Coruscant, Friday Fandom Time
Feb. 27th, 2009 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weetuskenraiderWell, getting out of the turbolift had been fun; luckily Mara'd had the access code to deactivate the security system, but Tahiri was still living down the mortification of nearly cutting Bhindi's head off when she'd lost her balance while trying to cut a hole through the lift doors.
They'd cleared out a chamber in the building to set up camp, and over the past several days' worth of exploration come to figure out that the building they were in was some huge scientific complex. Finding parts of both droids and sentient beings scored with lightsaber burns wasn't exactly reassuring, and neither was the dead ysalamiri they'd found. Or the fact that, judging from the lightsaber scoring on the walls, whatever this dark side being was, it was three meters tall. As if being around Kell wasn't making Tahiri feel short enough.
Bhindi had cobbled together a droid from parts scavenged around the complex, and most of the group was interrogating it now; Tahiri'd excused herself from the proceedings, though. The constant lingering dark side presence was wearing on her, and every time she looked at the droid Riina Kwaad's voice was in her mind, muttering something about abomination. Volunteering to stand guard was a convenient enough excuse to avoid the questioning. When she finally got back Danni filled her in on what they'd discovered: thirteen years ago, a human male had been installed in the suspended-animation tank (only disguised as a devourer tank, of course) she'd found, subjected to growth hormones and cybernetic stimulation for years on end and augmented with armor modifications.
She hadn't pressed for details; the process sounded way too similar to a technological version of what the Yuuzhan Vong did to their own bodies, and she found it horrifying from either perspective. But the sum of it was about that they were dealing with a three-meter-tall Force user going by the name "Lord Nyax," who was now on the loose in a completely incomprehensible world. This had to be what she got for complaining about not getting to do anything.
***
They'd been on the trail for hours now, finding such lovely evidence as Yuuzhan Vong bodies cut into seven or eight neatly cauterized pieces, and the walls were crawling with dark-side energy that sent unpleasant sensations down Tahiri's spine and stirred up too many thoughts she'd rather not have been thinking. She knew, of course, that Luke and Mara weren't having much fun with it either, and envied the Wraiths their lack of Force-sensitivity.
"Our Dark Jedi again. Or whatever they are," Mara observed, coolly eyeing another dismembered Yuuzhan Vong body.
"Dark Jedi might be able to impose their will on normal people," Tahiri said, wrapping her arms around herself; she could feel herself shaking and wanted to throw up. "But not on fully trained Jedi. This was like jumping into an ocean of the dark side of the Force. It was like feeling Anakin die again. And wanting again to die with him." It was a horrible sensation, made even worse by the fact that she couldn't quite put into words why it was so bad. Wasn't ready to put it into words, anyway. She locked her shielding down tight and turned her back on the others so her expression wouldn't give her away.
"I wonder," Luke said, "what it's going to be like to confront them face-to-face. The Yuuzhan Vong are invisible to the Force. They couldn't feel it. We aren't. Especially the Jedi."
"I had a thought on that." That was Face, standing guard over the entryway with his blaster rifle. "A tactic I've used from time to time in bad situations."
"What's that?" Luke asked.
"Snipers. Set up a couple of kilometers away in a blind with a laser rifle and someone who really knows how to use it, and when your enemy wanders by, 'zap.'"
Luke smiled. "Not exactly fair."
"Who wants to be fair?"
***
Several days' worth of investigation later, they knew that their Lord Nyax had been one Irek Ismaren, a Dark Jedi in training who'd taken a lightsaber to the skull and technically died, but whose mother had used an army of medical droids to keep his body functioning, then tried to turn him into some kind of new Imperial tyrant. And then he'd killed her. To make things more complicated, Baljos surmised that they were dealing with someone who could function to a specific set of programming, but not communicate verbally.
"He's had almost all humanity burned out of his brain. He's just a predator whose only goal is to dominate," Baljos had said. Oddly enough, it made Tahiri feel a little bit better about herself. She might not have been able to get rid of Riina Kwaad, but at least she still had her humanity.
***
And now Tahiri was crouched beside a hole in a wall with Luke, Face, and Kell while Mara reported back from her precarious perch on a metal girder a couple dozen meters out. Below them was a chamber with a sticky-looking black floor, full of Coruscant citizens excavating some kind of giant machine, all of them turned into listless, mindless drones by something -- mind control had been their guess, Lord Nyax's work. That wasn't a pleasant thought; it brought to mind the people on Yavin 4 after the Yuuzhan Vong had taken that moon, a memory that was all tied up in Anakin, and she could have wallowed in it. Part of her wanted to.
But more and more, she was discovering, she didn't really need to hold on to that to keep herself going.
Down in the chamber below she thought she heard the faint, tinny sound of sheet metal being moved aside, and she felt Mara's alarm for the split second before she was nearly flattened by the sheer malevolence of the Force presence that had just entered the building. If Tahiri'd had the brainpower to spare, she might have thought that after this she'd never complain about the last week she'd spent in Fandom again, because she couldn't block him out of her mind and neither, according to the comm chatter, could Luke or Mara. She struggled with the alien emotion for a while -- really, really should have done more work on her mental blocks -- while the sounds of sudden chaos swelled in the chamber. About twenty Yuuzhan Vong warriors had swarmed into the chamber and the workers, all of them affected by the same hatred that Lord Nyax was projecting, had turned on them in a mob. A frenzied, but not very effective mob, and the Yuuzhan Vong were cutting them to pieces easily with their amphistaffs.
The next thing she knew, Luke and Mara had dropped into the chamber below . . . helping, of all people, the Yuuzhan Vong, who were in turn getting cut down with brutal efficiency by Lord Nyax.
When Tahiri finally got a glimpse of him, she could see why -- red lightsaber blades protruded from the backs of both his hands, as well as from his knees and elbows. Well. With three Jedi that made . . . two blades apiece?
"If I make it out of this," she muttered to herself as she sprinted for the stairwell to help them out, "I owe Dinah big time for that eskrima practice."
[OOC: NFI, NFB, OOC okay, oh, you know the drill by now. Yes, this is still Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston from which some dialogue has been appropriated and other things adapted.]
They'd cleared out a chamber in the building to set up camp, and over the past several days' worth of exploration come to figure out that the building they were in was some huge scientific complex. Finding parts of both droids and sentient beings scored with lightsaber burns wasn't exactly reassuring, and neither was the dead ysalamiri they'd found. Or the fact that, judging from the lightsaber scoring on the walls, whatever this dark side being was, it was three meters tall. As if being around Kell wasn't making Tahiri feel short enough.
Bhindi had cobbled together a droid from parts scavenged around the complex, and most of the group was interrogating it now; Tahiri'd excused herself from the proceedings, though. The constant lingering dark side presence was wearing on her, and every time she looked at the droid Riina Kwaad's voice was in her mind, muttering something about abomination. Volunteering to stand guard was a convenient enough excuse to avoid the questioning. When she finally got back Danni filled her in on what they'd discovered: thirteen years ago, a human male had been installed in the suspended-animation tank (only disguised as a devourer tank, of course) she'd found, subjected to growth hormones and cybernetic stimulation for years on end and augmented with armor modifications.
She hadn't pressed for details; the process sounded way too similar to a technological version of what the Yuuzhan Vong did to their own bodies, and she found it horrifying from either perspective. But the sum of it was about that they were dealing with a three-meter-tall Force user going by the name "Lord Nyax," who was now on the loose in a completely incomprehensible world. This had to be what she got for complaining about not getting to do anything.
***
They'd been on the trail for hours now, finding such lovely evidence as Yuuzhan Vong bodies cut into seven or eight neatly cauterized pieces, and the walls were crawling with dark-side energy that sent unpleasant sensations down Tahiri's spine and stirred up too many thoughts she'd rather not have been thinking. She knew, of course, that Luke and Mara weren't having much fun with it either, and envied the Wraiths their lack of Force-sensitivity.
"Our Dark Jedi again. Or whatever they are," Mara observed, coolly eyeing another dismembered Yuuzhan Vong body.
"Dark Jedi might be able to impose their will on normal people," Tahiri said, wrapping her arms around herself; she could feel herself shaking and wanted to throw up. "But not on fully trained Jedi. This was like jumping into an ocean of the dark side of the Force. It was like feeling Anakin die again. And wanting again to die with him." It was a horrible sensation, made even worse by the fact that she couldn't quite put into words why it was so bad. Wasn't ready to put it into words, anyway. She locked her shielding down tight and turned her back on the others so her expression wouldn't give her away.
"I wonder," Luke said, "what it's going to be like to confront them face-to-face. The Yuuzhan Vong are invisible to the Force. They couldn't feel it. We aren't. Especially the Jedi."
"I had a thought on that." That was Face, standing guard over the entryway with his blaster rifle. "A tactic I've used from time to time in bad situations."
"What's that?" Luke asked.
"Snipers. Set up a couple of kilometers away in a blind with a laser rifle and someone who really knows how to use it, and when your enemy wanders by, 'zap.'"
Luke smiled. "Not exactly fair."
"Who wants to be fair?"
***
Several days' worth of investigation later, they knew that their Lord Nyax had been one Irek Ismaren, a Dark Jedi in training who'd taken a lightsaber to the skull and technically died, but whose mother had used an army of medical droids to keep his body functioning, then tried to turn him into some kind of new Imperial tyrant. And then he'd killed her. To make things more complicated, Baljos surmised that they were dealing with someone who could function to a specific set of programming, but not communicate verbally.
"He's had almost all humanity burned out of his brain. He's just a predator whose only goal is to dominate," Baljos had said. Oddly enough, it made Tahiri feel a little bit better about herself. She might not have been able to get rid of Riina Kwaad, but at least she still had her humanity.
***
And now Tahiri was crouched beside a hole in a wall with Luke, Face, and Kell while Mara reported back from her precarious perch on a metal girder a couple dozen meters out. Below them was a chamber with a sticky-looking black floor, full of Coruscant citizens excavating some kind of giant machine, all of them turned into listless, mindless drones by something -- mind control had been their guess, Lord Nyax's work. That wasn't a pleasant thought; it brought to mind the people on Yavin 4 after the Yuuzhan Vong had taken that moon, a memory that was all tied up in Anakin, and she could have wallowed in it. Part of her wanted to.
But more and more, she was discovering, she didn't really need to hold on to that to keep herself going.
Down in the chamber below she thought she heard the faint, tinny sound of sheet metal being moved aside, and she felt Mara's alarm for the split second before she was nearly flattened by the sheer malevolence of the Force presence that had just entered the building. If Tahiri'd had the brainpower to spare, she might have thought that after this she'd never complain about the last week she'd spent in Fandom again, because she couldn't block him out of her mind and neither, according to the comm chatter, could Luke or Mara. She struggled with the alien emotion for a while -- really, really should have done more work on her mental blocks -- while the sounds of sudden chaos swelled in the chamber. About twenty Yuuzhan Vong warriors had swarmed into the chamber and the workers, all of them affected by the same hatred that Lord Nyax was projecting, had turned on them in a mob. A frenzied, but not very effective mob, and the Yuuzhan Vong were cutting them to pieces easily with their amphistaffs.
The next thing she knew, Luke and Mara had dropped into the chamber below . . . helping, of all people, the Yuuzhan Vong, who were in turn getting cut down with brutal efficiency by Lord Nyax.
When Tahiri finally got a glimpse of him, she could see why -- red lightsaber blades protruded from the backs of both his hands, as well as from his knees and elbows. Well. With three Jedi that made . . . two blades apiece?
"If I make it out of this," she muttered to herself as she sprinted for the stairwell to help them out, "I owe Dinah big time for that eskrima practice."
[OOC: NFI, NFB, OOC okay, oh, you know the drill by now. Yes, this is still Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston from which some dialogue has been appropriated and other things adapted.]
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Date: 2009-02-28 01:36 am (UTC)