff blow, his opponent screamed, "Jeedai!" Other voices in the crowd picked up the cry until it was almost deafening.
Tahiri saw Luke take a wild swing at one of the warriors, who ducked out of the way; the blow continued onto the arm of the warrior she was facing and severed it when the blade found the unprotected elbow joint. He roared, more in anger than in pain, as his arm and amphistaff dropped to the walkway floor. Tahiri took advantage of the moment to kick him -- she'd learned from that encounter back on Borleias and added an extra Force shove to the motion -- knocking the warrior back into the second line of fighters.
Of course it couldn't be that easy. All of a sudden there were at least twenty warriors charging them from the opposite building, and more swarming from the walkway opening. Most of them were screaming "Jeedai!"
For the briefest moment, as Kell turned and ran, Tahiri felt a surge of startled betrayal. She ducked an amphistaff swing, and blasterfire crackled over her head before she could stand, dropping her opponent with a smoking hole in his throat.
Then the next wave of warriors reached them, and suddenly there were too many amphistaffs, thud bugs, razor bugs, and knifelike coufees to stand firm against. The Wraiths were firing for all they were worth, and she, Luke, and Mara were batting razor bugs out of the air with every swing that wasn't blocking an amphistaff.
"Fighting retreat!" Luke shouted.
Something -- a hand-sized black box with glowing figures on one side -- arced between Luke and Mara from behind. "Suggest we retreat fast," Kell shouted, pouring blasterfire down into the Yuuzhan Vong. "Ten."
"What was that?" Luke asked, chopping off a Yuuzhan Vong warrior's hand at the wrist.
"You know what it was. Seven. Six."
Tahiri and Mara kept pace as Luke began to back away fast, and Face and Kell kept pumping blaster bolts into the crowd.
They'd almost backed into the opening to the building when Kell's explosive charge detonated, except now the walkway was a wall of fire rushing toward them.
Tahiri felt a sharp Force tug as Luke hurled himself backward, taking her and Mara with him. They landed several meters back in the building corridor, still deflecting thrown thud bugs and razor bugs. Then the fiery flash from the explosion roared across the intervening Yuuzhan Vong and past the Jedi, momentarily blinding them, hammering them backward. Once the blinding light of the explosion had faded, Tahiri caught sight of Luke's lightsaber whirling in a spectacular defensive motion to block yet another amphistaff. Blasterfire from the Wraiths and Danni Quee was pouring all around them.
By the time they'd finished off the last few stragglers, the walkway was gone. Only smoke and the jagged edges where it had once joined the building suggested it had ever been there. Even with their ears ringing from the explosion, they could hear the smashing, grinding noise as its wreckage descended three or four hundred meters to the boulevard below.
They stood panting for a moment, Jedi, Wraiths, and scientist, staring at one another. Finally Luke said, "Anyone hurt?"
"I got grazed by a thud bug," Danni said. "But it hit the armor. It only knocked me down."
"Something of a disastrous encounter," Luke decided. "But at least we don't have any injuries."
"It was a very successful encounter," Face said. "Very promising." Tahiri decided right then and there that all the Wraiths were crazy.
Luke frowned. "How so? Now they know we're here. That Jedi are here."
"No. First, I think they were all on the walkway. So no one alive knows that Jedi are here."
"Until they find the bodies," Mara pointed out. "With distinctive lightsaber burns on them."
Face shrugged. "You have me on that one. But second, more important, until those lightsabers came out, they believed we were Vong. The disguises, and my extraordinary diligence in learning some conversational Yuuzhan Vong during the last couple of years, are working. We can expect them to work again."
"Good point."
Face's tone became professionally worried. "So, does that count as my turn, or do I have to check out the next walkway?"
Luke grinned. "It counts as your turn."
"The next one," Kell said, "will be twenty or thirty flights down. We'd better get to it."
Bhindi slapped the back of Kell's helmet. "That one is going to have been hit by debris from this one, Explosion Boy. We go up."
His tone subdued, Kell said, "I knew that."
Tahiri just groaned, and tried not to roll her eyes too hard behind her faceplate.
[OOC: Still with the NFI/NFB/OOC-okay dance. Dialogue and some narrative taken and/or adapted from Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston, who needs to write more of the Wraiths, dammit, because I loves them. This is the first of two posts from me today, so, um, sorry? Only one tomorrow though, promise.]
