This story is a work of fan fiction and is not endorsed or approved by George Lucas or LucasFilm. The characters and situations are based on the Star Wars RPG sessions Ward and friends enjoyed in college, and which I had the privilege to observe on more than one occasion.
Stirrings of Darkness and Light
© Mark W. Chesner, January 1999
A dark shadow swept across the milky expanse of the Dar Yash nebula. An observer might have wondered at the tiny patch of star-studded night sky that had broken loose, making its way across the cloud of dust and methane gas. The planetoid of Dar Kaleel glinted silently, a craggy oblong spheroid made up of ruddy-brown iron compounds and the occasional outcropping of golden quartz. The overall mass was significantly less than that of most self-respecting moons.
Frell squealed quietly from the rear of the Bear Claw, enhanced X-Wing of Special Forces Sergeant Bob Kleindschmidt. The droid was almost lost amidst the myriad of stars painted across the otherwise jet-black exterior of the hybrid starship. Bob stifled the urge to shush the agitated R2 unit. He could feel every hair on his neck standing on end as they approached the planetoid.
The droid warbled and sensor readings encompassing 97% of the electromagnetic spectrum scrolled across the X-wing’s heads-up display. Only visible light was being emitted and even that was simply reflected light from the stars overhead and the white dwarf sun of the tiny Dar Simpta system. He warbled again and the readings were replaced with particle wave signatures. Not so much as a stray graviton was being emitted by the planetoid.
“I don’t like it. Patch me into the fleet channel. Use Ghost Bear Alpha encryption.” Bob whispered into his comlink. The rock was too quiet and something told him they were being watched. But his orders were clear. “Kleindschmidt to Ghost Bears. No sign of any sensors. We’re going in. Meet at rendezvous point Kappa Nine.”
He pulled back on the stick and headed for the magnetic north of the planetoid. Hopefully, even if there was someone watching, their sensors would be blind at the pole.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
“Shut up, Cat!” Lance Corporal Shibu growled at the nervous bothan. The feline alien’s fur was rippling up and down his spine in a mix of embarrassment and extreme agitation. Shibu scratched the scar under his right eye and felt the wires beneath his skin connecting his bionic eye to the remains of his optic nerve. He was growing tired of Cameron’s constant pessimism.
“Why should I, rancor-face?” Corporal Cameron Roe was equally tired of Shibu’s violent optimism about these missions. It was he who was forced to sneak around and probe into the most dangerous areas of enemy bases, while Shibu satisfied himself by hurling missiles and blaster bolts at every moving thing. “What are you going to do, detonate me?”
Shibu smiled at Cameron, his mismatched blue human eye and silver replacement eye glinting with equal malevolent glee. He patted the missile tube strapped in beside him and slipped off the safety from his repeater rifle with a click he knew would be obscenely loud in the bothan’s ears. “Any time, anywhere.”
“Would you guys shut up?!” The nasal voice of Private Larry Bann came urgently across the comlink. “Bob is expecting us at the rendezvous point in five minutes!”
Shibu and Cameron sighed in unison. Nothing could bring them together faster than an over-eager rookie. Shibu suddenly winked at Cameron with his droid eye and clicked in a short sequence on his auxiliary controls. Suddenly, they heard a gasp over the comlink.
“Guys, I need some help! Someone just locked onto me!”
Cameron’s fangs showed from his wide smile and the fur at his temples rippled in silent laughter as he watched Shibu’s work at their targeting computer. By rotating the frequency of the targeting scanners repeatedly through the imperial range, the demolitions expert was keeping the rookie’s astromech droid from locating the source of the lock or evading it.
“Don’t worry, loser-boy, we’ll take care of it. You just make a run for it towards the rendezvous point. We’ll vaporize the bogey when he shows himself to chase you.” Larry’s human ears were far too primitive to catch the slight mocking inflection he put to his voice. Humans might be nonsensical lumbering things, but they were fun to play with.
“Roger, Cat!”
The X-wing’s engines ignited with a blue fury and the ship was almost to the edge of the nebula. The leering ghost-bear emblem on each wing seemed to be smiling, sharing in the joke.
Shibu leaned back and clicked off the targeting computer. Cameron looked quickly over the gnarled face and short-cropped jet-black hair. The smile was gone, but he could see that the human’s eyes were shining with amusement and satisfaction. His graveled voice rumbled in the small space of their smuggler yacht.
“With you around, we always have to be ready for a little cat-and-mouse game, right?”
Cameron indulged in a rare chuckle and punched up the engines to follow the rookie out of the gas-cloud. He could still feel the darkness at the back of his thoughts, but hoped this was the auspicious beginning to a simple and uneventful mission.
Kleindschmidt looked up as Larry Bann’s X-wing tore out of the nebula, trailing a long tail of nebular dust and gas behind him. He shook his head as he saw the rookie twisting and turning in a classic imperial academy display of evasive maneuvers. Bob looked across the sensor readings and saw no increase in any kind of emission. He hoped that meant no one else was noticing Larry’s antics.
Bob spoke quietly across the squadron frequency. “Having fun up there, Rookie?”
“Bob!” Larry’s voice carried a mix of self satisfaction and adrenaline. No matter how scared he was, the neophyte was having fun. “Watch my tail! Cat and Shibu are chasing down some imperial scum behind me!”
Bob checked his sensors again and spoke patiently across the comlink. “Who is chasing you, kid?”
“I don’t know, sir, but they had me in target lock until I broke out of the nebula. I suspect it must have some kind of cloaking device, because I couldn’t find it on any of my screens!” The private was gasping with exertion as he pulled his X-wing into a barrel roll.
“Larry, let me share a professional secret with you. There’s a trick to finding an enemy on your tail.” Bob paused to let his words sink in. “You look behind you.”
“What?” The rookie’s voice seemed more pinched than usual.
Suddenly, the elegant curve of Cameron’s smuggler’s yacht broke through the edge of the nebula. The ancient cloakshape fighter quickly twisted itself free of the nebular gases and headed toward the rendezvous point slowly, taking care to avoid any area of space which might betray their presence. They quickly settled into a slow polar orbit a half-kilometer from the Bear Claw. Bob imagined he could hear the snickering of the two veterans aboard without checking his comlink.
“Simple rule. You see nobody, nobody’s shooting at you, nobody’s talking to you, chances are nobody’s there.” Bob spoke slowly for the benefit of the youth. “Except when someone is. Now get down here! You look like you’re trying out for the imperial academy’s stunt flyers!”
The rookie was silent as he pulled himself out of the latest barrel roll and headed toward Dar Kaleel’s pole. Bob hoped no one below had scanned them... Or even looked up and seen the acrobatics. They had purposely left behind the female contingent of the team in order to provide the smallest possible target for Imperials. Now he was wondering if they’d manage to get even get to the surface without being seen. Oh, well. Their squadron had made it through worse, and this was group was the core of every successful Ghost Bear mission. A few more X chromosomes were unlikely to make a big difference. He saw Larry Bann move silently into position on the far side of the smuggler yacht.
“Okay people, listen up.” Bob spoke in quick clipped tones. He wanted them focussing on his voice and not on practical jokes, past, present, or future. “Quick review of the mission. The admiral dispatched us here the long way to make sure the Dar Simpta system was clear for the fleet to pass through. Intelligence has gotten reports of some kind of Imperial bio-weapons lab on this planetoid and it is our job to check it out. This is a quick recon. Get in, get out, make as little noise as possible. This means YOU, Shibu.”
He heard a snort over the comlink. He wondered who was doubting Shibu’s self-control. Then again, their demolitions expert hadn’t been nicknamed “The Little Nova” by Imperial Intelligence for nothing. Rumor had it that he was working to get renamed “The Super Nova.”
“Here’s the specifics: Larry and I will head over and land in the equatorial region and try to penetrate into this rock through a deep fissure at east longitude 118 there that we believe leads into a hidden hangar for TIE-fighters. We’ll scout around for evidence of the defensive threat of this place. Cat and Shibu will head to the cavern at coordinates 15 north latitude by 120 east longitude. Intelligence is guessing that spot is the traditional Imperial back door to the base. Not for ships, but only for the occasional scout walker or space trooper. You two will infiltrate at that point and take a look around. Scout for any sign of Imperial presence and see if you can’t swipe either something from the computer core or maybe an officer or two. We need some hard intel, in case the admiral wants to clean out this system.”
Bob paused to let things sink in. His people were highly skilled, but not known for their attention spans.
“Any problems, contact on comlink channel 19 using Ghost Bear Zeta encryption. We have seventy hours for this mission. At 0200 two days from now, we meet back at rendezvous point Lamdba 7” (a clearing in the nebula about seven light minutes from the planetoid) “and head back to the FarStar for some R&R. We bring back anything interesting, I have a promise from the admiral that we actual get to shower before being sent out on the next mission. Questions?”
“Does this mean we actually get a few hours away from the rookie, boss?” Shibu’s voice rumbled across the comlink. “Better be careful, you might spoil us!”
“Hey!”
“Don’t worry about it, loser-boy.” The Cat chimed in. “That’s just Shibu’s way of saying he’ll miss you.”
“Only if I don’t aim straight...” Shibu’s comment was barely audible over the comlink.
“Okay, boys. Be careful. This rock is so quiet, Frell thinks it is holding its breath. We don’t want to go sticking our leg in a Wampa’s mouth, right? Slow, steady, and stealthy.” Bob stepped in before things got out of hand. Larry was still new enough to the team that he couldn’t tell the difference between Shibu’s jokes and threats. Then again, Bob wasn’t sure that he always could. “Let’s go. See you in seven-oh.”
The engine of each ship flared blue-white and they streaked away. The dark feeling was growing stronger at the back of Cameron’s mind, but he dismissed it as pre-mission jitters.
Cameron slid the yacht slowly into a crevice barely larger than the bulky ship on the cushion of his repulsors. He could hear Shibu’s teeth grinding together next to him as the scarred human watched the walls of the cavern come within millimeters of the cockpit windows. The bothan allowed himself a smile and eased the ship slightly to the side. He laughed as Shibu swore loudly at the sound of the rock wall against the side of the ship.
“Don’t worry, Shibu,” Cameron purred. “I’m just trying to get your smell off of the side of the ship. We don’t want Imperials tracking us down by sniffing your stink.”
Shibu sighed loudly as the ship was brought quietly to a halt and the repulsors were powered down. He looked angrily at the alien for a long minute. Suddenly, he smiled.
“Don’t worry, Cat,” he rumbled through his teeth. “If it comes to that, I’ll bet I can hide my body odor with the smell of scorched fur.” He lifted his blaster rifle meaningfully.
Cameron smiled back and snapped off his harness. He walked to the storage lockers behind the cockpit and pulled out a pressure suit for himself. He quickly squeezed his four-foot body into it, careful to never take his eyes off of the unpredictable human. The fabric of the suit pulled at his fur and he resented for the thousandth time the hairless species that could slip into and out of space suits like a second skin. He always came out of a space walk with a terrible case of static electricity that could last for weeks.
Shibu watched the Cat struggle his way into the pressure suit and walked quickly over to the armor he had been issued for the mission. Adapted from captured Spacetrooper armor, the suit snapped quickly into place, and even had a shoulder mount for his beloved missile tube. It was painted with a green and brown camouflage pattern and sported the Ghost Bear logo above the heart. He checked that the system readings showing on the tiny screen at his wrist were all green and twisted on the mirrored helmet that had replaced the traditional storm-trooper headpiece. He smiled behind the reflective surface as he watched Cameron’s eyes trying to find some point to focus on as he stared at the armor. Nothing intimidated an opponent more than being unable to figure out what the other guy was thinking or feeling. Shibu latched on the missile tube and shouldered his repeater rifle, grateful for the enhanced strength that the armor provided. Normally he would have had to choose between weapons. Now he was a one-man wrecking crew. He pulled on a bandolier of thermal detonators and looked at himself in the mirrored surface of a nearby system screen. He looked as deadly as he had hoped.
“You ready, feline?” Shibu rumbled into the armor’s comlink. He smirked as he saw the Cat slip on the helmet to the pressure suit and strap on his blaster pistol and vibro-blade. The bothan was here to sneak and snoop, but Shibu resolved to make sure the little kitty got to rock and roll as well. “Or do you want to use the litter box before we go?”
Cameron glared at the mirror face.
“I suppose that walking monstrosity has a latrine built-in?” He spoke the words forcefully. “Humans never did mind making a mess of themselves. I suppose you prefer to pee while clothed.”
Shibu chuckled over the comlink and they made their way out of the ship into the vacuum outside. Cameron was struck by the clarity of the stars overhead and the visible colors of the nebula overhead, ranging from deep infrared to bright ultra-violet. It contrasted sharply with the dull exterior of Dar Kaleel which seemed to be made up of three colors: brown, dark brown, and darker brown. He padded forward slowly and observed the occasional flash of reflected color from an outcropping of quartz. He wondered how such a dung-heap of a world found its way into surroundings of such beauty.
“Enjoying the vacation, Cat?” Shibu’s voice sounded like a shout in the earphones of the pressure suit’s helmet.
Cameron felt the fur rippling along his chest in the bothan pattern of extreme annoyance, but held his tongue. The human could only see a fraction of the spectrum that he could. He would have no way of appreciating the extreme beauty of the surroundings.
“I know that you’re supposed to be our scout and science specialist and all that,” Shibu continued his rumbling rant. “But can I make a little observation that you seem to have missed while looking for catnip in the sky?”
“Go ahead, Hutt-breath,” Cameron hissed into the comlink. He hated when humans tried to act superior. It always ended in disappointment for all involved.
“Well, Dar Kaleel has about 1/100th the mass of a standard planet, right?” Shibu spoke slowly, obviously enjoying this.
“Yes.”
“And we didn’t pick up anything different while flying in here, right?”
“Correct.”
“Well, then why aren’t we bouncing all over the place on this rock? It should have 1/100th the gravity of a standard world.”
Cameron jerked he head around to stare at the mirrored face of Shibu. He hadn’t noticed the gravity. There had been no difference in sensation between the artificial gravity system on the smuggler’s yacht and the sensation felt on the surface of this world. He quickly pulled out the sensor padd tucked into the pocket at the rear of his pressure suit and keyed it for graviton emissions.
“Something is wrong,” he growled. “My readings show a graviton field exactly as expected for Dar Kaleel. 0.98 meters per second per second gravitational acceleration. But it feels like we’re home on Bothawui!”
He looked back at Shibu with grudging respect. He nodded his thanks, even while he noticed that the darkness at the back of his mind was growing ever-stronger. Something was very wrong here. But their mission was clear.
He darted quickly forward, dropping to all-fours when necessary to stay balanced when dashing from shadow to shadow. He was not going to be ambushed on this rock. He could feel Shibu’s armored footsteps several steps behind, causing the ground to shudder at each step.
After a half hour of walking, they came to the cavern identified by intelligence as the Imperial “back door.” All Imperial bases were built with at least one additional escape point so as to ensure that even an overwhelming force could not be victorious without risking the escape of some soldiers to carry word of the enemy back to the fearsome Emperor. Several foolhardy Moffs had learned the error of underestimating the ingenuity of Imperial informants and the anger of the Emperor himself at the beginning of the New Order. Cameron had heard stories of the gallery of severed heads that the emperor kept on his throne world of Coruscant to commemorate his vengeance upon each upstart Moff. Only the bothans had been able to sneak such rumors out of Imperial Center. But even then it had cost lives.
The cavern seemed far darker than would be expected even in the light of the white dwarf sun of the Dar Simpta system. Cameron darted into the cavern, his blaster drawn and was shocked when the darkness parted like a light fog and suddenly he stood before a six-meter tall door. He glanced behind him and saw Shibu crash though a curtain of dark energy which had hidden the door, and for a moment Cameron, from the human’s sight.
Cameron waved the demolitionist back to a covering position as he pulled out his scanner padd to examine the door. The door was set deeply into the rock and would probably stand up fairly well against a proton torpedo attack. He pulled up the readings on the installation and saw that the field that had obscured the door was still interfering with his instruments. He smacked the side of the padd to see if he could clear the display. After several slaps, he reached into the side and pulled out a long wire lead. He quickly found the computer terminal at the base of the door and plugged himself in.
A universe of data swam across the screen of the padd and he struggled to make some kind of sense out of the jumble of information. He quickly input a shroud of code around his intrusion to counteract any intruder countermeasures within the Imperial programming. He then began to weave a web of scan lines to pull significant data out of the bit-stream. After several minutes he could feel the darkness at the back of his mind growing stronger, and yet no discernible pattern presented itself. Either the slicer who built this security system was a genius, or the system had been allowed to fall into a state of extreme disrepair which would delight any chaos theoretician.
“Any luck, Cat?” Shibu rumbled over the comlink.
Cameron glared back at his partner for breaking his concentration. “Shut up! I’m almost in!”
“Right, and I’m grandmother to the Emperor.” The human’s voice tumbled across the line. “Listen, you know how these things work. You don’t get us in quick, I use my firepower to get us in quicker. No matter what Bob said, we’re not getting out of here without some hard data.”
“Fine. I just need another minute.” Cameron sighed. He knew that the human was right. Command might ask for quiet, but what they really wanted was results. He reset the padd and calmed himself, letting a peace fall around him. When he opened his eyes, he suddenly could see a new order to the chaos. He quickly diverted a loose data stream into the buffer of the door’s security system and bared his fangs in glee as he saw the intruder countermeasures overloaded trying to combat the sudden influx of data. When the last A.I. guard was deluged by information from waste extraction, the bothan keyed in a standard imperial code and was overjoyed to see the door rise up almost a full meter and a burst of air rushed out. They would need to crouch, but they were in.
“CAT!”
Cameron whirled around, grabbing out his blaster, as the darkness at the back of his mind suddenly became almost solid thing pressing against his skull. He saw Shibu pulling up his repeater rifle and firing indiscriminately into a mass of darkness which was crashing through the cloaking field. He pulled up his own blaster as the mass suddenly resolved itself into a headlong charge of almost fifty biped creatures wrapped in obsidian organic armor. As he fired and clipped one of the creatures in the face, he saw one of them raise their arm and emit a blinding flash of light which turned the computer terminal behind him into molten slag.
He suddenly knew the darkness in his mind was a mirror for this darkness without.
Frell squealed behind Bob as the X-wings screamed past a sharp iron-ferrite mountain and the target fissure came into view. The crevice was almost seventy kilometers in length and could have hidden several Star Destroyers in the shadows. Frell was scrolling a long list of data across the heads-up display of the hybrid X-wing as the little astromech droid played the sensor array across the opening. But there was still nothing on the display to indicate the presence of technology or life. Bob glanced over his left shoulder and saw the rookie’s ship following him at a discrete distance, holding a strong backup position. They were going to have to visually scan all seventy kilometers and he did not relish the thought of doing it with a hot-shot on his tail.
“How’re you doing back there, kid?” Bob spoke cheerily into the comlink.
“Fine, Bob.” Larry’s voice responded quickly. He seemed none the worse for wear after Shibu’s little joke. “Just hoping we have a chance to vape some TIEs before we have to head back.”
The sergeant shook his head in exasperation. He remembered his first days in the Rebellion, when every firefight had seemed like a party. It hadn’t taken many dead friends or weeks in a bacta tank to cure him of it. Still, he wouldn’t mind a little excitement this trip. Six months of exploring the nebula had left all the Ghost Bears bored and edgy.
“All right, kid,” Bob reached forward and slapped his targeting computers into full alert. “Let’s do this right. Lock S-foils in attack position and fall back into piggyback formation. We’re going to have to eyeball every square centimeter of this rock until we either find some Imperials or go blind. Keep your hand on your trigger and your eye on me. Anything shows its head in the crack, you turn ‘em inside out!”
Bob banked the Bear Claw into a swooping dive as his wings repositioned for attack mode. Frell made a comment about Larry’s flying skill and his choice in copilot droids as the rookie positioned himself just far enough away from their X-wing’s engines to avoid the backwash. Any mistake and Larry would be breathing their exhaust. Frell blipped with amusement and noted that a tan at 10,000 degrees might improve the rookie’s personality. Bob chuckled and was considering his response as they entered the shadow of the easternmost part of the rift and flew inside.
Immediately Bob knew something was wrong. The ship was suddenly handling as though it were flying in a gravity several times that of any standard world and sensors began to come back to life. Frell was squealing in shock as massive lifeform readings appeared on the screens and suddenly a targeting lock warning buzzed through the cockpit.
“Bob!” Larry Bann’s nasal voice tore through the comlink. “My system is showing multiple bogeys approaching from the west! I think we’ve got a squadron of TIEs coming at us!”
Bob winced at the adrenaline in the rookie’s voice. His sensors weren’t showing TIE fighters or anything in the Twin Ion Engine family. It looked like thirty airborne tanks were roaring towards them!
“Kid, peel off - Antilles Maneuver!”
Bob yanked back on the stick and banked the X-wing hard away from Larry to the north as the rookie performed the identical maneuver to the south. The needed to get some distance between them to spit the enemy forces and give them a chance to catch them in a crossfire. He pulled on the stick and turned back to face the attackers.
Suddenly, white-hot bolts of plasma were burning past them and Frell was whining something about the good old days as a kitchen droid. Bob knew the standard range of TIE blasters was 10 kilometers and the bogeys were firing on them with reasonable accuracy from a good thirty kilometers. A bolt spattered off of the Bear Claw’s forward shields and Bob quickly diverted power from the blaster cannons to recharge the weakened screens as he drove his ship upwards and tried to present the smallest possible target for the enemy fighters. He saw Larry diving for the canyon floor as though his ship were only a reflection of the Bear Claw.
Suddenly, the bogeys were all around them. They were about half the length of an X wing, but twice as wide as the body and encased in dark-purple armor. They were approximately circular in shape, with what looked roughly like a head jutting out of the front of each fighter, topped off by two glowing red, compound eyes. The rear of the fighter was parted slightly and white-hot plasma pulsed out in an irregular stream which propelled the fighters at a speed just slightly less than a cruising X-wing. Something like landing gear could be seen tightly held against the lower side of the fighters and glowing cones just below of the “head” were firing the plasma bolts which had made his R2 unit so nostalgic. Just behind the head along the top of the armor, twin blisters could be seen each spaced about twenty meters from the central axis. The blisters were translucent and black-armored, faceless pilots could be seen within.
“Kid! Lock and load! Bob and weave!” The veteran pulled his X-wing out of its climb and dove straight into the pool of enemy fighters, his hand tight on the trigger and his ship pumping out blaster bolts as far as each capacitor could discharge. The bolts did only minor damage to the enemy fighters. He saw the enemy formation looping around behind them and beginning a second attack run.
“Does that make me ‘weave’?” The rookie’s voice laughed across the intercom as he climbed through the cloud of bogeys with his laser cannons blaring.
Bob tapped his fire controls and brought a proton torpedo on-line. He roared by Larry’s ship and turned his ship about to meet the second formation head-on. Frell’s targeting blips quickly merged into a target lock whine and he pressed the firing stud as hard as he could. The torpedo burst from the launcher and roared toward the beetle-like fleet. It smashed into the head of the lead ship and exploded with a burst of flame which spattered the ship like a burst water balloon and sent a cloud of flaming liquid streaming behind it. Bob could see several other ships veering off as their armor ignited. Frell observed that several of the blisters appeared to have burned off of several ships which now seemed to be flying wildly. When the group finally emerged form the cloud, only twenty remained.
“Okay, rookie.” Bob slapped his controls and locked his S-foils into fire lock. “Looks like when they built these things, they forgot all about the pilots. Frell tells me they have no shields and it looks like the pilots are very mortal. Let’s cook these bugs!”
“Roger that, boss man!” Larry pulled up alongside the Bear Claw and flashed a thumbs up. “You spoiled the first batch. Let’s see how they do when their deep fat fried!”
The X-wings juked in opposite directions and fired their cannons simultaneously, hitting the twin pilot blisters on the new lead attack bug. The ship jerked, as if in pain, and veered off suddenly, crashing into it’s neighbor and sending both hurtling down into the crevice.
The other pilots were wiser and quickly pulled away from the X-wing and attacked again from positions which offered little vulnerability for the rebel pilots. But now their secret was out. The modified blaster-cannons of the Bear Claw packed as much punch as a low-yield proton torpedo and they were applied mercilessly to the heads, eyes, and pilot blisters of the enemy. At the same time, Larry’s hot-shot piloting allowed him to pull between enemy ships and had them quickly firing into each other and burning smoking holes in the purple-black armor of their own sides.
The bogeys got several hits on both Ghost Bears, but their shields held and soon the fight was down to only five bogeys against the two X-wings. Three of the remaining fighters had smoking holes in their outer armor from friendly fire, and the other two seemed afraid to engage the X-wings in combat.
“Kid, take the three smokers!” Bob spat out the orders as he slammed his throttle toward the remaining undamaged bogeys. “I’ve got the others. Watch your back!”
The timid fighters pulled up and were heading out of the rift, as Bob’s X-wing climbed at them. He watched as their armor split slightly wider and picked up additional speed - still slightly less than his full-throttle fighter, but fast enough to cause problems. He reached over and keyed two of his remaining three torpedoes into their launchers. He could see that the armor was still slowly splitting as they approached the jagged edge of the canyon, and they continued to pick up speed - soon they would be able to outpace him. Frell’s targeting blips merged into a target-lock whine and he slammed down the trigger.
The torpedoes left the twin tubes at near-light speed and streaked toward the enemy fighters. Suddenly the nearer fighter’s armor split wide open and he saw what looked like massive gossamer wings tear out and attempt to slow the vessel, presumably to brake its ascent and send the missile shooting past. Unfortunately for the fighter, there was no atmosphere to serve as a braking agent and the ship tumbled for only a second before the torpedo slammed into the vulnerable parts beneath the armor and the antimatter reaction scattered the component atoms and chewed away at the remains still large enough to be visible.
The second bogey had likewise split its armor wide, but had used the opening to pump out the greatest possible quantity of propellant. The sudden wall of flame slammed into the projectile and detonated it a half-kilometer from the vessel. The shockwave sent the bug spinning, but did not destroy it. Bob imagined he saw pride in the blank face of the pilots in the blisters before he came up on them and vaporized the pilots and a good deal of the vessel with his blasters.
He pulled away from the falling wreckage and turned back toward the canyon.
Bob smiled as he saw the rookie chasing down one of the smoking bandits, carefully placing his blaster bolts in the already smoking holes and burrowing ever deeper into the wounded vessel. After only a few more shots the ship detonated, and Larry flew triumphantly through the debris.
“Kid, watch out!” Bob slammed his throttle forward as he saw another of the bogeys flying out of the cloud of debris and within spitting distance of the rookie’s X-wing.
But the bogey did not fire. Instead, it extended what Bob had earlier thought to be landing gear and now looked suspiciously like legs. The extensions slammed into the X-wing hull and held it fast as rear extensions shot out and peeled open the cockpit. Frell squealed and shot up a long-range image of the rookie slamming on his pressure-suit helmet at the extensions wrapped around him and yanked him out of the hull. A third pair of legs shot out of the rear of the vessel and tore Larry Bann’s hysterical (according to Frell’s sympathetic comments) astromech droid from its slot.
Bob’s hands flew across the controls, diverting all power to the engines as the enemy ship pulled its captives into itself and flew deeper into the canyon. The remaining wounded bug threw itself at the Bear Claw in an attempt to slow him down, but Frell launched the last torpedo without any word from Bob and the vessel evaporated before even getting off a shot of its own.
The hybrid X-wing flew toward the escaping vessel, which had torn open its ventral armor and flew toward its destination at top speed. He was gaining on it slowly and was about to ask Frell to begin calibrating the targeting computer for precision shooting when the R2 droid suddenly waxed nostalgic. He looked up to see another squadron of enemy fighters heading for them. At their current speed, he would not be able to fire upon the kidnapper ship with any hope of getting Larry out and still have time to pull out before becoming a detonation himself.
Bob keyed up a tactical view of the canyon as he continued to near the bogey. There was no way that he could fire on the fleeing ship. There was no way he could out-fight the approaching squadron this deep in the valley. There was no way he could call in backup any time in the near future.
There was no way he was abandoning Larry to these insects.
“Frell!” Bob slapped the control that gave the astromech droid full control of the X-wing. He reached up and pulled down the mask that could make his flight-suit into a pressure suit. “You feel like some stunt flying?”
The droid warbled back something about his circus days being over and Bob wondered for the hundredth time how the little creature had avoided ever having its memory wiped.
“Okay, bring us in high above the bug that has Private Bann and flip the ship over on its back!”
Frell chirped a question that Bob didn’t bother to translate. There were a whole lot of questions that were worth answering right now. He reached to the side and squirmed to strap on the strormtrooper utility belt that he always carried.
“You really don’t want me to answer that question, now do you?”
He snapped his blaster into its holster on his right side, snapped his fear-stick onto a holder on the left side, and pulled out his vibro blade with his left hand. He could feel it humming. He snapped off his flight straps as the little droid pulled above the escaping bug and turned the ship over. He held himself in place with his right hand as he watched the attacking squadron growing dangerously close to weapons distance.
“Listen up, buddy. Once I’m clear, you turn this thing around hide out wherever you can. When you’re safe, listen for my signal and come running when you hear it. We may need a light speed evac!”
Bob heard the droid begin another questioning chirp that became a terrified squeal just before the air rushed out of the now-open cockpit and the ejection system hurled him down at the bug. He prayed that there really was no wind resistance on the world as he accelerated at an alarming rate down toward the smoking carapace of the kidnapper fighter. Now free of the X wing, he noticed that the right pilot blister had been burned away on the bug, and there were scorch marks all along its body.
He reached over to his left wrist and clicked the pressurization higher as his body steadily approached the armor. He could feel the breath crushed out of his lungs as the pressure doubled and tripled and thought for a moment that his eyes would be crushed out as well seconds before impact. Suddenly he heard a loud pop and felt the armor of the bug beneath him. He plunged the vibro-blade into the body of the bug and keyed it off after it had sunk deeply into the purple-black covering. A welling of sticky fluid quickly cemented the knife into place.
Bob grabbed the makeshift handle now with both hands as he felt the pressure suit sealing itself around him and repairing the holes that his violent landing had torn. Luckily the pressurized suit had cushioned the fall so he was alive to appreciate the feeling of fresh oxygen flowing into his lungs instead of out into the airless void.
He clung to the vibro-blade and watched the enemy squadron roaring by overhead, chasing the X-wing into orbit unaware that its pilot was stowed away on one of their own damaged ships. Quickly the bugs were past him and his fingers began to ache from the strain. He adjusted his grip as best he could without sliding off and braced his foot in one of the blast holes.
As he saw the hangar coming into view ahead, Bob wondered why none of his instructors ever seemed this interested in him when he was a rookie.
“Any bright ideas, partner?!” Shibu’s graveled voice tore across the comlink as he turned his body to pour another stream of fire across the armored enemy. “Remember, you’re the brains and I’m the muscles.”
“You forgot to mention good looks!” Cameron jumped up from behind the boulder providing him cover and squeezed off a shot into the face of the closest attacker. It was knocked backward, but quickly got up and resumed the attack.
“Well, I didn’t want to brag,” Shibu rumbled as he pulled a thermal detonator from his bandolier and hurled it into the mass of attackers. He ducked behind an outcropping in the wall as the bothan fell back behind his covering boulder. There was a flash of light and a spattering of green liquid, but when they looked up the enemy forces were only reduced by one or two.
Cameron looked around the side of the boulder and fired into the crowd again, praying for some way out of this mess.
The attackers had come seemingly out of nowhere, registering on neither sensor nor any of Cameron’s senses, until they were through the cloaking energy field that had hidden the Imperial back door. They were each identical in their dark offense, six-foot tall bipeds in black, organic armor that covered them from head to toe. The armor didn’t seem to be jointed, but rather flowed from one part to the other, and allowed the attackers great range of movement. And while they were vulnerable to the force of a blaster shot or explosion, each bolt seemed to be absorbed by the armor, leaving no wound behind. The faces of the attackers were completely blank, with only tiny slits where eyes would have been positioned on the anatomy of most sentient beings. On the backs of the attackers was some kind of large ovoid growth which pulsated like a heart, and on the back of each three-fingered hand was a small opening out of which spat white-hot plasma. The attackers did not seem overly intelligent or accurate with their shots, but their apparent invulnerability to anything smaller than a thermal detonation did not require great tactical skill.
Cameron looked over the battlefield. So far, they were ahead with one or two dead attackers to no dead Ghost Bears. But the way the battle was going, the current score was nothing to be proud of. He looked back at the door behind them and considered the meter-tall opening. He nodded suddenly to himself.
“Shibu, you sarlaac-mouthed moron!” Cameron darted out from behind the rock and shot one of the attackers in the hand. The blaster-opening spattered and the creature seemed surprised, but it continued to advance. “We’re going inside!”
Shibu hurled another detonator into the crowd and didn’t bother to duck back into cover as it exploded, showering him with green ichor which added to the camouflage pattern of his armor.
“What are you talking about, you insane feline?!” He fired into a pool of the sickly chemical which flared into a momentary inferno which engulfed several of the enemy. “For all we know there are a hundred more of these things inside! And I’m running out of thermals!”
“Just do it, your one-eyed son of a bantha!” He followed the human’s lead igniting every other pool of ichor he could find. The attackers didn’t seemed harmed by the move, but were distracted and repulsed by the sudden light and heat. “We KNOW we’re not going to last long out here!”
“Yeah, why worry about fire when the frying pan is already too hot.” Shibu grudgingly accepted the order. “You go first.”
Cameron nodded and began to inch his way back toward the opening. He could feel a slight wind against the pressure suit on his leg, as the atmosphere within blew out into the void. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were being polite.”
“Nah,” the swarthy human lobbed another thermal into the crowd as the flames from the pools began to die down. “I figure, there’s anyone in there, you’ll taste better and give me a chance to get away while they’re picking you clean.”
Cameron smiled and rolled his way quickly under the door.
He looked around at the cavern he had rolled into and yanked out a flare from his belt. He snapped it into full flame as he flowed to his feet and was shocked to see a vast space crammed with a mixture of high technology and scrabbling life.
The flare illuminated a vast bunker of Imperial white, lined with flickering computer consoles and several AT-STs, obviously abandoned long ago but still standing stiffly at attention, their chicken legs tensed and ready for motion. A number of suits of stormtrooper and spacetrooper armor were hung nearby, empty, but ready for a human to strap them on at a moment’s notice. Blaster rifles were neatly arranged in empty spaces on the wall, their power packs out and the safeties clearly on. It appeared as though the area had been abandoned during a surprise inspection.
At the same time, it was obvious that it had been abandoned some time ago. Insects scuttled along the floor. Most had long, furry antennae and shells which sported spines of various lengths. Some flowed from one pile of guano which lay in heaps beneath the leather-winged creatures which hung dormant far above. Cameron imagined he could see fangs glinting from the mouths of the creatures even thought they hung almost sixty meters away. Other mammalian and reptilian things crawled in the shadows, and he heard the outer microphones of his suit picking up the sounds of a small creature struggling in pain. It was coming from the head of one of the Scout Walkers.
“Shibu!” Cameron shouted into the comlink as soon as he was satisfied that the Emperor wasn’t waiting for them in the hall. “Get in here now!!!”
“Thought you’d never ask, Cat.” He saw a shadow fall across the opening and dodged to the side as plasma shots began to flow through the opening. “But couldn’t you have found a smaller hole to crawl through? This may be nothing for a kitty, but we humans like to be able to walk through an open door.”
“Crawling will do you good!” Cameron fell to his belly and fired past Shibu’s legs into the mass of black armor which was a mere three meters from the opening. “Remind you of who is the real superior species around here.”
Shibu fell onto his side, his wide shoulders barely clearing the meter opening. He squirmed he way backwards through the opening. He grunted when the enemy’s shots got too close, and Cameron struggled to knock backwards the closest attackers with blaster shots to the face. Suddenly Shibu stopped moving and the bothan’s external microphone picked up the sound of metal against metal.
“Setback!” Shibu’s voice shouted over the comlink. “My missile tube is stuck on the door.”
Cameron swore in his native language as he struggled to think of an alternate plan. He had already failed to force the door to raise any higher and Shibu would not be able to struggle his way out of the missile tube while lodged in the opening like a champagne cork.
“Ugh!” Shibu shouted as a plasma bolt hit him in the chest. The armor seemed to absorb most of the shock, but the dark human was suddenly shaking with anger. “That’s it! Stand back, Cat! We don’t want to mess up your pretty hair.”
Cameron was about to demand an explanation when he saw Shibu reaching up toward the missile tube. He jumped back out of the way as the tall human slapped a hidden key on the tube and suddenly there was a roar of thunder and a flash of fire. Shibu was thrust backward into the cavern by the backwash of the launch, with the searing sound of tortured metal, and rolled into a crouch ten meters from the door. Cameron jumped forward and slapped a standard imperial control, which slammed the door down into place, giving the bothan only a moment to glance out at the large crater and piles of mismatched arms and legs piled outside the door. The creatures might shrug off a blaster bolt, but even an AT-AT flinched at the sight of a Arakyd 313 missile.
The cat ran over to where Shibu was crouched and examined the pitted, scorched exterior of the armor. It appeared that nothing had gotten through, but he wished they had time to break out a medpack and make sure. He pulled off the helmet of his pressure suit to get a better look at the demolition expert.
“Don’t worry about me, fuzzy” Shibu smiled as he rose to his feet and stretched. “It was a fun ride. Wouldn’t mind doing it again sometime soon.”
Cameron smiled. “Not too soon, partner. I’m ready for a little boredom now.”
“You would be,” Shibu turned and looked around at the dark interior of the long imperial hall. “Not too shabby. Think we could take any of these walkers home with us? Amy’d like it better than the flowers Bob said I should get her!”
Suddenly a shape detached itself from the wall and scampered toward them. Both pulled their blasters up and prepared to fire.
“STOP!”
The room suddenly flared with light and a tall, black-haired, bearded human stood before them in a glowing white robe. He walked forward toward the creature, a spindly, magenta-furred thing on all fours with long jointed arms and black claws.
“KILL THIS KIND SOUL AND YOU DESTROY YOUR CHANCE TO STOP THIS MADNESS BEFORE IT DESTROYS US ALL.”
Larry Bann’s dreams were of his childhood on his homeworld of Correllia. He dreamt that he was swimming in the great Central Sea, alongside his brother Michael. Michael was only twelve in the dream and struggled to keep up with the long, strong strokes of his older brother, his blonde head bobbing above the waves. They laughed and splashed in the warm water of the equatorial ocean, pushing themselves farther and farther out from land. He felt the swimsuit clinging tightly to him in the warm currents, and wished that the day would last forever.
He felt a sharp fin brush against his leg and he glanced down to see a long, sleek shape swimming beneath them in the water. He reached out to Michael and tried to call out to him, but found his mouth held closed by some unseen force. His brother looked up at him and frowned at the panic in his eyes. Suddenly, the long, beaked face of a Correllian Leviathan broke through the water. The brothers screamed as the creature descended upon them and swept Michael into it’s mouth.
Larry screamed in fury as he saw his brother’s legs disappear into the monstrous maw of the legendary creature. He threw himself toward the creature, only to see it slip silently beneath the waves, leaving no sign of the violence or fury. Larry looked around through the deep, clear water straining his eyes to find the dark shadow that was lurking below the surface. He saw nothing and after an eternity of waiting, began to feel his body growing cold as shock set in. He sighed deeply and turned to swim back to land and sob in his mother’s arms as he told her of her son’s death.
Suddenly, the leviathan was slashing through the water toward him, and he had no time to shout or turn before he was swept up into its mouth. He struggled as he felt the tongue of the great beast wrapping itself around him and the muscles of the massive throat pushing him down the gullet with great heaves of peristalsis. He screamed again and thought he heard the voice of his brother answering from the depths of the monster’s guts.
A flash of light blinded Larry and we woke to find himself being pushed and pulled out an orifice in one of the beetle-like fighters which had captured him. He saw several of the organically-armored, blank-faced pilots standing around him and one pulling on his shoulders to help the body out of the opening in the vessel. He saw that he was wrapped in a translucent gauze which resisted his every attempt to struggle, and shouted at the crowd around him only to find that he was still wearing the air-tight helmet of his pressure suit. He quickly tried to call out to the other Ghost Bears, but found only static in his ears and suspected that the interference which had blocked their sensors earlier was now interfering with the comlinks.
With a final rhythmic push from the fighter, we felt his legs fall free and his rear slammed against the floor with a slap that resounded up and down his spine. He was about to swear, when he saw his little R2 unit being excreted right behind him, with no enemy pilot to keep its brain from being rattled out of its skull. He wished he had invested in the repulsors that it had requested.
He looked up as the enemy pulled him to his feet and motioned him to stand at attention. He pulled himself up as straight as the gauze-wrapping would allow and looked around him. The crowd had straightened itself out into an Imperial receiving line, with each warrior standing with his right arm across his chest, as though in salute. He realized that he was in a massive hangar complex and as he looked upward saw that the ceiling was at least seventy meters above and the nearest wall was one hundred meters to the east. The walls and floor were bare, polished stone - brown with occasional sparkles of quartz - but were crowded by several hundred of the new enemy fighters, each propped on three sets of landing gear which were joined in several places. Hoses sprouted out of the floor and were fed into the sides and heads of the massive ships, and pilots could be seen tending to them in pairs. Amidst the vast numbers of bug-ships, an occasional TIE Interceptor or Imperial shuttle could be seen, but the standard ships were outnumbered by at least ten-to-one. He thought he saw a larger version of the bug ships at the west end of the hangar, but it was so far away that his eyes had trouble focussing.
He gasped as he felt his helmet being unlocked and torn from his head and he looked accusingly at the black armored form which stood beside him and held the helmet in it grasp. To his surprise, he was able to breath the air in the hangar - surprising since none of the enemy pilots had bothered to remove their impassive helmets. It had a sickly-sweet smell, but was a welcome change from the smell of his own body in the air trapped in his suit.
He heard a clang behind him and saw his R2 unit laying on the floor, wrapped in the same membrane as he, moaning electronically on the ground. He knew the little droid would be unable to raise itself without help and was about to ask the pilot to help when the assembly suddenly pulled themselves to an even tighter attention and his captor grabbed him by the shoulder.
He heard a whine in the air and saw a small land-speeder coming toward them across he hangar, narrowly missing the landing gear and bodies of the various vessels as it zigzagged through the haphazard rows. It had obviously once been intended for the transport of V.I.P.s, shining with white imperial armor with a sleek shape and a trio of SoroSuub DS-88 turbine thrusters which would have been the envy of any serious racer on Correllia. But the ship was now encrusted with barnacle-like growths of blood-red creatures which pulsed with obscene life - looking like ticks on the skin of the beautiful craft. He wondered if the seemingly random changes in course were due to the layout of the hangar or the deterioration of the craft.
The landspeeder drew to a sudden stop before him, and he saw gull-wing doors flip up from either side. Four stormtroopers stepped out, rifles drawn, and walked to the formation of black-armored pilots. Two took position in the formation, one at the end of each row, and the others walked straight back toward him. The one to his left, with an orange bade on its left shoulder, nodded at the pilot who had been holding him, and the creature released his shoulder and stepped backward and to the side into the formation. The stormtroopers patted him down and pulled out the blaster in his side holster and the small holdout that he usually hid in his right boot. They carefully deactivated the life-support systems attached to the front of his now-open pressure suit and looked carefully into each of his eyes, as though looking for signed of a concussion. After a moment, they seemed satisfied and fell back into position beside him, their blaster rifles held carefully at the ready. He thought the one to his right was shivering slightly.
He looked forward now and saw two forms emerging, one from each side of the speeder. To the left, a thin man of average height and grey-streaked black hair emerged, looking him over like a rotting piece of meat. The man was dressed in the immaculate grey uniform, with the distinctive markings of an Imperial colonel, with a series of rank cylinders attached to his uniform. He sniffed the air disapprovingly and looked across the speeder at the second form that was emerging.
The second form stepped out of the speeder and drew itself slowly to its full seven-foot midnight height. Larry gasped as he looked up at the leering smile that cracked a corpse-white face with burning red eyes that were almost obscured by black triangular plates which seemed to hold his eyes in a constant look for fury. The creature stepped forward and he saw that it was wrapped in a tight-fitting tunic and pants of deep velvet black, and a long cape that floated behind it as it walked. Pointed teeth showed in the leering smile that it wore, and he could see that its hands were ungloved, but tipped with black claws of similar material to the organic armor that was worn by those around him. The thing had no hair visible anywhere on its body and seemed to radiate a feeling or a smell or a heat that threatened to kill anything it touched. He saw a long black cylinder at it’s waist that he guessed was one of the infamous light sabres used by the Jedi for the Old Republic. But Larry had only seen such a weapon hanging at the side of Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.
The creature looked intently at him and began walking toward him like a panther stalking a meal, muscles rippling beneath its clothing. He began to feel as though something had entered his skull and was scrabbling about inside seeking a meal. He struggled in the gauze.
“Kosiris!!!” The voice of the imperial colonel rasped and echoed in the vast hangar. “Stay where you are. This is my prisoner, not yours!”
The creature turned and looked back at the colonel with a lazy ease. It was not intimidated by the tiny human. But after a moment, it nodded its accent and stood in place until the gray uniformed man stood beside him. They walked slowly forward toward him and stopped only a meter before him. Both studied him for a moment, the colonel with disgusted detachment; the creature with obscene interest.
“Has he been disarmed?” The colonel snapped the question to the stormtrooper to Larry’s right.
“Yes, sir.” The stormtrooper spoke quickly. “Two small blasters. No bladed weapon.”
“Fine.” The colonel seemed bored by the answer. He leaned forward and peered into Larry’s face. “You’re Correllian, aren’t you?”
Larry pulled himself as straight as the gauze would allow, “Larry Bann, Private Alliance Space Fleet, Serial Number 12987-045-74638...”
“Yes, yes,” The colonel waved away the standard response. “I suppose all Rebels are as uncooperative as you. Still, I wish I had been able to meet more of you before the fall of the empire. Might have made this mission a little more interesting.”
The towering creature laughed a deep rumbling that seemed to come out of the depths of the planetoid. It placed its hand on the colonel’s shoulder.
“Are you saying that I haven’t made this mission fun for you, colonel?” The sharpened teeth of the creature glimmered in his smile. “Any more talk about the fall of the Empire, and I’ll be sure to bring some excitement to your life.”
The colonel looked at the massive thing with boredom and shrugged. He turned back to Larry.
“Private Larry Bann, welcome to the Dark Horizon base on Dar Kaleel.” He waved at the towering form beside him. “This is Darth Kosiris, Dark Lord and apprentice to the Emperor. I am Colonel Meklan Vath, imperial commander of this facility, where I have lived my tired little life for almost thirty years and where, so far out in the Outer Rim, I never expected to have the fortune to meet a Rebel. I thank you for having the pleasant incompetence to allow yourself to be captured.”
Vath turned from the prisoner and looked straight at Darth Kosiris.
“Your precious scarab fighters performed admirably, Kosiris,” The sarcasm in his voice burned the air. “It cost us twenty-nine ships to capture a barely post-pubescent boy. We pitted an entire squadron of our ships against two antiquated Rebel X-wings and have nothing to show for it besides an excellent exercise in population control.”
The red eyes of the Dark Lord burned behind the armored plates on his face. Larry could see the black-armored pilots growing tense, and heard the rusting of the armor of the stormtroopers beside him as they shifted their blaster rifles from covering him to aiming at Darth Kosiris. He saw the other stormtroopers step out of line to either side of the colonel.
Suddenly, the fire was gone from the dark jedi’s eyes and his earthquake laugh echoed through the emptiness. The tension seemed to drain from the pilots, but the stormtroopers remained at the ready.
“Be patient, my little Meklan,” Darth Kosiris seemed to speak from a great distance away. “My warriors are still young and their skill is limited by the petty simulations you demand we participate in. Now that they have tasted blood in a real battle, they will learn quickly and apply themselves diligently to the darkness.”
The colonel looked into the crimson pupils of the Dark Lord and shrugged. He has long grown tired of the assignment and the daily sparring sessions with the massive jedi who never seemed to age. He turned back to Larry.
“Private Bann, I will ask you a simple, direct question.” He cleared his throat and his voice seemed to have picked up a harsher rasp. “How large is the Rebel force you are traveling with.”
“Private Larry Bann, serial number...”
“Fine,” the colonel waved him to silence. “You’ve spoiled the one highlight of my day - the chance to show mercy to a Rebel. How disappointing.” He looked toward the Dark Lord. “He is your Kosiris, I am tired of this. Get the information I want any way you wish. Just leave enough behind in the end for a DNA check on his identity.”
The Dark Lord’s leer broadened into a full smile.
“Of course, Colonel. Nothing makes me happier than making YOU happy.”
The colonel walked away toward the speeder as the jedi stepped forward and grabbed Larry by the throat, lifting him high into the air. He looked into the rookie’s eyes, and Larry thought he smelled rancid meat. The Dark Lord spoke quietly
“I was mistaken. Nothing makes me happier than tearing out the heart of a Rebel.”
Bob clung to his precarious perch atop the fighter, holding himself close to the shell in hopes that he would not be noticed by the crowd of enemy pilots who had gathered around the battle-scarred vessel. He watched at the surviving pilot of his ride tapped the blister which surrounded it. The membrane parted at his touch and retracted into the body of the craft, as the pilot pulled himself out of the deep indentation that served as a cockpit and threw itself off of the vessel. He heard the cold slap of the organic armor against the polished rock floor, and hoped that the blank-faced soldier would not return for some time.
He pulled himself up via the vibro-blade now cemented into the back of the fighter, and saw that the crowd of pilots seemed to be particularly interested in some activity happening on the underside of the vessel. He assumed that Larry and his droid were being unloaded. And while he had a sudden urge to jump down and rescue the rookie with only his blaster and his wits, he suppressed the urge violently. Only fools jumped face first into a rancor nest. The soldier who survived was the one who moved slowly.
Bob keyed the vibro-blade to activation and pulled it out of the armor quickly, deactivating it with equal speed so as to avoid attracting attention. A well-tuned blade could cut through almost anything, but it was not a quiet weapon. He slipped it into the sheath on his right calf. He climbed slowly across the back of the vessel and lowered himself slowly into the piloting well.
The cockpit was oblong in shape, lined with various growths and protrusions which had no obvious purpose. Directly in front of the pilot lay a vertical bar of soft material with a hand grip already formed on the surface, to his right was a similar bar studded at the ends with small pimple like growths. He leaned back and sat down. As soon as his rear hit the seat that lined the pit, the blister membrane instantly extruded itself and reformed into a solid shell. He was relieved when no sounds presented themselves and he saw that the only other changes were that the protrusions suddenly lit up with information.
He leaned forward and watched on a forward oblong growth, a holographic image showing a shining white speeder approaching from the north. He reached forward and touched the image and found he was able to swing it around to show a 360 degree view of the hangar. He saw Larry struggling within some kind of cocoon that wrapped him from shoulder to kneecap, and the rookie’s battered R2 unit lying prone beside him. The crowd of enemy pilots appeared to have formed themselves into a respectable imperial receiving line, so Bob assumed some bigwig was coming to view their Rebel prize.
He leaned back into the seat and inspected the other protuberances and was pleasantly surprised to find that most displayed the kind of standard flight information found in the TIE fighters that the Alliance had captured from time to time. The deviations were what appeared to be bio-monitors of some type, though the lifesigns were like nothing he had ever seen. He wondered if the new ships had been designed by Verpine or some other kind of insectoid lifeform with a distinctly non-human point of view.
He looked up and saw the speeder heading away at breakneck speed and some kind of giant holding Larry in the air by his throat. Bob could see the rookie’s face turning blue was the white-faced monster showed a mouth full of fangs. Now was not the time to be subtle.
Bob looked around the cockpit for some sign of a yoke or other obvious piloting control, but nothing presented itself. Finally, seeing Larry’s tongue beginning to loll from his mouth, Bob reach to the bars in front of him and to his right. The material was even softer than it appeared to touch and he found the urge to squeeze the front bar irresistible.
Instantly, he felt the ship lurch under him and watched through the piloting blister wall as he hurtled toward the far wall of the hangar. He pulled back on the forward bar and the world tumbled around him and he suddenly found himself accelerating toward the ceiling. He pushed forward and the ship righted itself. He eased his grip on the forward bar and found the acceleration easing.
“Okay, easy enough so far,” he mumbled to himself. “Squeeze for the throttle, forward to dive, back to climb.” He saw the northern wall of the hangar drawing dangerously close. “Lets see about turning!”
He pulled hard on the rod beside him and felt the ship banking to the left. Another mystery solved. He pulled the ship around to head back where he had come from, and saw that the bug had been landed at the far outer edge of the hangar. He reached quickly forward to adjust the forward hologram and saw that the giant had dropped Larry to the floor where the kid lay gasping for breath. He looked around at the other ships in the area and wished he knew how to fire the weapons.
He felt the forward pimple of the side bar brush this thumb and wondered at its purpose. He watched as the pilots in the holo ran toward their ships and realized that it was time to experiment. He pressed lightly on the growth and saw targeting shapes appear in the forward holo. He locked the crosshairs on the nearest ship and mashed his thumb down hard.
Perfect globes of white plasma raced out towards the fighter and Bob hissed in victory as he saw them burrow their way into the head of the bug. It exploded after only a second, showering enemy soldiers in the area with flaming liquids.
He pulled back to gain some altitude and eased up on the throttle and saw that several of the fighters near his original landing sight were now rising upward on hidden repulsors, retracting their landing gear, and were streaking toward him. He realized that he had never retracted his own gear and felt around until he found a series of controls to his left. He slapped small growths like the firing pimple until he saw one of the lateral monitors showing the landing gear pulling in. Suddenly, he felt the control and speed of the fighter greatly increased.
Plasma bursts began to streak past him as the two fighters drew close, but they were obviously pulling their punches to avoid damaging any valuables in the relatively cramped area of the hangar. Bob had no such compunctions. He yanked his vessel to face the attackers head-on and slammed down his thumb on the firing pimple. The plasma bursts raked across the enemy fighters, destroying one instantly and knocking the other to the side. He kept his thumb firmly in place as he raked the rows of beetles, TIEs, and shuttles drawing a jagged line with the explosions.
His bug jerked and a monitor to his right showed damage to the starboard armor, as the biomonitors flared red. He banked to the right and flew centimeters from the tops of the lined vessels, still firing. He swung around the holo and saw seven enemy fighters being caught in the trail of explosions he left behind him. Two veered off, while the remaining five stayed close on his tail. Two were destroyed in the secondary explosions, but the remaining three began to rake the back of his vessel with fire. He saw that the damage screens and biomonitors were all pulsing red and showing several universal danger signs.
Bob stamped his feet in anger and felt a rod between his feet of the same type as the control robs before him and beside him. Without a thought, he reached between his legs and yanked hard on the rod.
He saw on the rear holo that the armor split wide open and gossamer wings flared from beneath in an imitation of the maneuver he had seen in the previous firefight. The wings were filled with the atmosphere of the hangar and he felt himself being thrown forward as the fighter drew to a sudden halt. He was held back from being splattered against the cockpit membrane by something which held fast to his flight suit.
He quickly released the “wing” rod and grabbed hold of the main controls again and raked the backs of the bugs in front of him with plasma bolts. Two exploded in vibrant flowers of green flame and the third crashed to the hangar floor and plowed through four TIE interceptors and four grounded fighters before coming to a halt.
He turned the fighter back toward the giant and saw that the creature was running toward him across the hangar. Bob smiled and tapped the firing blister to bring up the targeting information on the forward holo. He locked on the black-robed thing and fired.
The creature seemed to smile suddenly and grabbed something from his waist. With inhuman speed, the creature had ignited a deep purple light sabre and was slapping the energy bolts aside like bits of lint. Bob continued firing, but for ever bolt thrown the creature had a countering move with its sabre. Bob roared past the creature and turned back north for another attack run when he saw the giant raising his hand toward him.
Suddenly, the fighter jerked and Bob saw the biomonitors go black. He looked up as the piloting membrane suddenly popped and he knew that the giant was somehow tearing apart the fighter. He pulled on the forward rod and squeezed it with all of his might, but could feel the fighter slowing and falling. He saw that the holos were beginning to wink out and wondered if the designer of the bug had thought about an ejection system.
He passed by the giant and saw Larry beside it, breathing regularly and gazing up at Bob with blank shock on his face. The fighter was losing altitude quickly. Bob saw the north wall approaching again with agonizing rapidity, and saw the remaining airborne fighters approaching from the rear. With a snort of disgust at his own lack of options, Bob pushed forward on the front rob, slapped the controls which had retracted the landing gear, and brought the bug in for a crash landing.
The vessel jerked as the gear scraped violently against the ground, but Bob kept the gear down slowing himself down through raw friction. The bug threatened to spin out of control as it clipped other fighters in its way, but Bob held tight to the control rods.
Plasma burned into the ground around him as the fighters behind him opened fire, no longer caring about what else they might hit, but the jerks and bumps of the fighter kept him just out of their firing path. He wished he were in his old Y-wing with its rear-mounted blaster cannon. But the beloved piece of engineering had died long ago and the Bear Claw was his new love. As he watched the north wall growing larger through the remains of the cockpit membrane, he wondered whether Frell was taking care of it.
When he saw that the far wall was about a half-kilometer he released the control rods and yanked on the “wing” rod with all of his might. The wings quickly unfurled from the armor and caught great gusts of atmosphere in their shining expanse. But the braking action was not able to stop the great vessel and it slammed into the far wall at over 20 kilometers per second. He felt the force at his back holding his body from being flung out of the cockpit and wondered if his heart would literally catapult out of his chest. He heard a crunching, tearing sound and watched the cockpit crumbling around him. The walls drew closer and closer. He exhaled all of the air from his lungs in an attempt to get thinner and was unable to gasp in relief when the ship grew quiet and he was not crushed. He heard the other fighters turning overhead and flying away from him. He knew they would not be gone for long.
He struggled to stand, but found the unseen force still holding him back. After what seemed like an eternity of struggle, he was able to turn and saw that some kind of glue had been secreted from the seat to hold him in place. He drew his vibro-blade quickly and cut himself free with the humming blade, opening the pressure suit to the atmosphere. The sounds of the approaching fighters was suddenly very loud and he vaulted out of the piloting cockpit. He thought he heard a sigh from the vessel as the last monitor winked into darkness behind him.
He scrambled down the remains of the ship and saw a small door way seventy meters away. He ran toward it without looking back and heard plasma bolt hissing as they vaporized the rock behind him. He heard the fighters again turning back above him and put down his head and ran toward the opening, focussing all of his might toward the task.
He reached the doorway just as he heard the fighters turning behind him. It was blocked by a ten-meter long and seven-meter tall door. Bob saw a locking control to the right and quickly pulled out his blaster and slagged it. The door released with a groan and he ran through it as soon as there was an opening large enough.
He emerged into a long corridor lined with doors, each guarded by a stormtrooper. He threw himself to the floor as the armored guards who had been standing by the hangar door turned toward him and were rendered into atoms by bursts of plasma. The polished-stone floor of the corridor shattered under the heat and force of the energy bolts and he saw stormtroopers torn apart by the shrapnel from the explosions.
He stood up as soon as he heard the fighters veering off behind him and threw himself through the first door to his right, guarded now by only shreds of armor. The door opened into a second hallway, this one empty, which led to another and another, until Bob was thoroughly lost. But thoroughly alone.
He pressed himself against the wall and gasped. He waited for the sounds of an Imperial security alert and was shocked when the air remained silent. The glowplates overhead did not turn red and no announcements thundered from hidden speakers. Even his comlink, which routinely monitored imperial security frequencies, remained silent. The world suddenly seemed to have left Bob in a universe of silence and white light.
He looked about him and saw that he had stumbled into a section which had once been crew quarters for the stationed personnel. But the doors were encrusted with dust and muddy grime now. He looked about and chose a door at random. He needed a place to recuperate before going back after Larry, and any bed would do for a quick nap.
He reached to his belt and pulled out a ration stick as he entered the room. It was completely dark and his best attempts found no controls for the lights. He stuck the ration stick in his mouth as he reached around and pulled out a flare. He ignited it with as he twisted off the cap.
Suddenly, he was struck by something hard and wet on his forehead and he fell to the ground. Or... was his forehead wet from blood after the attack.. or...
As he faded into unconsciousness, he saw a tall dark form standing over him and heard the sound of harsh laughter.
“Che-huba?”
The tiny magenta creature’s voice echoed in the silence of the vast imperial bunker. It was a reptilian thing about as long as Shibu’s arm, with thick fur covering its back and poking out from its joints in tufts. Tiny intelligent blue eyes peered out at them from behind a long face lined with teeth. Tiny ear-holes were at the side of the head and three holes were along the top of its head which Cameron suspected were olfactory cavities. The creature’s arms and legs were jointed at the shoulders, twice along their length, and then at the wrist. The hands and feet both held four digits and an opposable thumb. It gave the illusion of a long, pink spider.
“Che shu-batchta?”
“What the heck does that mean?” Shibu’s voice rumbled out at the shining figure that stood before them “Why shouldn’t we slag this lizard?”
The creature darted back and between the legs of the shining human. He was several inches less than six feet, with a thick beard and black hair that hung down his back in a long braid. Cameron sniffed the air and found that he was unable to get any scent from the human. Creatures such as humans normally were completely unable to control the embarrassing series of glands hidden throughout their sweating bodies. As the human stepped forward, he moved silently and seemed to be walking along a surface slightly below the visible floor. Cameron thought back to the bothan legends of force wraiths. He raised his blaster.
“You are the Darkness, are you not?” The man looked intently at Shibu, his gaze not seeing the armor or even the skin of the tall human, but looking within. He turned to Cameron. “And you are the Light.”
“What are you talking about?” Shibu raised his blaster and pointed it directly at the human. “I am not in the mood for word games, right now. The Cat is the intellectual around here.”
The human blinked slowly at Shibu and seemed to slowly dawn in understanding. He sighed and waved his hands at the demolitionist as he sat down on the foot of a scout walker.
“I’m sorry, it has been a long time since I have been able to speak to a living person,” His voice was a smooth baritone that fell softly on Cameron’s ears. “In the Force, language is unnecessary and often an impediment to understanding.”
“Tu Cheba?” The lizard-thing scampered up the leg of the scout walker and peered down at them with intense interest.
“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but we need to get out of here.” Shibu moved away from the apparition as he grumbled. “If this is an Imperial base, you can bet there are some Imperials nearby.”
“You needn’t worry about that, my large friend,” He spoke softly from his low perch. “The Imperials abandoned this area almost a decade ago. Their kind of darkness is often fearful of a place where light once stood.”
“What do you mean, ‘in the Force’?” Cameron slowly approached the human. He recognized the robes the man wore from the stories of his grandam. They were the uniform of the jedi in the Old Republic. But no light sabre hung at his belt.
“I have been dead for almost ten years, my bothan friend,” The man smiled at Cameron. “Killed by a creature of pure malevolence.”
Shibu grunted in annoyance and suddenly lurched closer to the old man and hefted his blaster so that it was within inches of his nose. The man smiled sadly at the armored form.
“I’m tired of this nonsense. Who are you and why shouldn’t I slag you here and now?!” Shibu’s graveled voice shouted, sounding like an avalanche of rocks.
“My name is Sax Landron, jedi master.” The human responded simply.
Cameron stepped beside Shibu and gently pulled the blaster away from the jedi. He examined the face of the human and realized with a shock that he could see the stormtrooper armor hanging on the opposite wall through the apparition. The pale blue eyes of the figure danced in tired amusement.
“You might as well put the blaster away, my human friend,” The jedi spoke quietly. “You can’t hurt me with it. And I can’t hurt you, either. I have been absorbed into the Force and am only anchored here at all by the presence of our little pink friend.” He gestured at the lizard perched meters above. “I am here to avenge my death and the death of my brother Bal Landron, at the hands of the master of this place. And the two of you are my instruments.”
“Don’t go calling me a violin, old man!” Shibu dropped his blaster to the floor, satisfied that the apparition was no threat, and reached up to pull off his mirrored helmet. He took a deep breath of the relatively fresh air of the bunker. “I control my own destiny. No one uses me.”
Cameron looked at the jedi and remembered the tales from his homeworld of the great jedi warriors that had protected the Old Republic and maintained peace and justice throughout the universe for over a thousand years. If he had truly died only ten years earlier, this one looked too young to be one of the ancient jedi. Yet Cameron could feel in his heart that the apparition was not lying. He reached out and watched his hand pass through the jedi’s chest. His hand tingled where it touched the ghost and he knew it was real. Very real.
“My grandam used to tell me stories of the ancient jedi, Master Landron,” Cameron removed his hand and nodded an apology. “In her tales, only other jedi could see the spirits of dead. Neither of us are jedi.”
Landron smiled at Cameron and rose to his feet. Shibu strapped his helmet to the belt of his armor and reached for his blaster as the apparition moved. The jedi smiled at the large man and gestured for him to relax. Shibu sat down heavily on the scout walker foot that had held the ghost only moments before. Landron moved to the other side of the bunker and pointed into a small crater in the floor.
“Look here, my furry friend,” Landron’s melodious voice floated across the room. “Here is the answer.”
Cameron moved quickly over to stand beside the jedi. He could see something stuck in the shadows at the bottom of the crater. He reached down and pulled out a long golden cylinder. The thing was slightly longer than the length of two of Cameron’s fists. The bottom tapered slowly to a dull point pierced by a small ring, while the top split into four petals which arched back gracefully to rejoin with the handle, forming an elegant hand-guard. There was a pressure sensitive pad along the side and several lights and dials along the upper rim. It was covered with lines of delicate carving adding to the elegance of the thing. The jedi master placed his hand around Cameron’s and directed him to press a stud just below the hand-guard.
There was a snap-hiss and a flaring of golden light. The magenta lizard shouted out an alarmed “Che-huba!” Shibu jumped to his feet and pulled up his blaster to see the Cat standing in a pool of golden light projected by a meter-long blade of pure energy. The jedi master took a step back and left the bothan staring in awe at the light sabre in his hands.
“You will be a jedi, my friend,” Master Sax Landron’s voice echoed in the open space of the imperial bunker. “I am here to train you.”
Larry cried out in pain as his back slammed into the back wall of the detention chamber and he fell to the floor. His throat still burned from Darth Kosiris’s grip and he looked up at the giant standing in the doorway of the cell with a look of purest fury on his face. His crimson eyes seemed to radiate a fiery radiation, and his pointed teeth were grinding as he stared at the Rebel before him. Larry could see the corner of the jedi’s black cape smoking where one of Bob’s shots had been only just parried.
Suddenly, the dark creature smiled and stepped forward into the cell, allowing the door to slide closed behind him and lock with an echoing clang. He reached down and gently lifted Larry from the floor and placed him in a sitting position on a narrow shelf jutting out from the wall. The giant handled Larry’s lean muscular form as thought it were nothing, and the rookie could feel his body grow cold where he was touched.
Darth Kosiris took a step back and Larry could feel himself being raked by the glowing coals that served as the jedi’s eyes.
“I hope you are comfortable, my boy,” Kosiris’s deep voice filled the room, enhancing the claustrophobic feel of the cell. “I always want my guests to be at ease during our little ‘getting-to know-you’ sessions.”
Larry’s voice croaked out of his throat. “Larry Bann, Private, Alliance.... aaaaaaaaAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Larry could feel his scream tearing away at his already tender vocal cords, but could not help himself. His right hand seemed to have caught fire and pain was shooting up and down his arm with an unimaginable intensity. He looked down in horror and saw the fingers curling as an invisible force burned within.
“A good guest speaks only when asked a question,” The pain subsided as the Dark Lord took a step forward and leaned over his victim. “Do you understand?”
Larry looked up into the grub-white face and nodded meekly. His hand ached from the attack. He did not want to bring on another.
“Fine.” Kosiris rose back to his full height and Larry could feel the giants shadow falling across his body. “Why don’t I begin our session by telling you a little bit about myself? I am the master of this place, which the Colonel so quaintly calls Dark Horizon base. This is the premiere weapons development facility for the Empire and the place where the New Order will begin again.”
He looked down at the cringing Rebel. “Now it is your turn. Who are you and your friends? I know you are not alone, because aside from the fool who stole one of my scarab fighters, I am aware of your attack on the back door to the base. My dark warriors hide nothing from me.”
Larry looked at his hand and back at the giant. He swallowed and took a deep breath. As he spoke, his tortured voice shook. “Larry Bann, Private, Alliance Starfleet, SeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!”
The jedi frowned and suddenly Larry’s hand again took fire. He looked down as he screamed and saw the skin on his hand blackening and a terrible green liquid flowing out from the crackling skin. No flames were visible, but the hand seemed to be covered in a dark mist like smoke. He closed his eyes as the pain became even more intense and he could think of nothing but the pain.
He gasped as the pain subsided as though cool water had been poured over a fire. He breathed deeply and opened his eyes slowly. He saw the Dark Lord leering at him from far above and saw that his hand was now encased in a dark shell which ran from his fingers to his wrist. His forefinger and middle finger, and his pinky and ring finders had been fused together beneath the dark shell, leaving him with a three-fingered hand. He was amazed as he flexed the fingers and they moved easily beneath the darkness. The only pain remaining was where the shell met his own pale flesh.
“The choice is very simple, my child,” Kosiris placed his hand on Larry’s shoulder. “You will obey me. Either as a free man, able to serve me with honor and his will intact or as a warrior subservient to the dark side. Which do you choose?”
Larry reached up and wiped his face with his left hand, savoring the feel of the soft flesh of against his face now wet with tears. When he had dreamt of a glorious life in the Rebellion, he had never imagined something like this. Interrogation droids, perhaps. Lifelong imprisonment on some prison world or the spice mines of Kessel. But never the loss of his soul. But he remembered the firm hands of his teammates on his back, welcoming him into the Ghost Bears as an honored member, and he resolved that he would not betray them. Grand ideas were one thing, very far away now, but friends were something else entirely and he had seen Bob Kliendschmidt wresting with the controls of an enemy fighter in hopes of saving him.
He looked up defiantly at the jedi and hoped he was not shaking too violently.
“I ask again, who are you and where are your friends?” Darth Kosiris’s voice boomed.
“Serial number 12987-04rrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”
The fire had begun again and this time was burning in his very mind. He could feel the pain tearing through his brain, leaving behind a cold feeling of death and decay. He found himself beginning to drift in a cool fog which not only was within his thoughts but when he opened his eyes seemed to have filled the tiny detention chamber.
“So, there are four of you.” Kosiris’s voice echoed in the small space. He laughed. “Ghost Bears! You Rebels have a love for silly names and lost causes, don’t you. Rogue squadron, Ghost Bears....”
Larry reached again to his face with his flesh-covered hand and found a smooth plate covering the left part of his face. He found that even his eye was covered by some kind of clear, hard membrane. He looked back at his right hand and found it hard to remember what it had looked like only minutes before.
“Next question, my little one,” The dark lord’s smile had faded and now he seemed to be peering hungrily into his skull. “Where are your friends now? What is their plan of attack?”
Larry could feel his thoughts whirling as though being stirred by a great wind. He wanted to answer badly, to please the giant, but memories of the others tumbled within him and he clamped his mouth tightly shut. He would not betray them.
Kosiris growled and Larry heard himself screaming again, as thought from across a long hall. He felt a cold fire raking down his back and felt a ridge forming there pushing him away from the wall and bending his spine in strange ways. The darkness in his mind grew and he found words tumbling out.
“Don’t know, sir.” His voice rasped. “Cameron and Shibu were to infiltrate through the rear while Bob and I scouted your main defenses. We never intended to get captured or shot down or...” The words suddenly failed him.
“Next question, my precious morsel,” Kosiris leaned low over him and Larry could smell a cloud of rot surround him. “Why are you here? Not just you, but your whole Rebel group?”
Larry began to answer before he was able to stop himself. He felt like his mouth was a separate entity. “We were sent from the FarStar to see about reports of a Biological Weapons lab on Dar Kaleel. The admiral wants to pass through this system on our hunt for the Moff.”
“What Moff?” Darth Kosiris leaned in even closer. “Who are you chasing?”
Larry felt himself begin to answer when suddenly the giant pulled himself to his full height and looked back over his shoulder, seeming to peer through the plasteel door of the cell. His eyes ignited again and he slammed his fist into the wall, leaving a visible dent in the supposedly invulnerable wall of durasteeel.
“Kala!” He strode to the door, which slid open quickly, and he was gone. Larry could see black-armored formed sliding quickly into guard position outside.
As the door slid to a close and the locks shot into position, Larry lowered himself flat upon the slab and sighed. He could feel his new hand and face burning with a dark energy and couldn’t seem to clear the mist from his mind. Perhaps if he slept. Yes, just a little rest.
It had been such a busy day.
Bob awoke slowly to the sounds of liquid dripping in a slow, wet rhythm. He reached down and found that he was lying face-down on a floor of polished stone. His hands slipped as he tried to push himself up, and it took several tries to rise to a sitting position. He shook his head to clear the ringing that hung in the air and winced at a sharp pain in his forehead. He reached up and found a long gash running from just above the right eye to his hair line. He looked down and saw a pool of blood on the floor and realized that the dripping sound had probably come from the blood draining from the wound.
A guttural giggle sounded from across the room and he rolled to his knees and reached for his blaster. He found only empty holster and his own blaster aimed at him from across the room, held by something hidden in the shadows.
“Looking for this?” A hissing chuckle sounded from the darkness as the blaster was shaken. “I like it. I think I’ll keep it.”
Bob watched the blaster barrel as he carefully rose to his feet, wavering as the pain in his wound throbbed and caused the world to spin slowly around him. He peered into the darkness and tried to catch a glance of his assailant. But it remained carefully out of sight.
“You want it?” Bob tried to speak with a studied nan-chalance and reached into pocket on his left side. “Fine! Keep it. The charge is gone anyway, won’t do you any good.”
A burst of crimson blaster fire ripped across the room and missed Bob by only a fraction of a centimeter as he threw himself to the ground. A medpac fell from his open pocket and scattered tools all around. He rolled quickly to his feet and pull a thin desk chair in front of him to serve as some semblance of cover.
“Seems to work well enough to me,” The voice hissed out of the darkness. “And don’t you go reaching for any more weapons, handsome.”
Bob winced at the compliment in confusion and slowly reached across the floor for the laser cauterizer that had fallen from the medpac, careful to keep his hands in plain sight.
“I’m not reaching for a weapon!” He called out to the attacker. “See this? It’s a medical instrument. I’m just trying to close up this hole you made in my head! Don’t you think I’d make a better prisoner alive than dead from blood loss?”
The smoking blaster barrel wavered in the darkness and he thought he could hear the assailant hissing to itself. The darkness wavered in the light of his flare which still burned across the room, and he saw a thin, shapely form detach itself from the shadows and walk slowly toward him.
“Stay where you are!” The voice hissed urgently. “One move and I’ll widen that hole in your head and expose the vacuum inside!”
The form approached slowly and was dimly revealed by the flickering light of the flare. It resolved itself into a young woman, Bob guessed approximately eighteen, with a long dark mane of black hair which flowed down her head and shoulders like a river of midnight. She was dressed in a reflective black tank top and the rough serviceable material of a shipsuit covered her legs. Her face was strong with a small soft nose and deeply brown eyes so dark as to make the black pupil within invisible. He skin glowed white in the uneven light of the flare and her lips were pursed and dark in a scowl of hatred. Had he been standing, she would have been several inches shorter than his strong five-foot-ten, but she held herself with a strength that made her seem taller. She moved like a panther, with the muscles rippling beneath her skin. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
She drew within a few feet of Bob, the blaster still pointing squarely at his chest, and reached down quickly to grab the cauterizer. He studied the instrument for a moment, keeping one eye on the rebel at her feet at all times, and keyed the laser on and off several times. Finally she nodded and kicked the chair away from Bob and motioned to it with the blaster.
“Move, little man,” The guttural hiss of her voice and the chill in her eyes brought a sudden reptilian look to her face. “Sit down before I change my mind and make some more holes.”
Bob quickly pushed himself to his feet and allowed himself to fall into the chair. She moved toward him and pressed the barrel into his chest. She raised the medical instrument to his forehead and leaned forward to look into his eyes. Her breath was stale but sweet.
“I hope you have a high threshold for pain, little man,” She pushed the barrel deeper into the rags of his pressure suit. “If you make one sound or make the slightest move, I promise you you’ll have just enough time to admire the neat whole in your chest before you die.”
Bob held himself completely still as she keyed the laser to light and began to trace it along his wound. He fought against a shout that started in his throat as he felt the burning heat of the instrument begin to close the wound and began to smell the pungent scent of his own cauterizing flesh. He watched her face carefully and saw her grow more and more focussed on the job as she worked, obviously intent on closing the wound perfectly.
He slowly moved his right hand slowly to his calf and found the handle of his vibro-blade still snugly in its scabbard. He carefully felt the activation key and confirmed that it was firmly in the off position, rather than set to activate as soon as it was drawn. He could afford no stray hums in the silence of the room. He pulled it slowly out and held it loosely at his side. He watched the woman’s face for any sign of distraction and wondered if he would be able to slip the blade into such perfect flesh.
Suddenly, she spat out a swear and he thought she had seen the movement.
“I should have used a thinner rod when I cracked your skull,” Her sibilant speech was dark with anger. “The wound will not close completely on its own and I can’t bring you to my lord like this. He will want you whole before he tears out your heart.”
She stepped back from Bob and shifted the weapon to the same hand as the laser cauterizer. She gripped the blaster tightly, her index finger on the trigger, but held the medical instrument between her middle and ring fingers. She held the blaster against his crown and maneuvered the laser with her fingers. It was a precarious position, but if the blaster went off it would still likely remove a good portion of his frontal lobe in the process.
Still, he had no intention of being taken before “her lord.” He held the vibro-blade tightly and placed his thumb lightly on the activation stud.
She reached forward with her open hand and pinched the wound closed between her thumb and index finger as she brought the laser to bear. After only a moment she jerked back with a shout, as though burned, and fell backwards, firing the blaster wildly into the air.
Bob jumped forward and thumbed the vibro-blade to humming life. As she tried to rise, he shoved her back to the ground and brought the blade to her throat as he kicked the blaster out of her hand.
“Don’t mean to be ungrateful, lady, but...” He trailed off as he looked into her face.
Her mouth was twisted into a terrible grimace and tears were running from her eyes. She was arching her back in pain and grunting in agony. He looked to where his left hand held her right wrist and saw her skin growing less pale at his touch. The spot of color flowed out from the point of contact and up her arm, washing out the milky-white with the color of vibrant life. He stood up and took a step away and saw that her right hand was going through a similar transformation which was quickly spreading across her body. Within moments it had reached her shoulder and washed up onto her face, finally reaching her ebony hair and leaving it with a light brunette color. The black tank-top and shipsuit bottoms did not change, but every other part of her had been touched by the wave and transformed.
Her muscles ceased their spasms and she relaxed slowly, still shaking. Bob reached for his blaster and as he stood, he saw her eyes open. They were now a vibrant green and seemed somehow softer, as though the ice that had covered them had shattered. She looked up at Bob with a look of wonder.
“Don’t move,” Bob pointed the blaster at her, feeling suddenly silly pointing it at the girl at his feet. “Thanks for sealing the wound, but one twitch and I’m going to have to part your hair the hard way.”
She smiled at him and laughed a musical laugh that seemed to wash away his words from the air like a soft spring rain. She stood slowly to her feet, smiling in amusement as he backed away, and stretched her body. She looked back at Bob and laughed again.
“You’ve freed me,” Her voice was a delightful contralto, as far removed from the hisses she had made earlier as seemed possible. “You’ve broken his hold on me!”
Bob stared dumbly at the woman standing before him for several seconds, trying to sort out the last few minutes. Finally, he reached up and touched his now-closed wound and smiled.
“What the heck are you talking about?” He spoke softly to her and slowly slipped the blaster into its holster. He still held the humming vibro-blade as a final precaution, but the snake that had attacked him seemed to have been transformed into a beautiful song-bird.
She smiled quizzically at him for a moment and then shook her head, as though he had failed to understand a particularly witty joke of hers. She reached over placed her hand over his right hand and shook it, complete with the vibro-blade.
“I am pleased to meet you, sir,” She spoke with mock seriousness. “My name is Kala Seleuda and I am an orphan from the Shok-Pan colony in the Yek-Ta system, brought here to serve the empire as a slave girl.”
Bob stared at her. She waved to him.
“Now it is your turn,” She said. “You tell me your name.”
“Bob,” He stuttered slightly as he spoke. Maybe it was the wound on his head, but the whole thing had a fantasy feel about it. “Bob Kliendschmidt of the Rebel Special Forces Squad, the Ghost Bears.”
She laughed in delight and seemed about to ask him to dance when suddenly a wave a darkness seemed to sweep over her and he saw her skin pulse white before settling back to its new vibrant glow. She looked up in terror and grabbed his hand.
“We have to go!” She pulled him toward the door. “He’s coming for us! He felt you break my bonds!”
“What are you talking about?!” Bob had just barely gotten the words out when an alarm suddenly blared out of hidden speakers throughout the room and the dark glowpanels suddenly sprang to vibrant crimson light. The imperials had finally decided to sound the alarms.
Bob keyed off his blade and slipped it into the scabbard and his calf. He saw the bloody rod that Kala had used to smack him lying on the ground. He grabbed it and thrust it into her hands.
“C’mon, we have to get out of here and I need you armed with something,” He ran to the door and slapped the control to slide it open. He looked out and saw nothing, but could hear running sounds from the south. He pushed the girl out the door to the north and began to sprint, pulling her after him his blaster now drawn. “You see anything or anyone I don’t see, you let me know and I’ll drill it a third eye.”
She gave a little yelp as they turned a corner and he saw ahead a cluster of seven black-clad soldiers and one stormtrooper. They looked up as he rounded the corner and he ducked into a doorway, pulling Kala in with him as he fired a blast which caught the stormtrooper in the chest and knocked him to the ground, unmoving.
Blasts of white plasma burned through the air down the hall past him and he looked back at the girl, now gasping for breath and pressed firmly against the wall, her form clearly outlined beneath her ebony clothing.
He wondered briefly is he was the luckiest man alive, or if he had just run into his own death. He fired down the hall and hit one of the dark troopers on his arm, causing the plasma projector on his wrist to explode spattering bits of the trooper over the other six. He looked back at Kala.
He decided he didn’t care.
“Cat, we have to go!” Shibu’s voice rumbled over the hum of Cameron’s light sabre as the bothan stepped aside and blocked the stone that the magenta creature had hurled at him.
They had been waiting in the imperial bunker for hours as Master Sax Landron had patiently led Cameron through the basics of the jedi arts, allowing him to recognize the hunches and feelings that had nagged at him for as long as he could remember as touches of the grand Force which filled the universe. He could now lightly touch the Force and allow it to flow through him with great concentration. He been practicing the new guiding influence of the force by swatting aside projectiles that the pink lizard hurled at him through the jedi master’s influence, with eyes tightly closed.
Cameron turned to face the human and opened his eyes, newly aware of the dark but strong sense of Shibu in the room. He keyed off the sabre with a flick of his thumb and clipped it to the belt of his pressure suit. The lizard paused with another rock in his hand, seemingly shocked that the game had ended.
“What are you talking about, rancor-face?” Cameron looked back at his fellow Ghost Bear. Shibu had spent the last few hours cleaning his weapons and loading a fresh magazine into his repeater blaster. “Master Landron says that I have a lot more work to do here.”
The glowing spectre of the dead jedi master was silent as Shibu shouldered his blaster.
“What I mean, kitty-cat, is that we have a mission to accomplish, remember?” Shibu spat out the words. “We’re not here to make your grandmammy proud of you by finding religion. We’re here to get some info for the admiral. We’ve already burned through thirty of the seventy hours we’ve got, and unless you pick-pocketed the ghost I don’t think we have anything to show for it.”
Cameron looked back at the jedi questioningly. He knew it was unwise to challenge a jedi, yet Sax Landron said nothing. A look of sadness was on his face, but remained silent. Cameron knew logically that the scarred human was right, but he could FEEL that he was wrong. Cameron needed to stay here.
“No, partner,” Cameron reached for the light sabre on his belt and detached it. He keyed it to life and turned back to the lizard who threw its stone with a delighted shriek. He swatted it aside and closed his eyes. “I can’t go. I need to stay here.”
Shibu grunted behind him. “What’s the matter, Cat? Scared? Or does the ghost have some kind of catnip hidden here that I can’t smell.” He walked up behind Cameron, leaving a dark eddy in the Force as he moved and slapped his left hand on his shoulder. “We have to go.”
Cameron shrugged the hand away and stepped forward.
“No.”
Shibu swore loudly and stepped around the bothan. He looked at the glowing apparition and shot a blaster bolt through it, sending the lizard scampering for cover with a shouted “Chel Da!” Cameron opened his eyes in shock and saw the jedi master looking down at the floor sadly.
“You blasted ghost! I swear I will find some way to kill you again if anything happens to the Cat.” Shibu glared at Landron. “I’m going on ahead and you had better make sure the kitty is still here when I get back. Otherwise, I swear to you I will find an exorcist and bring him here.”
Shibu stalked off down the length of the bunker and was about to snap back on his helmet when the voice of Master Landron filled the space.
“May the Force be with you,” His eyes remained downcast. “At the far end of the bunker you’ll find a magnetically sealed door. The code to deactivate the seal is 15-23-92-34. The code to open the door is 99-99-13-87. The door may open slowly, but you should be able to get through and into the maze of the working portion of the base.”
Shibu looked back for a moment before snapping the helmet of his armor into place. The external speaker hissed as it transmitted the gravelled voice. “Thanks.” We walked off into the shadows, leaving behind a smell of human sweat and a trail of force-sense. Suddenly, Cameron felt his concentration shatter and he turned angrily to the jedi master.
“Why did you let him go?” Cameron hissed at the glowing human. “He would have stayed if you had asked him to. He would respect a jedi!”
Landron looked slowly up at his pupil and shook his head.
“You must concentrate and control your anger.” The voice was stern and devoid of guilt. “The dark side is always there before you and will dominate you if you surrender to it for only a moment!”
Cameron stared at the apparition. The room was silent save for the hum of the light sabre and the sound of the lizard slowly coming back out of hiding.
“He is the Darkness,” Master Landron gestured back to where Shibu had disappeared into the shadows. “He can not be controlled and must be allowed to go his own way. Besides, you give me too much credit.” The jedi master smiled sadly. “I exist in this place only for you and because of the kindness of this tiny sentient.” He waved to the lizard. “I can not interfere with anyone else.”
Cameron looked at Landron and sighed. He closed his eyes and calmed himself, allowing the Force to again flow through him. Images of Larry writhing in pain, Bob lying in a pool of his own blood, and Shibu screaming in the midst of an inferno flashed across his mind, but he pushed them away.
“Good.” Landron’s voice was soft and calm. “Be calm and at peace. We must move along to the next exercise. There is little time. Raise your sabre and follow my movements.”
Cameron opened his eyes and watched the jedi master fall into a strong battle stance, pretending he had a light sabre in his hands. He suddenly fell back into a defensive position, his hands holding the imaginary weapon above his head in a sweeping challenge.
Cameron fell into the same position and followed as Landron brought the blade around in a sweeping attack and then back into a parry with the blade across his body.
“Master,” The bothan could hardly believe he was calling anyone by that name. “What do you mean when you call Shibu ‘the Darkness’ and me ‘the Light’?”
Landron stabbed forward and flowed a sideways slash, then back into a rising block, and Cameron mirrored him perfectly.
“When I died, I had a vision in the Force,” Landron brought the imaginary sabre into a forward block. “It showed me that my enemy would be destroyed when five elements came together.” He swept the weapon down to defend his feet from an imaginary attacker, “They were The Light, The Darkness, The Void, The Mirror, and The Focus. The vision was fractured and confusing, as I am told all death prophecies are, but the meaning was clear. When I saw you, I knew that you were the Light - a force-sensitive sentient with a strong heart of mercy and caring who was destined to be a jedi knight.” He swept the blade up and around to block an attack to the head. “When I saw your friend, I knew I was facing the Darkness - an individual who was invested strongly in the violence and strength of the dark side, but who would never accept the discipline of the jedi and thus would not be ruled by it.”
He fell back with the blade held over his head in one hand and his right hand outstretched toward the enemy, palm up, in challenge. Cameron mirrored the move, his thoughts spinning. He had never considered talk of prophecies and destiny, though he had deeply enjoyed his grandam’s stories.
“And the other elements?” He followed the jedi master as stepped back and delivered a one handed slash, and then fell forward into a two-handed block.
“I do not know.” Landron held the position for a moment and then fell back to a position of rest. “The Force brought me deep meaning, but the specifics are hidden from me. I will know each element as it is brought before me. Until then, I must follow the path set out for me.”
Landron gestured to his student. “That was the Gem Fash form. It is one of seven fighting sequences that jedi use to sharpen their skills for battle. If you touch the Force, you will find that each position flows into the next. Practice that for now and I will show you the second form later.” He sighed and walked across the room to sit down on the foot of a scout walker. He seemed tired.
Cameron stood to an en guarde stance and began to follow through the sequence again. He found he had to stay in constant contact with the Force in order to remember the all of the positions. He could sense a deeper meaning to each move, but found the specifics beyond his reach. He suddenly understood how Master Landron must feel.
“Master, what about your story? How did you come to be here?” Cameron looked hopefully back to Landron as his sabre cut through the air.
Landron nodded sadly from where he sat and watched his student.
“My brother, Bal Landron, and I were the last students of Master Yoda, the greatest jedi teacher of the Old Republic.” He spoke softly but the words carried well. “We were trained in the hopes that we would be able to stand against the rise of the Emperor and his puppet, Darth Vader. I was trained as a warrior and found that my skills gave me a speed and strength that was incredible. Of course, I had no one else to compare myself to but Master Yoda and Bal - Vader had killed all of the others by then or chased them into hiding. I was able to lift a hundred times my own weight and was unstoppable in the lightsabre battles that we staged. Bal, on the other hand, was trained as a healer and was able to reach into the body of any creature and restore it to health. He even found new ways to heal the ravages of age upon Master Yoda, who was already over eight hundred years old.”
Cameron fell back to the rest position as he completed the form. He looked back and saw Landron waving him into the form again. He raised his sabre to the en guarde position.
“We were an incredible team and when Master Yoda released us upon the Empire, we cut through it like a light sabre through butter. We personally destroyed the Imperial control of seven worlds before the Emperor even became aware of us.”
Cameron found himself flowing into each position without thought as he focussed on the Force and Sax Landron’s story.
“But soon the Emperor did become aware of the new threat to his New Order and he sent Darth Vader to destroy us.” He spoke sadly. “We were victorious over that creature, costing him his right leg, but he escaped and managed to kill a woman that Bal loved deeply and left me with a terrible wound.”
Cameron fell back to the rest position as he completed the Gem Fesh, and immediately moved back into the fighting form as he sensed Master Landron’s wishes.
“Bal cared for me and under his ministrations I quickly recovered, but was still weak from Vader’s darkside attack - I had never directly faced a dark jedi before. Bal demanded that we seek out Vader and destroy him now that I was healed, but I insisted that I needed more time to rest. He persisted for a time, but finally grew silent in the face of my repeated refusal. I know now that my weakness came from fear which opened me to the dark side.”
“Finally, Bal grew tired of waiting for me and went off on his own to challenge the Dark Lord of the Sith,” Cameron felt a wave of sorrow wash across him as Landron spoke. “But in that time, a new servant for the Emperor had been forged and a Bal faced a new threat, Darth Kosiris. This new jedi fought Bal and when he defeated him, reached into him and tore out his healing knowledge. He used it to pervert life and twist it to his own ends.”
“When I heard of Bal’s death, I swore vengeance upon his murderer,” Landron nodded in approval as Cameron increased the speed of his movements into a blur of activity. “But I knew that I was not strong enough to defeat either Vader or Kosiris as I was, so I returned to Master Yoda and trained myself until Yoda declared me a jedi master. It had taken ten years, but I felt the force in a new way and knew I was stronger than either Vader or Kosiris who had spent their time hunting down the remaining Jedi. Even Master Yoda was forced to flee from our training center after I completed my training and I have felt his death.”
“I sought out Darth Kosiris and found him on this backwater world, where the Emperor had banished him for some imagined insult.” He waved at the walls around him. “I faced the dark jedi, now calling himself a Dark Lord, and we fought. My power was greater, but he had mutated his own body into the shape of a fanged giant and I found fear sapping at me. When I allowed my focus to waver with a memory of Bal, Kosiris slashed past my defenses with his sabre and cut me in half. As I died and felt myself being absorbed into the Force, I felt a tiny bright mind watching me from a great distance and I reached out to it. It was only barely sentient, but had enough self awareness to allow me to anchor myself to its consciousness.” He indicated the spidery lizard. “And I have waited here since for you, for the elements to come and give me my final chance to avenge my brother’s death.”
The bothan continued his exercises for some time after the jedi master grew silent. Cameron fell back to the rest position and could feel himself panting from the effort. But he could feel the flow and power of the Force within him. He wanted to learn more.
Master Landron rose to his feet and walked over to Cameron, nodding with approval.
“Now it is time to learn the next form, Kom Dishat.”
Suddenly a scream of anger and pain ripped through the Force and knocked Cameron to his knees, he cried out in anguish and felt the mingled sense of darkness and strength that he knew to be Shibu. Somewhere, his partner was suffering in terrible agony.
The door slid open with a groan as Shibu finished keying the last sequence from the ghost into the keypad. He reached forward slowly and confirmed that the magnetic field was truly gone. Several rookies had been flash-fried by a faulty magnetic seal on his first mission for the Rebellion, and he was not in the mood to do his impression of a seared nerf steak.
He looked back into the darkness of the bunker and scowled. He couldn’t believe that the Cat had chosen some cheap special effect over a fellow Ghost Bear. But he knew that the bothan was ruled by complex emotions, and hoped that common sense would overcome whatever romantic nonsense kept him hanging around with the ghost. If not, he and Bob might have to come back and manually shake some sense back into him.
Shibu sighed loudly and keyed off the external speaker of his armor - no sense letting off extra noise in enemy territory. He took a step through the door and found himself in a long, dark hallway. He pressed a key on his belt and the space suddenly sprang to life with a green glow as the night-vision function of the armor came on-line. He could see that the area was significantly cleaner than the bunker had been and suspected that he had finally entered an active area of the base. He brought up his repeater blaster and snapped off the safety.
He dashed down the hallway, he followed a sharp right bend and then a sharp left before coming to an intersection with three coded doors, each leading off in a different direction. He paused a moment, shrugged, and keyed the ghost’s pass-code into the one to the right. It slid open silently and he stepped through it.
The room was obviously a computer center and he saw a lone technician look up as he entered. The imperial was dressed in all black with a long circular helmet on his head. He reached for a blaster at his side and Shibu quickly cut him down with a stream of fire from his own rifle. He quickly stepped forward, past several terminals incorporated into the walls and desks that lined the room, and pushed the tech’s body from the terminal he had fallen upon.
Shibu placed his rifle carefully on the top of the console and peered at the series of screens. It appeared that the imperial had been trying to transmit a coded signal through the interference that surrounded the base. Shibu grunted as he saw that the technician had seemed baffled by the signal-scrambling effects that they had assumed were part of the defenses of the place. He sat down quickly in the seat recently vacated by the corpse and typed in a series of commands.
The encrypted text of the message scrolled across the screen, a meaningless jumble of letters, symbols, and punctuation. The demolitionist tried a number of slicing keys he found in the standard directory of the system, but had no luck. The message remained a useless mass of chaos.
He slammed his armored fist down on the console and swore loudly in the confines of his helmet. This was the kind of thing he kept the Cat around for. Or even the rookie. His job was supposed to be blowing large holes in things, not finessing a lump of silicon into divulging its deepest darkest secrets. He wasn’t even able to make his girlfriends do that!
He blew out his breath in a long stream, mimicking an exercise he had seen Bob do when he needed to be calm and focussed. He looked at the encryption code and realized that anything which was not covered by the standard keys had to be either high ranking stuff or personal messages. Personal messages would not be of any use to the Alliance, and he could already imagine the jokes if he brought back the dead technician’s love not back to the FarStar for their slicers to work on. So the only way it would be of any use was if this was from someone high up.
Shibu turned to another screen and brought up the crew complement for the station. He noticed that the place had the annoyingly moody name of “Dark Horizon,” and that is was commanded by a Colonel Meklan Vath. He hacked his way quickly into the deeper system and brought up the standard bio of the commanding officer that was available to every imperial assigned to the base. Making such a personal history an open document was a holdover from Old Republic days when the philosophy had been that one was more likely to follow a commander when one was able to read the long history of his victories for oneself. Shibu supposed the Emperor kept the tradition around so that Imperials could wet themselves while reading of past atrocities the commander had committed on enemy planets.
Vath seemed to be a fairly innocuous person, for a colonel in the Imperial Army. He had served several years aboard the Emperor’s old flagship, the Merciless, as first officer to the AT-AT commander. He had graduated to a command of all ground-assault forces on board the an old Victory-class Star Destroyer, called the Hand of Fate. He had served at Coruscant for a number of years as an assistant to the Speaker Pro Tem of the Imperial Senate, a puppet named Holden Varm, before having been rather suddenly reassigned to command the Dark Horizon base.
Shibu could feel his voice rumbling in amusement. No one got assigned from Coruscant, center of the galaxy, to an unknown bio weapons lab beyond the edges of the Outer Rim unless he had done something really stupid. A little more hacking turned up an old article from a Coruscant gossip rag called the Emperor’s Confidant, hidden away in the personal directory of some moron who had died years before. It was obvious that no one spent any time maintaining the system. The article coyly claimed that a certain high-ranking officer of initials MK was having an affair with some female Senator named Legana Pelor. The article went on to remind its studious readers that Senator Pelor had once been rumored to be romantically involved with the Emperor himself, and speculated that little ole MK had better watch his pretty little butt.
Shibu slammed his fist down on the screen, causing the system to waver slightly and the image to shiver. He could feel a smile splitting his face and felt his droid eye itching in its socket as he spun around to the encrypted message and tried the encryption key “Legana Pelor.”
The text quickly was transformed into a readable message:
“To Moff Disra, Grand Admiral Delora, or whoever commands the remnants of the Empire:
Dark Horizon base has fallen completely into the hands of the madman Darth Kosiris, apprentice to the dead Emperor Palpatine. Have fewer than fifty loyal men remaining and am losing them daily to treachery and pestilence. Request immediate reinforcement or can not be held responsible for loss of classified biotech to non-Imperial forces.
- Colonel Meklan Vath”
Shibu’s grin widened. There was a certain thrill to this spy stuff. He could see why the Cat got his jollies from it. He pulled a padd from a pocket in the corpses coveralls and downloaded the message into it, along with the crew manifest and bio. He tucked the gem into a compartment at his back and wondered whether he might get a bonus for this one.
Suddenly, he was blinded by a pulse of light and as his night-vision disengaged he saw that glowpanels in the ceiling had sprung to life, flashing in the signal for a standard imperial alert. He keyed the external microphone to activity and head klaxons sounding from hidden speakers. He grabbed his rifle and ran toward a door on the far side of the room. He slapped it open.
As he jumped into the hall, he saw ten of the organically-armored troopers heading in his direction. The lead creature paused, seemingly in surprise as it saw him, but after a glance back its fellows raised its arm and fired a plasma bolt down the hallway.
Shibu smiled again. He knew how to handle this bunch. He reached up and keyed his missile tube into action.
He heard the ka-chunk of a missile falling into place only a moment before the hall was lit by the fury of a launching Arakyd 313 missile. Shibu threw himself to the floor as soon as the projectile was clear and could see the capillaries in his eyelids despite the darkening action of his helmet attempting to shield him as the missile flashed into explosion and the base was rocked by thunder. He looked up and saw a large crater in the floor, walls, and ceiling where the black armored troopers had stood a moment before. He laughed out loud. This beat hacking some sissy computer any day.
He ran down the long hallway, vaulting the large crater and admiring the scorch marks that ran far in every direction. He checked the readout of the missile tube and saw that he only had four missiles remaining. More than enough to have some serious fun.
As he rounded a sudden curve in the tunnel-like hallway, he found himself facing more black-armored troopers. He ducked under their fire and raked them with his repeater rifle, knocking many down and shattering the plasma projectors of many others. They were falling back as he heard the next missile fall into place and felt his shoulder jerked back by the kickback of the launch. A flash and there was another smoking crater filled with a little green liquid and flaked of black armor.
He ran through the smoke and threw himself to the ground as plasma bolts burned perilously close to his head. He ducked back into the crater, still warm from the detonation and looked over the edge, careful to keep himself hidden in the smoke.
Huddled into doorways about seventy meters down the corridor were two soldiers unlike any he had seen. These ones wore black armor like the others, but their helmets were skull-like and large bulbous goggles covered their eyes. Their armor was covered with a jagged crimson design and the goggles glowed a fierce red. Their hands were raised and firing the standard plasma bolts, but he could see twin squared barrels attached to each of their shoulders. He could heard their harsh breathing even over the lightning crack of the plasma bolts.
He carefully lined up the right-most trooper in his sights and slapped the hidden key on his missile tube. He heard a missile fall into place and braced himself as the roar of flame blossomed from the end of the barrel. He ducked back into the crater and smirked as he saw shrapnel from the explosion flying by overhead.
But when he raised his head to see the results of his handiwork, he saw the crater formed about a meter closer than he had intended and the troopers standing in a shimmering, blurring field of light. The ground between them had been scorched and the walls before them had been torn apart, but the soldiers themselves seemed unharmed as they disengaged the fields. He stared in shock as they stepped forward and he saw their shoulder barrels grow bright and their harsh breathing became guttural, as though they were laughing.
He ducked back as he saw something like miniature proton torpedoes firing from the shoulder-mounted weapons, and he saw them strike the ceiling above him. All four projectiles blossomed into flame and which formed a firestorm which enveloped him.
Shibu tucked himself into the tightest ball he could manage, hoping the old duck-and-cover method might help him, but the heat of the detonation quickly penetrated the armor. He could feel his skin growing slick with sweat, then cried out in pain as he felt the back of the armor grow searing hot.
The tall human jumped to his feet and ran forward out of the firestorm, and had only a moment of relief before he felt a plasma bolt hit him square in the chest and begin to burn through the armor. He fell to his knees as the agony overcame his senses. He saw the red-marked soldiers walking toward him slowly, their blood-red eyes reflecting the firestorm behind him, and felt his back begin to blister as it touched the red-hot armor at his back.
He felt himself falling into unconsciousness and wondered, with his last thought, if the Cat might have been right after all.
Bob pulled his head back suddenly into the doorway, smelling the sharp tang of ozone and feeling his eyebrows curl as a plasma bolt missed him by centimeters. His shots were keeping the troopers from overwhelming them for now, but after the first two lucky shots he seemed unable to even wound them. They were knocked backwards by the force of each blaster bolt, but after a moment rose back up to renew the assault. He knew it wouldn’t be long before they took the hint and simply rushed his position en masse.
He looked back at Kala, who was trying to get them through the door locked closed behind them. Her forehead was creased in concentration and beads of sweat were visible on her arms and cheeks. She had tried at least a dozen combinations, each of which she had assured him was a higher clearance level than the last, but each time the door bleeped a binary refusal to her. Bob suddenly wished he had Frell with him now.
He leaned back out into the hallway and shot a trooper who had taken a few experimental steps forward in the chest, knocking him down, and ducked back quickly as he saw white globes of energy rushing towards him. The far wall and the floor were scorched and pitted by the enemy’s fire and the doorway itself was becoming narrower as the plasma chewed away at the polished stone. Bob tried hitting the emergency function of his comlink again, sending out a prerecorded message on all Alliance Fleet frequencies, but was answered by the same static which had been pouring out of it for hours now. He was alone and in serious trouble.
“Well, that’s it!” Kala’s musical voice contrasted sharply with the lightning-crack of the passing plasma bolts. “I’ve tried every code I’ve begged, borrowed, or stolen in my fifteen years slaving here. They must have activated a level one lockdown!” She turned around and pressed her back firmly into the door, as though trying to melt through. “But I don’t think the colonel ever ordered anything like this. You guys must’ve really scared him!”
Bob snapped off another shot. “Well, we are known to have that kind of effect on people.”
Kala looked him over with her penetrating gaze, taking in every inch of his muscular form.
“I don’t suppose you have another blaster hidden in that suit?” She asked.
Bob looked down at the tatters of his flight suit and smiled. He was wearing a thin, white shirt and pants under it, but there was nowhere to hide a holdout blaster. It was something he had been planning on taking care of before the next mission.
“Nope,” He shot the feet out from under a trooper and nailed another in its eye-slit. Both pushed themselves hurriedly back, but seemed fundamentally unharmed. “What you see is what you get. One blaster, one blade, one fearstick, and some ration sticks in my right pocket. Don’t even have a spare data padd along for this mission.”
She stared at the long, steel rod on his left hip beside the vibro-blade.
“Fearstick?”
“Yeah, it’s an injector that fills the victim with adrenaline and some low-grade psychotics,” He managed to hit the plasma-projector of another trooper, causing an explosion that showered the others with his remains. “Turns on the old fight-or-flight response, full power. Fun for close quarters, but not much help in a firefight.”
“You might be surprised!”
Kala grabbed the fear-stick from his belt and launched herself down the hall before Bob could gather enough air to shout a warning. She ran down the hall like a banshee, screaming and brandishing the long rod like a spear. The troopers stopped firing for a moment and stared at the girl in blank shock. When she was a meter away, one raised his arm and Bob managed to nail the trooper in the chest, knocking him back and sending the plasma bolt into the ceiling.
Kala reached the group, just as they began to recover from the shock of her attack. As they raised their arms in unison to fire, she jabbed the fearstick against the neck of the closest trooper and Bob could see the tiny injector find a tiny opening where the plates of covering the chest met the shell covering the neck. Kala allowed herself to fall to the floor as the bolts of plasma flew through the space she had recently occupied and she pulled herself into a fetal position as the fear stick hit the floor.
The stricken trooper paused for a moment and slowly began to shake, staring off into the distance. As the other troopers stepped forward to grab the girl and take her prisoner, the trooper suddenly twitched violently and opened fire on the trooper to his right.
Bob watched as the bolt burned through the armor and seemed to shatter the trooper like a Taun-taun egg. The stricken trooper seemed to grow larger as he turned to meet the charge of two other troopers who were stepping forward to subdue him. He grabbed one and hurled it down the hallway with an inhuman strength, and shot the other in the face a point-blank range.
Bob ducked back into the doorway as the flung trooper flew past and felt the impact through the floor as it hit the far wall. He looked out and saw green ichor flowing from a thousand cracks in the armor and knew the imperial would not be getting up anytime soon.
Bob looked back down the hall and saw the stricken trooper, now alone, on his knees, in the position a human might have used while trying to throw up. He saw Kala unwinding herself and pushing herself away from the creature in terror. Bob saw the white pallor beginning to wash up her legs as she backed away, but had no time to observe the phenomenon. Suddenly, a sound like a steaming kettle filled the hallway and he looked up to see the armor of the lone trooper cracking at several points and saw something like a dark mist oozing out. Kala pushed herself to her feet and flung herself at Bob, pushing him back into the doorway.
He caught a glimpse of the healthy glow washing back down her legs before his ears were filled with the sound of a great explosion and the world suddenly went black. He blinked his eyes several times and thought he had been blinded by the flash as the darkness did not lessen. But felt Kala’s hand on his arm and felt her pulling him out into the darkness. He allowed himself to be lead and after only a few minutes of walking found himself seeing the pulsing red lights of the alarm through a swirling mist. Kala held his arm tighter and broke into a run, dragging him along, and after a few moments more they were free of the mist.
Bob planted his feet and stopped their rush. He looked back into the dark mist.
“What in blazes was that?” He saw the mist slowly settling, like a cold vapor. “I thought those things were invulnerable, except for their hand-blasters.”
He felt something cold touch his hand and saw that Kala was handing him back the fear stick. He took it and clipped it back to his belt.
“That was a darkside force storm.” Kala spoke matter of factly. “The darkside warriors are powered by the Force. When we increased his fear, we overwhelmed him with the darkside and he could not hold himself together.” She paused and looked back at Bob, suddenly smiling. “And they are not invulnerable. You just need to know where to hit.”
Bob shook his head in amazement and followed the woman as she lead him through the maze of tunnels. She guided them around other patrols and through many unused passageways until they emerged into a brightly-lit hall where the glowpanels alternated white and pulsing red. She pulled them back into a doorway recess as two stormtroopers stepped out of a doorway and began to pace the hall.
“Where are we?” Bob trusted the girl, though he was not sure why, but she was a bit weird for his tastes. “Why’d you bring me this way?”
Kala smiled up at him. She pointed down the hall.
“That doorway those stormtroopers just stepped out of is the office of the commander of the base. I figured a Rebel soldier would want to see the colonel.” Her voice was like a song even when whispering.
Bob looked down the hall, then back at the girl. He shrugged. It was as good a way to find Larry as any.
He waited until the stormtroopers were talking together and looking away, and jumped out into the hallway and planted shots neatly in the back of the closer imperial and the head of the other as he turned to look down the hall. Bob walked forward slowly, sure that the office of an Imperial commander would be better guarded, and jumped as Kala darted past him and picked up the blaster rifle of one of the stormtroopers. She smiled up at him. He smiled back and shook his head.
He walked up to the door to the office and wondered how they would get in. He didn’t have along any explosives, and he was sure the thing would be magnetically sealed against blaster fire. But after a moment, the door slid open to one of Kala’s codes and she strode through the door before him.
The office was a fairly small space, about 10 meters square, and bare of almost all adornment. A desk sat at the far wall, with several integrated computer terminals, and a bookshelf filled with datapads sat next to it. There was a tall portrait of a stunning, red-haired woman on the right wall, dressed in the shimmering white gown that Bob remembered had been fashionable on Coruscant a generation ago. To the right was another small steel desk filled with tools of various types in front of which sat the same grey uniformed man that had faced Larry in the hangar. He was attempting to pry open one of the access ports of Larry’s R2 unit.
“Come on, you blasted garbage can,” He was muttering to himself. Bob could see a restraining bolt welded to the front of the little droid. “Open up. I haven’t had any news of the outer world since that jedi freak told me he had ‘felt’ the Emperor’s death. I need to know if she...”
He looked up suddenly and saw Kala. He smiled and was rising to his feet as he suddenly saw Bob behind her. He reached for a small sporting blaster at his side, but Bob stepped forward and waved his blaster menacingly.
“Hold still, Colonel,” He waved the imperial to raise his hands. “We wouldn’t want to go and force me to air you out, now would we?”
The colonel stared angrily at them for a moment before raising his hands. Kala stepped forward and removed his blaster. He spat at her as she drew away.
“Is this any way to repay me for having protected you from HIM for so many years?” The colonel hissed out the accusation. “I could have given you to him when I first bought you. It would have made my life a lot easier, you know.”
Kala smiled at him and then back at Bob.
“Bob Kliendschmidt, this is Colonel Meklan Vath.” She bowed deeply to them both. “He is the commander of this base and my owner. I think the two of you have a lot to talk about.”
Bob was about to speak when suddenly a wave of darkness flowed across Kala’s hair and she pulled him across the room and behind the massive desk. He was about to demand an explanation when the door hissed open and the dark giant that had tried to choke Larry stepped through the door. Kala pulled him close to herself and buried her head in his chest. He was flattered but very confused.
“What do you want, Kosiris?” The colonel sounded like he had risen and was speaking with his best voice of authority. “These are my private office and I expect you to announce yourself before you enter!”
Darth Kosiris’s voice flowed across the room like some kind of airborne magma.
“Meklan, you fool. There are two dead soldiers outside your door,” The giant shouted at the colonel. “The rebel fool that attacked me in the hangar is loose in the building, along with at least one other irritant. I managed to capture another member of their little ‘Ghost Bear’ troupe, but we are infested with these fleas. I want to know why you cancelled my original order to have a level one alert activated.”
Colonel Vath laughed loudly.
“Since when are four fleas reason to wake the entire base?” His bravado was thin. “We have been here a long time, Darth, and it is too late to start worrying about Rebel fleas. You were the one who told me the Emperor is dead. The New Order is gone and there is no reason to pretend that somehow we are the last standard bearer of that dead political system. Let the fleas come.”
Bob heard a sudden slap of flesh against flesh and hear a gurgling sound coming from where the colonel had been standing.
“My little Meklan,” The giant growled. “How have you lost your faith in me? The New Order lives in me! The wrath of the Empire will light a fire on this world and consume the galaxy. You will never countermand one of my orders again. Is that clear?”
Bob heard the gurgles fall into a soft moan.
“Good.” Bob heard a thud as the giant threw the commander to the ground. “Now, order your stormtroopers to assist me. Someone has taken Kala and turned her. We must find her and these last two fleas immediately.”
The door slid open with a hiss and closed with a thud as the giant stalked from the room. Bob heard the click of a comlink and the rasping voice of the colonel hissing, “All stormtroopers, report to Lieutenant Garr for immediate deployment in Darth Kosiris’s search.” The comlink clicked off.
Bob and Kala stood up and saw that the colonel was sprawled on the floor. His face red and gasping, and a comlink in his hand. He looked at them and pointedly moved his finger away from the transmit lever.
“Mr. Kleindschmidt,” His voice was barely audible as it scratched its way past his bruised vocal cords. “What is your rank in the Alliance Star Fleet?”
Bob stepped forward and took the comlink from Vath’s hand. Kala stepped forward and helped the colonel to his feet.
“Special Forces Sergeant, Colonel.”
Bob watched as the thin man looked longingly at the portrait of the woman for a long moment. Vath sighed and reached up to tear his ranking bars from his chest. He took a rank cylinder from his chest and waved it at the R2 unit standing dormant by the work-desk. The restraining bolt fell to the ground and the droid chirped happily back to life. The colonel looked up at Bob.
“Sergeant Kleindschmidt of the Rebel Alliance,” He spoke formally. “I request political asylum for myself and my men. There are only a few of us left after these years under the eye of Darth Kosiris, but all are good men who are tired of the Empire. Do you have room on your ship for thirty good men?”
Bob stared for a long time at the imperial before nodding his head. The FarStar had been understaffed for its entire voyage through the Rim. If the colonel and his men were truly sincere, they would be welcomed aboard. It was not unheard of for entire Imperial worlds to defect to the Alliance.
He reached out and shook the former commander’s hand. Vath smiled in relief.
“Well, then, let’s see about freeing your men before Kosiris twists them into more of his darkside warriors.”
Shibu’s breath hissed out in a long gasp of agony as he fell to the floor of the imperial detention chamber. He could have sworn that his back was still on fire and he could feel the burn on his chest from the plasma bolt scratching against the durasteel floor of the cell. He heard the door slide closed and the locks clang into place. He sighed.
The troopers who had captured him after he had passed out had stripped him of his armor and weapons, leaving him only in the shipsuit he always wore when flying on the cloakshape fighter with the Cat. The floor felt cool against his face and he groaned as he sorted through a number of plans that might allow him to get up. All seemed hopeless at the moment.
“Shibu?”
He heard a pinched voice sound from the darkness as the far side of the cell. He looked up and saw something moving slowly in the shadows. He thought of the vibro-shiv still hidden in the lining of his pants, and wondered if he had the strength or flexibility to reach it. There were plenty of folks rotting in imperial holding cells who wanted him dead. Or worse.
“Shibu, is that you?” The voice grew slightly nasal as it repeated the question. “I can’t see so clearly in the darkness. I wish they’d turn back on the lights. It’s cold in the dark.”
Shibu looked up and rolled to his side, so that he could better see the speaker. It hung back, almost completely hidden, but he thought he saw the ponytail of Larry Bann. He reached for the vibro-shiv and cried out in agony. There was no way he would be able to defend himself no matter who was in here with him.
“Yeah, it’s me,” His voice rumbled out with a gasp. The pain was worse than when he had lost his eye. “That you, Rookie?”
The shadow sprang to life and drew closer, but remained obscured by shadow. He though it was hunched over, but couldn’t get a clear picture. He wished the guards have given them some source of light besides the gleam from under the door.
“Sure is, Big Guy!” The rookie sounded overjoyed. “What are you doing here? I thought you guys were coming in the back entrance. I didn’t think they’d ever find you. You miss me?”
Shibu managed a gravelled laugh. “Nah, kid, I just didn’t pull the trigger.”
Larry paused a moment and then fell into pinched, hysterical laughter. Shibu scowled. The kid wasn’t right. He had always thought the rookie to be a goof and a bit clumsy, but the sounds he were making now were downright insane. He saw the rookie scamper around behind him, and he felt a cool hand on his back, just shy of the burns.
“Man, you’re looking terrible back here, Shibu,” Larry’s voice seemed unnaturally cheerful. “What did you do, moon a krayt dragon?”
Shibu tried to turn and face the kid, but a strong hand held him in place.
“Nah, it was one of those wrong place, wrong time kinda things, kid,” Shibu rumbled. “I walked into a fight with some guys carrying some new kinda missile tube and personal shields. They didn’t splatter like I thought they would.”
He heard Larry bark a loud laugh and then scamper back across the room. Shibu saw a shadow jump over him and then felt a cool mist on the burns on his back. He arched his back in agony, but welcomed the cool feel. Slowly the gnawing pain lessened.
“When they captured me, they left me in my flight suit,” Larry’s voice seemed to float somewhere above him. “They took my blasters but left me with my medpac and ration sticks. Guess they figured I’d be less trouble if I could feed myself and tend to my own wounds.”
Shibu grunted a response as he allowed the cool mist to wash away the pain.
“Don’t bother asking about using it to get out,” Larry continued. “I ran out the power cell on the laser cauterizer and broke the blade on the sonic scalpel trying to make a dent in the door. And the guards don’t come even if you yell, so there’s now way we could inject ‘em with anything.”
Shibu nodded slowly. His experience had shown a hypo would have no chance against their armor anyway. Not unless it was tougher than his repeater blaster.
“I’m... I’m gonna come around and treat that burn on your chest now,” The rookie seemed strangely hesitant. Shibu wondered if his first capture had broken him. “Now, I want you to close your eyes.”
Shibu grunted, “Sure, kid, whatever.”
But he kept his eyes open as the rookie stepped over him and crouched down to apply the cooling spray to his chest. Shibu stifled a shout as he saw the medpac held in a black-shelled claw. He looked up and saw the left half of the kid’s face covered with a plate that looked suspiciously similar to the masks the darkside troopers wore. He saw that Larry was hunched over and saw a long ridged shell covering his spine. He tried to imagine what kind of torture methods they could have used on the kid.
Larry used his flesh-hand to spray a white foam onto the chest burn, which washed away the pain and after a moment hardened into a kind of makeshift bandage or cast. Shibu could still feel a multitude of bruises, scrapes, and cuts along his body, but knew he would survive so long as the burns were being cared for. He slowly pushed himself to his feet.
“What happened, kid?” Shibu’s gravelled voice filled the tiny room.
“Oh, its a new burn treatment they make our of plas-foam and a kind of bacta mist,” Larry evaded the question and drew back into the shadows.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it!” Shibu reached out and grabbed the rookie by his black-shelled wrist. He yanked him into the light.
“Leave me alone!!!” Larry pulled his deformed hand out of Shibu’s grip and slashed at him with it. He glared at the demolitionist with his good eye. “I don’t want to talk about it and you can’t do anything for me.”
Shibu sat down on a shelf sticking out of the wall that he assumed was supposed to be a cot of sorts. He thought he saw Larry draw back and fall onto another one on the opposite side of the room.
“Kid, you are a Ghost Bear,” Shibu spoke slowly. “That don’t just mean we get to make fun of you and get you drunk in cantinas. It means we take of each other. I’m no doctor, but there’s gotta be some way to get that stuff off of you.”
Larry snorted in the darkness and was quiet for several minutes. When he spoke, Shibu thought he could hear tears in the rookie’s voice. He hoped this wouldn’t deteriorate into some kind of therapy session.
“I lied, Shibu,” Larry’s voice shook with emotion. “I burned out the laser and broke the scalpel trying to cut these things off of me. They don’t come off! And... and I think they’re growing. The master changed me and now...”
“Master?” Shibu had never heard anyone use that word before this day. Now he had heard both the Cat and the rookie call someone by that title.
“Darth Kosiris,” Larry spat out the name, but somehow managed to keep a sense of awe in his voice. “He’s a Dark Lord... a jedi... He made me like this and... and made me tell him all about the Ghost Bears... about the mission...” He grew silent and Shibu thought he could hear quiet sobs.
“Kid,” Shibu tried to put an encouraging tone into his voice. “You’re not the first guy to undergo Imperial torture. And your not even number one thousand to break under it. You’ll do okay and you didn’t get us into this mess. We’ll get out of it.”
Larry’s sobs slowed but did not stop. When he spoke again, it was with such despair that Shibu found himself reaching for the vibro-shiv.
“You don’t understand, Shibu. When he comes for you, then you’ll understand.”
Suddenly, he understood. The guy who had done this to Larry was coming back and planning on doing it to all of the Ghost Bears. Shibu felt fury burning in his chest and he tore the vibro-shiv out of its hiding place. He keyed it to life and moved to the door.
“Don’t worry kid,” He rumbled. “I won’t let him at you again. Next person comes through that door is gonna be without a head.”
Cameron dashed through the still-open door leading from the bunker into the main base, and heard the claws of the lizard-thing scrambling behind him on the polished stone. He still held the sabre, now extinguished, and followed the signals of pain that Shibu was sending through the Force.
“Cameron!” He heard the voice of Master Landron behind him, pulled along by his host. “You can’t go yet. You are not yet ready to face Darth Kosiris. There is so much more for you to learn! Once you enter Dark Horizon base, I can no longer protect you or interfere in any way.”
The bothan stopped, now several meters into the base, and looked back to the glowing form of the dead jedi master. Landron stood some distance behind the spidery creature, who had followed Cameron into the base. It scampered up to him and leaped onto his shoulder, clamping its claws tightly, but gently, into his pressure suit.
“Che-yetba!” It chattered back at the jedi master. “Yot che-laba pro kachba. Che-huba!”
The jedi seemed to deflate under the gaze of his student and his host. He moved quietly into the base and Cameron watched in amazement as the ghost grew more and more faint as he approached. When he stood directly in front of them, Landron was barely visible. He looked down and placed his hand on Cameron’s shoulder.
“My student,” Sax Landron’s voice sounded thin, as though only speaking through cloth. “I will always be with you, but the Dark Side is strong here. You must keep your mind clear of anger and fear. Concentrate on your love for your friends and it will guide you through the darkness.” The apparition laughed. “I guess the problem with prophecies is that they never really tell you what you need to know.”
Landron’s form winked out like a candle flame and Cameron peered into the darkness of the bunker, struggling to catch some glimpse of him. The lizard chattered from his shoulder and he looked up into its bright eyes. He desperately hoped the jedi had not abandoned him.
He clipped the light sabre to his belt before turning and jogging down the closest corridor following his sense of Shibu.
Bob moved slowly down the hallway behind Vath, watching carefully over the colonel’s shoulder as Kala carefully covered their rear with the stormtrooper rifle. Larry’s timid R2 unit kept itself carefully between them. They had only met one soldier along the way, a stormtrooper leading two darkside troopers. Bob and Kala had ducked back into a recess in the wall as the colonel quietly conferred with the loyal white-armored soldier. After a moment, the stormtrooper had nodded and lead the darkside troopers off in the opposite direction. They had moved along and pointedly ignored the sounds of blaster-fire behind them minutes later.
Now they were finally into the long hall of the detention center, a uniform mirrored silver of durasteel and in stark contrast to the polished brown stone of the rest of the base. There were no guards for several meters, the colonel explained that the Ghost Bears had been their first incident of intrusion in the history of the base, and Bob had just begun to relax when they turned the corner and saw two darkside troopers on either side of a detention center door. One was dressed in the usual uniform black of the darkside trooper, but the other wore a skull-like helmet and large crimson eye-pieces. They looked up as the colonel turned the corner and Bob pulled back into hiding.
“The red one is a Scorpion Trooper,” Vath whispered back to them. “They carry firestorm torpedoes and can generate their own defensive fields. I suggest you let me handle this.”
Bob patted him on the back and peered ever so slightly around the corner to watch.
Meklan Vath walked slowly towards the pair, holding himself in full regal posture. He walked to the door and looked to the scorpion trooper.
“Let me in, trooper,” His voice carried full command authority. “I want to see the prisoners immediately.”
The troopers exchanged glances and Bob wondered if they had some silent way of conversing. The red-marked trooper pushed the colonel back and stood directly in front of the door. When he spoke, his voice sputtered and hissed as thought it were being processed by some kind of transmitter.
“I’m sorry, Colonel Vath,” The scorpion trooper crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Our lord Darth Kosiris left strict orders that no one sees the prisoners until he returns. Not even you.”
“How dare you refuse my orders!” The colonel stepped forward and looked deeply into the crimson eye-plates. “I am commander of this facility, not Darth Kosiris. My word is law here.”
The trooper nodded. “No sir. We don’t take orders from you anymore. Our lord has decreed that you are no longer to be trusted. I suggest you leave, sir. I am authorized to take you prisoner should you persist.”
Colonel Vath seemed to wilt at the last word and turned, reaching into his pockets. The scorpion trooper stepped back to the side of the door and Vath suddenly turned and slashed the trooper across the eyes with a small glowing blade. There was a popping sound and Bob saw the scorpion trooper falling to the ground, gasping.
Bob jumped out as he saw the darkside trooper raising his arm to fire at Vath and shouted out a warning as he fired his blaster at the creatures hand. He hit the plasma projector and the soldier exploded in a flash of light and green liquid. Kala ran around the corner and helped Vath to his feet, careful to avoid the new burns on his legs. Bob walked to him slowly and took the glowing blade from his hand. It was the size of a vibro-blade, but hummed and glowed light a light sabre.
“It’s called a light dagger,” Vath grunted as he leaned against the wall. “Same technology as a full-sized jedi sabre. It was in vogue when I was stationed at Coruscant decades ago and I brought it with me here when I was banished. The darkside troopers are not designed to be able to defy Kosiris himself, so I assumed they would not be invulnerable to his kind of weapon.”
“Nice,” Bob nodded and handed the miniature weapon back to Vath, who keyed it off. “You’re a man of hidden talents, Colonel.”
Vath smiled sadly back at him. “My talents aren’t hidden, Sergeant. Merely dormant. After thirty years of baby-sitting this facility beyond the Outer Rim, most of my skills have atrophied from boredom.” He stepped forward and tapped in a long code into the cell’s keypad.
As the door slip open with a clang-hiss, a tall dark shape flung itself out the door and slammed into Bob. He reached up and grabbed the right wrist of the assailant just centimeters from his throat. He heard the hum and saw the blade of a tiny vibro-blade, called vibro-shivs by the criminals who habitually carried them. He held the arm but felt himself being slowly overcome by the other’s superior strength. Suddenly, the attacker screamed in agony and rolled off of him. Bob looked up and saw that Kala had hit the assailant on the back with her rifle. Bob reached over and grabbed the blade that was now cutting into the floor.
Bob stood up and saw Shibu lying on the floor beside him writhing in agony and clutching his back. He learned over quickly and pulled the demolitionist to his feet and saw that Shibu’s chest and back were covered with a protecting foam.
“Shibu!” Bob couldn’t help himself as he smiled at the mismatched eyes of his friend. “What is the matter with you?!”
Shibu looked up and saw that it was Bob who was holding him. He grunted and pushed himself away from his commanding officer. He winced as he stood up straight and he smiled at Bob.
“Sorry, boss-man.” He accepted the deactivated vibro-shiv from Bob. “Thought you were someone else. Kid’s been telling me ghost stories.”
Bob peered into the darkness of the cell and saw a hunched over shape slowly walking toward the light, shielding its face with it left hand. As it came into the bright glow of the hallway glow-plates, still pulsing red from the alarm, Bob saw that it was the rookie. He gasped as Larry drew out his transformed hand and revealed his shelled face. The tactless R2 unit let out a terrified squeal and backed away. Bob had found the kid, but it looked like he had failed to save him.
“It is Kosiris,” Vath spoke grimly. “He has start the process of twisting the boy into one of his own creatures.” He reached forward and touched the ridge on Larry’s spine. “I’m sorry, boy. I wasn’t thinking when I gave the order.”
Larry roared and slashed at the colonel with his clawed hand. Kala stepped forward quickly and grabbed Larry by the left arm. He looked up in shock at the light touch and blushed as he saw the pretty girl. He smiled awkwardly.
“What’ve you got here, boss?” Shibu smirked at the woman at Bob’s side. “Stopped for some goodies along the way?”
Bob waved Shibu to silence. He looked at the ragtag group he now commanded and sighed. He pulled Larry away from the colonel and out of Kala’s grip. He quickly introduced each member to the others.
“Okay, people, we have to get news of this place back to the FarStar,” Bob spoke in his standard clipped command tones now that he had most of his Ghost Bears back together. “Shibu, where is Cameron?”
Shibu shrugged. “Still near the back door, I think. The Cat found some kind of jedi ghost and has been practicing his delusions of grandeur.”
Bob looked quizzically at the demolitionist. “Whatever. Okay, here’s the plan. We make our way back to the hangar, grab a ship for you four, call Frell to bring in the Bear Claw, and send a comm back to Cameron to get his cloakshape and meet us in orbit. Then we jump back to the FarStar and get some serious firepower to level this place.”
Vath shook his head and scowled. “You’ll never make it. Kosiris is able to sense everything that goes on in this place. He’ll already know about the two dead troopers here, and what’s more he’ll know that I killed them. We’ve got no more than a few minutes before we’re overrun with darkside troopers.”
Bob glared back at the colonel. He needed to understand that the Ghost Bears were in command here.
“Do you have a better idea, colonel?” He waited until the ex-imperial sighed and shook his head. “Fine, then its settled. Vath, can you get us back Shibu’s and Larry’s weapons?”
“Yes,” The colonel was cooperative again, now that he knew the pecking order.
“Fine. Let’s go. I’m at point, Kala is taking up the rear until we get rearmed. Then Shibu gets to take our tail.” He smiled back at Shibu. “Remember, slow, steady, and stealthy.”
Cameron ran lightly down the halls of the imperial base. He had stopped to sniff two craters left in floor and walls by what smelled like one of Shibu’s missiles. He found no sign of the demolitionist himself at either of them, but found large gouts of the green ichor that seemed to serve as blood for the organically-armored creatures.
He kept following the feeling of Shibu’s pain around a corner and saw a third missile crater but found this one guarded by two soldiers. They were dressed in different armor, marked with red and wore some kind of tube over each shoulder. They looked up as he turned the corner and suddenly some balls of crimson fire emerged from the tubes over their left shoulders. He heard the lizard on his shoulder jump off and chatter from somewhere behind him.
Cameron suddenly felt the Force flowing through him and had pulled out his lightsabre and ignited it before he realized he was moving. He stepped forward and blocked the first projectile into the wall, where it burst into a brief flare of life but puffed out after a moment, leaving a molten spot on the wall. He slapped the other as he brought the sabre around and saw the ball of fire fly back at the red-marked soldiers. They were engulfed in a firestorm as the projectile reached them.
But after a few moments, the storm subsided and the soldiers stepped out of the cloud of smoke, wrapped in fields which blurred their outlines. As the blur faded, he saw they were unharmed. He saw them raise their hands to fire the familiar plasma bolts and felt his body flowing in to an attack. He ran forward, slapping aside the few plasma bolts that got in his way and fell to his knee and slashed through their armor just below their armpits. The armor which had stood up to repeated blaster fire offered almost no resistance to the blade of the light sabre.
The trooper sprawled to the ground and he saw ichor draining from their lifeless bodies.
As he felt himself emerge from the flow of the Force, he noticed a strange tang in the air. He walked back to the edge of the crater and found a small pool of green plastic at the edge. As the pink lizard scampered up to stand beside him, he recognized the scent as scorched spacetrooper armor. And he knew of only one suit of green-camouflaged spacetrooper armor in the sector.
He keyed off the sabre and ran past the bodies down the long hallway, hearing the claws of the lizard on the stone behind him.
The bothan ran for what seemed like hours, following the trail of pain until suddenly it faded out, like a computer screen suddenly turned off. He stopped at a crossroads in the maze of tunnels and looked about him in confusion. Suddenly, he was lost without anything to guide him. He sniffed the air for any sign of Shibu’s scent, but sensed only the sickly sweet odor of darkside trooper blood. He looked back and forth at the three corridors before him, struggling in his mind for some reason to choose one over the other.
He heard a tapping of claws on stone and suddenly felt the pink lizard land hard on his shoulder. It leaned forward and looked fondly at him. He smiled despite himself.
“There is an answer, my student,” A voice hovered in the air, echoing from all directions at once. Cameron recognized it as Master Landron. “Calm yourself and feel the Force. It will guide you.”
Cameron sighed and shook his head. A week ago he had considered jedi to be the stuff of myth and legend. Now he was listening to the voices of Force wraiths and holding a light sabre in his hand. He wondered what his grandam would think of him.
He breathed deeply, as Master Landron had showed him, and allowed the Force to flow into him as the air hissed out of his lungs. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to be filled with it, like opening his mind to a river of sense-images and information. He reached out for Shibu, but found a much stronger locus of the Force drawing all of his attention. It was far darker than Shibu had felt and it seemed to absorb everything into itself, like some kind of spiritual black hole. The darkness was so intense that the thing seemed almost one-dimensional. He felt a stab of fear as the thing turned it attention to him, and suddenly seemed to burn with a black fire.
“The Force will guide you,” The ghosts voice thrummed through the Force.
Cameron opened his eyes and took the corridor to his left, heading toward the darkness. He could feel fear threatening to consume his control, but he held fiercely to the feeling of peace and ran.
He could feel the darkness laugh as he grew near.
The group was now tightly arranged and moving quickly through the halls of the Dark Horizon base. Bob had taken the point position, with the colonel close behind to face any loyal stormtroopers who might show themselves. Larry limped some distance behind them, leaning heavily on his rolling astromech droid. Kala and Shibu were watching their back - Shibu in the remains of his armor with his beloved missile tube attached - having formed a friendly competition to see who would see danger first.
Vath seemed surprised at their steady progress, constantly muttering dark suspicions about the real motivation behind their easy escape. Bob shrugged off his pessimism and listened carefully for the colonel’s careful directions that would allow them to make their way through the maze of the base. He had explained that the original base had been burrowed out by alien workers hired by the empire for their stone cutting skills. Unfortunately, the creatures had refused to pay attention to the carefully recorded imperial plans and had burrowed the tunnels according to their own alien sense of aesthetics. Meklan Vath’s first directive after taking over the base was to launch an assault on the aliens’ homeworld and wipe them out. He found he had a talent for genocide, but no stomach for it. He postulated that this, more than any other failing, had kept him from ever escaping Dark Horizon base.
“It is where the Emperor exiled most of his undesirables that he did not consider worth killing,” Vath muttered softly behind Bob. He wondered if the colonel ever stopped talking. Maybe he was working off the three decades of embarrassment in one session. “Even the stormtrooper corps here was made up of disgraced warriors. It made for a kind of brotherhood among us. At least until Kosiris came here.”
He glanced back at Shibu and Kala, listening to their friendly banter. They walked for a while in silence and Bob stretched his ears to hear any sign of trouble ahead. But the halls had grown silent a short time before, even the alarms having fallen silent and the ever-present red pulses of lights had grown dim. But his father had always said it was always calmest before a sabre cat attack.
“You are enjoying Kala’s company, aren’t you?” Vath’s comment had a note of wistfulness to it. Bob glanced back to make sure the colonel wasn’t making fun of him, but his face was completely serious. “She is a delightful girl.”
“Yeah, but she has quite a temper,” Bob felt the cauterized gash at his temple.
Meklan Vath studied Bob’s face for a moment. “She hasn’t told you what she is. Has she?”
Bob glanced back at the thin man and frowned. “She told me she was an orphan. She told me she was your slave girl. Told me that she’s been here for years serving the empire. Told me she likes me.”
Vath laughed quietly and looked back at the girl. “Yes, yes. But she didn’t tell you the most important thing about herself. She is cursed.”
Bob closed his eyes and resisted the impulse to flash-fry the thin man. He found himself suddenly hating the rasping voice of the colonel.
“No,” Vath saw the fury and placed his hand on Bob’s shoulder. “I don't mean that facetiously or perjoratively. She is cursed. So is everyone who has been in this place since Darth Kosiris came here.” He coughed suddenly and pointed to his throat. “Even I am not immune. Tell me, sergeant, what have you seen while you were here?”
Bob tried to ignore the ex-imperial. The grey-clothed man was infuriating and even more so when he was patronizing.
“You have seen fighters that look like beetles, you have seen men clothed in organic armor that they never remove, you have seen mold and growths all over high technology, feeding off of it.” The colonel suddenly squeezed Bob’s shoulder. “This is what Kosiris does. He twists life to his own purposes. Everyone he touches is polluted by him. Insects are mutated into starships, men are transformed into faceless unquestioning soldiers, little girls...” He looked meaningfully back at Kala, “...are transformed into Darth Kosiris’s ideal woman.”
Bob stopped suddenly and stared directly into Vath’s eyes. He pressed his blaster into the thin man’s chest and looked for any sign of deceit. He found none and began moving again as he saw Shibu looking forward in alarm. He gave the sign for “all-clear” and whispered back to the colonel.
“Explain that, Vath!”
“Kala Seleuda was sold to me when she was only three years old by the orphanage which had raised her.” The colonel whispered to Bob, glancing back to make sure that none of the others were noticing the conversation. Larry seemed obvious to everything, absorbing in his own misery. Shibu and Kala continued their quiet banter from the rear. “I used her as a servant girl, nothing more.” He looked sadly over his shoulder past the group and Bob thought of the portrait on the wall of Vath’s office. “But when Darth Kosiris arrived, he pronounced her to be Force sensitive and thus a perfect student of the Dark Side. But I resisted him. I wish I could say I had only her own interests at heart, but I simply had no desire to have another dark jedi running around my station.”
He paused and pulled Bob to a stop as a patrol of three dark troopers walked out of a door ahead and wandered down a hall off to their right. After several minutes, he tapped Bob on the shoulder and waved them forward. After they had passed the hallway, he continued his tale.
“But soon Kosiris found ways around my stubbornness and took her from me. But his problems were not over. The girl had been raised well on Shok-Pan and refused to involve herself in dark side pursuits.” His voice grew sad. “Kosiris grew more enraged with each session and she would often come slinking back to my room bruised and battered. I protested to the jedi each time, but to be honest I had grown increasingly afraid of the creature. He had already begun warping my soldiers, calling his experiments weapons research. I was afraid he would turn his powers on me if I protested too strongly.”
“When Kala turned thirteen, she faced the Dark Lord with all of the fire contained in her blossoming hormone laden frame and called him every name she had learned while cleaning the mess hall filled with my soldiers.” He laughed. “Kosiris was furious and a soldier who was there at the time told me that suddenly the room was filled with some kind of black lightning. When they emerged, Kosiris had grown the black plates that now cover his eyes and Kala had been transformed into some kind of black-haired hellion.”
They turned a corner and saw three stormtroopers staring back at them, their weapons lowered. Vath spoke to them quietly and the trio ran off down an adjoining corridor. The colonel claimed he had sent them to intercept the darkside troopers.
As they resumed their journey, Vath resumed his tale.
“I was no longer able to control her and she spent all of her time with Kosiris,” The rasp in his voice grew worse. “I assumed she was apprenticing under him, but she showed no signs of using the Force on my men - just sharp blades and blunt objects. I protested again to Kosiris, but he only laughed at what he called ‘the antics of his pet.’ It went on for a long time before I got any real answers.”
“About seven years ago, after the first successful test of the scarab fighter, we were drinking a celebration together and he allowed himself a good deal more grog than I did. He began telling me stories about his time learning under the Emperor, his life before the darkside, and the incident that had gotten him exiled - something to do with the original Death Star, I think. Anyway, when I saw that he had gotten so drunk that he no longer glowed with that shadowy aura of his, I asked him about Kala. He laughed and confided that he had used an ancient Sith trick on her and ‘reforged her spirit.’ He said she would now take on the force identity of anyone around her, whatever that means. He claimed that she had become a hellion because she was surrounded by darkside influences here.”
He turned to face Bob and looked deeply into his face.
“I don’t know what you did, but you seem to have chased the darkness out of her.” He whispered the words. “But I warn you to be careful, I suspect it will return if Kosiris shows up.”
Bob shook his head and tried to assimilate the information. He had no desire to get involved with anyone connected with the ancient Force-religion. If Kala were one of the jedi, she could be even more dangerous that he had thought.. He decided to put it all aside for now. Their only priority for the moment was getting off of Dar Kaleel.
They emerged into a room lined with doors and ringed with shreds of stormtrooper armor. Deep gouged had been taken out of the floor by plasma fire and a long door sealed the far end of the room.
“That’s the hangar.” Vath offered the information, but Bob knew it was a place he would not soon forget. He lead them forward and watched as the colonel tapped a sequence into the keypad. With a groan, the door slowly slid open.
He heard Kala gasp behind him and he looked out into the hangar to see several hundred darkside troopers - soldiers, pilots, and scorpions alike - lined up in precise ranks. Bodies of dead stormtroopers lay all around them. He heard the rumbling of feet behind them and knew others had taken up position at their rear. They were trapped. And at the front of the vast assembly, his pointed teeth bared in a hideous smile and a shining purple light sabre at his side, Darth Kosiris leered at them.
The Dark Lord’s voice boomed in the vastness of the hangar, “Colonel, Kala, Ghost Bears... Welcome to my party!”
Cameron gasped as he ran. The darkness was so close now that it threatened to smother him with its intensity. The light from the glowplates over head seemed to have dimmed, and he felt his hand reach to his belt and pull off the sabre. The enemy was close.
He pulled himself to a stop at a sudden dead end around the bend of the corridor. The wall was a thick plate of transparisteel and he could see a vast hangar beyond, filled with some wreckage, a few TIE fighters, and thousands of large things that looked somewhat like oversized beetles. He could sense a dark life pulsing in them.
The bothan walked slowly to the window looked down. Row upon row of the black armored soldiers, the red-marked warriors, and others in similar armor without the pulsing organ on their back were lined up in a standard Imperial formation. Each seemed to glow with a flame of darkness, but none were the source of the smothering power that threatened to overwhelm him. He pressed his hands and face against the glass and looked down.
At the head of the formation was a huge creature, humanoid in shape, but far taller than any human he had ever seen. It was covered in black clothing with a billowing midnight cape. It’s bald crown glowed under the lighting of the hangar, so white that it appeared for a moment that someone had erected a white marble statue at the front of the assembly. But a statue would not have held a glowing light-sabre. And no statue would have been exuding a river of the darkside like this creature.
“Darth Kosiris!” Sax Ladron’s voice whispered in his mind.
The creature suddenly seemed to be laughing and Cameron caught the sense of Shibu and several other humans below him. He knew suddenly that he had found the Ghost Bears.
He felt his teeth grow cold as he bared his fangs and gripped his sabre tightly. He ignited it with a flick of his finger and stepped back from the window. He breathed deeply and let the Force fill him, careful to push away the anger while embracing the sense of brotherhood with his fellow Rebels. He looked up and swung the rod of light through the window.
As it shattered, he jumped through and shouted a traditional bothan battle scream.
Kosiris looked up suddenly at the sound of shattering transparisteel and some kind of high pitched squeal. His swept up his sabre in an over head block as something small, furry, and glowing slammed into him and knocked him to the ground with a crack like lightning. The giant rolled away from his attacker and flowed to his feet, laughing.
Bob looked back at the point of impact and saw Cameron rising slowly, painfully from the ground. The cat was still dressed in his pressure suit, minus the helmet, but was holding a glowing golden light-sabre! Bob felt himself grow cold at the sight of the shining blade. He had never known a jedi’s presence to be a good omen, and wondered what it meant for their team. Jedi seemed to attract trouble like a tractor beam. Then again, life as a Ghost Bear had never been boring.
Darth Kosiris’s laughter filled the hangar and Bob could see the assembled darkside troopers shiver at the sound. The giant walked slowly toward the bothan, his sabre held indolently at his side. He leered at Cameron and the cat seemed suddenly even smaller than usual before the Dark Lord’s immense frame.
“So, the Ghost Bears to provide me with a student,” Kosiris’s voice boomed. “How considerate. Perhaps I’ll let one of you live, to show my gratitude. I felt your presence as you entered my domain, little one. Who are you, my little morsel?”
Bob heard Larry gasp behind him as Kosiris spoke, and felt anger burning within him. The creature had almost destroyed the rookie, and, if Vath were right, had harmed Kala in ways unimaginable. He was not about to let it harm the cat as well. He took a step forward.
But the dark jedi was faster and in a blur of motion, brought around his sabre in a wide slash that Cameron barely caught on the edge of his own weapon. The bothan grunted as the force of the blow knocked him from his feet and threw him sprawling against the far wall. Kosiris towered over the bothan.
“I asked you a question, my apprentice,” Kosiris laughed as he spoke. “Who are you?”
Suddenly, there was a flash of light and a glowing apparition stood between the bothan and the giant. The thing was dressed in flashing white robes and wore a black beard and its hair hung down its back in a long braid. A look of righteous anger burned its face and for a moment it seemed even taller than the giant. Kosiris took a step backward and stared at it.
“Sax?” The giant’s voice echoed even at a whisper.
“Yes, Bal,” The apparition’s voice pulsed through the room. “I have returned to have my vengeance. The darkness that twisted you into this black creature will be destroyed!”
Kosiris stared at the apparition in silence for several seconds, and Bob could see Cameron looking from it to the giant in shock.
“That’s the ghost I was talking about,” Shibu rumbled quietly in his ear. “It’s been teaching the Cat all kinds of jedi tricks.”
The shock suddenly melted from the Dark Lord’s face, replaced with a glare of fury and he swept the blade of his sabre through the ghost. It passed through without resistance and the shining form regarded him impassively. The dark jedi laughed loudly.
“I killed you years ago, brother,” Kosiris voice shook the ground. “How did you manage to hang around without a jedi to hang on to?”
Bob heard something call out in a high voice.
“Che-huba!”
They all looked upward and saw a magenta lizard-like face peering down in amazement at the assembly below. It seemed impressed and amused at the same time and chattered down at them. Kosiris glared at the ghost and then at the lizard. He reached up and suddenly the creature screamed in agony, it fell from the window and hit the ground beside Cameron with a wet thud. Bob knew the creature was dead or dying.
The ghost looked sadly back at the creature and then sharply back at the dark jedi. “I don’t need him anymore, Bal. The elements are in place, and I am only a distraction now.” The apparition began to slowly fade from sight. “Your destruction is upon you and you don’t even know it.” The voice fell to a whisper as the man-thing faded out. “Good-bye, brother.”
The Cat screamed in fury as the ghost faded from view and slashed at Darth Kosiris. The jedi blocked the blow easily, but stepped back from the attack smiling.
“Good, my apprentice! Let the anger rule you!”
Cameron stepped hard into a second swing and felt his body shudder at it met the blow of the dark jedi. He struggled to keep the darkness burning at the edge of his mind at bay, but clung tightly to the Force and used its strength to defy the giant. He could feel the dark, burning power of Darth Kosiris - apparently the fallen Bal Landron - and knew his barely awakened power was nothing. But he would not allow his Master’s second death to go to waste.
As he touched the Force, he felt the memory of the Gem Fash flow through him and he met the attacks of the dark jedi with the various moves he had learned. He saw the giant’s pointed teeth through a leering smile and knew that it recognized the flow of positions, but hoped that the flow would keep him from making a mistake. He could not afford to give the darkness the slightest opening.
But after only a few moves he saw the giant step forward through the arc of a slash, and lock his arm in a grip of cold durasteel. He cried out in pain as the giant yanked him from his feet and lifted him until he was eye to crimson eye with him. He saw amusement glittering in the fiery eyes and he struggled to bring around his sabre to wound the creature.
“You are a feisty little thing, aren’t you?” Darth Kosiris laughed at his struggles. “But I can cure your size problem easily enough. All you have to do is surrender your soul to me. It is an easy bargain. I know from experience.”
Cameron suddenly felt something squirming in his chest. He cried out and knew that Kosiris had reached into his body with the darkside and was twisting him. He clung desperately to the light side and tried to turn it on the lump of terror expanding in his chest, but found it was like pouring a cup of water on the fires of Hell. There was only the slightest reaction.
Suddenly, Kosiris was thrown to the side and Cameron felt himself slam into the floor with a grunt. The darkness was gone but he could feel something inside him snap. He had been deeply harmed by the dark jedi. He pushed himself to a sitting position, his sabre still humming beside him and looked up to see Bob being thrown away from Kosiris. The human had tackled the jedi in hopes of freeing his teammate!
Kosiris pulled himself to his full height, seeming to fill the hangar with his power. Bob pulled up his blaster and fired at the dark jedi, but the bolts were swatted aside by a black-clawed, bare hand. The Dark Lord did not even need his sabre in the face of a blaster. Cameron saw the deactivated sabre clatter on the ground several feet from Kosiris and fly up into the giant’s waiting hand. He noticed that the handgrip, though black as darkest night was carved with the same intricate designs as his own and instead of petals which swept back into the handle, this one had jagged barbs which jutted out like spears. Darth Kosiris held it tightly but did not ignite it.
“You should learn not to interfere in the business of your betters!” Kosiris growled at the leader of the Ghost Bears. He reached out his hand toward Bob and curled it into a fist. “You WILL learn.”
Cameron could feel the invisible tendrils of the darkside tear across the hangar toward Bob, but watched in wonder as they evaporated as they touched his chest. He watched as the giant frowned in confusion, and realized that he could not sense Bob in the Force. It was as though the sergeant stood in the midst of a bubble devoid of the Force.
Kosiris roared in fury and Cameron saw spears of black lightning fly from his fingers and storm around Bob, leaving the man himself untouched.
“The Void!” The disembodied voice of Sax Landron echoed in his ears.
Cameron pulled himself to his feet with a groan and let the Force flow across his internal wound. It felt warm and he felt the pain dissipate. He doubted that he was healed, but all he really needed was a little anesthesia. He watched Bob stand to his feet, laughing at the Dark Lord’s impotence, and saw the dark jedi motion to the darkside troopers. They pivoted as one and Cameron saw Bob’s face twist in horrified realization.
Suddenly, the world shook and pieces of trooper flew in all directions.
Shibu grunted in pleasure as he saw the ranks of darksiders melt under the flames of his last missile. Bob and the Cat might have been impressed by the parlor tricks of the tall thing, but he knew that it was the army standing behind it that was the real threat.
He pulled up his repeater blaster and began to spray it into the chaotic ranks of the stunned troopers. They were quickly knocked aside by the blasts, even if they were not seriously hurt and he heard an echo to his blasts beside him and saw that the imperial colonel had taken up position beside him firing into the ranks.
“Not bad, Corporal,” Vath’s rasped out beside him. “I would take you on my side in a firefight any day.”
Shibu rumbled out a laugh. “No problem, Colonel. Just make sure you stay on my side. Try to cross the lines and I guarantee you’ll be on the inside of one of those explosions!”
Shibu grabbed a thermal detonator off of his bandolier and hurled it into the ranks of the enemy. He smiled as red-marked armor shattered. Pay-back was always fun when you were on the winning side.
But he flinched as he saw a crimson globe fly past them into the corridor behind them, narrowly missing Meklan Vath. He heard screams echoing in the hallway as the troopers at their back were cooked by the firestorm, but was not encouraged. He knew the next shot would not miss.
“You got any bright ideas, Colonel?” Shibu threw himself down as bolts of plasma streamed out of a group of reorganizing trooper and pilots. He fired wildly back into the crowd, knocking several down and shooting out the firing hand of one of the pilots. “Or did you get promoted for kissing butt really well?”
Vath had thrown himself to the ground beside him and was firing wildly into a trio of scorpion troopers. He looked around quickly and caught saw the wreckage of a scarab fighter against the near wall. It still stood, held up by two rickety “legs.” He pulled something from his pocket and Shibu heard a snap-hiss.
“Cover me, Corporal,” Vath pushed himself to his knees and prepared to jump to his feet. “I’ll show you what it takes to be a commanding officer in the imperial forces.”
“Besides an overactive mouth, that is,” Shibu rumbled at Vath’s back as the imperial ran toward the fighter. Shibu flung his next-to-last thermal detonator into the group of troopers closest to them and grinned as seven imperials evaporated into a cloud of debris.
He looked up and saw Vath slashing the “legs” of the fighter with something that looked like a miniature light sabre and saw the ship fall to the ground with a groan, baring its armored back to the troopers and leaving several meters behind for clever Rebels to seek cover. Shibu grunted in appreciation as he ran toward the make-shift fort. Vath fired wildly out from behind the scarab, covering Shibu’s mad dash.
As Shibu threw himself behind the armor and heard a thump as a firestorm torpedo slammed into the armored back of the scarab. He smiled as the flames quickly burned themselves out against the nearly invulnerable plating. He squeezed off some shots at the scorpion trooper that had fired and barked a harsh laugh as he hit the creatures in the launch tube as another torpedo was emerging. The trooper was swallowed in his own firestorm.
He back toward the Ghost Bears as he heard a guttural scream tear from a tortured throat.
Bob ran toward the dark jedi, taking advantage of the momentary distraction of Shibu’s missile, and lowered his shoulder. He hit the giant in the chest and heard the breath rush out of its lungs. Kosiris fell to his knees and felt the giant’s fist slam into his side, throwing his across the room to slam against the far wall. He might be somehow invulnerable to the jedi’s light show, but the bruises from its fists felt alarmingly real.
Bob heard a shrill cry and saw Cameron slash at the downed Dark Lord, but Kosiris ignited his sabre and brought it up in a block one-handed. He growled at the bothan with a sound that shook the ground and rose quickly to his feet. He swung the purple sabre in bright arcs which knocked the Cat backwards and raised storm of white sparks at each blow.
Bob pulled himself painfully to his feet and pulled out his vibro-blade. He felt the weapon begin to hum with power and he carefully gauged the distance between him and the dark jedi. As Cameron was pressed tight against the wall by the power of Kosiris’s blows, Bob stepped forward and flung the blade at Kosiris.
The giant’s scream exploded from him, throwing out a wave of fury that almost knocked Bob over and slapped the bothan hard against the wall. The blade had sunk deeply into the dark jedi’s leg and Bob could see green ichor flowing freely from the wound. The giant reached down and tore the blade from his leg. He stepped back and Bob could see the wound close up spontaneously. But an off-white scar could be seen on the giant’s white flesh where the blade had sliced the fabric of his clothing. Kosiris crushed the blade in his grip and let it fall to the ground, now silent.
Kosiris looked quickly around the scene, taking in his own two attackers, those firing into the ranks of the darksiders, and the two behind them. Bob glanced backward and saw Kala firing her stormtrooper rifle back into the corridor from which they had come, keeping the few surviving troopers at their back from overwhelming them. Larry was off to the side, leaning heavily against his droid and watching the battle with dead eyes.
Bob turned back and saw Kosiris reach out suddenly and curl his fists.
Bob heard a guttural scream behind him and turned to see Kala fall to the floor, spasming in pain. Her hair had again grown midnight black and her skin was fading to the inhuman pall it had held when he had first met her. He saw blood and foam at her mouth as she screamed and bit her own tongue. He ran toward her and heard the crackling of the light-sabre battle beginning again behind him.
By the time he reached her, Kala’s transformation was complete and she lie quietly on her side, a small pool of blood forming where it flowed from her mouth. Bob admired the ivory quality of her skin and the peace on her face with her eyes closed calmly. He reached toward her.
Suddenly, her eyes shot open, now a deep black-brown and a rasping cackle erupted from her throat. He saw her twisting around and felt his legs knocked out from under him.
Bob rolled away from her and pushed himself to his feet and saw that Kala had raised the stormtrooper blaster. He jumped to the side as crimson energy erupted from it and missed him by only a few centimeters. He pulled out his own blaster and ducked under as she swept the rifle around. He felt his hair curl as the heat burned dangerously close. He jumped to the side and pointed the blaster at her chest, as she struggled to bring around her rifle. He aimed precisely at her chest and began to pull the trigger.
He stopped. He threw himself to the ground again and rolled under the stream of fire and jumped to his feet as he heard the blaster sweep down. He tasted iron on his tongue as the air was filled with particles from the polished floor. He could not harm Kala. He wouldn’t say that what he felt was love, yet, but he had seen her goodness and would not let it be destroyed. Even if she was in the throes of the dark jedi’s darkness.
Bob dropped his blaster and felt his fear stick bump up against his leg. He reached down quickly and pulled the instrument from his belt. He ducked behind the landing gear of one of the scarab fighters and heard the blaster fire sear into the it. But the fighters were as tough here as they had been in the outside vacuum and Bob couldn’t even feel the heat of the blaster through the “leg.” He flicked the control on the rod which extended the injector of the fearstick and took a deep breath.
He dove around the left side of the landing gear as he heard a break in the blaster fire. He saw Kala ripping the powerpack from the stormtrooper rifle and pull a new one from her belt. He lowered his head and ran toward the woman with all of his might. He was an arms length away as she slapped the new powerpack home and looked up to see his rush.
Bob slammed the injector into her side and felt the click-hiss of the hypo function release. He grabbed hold of her rifle and held it pointed at the ceiling. She shrieked in fury and pulled the trigger, digging deep gouges in the stone overhead and showering them both with dust. Bob struggled for control for the weapons and felt his left hand brush her right fingers. She gasped.
He looked up and saw a dual transformation sweeping across her body and deep pain blossoming in her eyes. From the site of the fearstick injection a deep darkness was washing across her, turning her pallid skin a deepening brown. From her right hand, the vibrant shade of health that had characterized the Kala that had joined them washed across her arm. Bob watched in amazement as the transformations met in her face, and he felt her release the blaster. Her left side was so dark as to be almost as black as her clothing, even the whites of her eyes having darkened to a deep brown. He right side wore the vibrance of her goodness, and he right eye was the glowing green that he loved dearly.
She stepped back from him and he could see fear and hope struggling on her face. Suddenly, her eyes closed and Bob could see a dark lightning crackling across her skin. When she opened her eyes, he could see a new focus in them.
“Ssssssssssssssstep...” Her voice was hoarse. “Ssssssssstep aside!” She struggled to push the words out.
She raised her left hand and he heard a rushing of air behind him. He turned to see Darth Kosiris’s lightsabre fly over to Kala and slap into her hand. He stepped back, ready to deal with the new threat, but she let her hand fall to her side and smiled weakly at him.
“The dark side is powerful, Bob,” The voice was nearly the musical tone he loved. He could see the darkness receding slowly from her. “I used it while I could, while the fear and anger were strong in me.”
She swooned suddenly and fell into his arms, barely conscious.
He heard a roar of rage erupt from the giant behind him and felt the floor shatter at his feet.
Cameron brought up his blade in a golden arc as Kosiris slammed the purple sabre down at him. His body shuddered with the force of the blow, but the Force flowed powerfully in him and he stood up under the assault. Kosiris laughed loudly at the sparks which raised from the blades and showered the bothan’s clothing, causing puffs of smoke to form as the fabric of the pressure suit burned.
He stepped backward and then pushed off from the wall behind him, rolling under the horizontal slash of the Dark Lord’s attack. He heard a hiss and groan as the blade sliced cleanly through the wall of polished stone. He rolled to his feet and slashed at the giant’s back, but Kosiris flowed around into an attack and stepped away and just out of reach. Cameron jumped to the side and dodged a stabbing move aimed at his chest.
Cameron saw Bob dodging under the blaster fire of some female that pulsed with the darkside and he brought his own blade up to block a few shots which flew his way. He could feel the dark jedi advancing and he brought the blade down to reflect a bolt into the giant’s chest. He heard Kosiris grunt in pain, but as he stepped back and looked up he saw a smoking hole near the giant’s left shoulder closing up. Apparently Darth Kosiris still retained the healing abilities of Bal Landron.
Cameron backed away from the jedi and ran back toward a group of three scarab fighters about twenty meters behind him. He jumped high, feeling the Force adding height to his vault, and landed heavily on top of the closest one. The dark jedi was hidden for a moment by the shell of the fighter, but Cameron could feel the darkness growing quickly closer. He ran to the starboard piloting blister and was about to jump in when he felt the fighter shiver suddenly, like a creature in great pain.
With a crack, the floor of the piloting blister shattered and a burning purple blade tore through the floor of the fighter. Cameron backed away and saw the Dark Lord climbing his way through the gash in the craft. He turned and ran back until he felt a deep ridge in under his feet. He heard laughter booming behind him and turned to see Kosiris standing atop the carapace of the craft. Cameron brought up his sabre in a challenge position, but saw Kosiris simply raise his hand. Suddenly the ridge under the bothan’s feet split and the armor began to rise around him. He felt himself slipping and sliding toward Kosiris.
Cameron turned to face the rising armor and slashed through the wall to his right. He pushed himself through and felt something soft and sticky under his feet. He ignored it and leaped toward the next fighter. He landed hard against the side of the craft’s port piloting blister, suddenly raised, and he looked back to see gossamer wings flowing out from the other craft.
Suddenly, a dark wall of fire seared the shining membranes and Darth Kosiris leaped across the gap between the two ships, landing heavily in front of Cameron. The bothan flipped backwards as the dark jedi slashed the air before him and landed on the far side of the fighter. He flicked off his sabre and slid down the side of the craft. He landed lightly beside the forward landing gear of the fighter and ran lightly under the craft, back toward the damaged fighter. He felt a flow of the Force and ducked to the side as Darth Kosiris’s blade seared through the belly of the craft. Cameron felt the ship shivering in a kind of sleeping agony.
The bothan ran out from the far side of the fighter and was across the gap between the ships in an instant. He heard a shout of fury from the jedi behind him as he dashed beneath the damaged fighter and stopped just short of the hole in the starboard piloting pit. He drew his sabre and flicked it on with a snap-hiss. He saw the ship shiver under the force of the giant jumping back onto it and whirled his sabre around in a broad arc.
He threw himself out beyond the armor as the ship’s landing gear shattered with a crack at the joints where Cameron had neatly cut each “leg.” He heard the ship fall to ground with a thud that echoed through the vast hangar. He saw Darth Kosiris fall heavily to the ground beside the ship. He saw a stream of green blood flowing from the mouth of the giant as it stood angrily to its feet. It lifted its sabre over its head and flowed forward with such speed that Cameron had no time to react. His sabre was slapped away from him and slid along the floor to the back wall, extinguishing itself as it left his hand.
“I am tired of playing with you, little cat,” The Dark Lord’s voice echoed in his ears and his mind. “You and your friends have not only damaged my creations, but my soldiers... and even my own body.” The giant stalked slowly towards him, and Cameron jumped backward. “Such disrespect can not be tolerated. I had hoped for an apprentice.” His steps shook the ground and Cameron suddenly felt the far wall of the hanger pressing into his back. He reached out for the Force, but felt no options open to him. This was his destiny. “But I will have to settle for a trophy. Your head will make a fitting decoration on my wall. The wrath of the Empire demands that no jedi shall live.”
But at that moment, the Dark Lord’s sabre was torn from his hand and Cameron felt a powerful wave of darkness wash over him. He saw Kosiris look behind him, the Dark Lord’s face almost torn apart by the anger upon it, and saw the sabre slam into the hand of the girl that Bob had been wrestling with. Cameron felt a mixture of intense darkness and void in her.
“The mirror!” He heard Sax Landron’s voice in his mind.
He reached down and lifted his own sabre. He ignited it and swept it at the outstretched arm of the dark jedi with a battle scream.
Larry shook his head, trying to clear it of the dark mist and the whispering that seemed to be vying for control of his mind. He felt the smooth dome of his R2 unit under his human left hand and heard a sympathetic warble come from the little droid. He tried to smile under the spreading plate on his face. He found he was unable to.
He looked around the room and found himself unable to make out anything but vague shapes in the mist that covered his vision. The only thing he could see clearly was the giant form of Darth Kosiris. His master.
He cried out, feeling tears flowing freely from his unchanged eye at the thought. He knew that the Dark Lord had placed something within him that was growing stronger by the minute. Anger burned within him, yet left only an empty void as the passion burned outward. Power flowed from the anger and the void, but Larry knew that he would be consumed if he used it.
A scream scraped across his ears and he looked up to see a woman suddenly visible in the fog. It looked like the girl that Bob had introduced him to, but this one was paler, yet darker. He could feel the void within him drawn to her irresistibly. He raised himself off of the R2 unit, hearing a feint questioning blip from the droid. And began to walk towards her. He would serve the master by serving her.
But suddenly the vision was shattered and she seemed to grow more visible on one side and instantly winked out of sight on the other. He shook his head and fell backwards against the droid in shock. He tried to understand the transformation but his mind felt terribly numb within his skull. He looked back at his master.
His master. Something within him burned at the words other than the anger in his chest. He looked carefully at Darth Kosiris and the memories of the torture came flooding back through his consciousness. He remembered the burning of his flesh, the searing of his mind, the tearing of secrets from his soul. The anger in his chest suddenly flared into a black brilliance of hatred and he made his way slowly, painfully across the hangar.
As he approached the jedi, he could feel the anger filling his whole being and could also feel the void beneath. He clung to the fire with all of his might, knowing he would be empty as soon as it was extinguished. His back ached and his left hand throbbed with pain, but he continued to drag himself across the long floor of the hangar.
He gasped in fury as the dark jedi leaped away from him and jumped atop something large some meters away, but as he flexed his clawed, armored hand he watched as the giant leaped back across the hangar. He felt something thunder under his feet and fell back against something cold and hard, the way he imagined the armor of the scarab fighters might feel and saw Kosiris fall heavily to the ground beside him.
The jedi did not see him, huddled in the shadows of whatever had fallen, but suddenly it seemed to grow far clearer and Larry could feel himself drawn powerfully to it. He had to clamp his mouth shut to keep from whispering “Master.”
But he closed his eyes and remembered the feel of his hand withering under the fiery stare of Darth Kosiris and his anger flared to a new intensity. He drew himself slowly to his feet and limped toward the jedi, who now had his back to his creation. He walked forward and flexed the claw of his hand, feeling the sharp edges of the newly formed armor. He smiled under the face plate.
He saw the jedi look up in shock as a light sabre was torn from his hand, and Larry heard some kind of scream. He looked up and saw a golden blade slicing through the outstretched left arm of the giant and heard the Dark Lord scream in agony. He saw the pallid arm of Darth Kosiris fall to the ground with a wet slap and saw a wave of power flow out of the enraged jedi. He thought he saw Cameron through the mists thrown against the far wall by the wave of power and heard shouts of pain from all around him. But the dark power washed over him and he felt the flames of his anger fanned to even greater brightness.
He stepped forward heavily and slashed his claw up into the back of the Dark Lord. He grabbed something with his hand and drew it out. He saw a green, pulsing muscle in his hand. He saw the blood of the dark jedi burning into his claw and suddenly the mists began to clear from his mind. He heard a deep baritone voice speak in his mind, “And the Focus!”
He looked again at the muscle in his hand, as it slowed its rhythmic beat and realized that he held the heart of Darth Kosiris in his hand.
Bob watched in shock as Cameron’s blade hissed through the flesh of the Dark Lord. Kosiris looked at the stump at the end of his own arm for a long minute and suddenly screamed a throat-rending sound and a wave of dark energy exploded out from the body of the giant and flowed across the hangar. Even Bob was knocked to the ground by the force of the explosion and as he picked himself up, he looked about and saw that several of the darkside troopers had been shattered by the wave. He saw that their attacks and the Dark Lord’s anger had left only a few dozen alive in the hangar.
He looked up and saw the dark jedi glaring angrily at Cameron, where the bothan lay crumpled against the wall of the hanger. He reached down and pulled Kala’s stormtrooper rifle from the ground, hoping to hold back the Dark Lord for a moment, and saw Kosiris take a step toward the bothan.
Suddenly, the Dark Lord arched his back and screamed something completely unlike his earlier shout of fury. Bob saw something step back from the jedi and realized that the hunched form of Larry Bann had attacked the giant. Larry was covered with the dark green blood of the jedi, and Bob could see steam rising where the ichor touched Larry’s black shell. The rookie stared at something in his hand for a moment and looked up at the giant in shock.
Bob watched the dark jedi fall to his knees and cough violently. The creature looked about, trying to see the thing that had killed him, but could not turn far enough to see the hunched, steaming form of Larry Bann. The jedi hunched forward and began to glow with an intense dark light.
The hangar was lit by a sudden flare of blue light and a whirlwind of dark energy flowed out of the body of the dying jedi, flowing over them all and knocking Bob back to the ground. The sudden hurricane of energy burned where it touched flesh, tore apart the scarab fighters nearest the eye, and gouged deep holes in the walls, floor, and ceiling where vast discharges of black lightning touched. It washed over the entire length and breadth of the hanger before suddenly washing backwards and disappearing back into the body of the dark jedi, which now slumped to the floor, charred beyond recognition by the dark energy.
An urgent whistling spouted from the comlink Bob wore on his collar and he reached down and pulled it off. He recognized the hysterical whistles of Frell and struggled to understand the binary blips of the little R2 unit.
“Frell!” He shouted into the comlink and saw Cameron rising quickly to his feet as a quake shook the hangar. “Slow down! I can’t... Never mind! Get that X-wing in here! We’re inside the hangar, at the far side. We need an immediate evacuation.” He thumbed off the comlink in the middle of a whistled tirade. He knew the droid would be protesting the idea of setting down in an active imperial base, but he looked around at the wreckage and knew the base would not be active again any time soon.
He reached down and helped Kala to her feet, surprised at how light she suddenly seemed. He looked back and saw Vath and Shibu bounding toward him, the colonel’s face contorted in fear.
“Sergeant, we have to get out of here!” Meklan Vath rasped. “Kosiris was all that was holding this place together. Since he arrived, he demanded that we shut down all non-essential technology to allow him to work! He provided the artificial gravity, the structural integrity enhancements, everything!” Another quake shook the planetoid. “I doubt we have time to try and get them all back on-line before Dar Kaleel collapses upon itself.”
Bob looked up as Cameron ran over, supporting a smiling Larry Bann on his shoulder. Bob could see that the armor has dissolved under the blood of the Dark Lord. Even the ridge along the rookie’s back cracked and fell to the ground as he stood to his feet and saluted his commanding officer. Bob fought a smile.
Shibu seemed to be fighting a sudden pain in his chest, but rumbled at Bob. “Hey, boss man! How about we get off this rock?!”
Bob looked back at the whine of repulsor-lifts and saw the Bear Claw floating quickly across the hangar toward him, knocking aside stunned darkside troopers as it flew. He heard the angry whistling of Frell and saw the flight shield of his X-wing raising open. He looked urgently around.
“My X-wing can only hold one,” Bob shouted over the rumbling of the planetoid and the whine of the floating X-wing. He turned to Vath “Colonel, what do you have around here that can fit the rest of you?”
Vath looked about at the wreckage of a Lambda class shuttle and frowned.
“How about one of the scarab fighters, Bob?” Larry shouted over the din. “You flew one, so we should be able to handle it!”
Vath looked up quickly and across the hangar at a single larger version of the scarab fighters with a glowing white design etched into the armor, he smiled.
“No!” The colonel rasped. “The scarab fighter don’t have a pressurized cockpit, hyperdrives or shields and could only hold two of us at a time!” He looked meaning fully at the R2 unit and Kala’s shaking form. “But over there is our new scarab bomber! It can hold up to six and had an integrated organic light-speed drive!”
Bob nodded and turned toward his X-wing. He reached over and squeezed Kala’s hand and smiled.
“Go!” He shouted as he backed to the X-wing and leapt up to grab hold of the cockpit. He pulled himself up. “Anyone gives you any trouble, Frell and I will make them regret it!”
The hangar suddenly seemed to tilt and Bob was almost thrown from the Bear Claw, despite the weak gravity.
Shibu looked up as he stood back to his feet. He pulled his missile tube from its place on his shoulder and held it under his arm. He slung his repeater blaster onto his back.
“Somehow, boss,” he rumbled, “I don’t think its the troopers we need to worry about!”
Larry smiled as they ran toward the scarab bomber, feeling the strength of his legs beneath him and the absence of pain that was like a glow bathing his body. His mind felt bright and his body felt strong, even if he did stumble and need to lean on whoever was closest to him at the moment. He felt as though he were bouncing in the weak gravity and laughed aloud.
“What’re you laughing at, rookie?” Shibu rumbled beside him, struggling to maintain his balance in the midst of the quakes. “You like the idea of being buried alive in a planetoid?”
“No, rancor-face,” Cameron grinned to his left. “He just likes the idea of seeing YOU buried alive. Hideous things belong underground!”
Larry laughed loudly at the banter and had to dig his heels into some rubble at his feet to keep from slamming into the landing gear of the bomber. He felt like he could fly away without any fighter.
The imperial colonel that Bob had brought along ran up beside them and slapped a design on the lower shell of the ship. A ladder extruded itself from a tiny crack that opened in the armor and the belly of the best irised open to reveal a cargo area. Vath slapped Shibu and Larry’s droid and pointed to the hold.
“Corporal!” His void nearly broke as he shouted. “You and the droid must are in the cargo hold! The private will fly the bomber and Kala will sit behind him in the cockpit, the bothan and I will ride in the bombardier pit. Let’s move!”
Cameron grabbed the colonel by his collar and swung him around sharply. He stared at the imperial uniform and growled.
“Who put you in charge, imperial?” Cameron could feel the darkness in the colonel’s mind. He was not a darksider, but he had done many acts in the service of the dark side. “And why should Shibu have to fly down here?”
Vath slapped Cameron’s hands away and grabbed the lowest rung of the ladder, pulling himself up. He shouted back at the bothan.
“I’m in command, little man, because this is MY ship,” He slapped the side of the beetle like craft. “And the Corporal has to ride down there if he wants to be able to get out and rescue your ship.” He climbed higher as Cameron began to protest. “He’s going to have to fly it out, unless you know someone else around here still holding the helmet to his pressure suit! I doubt you could hold your breath long enough to do the job.”
Vath reached the top of the scarab bomber and dropped into the starboard cockpit blister. Cameron looked long and hard at Shibu, but waved at the human and jumped high into the air and landed behind the colonel.
Larry climbed the ladder next, followed closely by Kala. They ran past the colonel, seeing the cockpit membrane growing around the Cat’s shocked face, and jumped down into the port piloting blister. Larry slipped into a seat toward the front of the oval pit as Kala slid into one to the rear. He found the controls almost exactly as Bob had described the ones in the scarab fighter. He reached forward and to his side and grabbed the control bars, careful not to squeeze the throttle padding.
“Private!” Vath’s voice rasped through a speaker in the wall. “There is a design in front of you below the front control bar. It looks like a cross. Press that to close the cockpit membrane!”
Larry found the spot, marked with an X, and slapped it. The membrane grew around them and he felt a sticky substance flowing against his back and “strapping” him into the seat. Despite the disgust he felt at the idea of being glues into the fighter, he had to admit it felt almost as secure as his X-wing’s flight straps.
“We’re in!” Larry heard the rumble of Shibu’s voice over the intercom and a few quiet blips that he assumed were from his droid. “The cargo pot closed when I touched something that looked like an X. My helmet’s one and we are ready to fly!”
“I am engaging the repulsors.” Vath’s voice was less harsh now that the membrane had blocked out the noise of the planetoid’s collapse. “My systems here have some co-piloting abilities, Private. I’ll get us in the air and retract the landing gear. It’s your job to get us out of here!”
Larry smiled as projections all around him flared to life and he saw the ship leaving the ground in the forward holo. He could hear Kala gasp behind them as the ship rumbled and the landing gear retracted. Larry smiled as he looked forward through the cockpit membrane and saw the far wall almost a kilometer away. He looked to the side and saw Bob firing his laser cannons into a cluster of darkside warriors fleeing toward a scarab fighter. He laughed as Bob’s blasters slammed into the fighter and knocked it onto its side.
Larry squeezed the throttle padding and felt the ship lurch forward. He was pressed tightly back into the seat and knew that this ship had even more thrust than his X-wing had. He pulled on the side rod and banked the ship around, heading for the hangar’s exit. He saw Bob pulling himself away from the battle and flying behind him. He looked forward and saw a row of seven scarab fighters, their pilots struggling to pull themselves into the cockpits. He grinning and pressed hard on the firing blister. He saw immediately that this model of scarab had four plasma cones and watched as the smaller fighters shattered under the force of his attack.
Larry squeezed harder as he passed the row of smoking fighters and was suddenly through the magnetic field that held the atmosphere within Dark Horizon base. He heard a Bob shout a cry of victory as the Bear Claw followed them out and both ships pulled up and headed for the star studded sky of the Dar Simpta system.
“Kid!” Larry heard Bob’s voice clearly through the intercom. Apparently, the ship also had a decent comlink. “Looks like that weird interference we were getting came from Darth Kosiris, too. Don’t forget to bring that monster around to pick up the Cat’s fighter!”
“The command has already been given, Sergeant.” Vath’s voice cut through the comlink before Larry could respond. “We’re swinging around now, and your armored Corporal will be flying the ship.”
Larry heard Bob snort at the comment. Shibu had never been a proficient pilot. Larry could imagine the look on Cameron’s face as he though about his baby in Shibu’s hands.
“Sorry about your soldiers, colonel.” Bob’s voice buzzed on the comlink. “There wasn’t time to go back for them.”
“You weren’t watching very carefully, were you ?” Vath’s rasping voice was suddenly lit with a fire. “The bodies of my men were littering the hangar when we got there. Kosiris butchered them long before we got there. He wanted a chance to gloat before he killed me.”
They flew in silence as the surface of Dar Kaleel streaked by beneath them. Larry brought the ship down and felt Vath engage the repulsor field as they came upon the landing site of Cameron’s ship and whistled at the huge door that stood a kilometer away. Even from here he could see a deep crater from one of the demolitionist’s missiles. He thought he saw the blank face of one of the darkside troopers peering at them from the crater.
He felt the ship shudder and saw Shibu run out from beneath the scarab bomber and into a small crevice far to their right. The huge human was gone only a few moments when Larry saw energy readings flowing across his monitors. He backed them away slowly by stroking the throttle pads with his hands, something he knew Bob hadn’t managed to figure out, and watched as the smuggler’s yacht scraped its way out of the cave. He laughed as he heard Cameron grumbling over the comlink.
“Watch it, hutt-breath!” Cameron shouted. “Where did you learn to fly? Jabba the Hutt’s discount flight school?!”
“Shut up, Cat!” Shibu’s voice was unusually tense for the demolitionist. “You think I like this? I’m just the only guy stupid enough to hang onto his pressure helmet! Next time, you be the responsible one!”
The cloakshape fighter jumped into the sky with a sudden burst of flame, and Larry and Bob brought their ships up alongside the wavering craft. They headed out to the jump-point for the system when suddenly an alarm began to ring in the tight space of the cockpit.
“What is that?” Kala’s musical voice filled the cabin.
“Proximity alarm!” Vath’s voice cut across the comlink. “We’ve been locked onto! Take evasive action!”
Larry pulled hard at the side rod and banked his ship away from the smuggler’s yacht. He saw Bob performing a mirror of his maneuver as bolts of white plasma spattered against the shields of the smuggler’s yacht. They could hear Shibu swearing loudly over the speakers as he struggled to keep control of the craft.
“You guy want to do something about that, I really wouldn’t mind!” Shibu rumbled.
“, hold back!” Vath spoke loudly across the comlink. “This is our battle! My screens show seven scarab fighters following us out of the system. Your battered X-wing won’t be of any help in this!”
Larry started to protest, but shrugged and held his tongue. He could feel the power of the ship thrumming under his feet and assumed Vath knew plenty about his own ship. He pulled the bomber around to face the attackers and flinched as plasma bolts splashed against the shields of the ship. He slapped the firing blister of the side rod and smiled as his own fire raked across the ships, shattering one into a thousand wet shards. The others peeled away and over the small horizon of the planetoid. Larry could see immense cracks forming in the surface of Dar Kaleel as the rock tore itself apart.
“Good shooting, private!” Vath hissed. “But next time, hold your fire. We need to finish this quickly.”
“I’m not terribly impressed with your fighters, imperial,” Cameron’s voice purred through the speakers. “Seems like they flee at the slightest sign of weakness.”
“Actually, we have sold a good deal of them to other imperial outposts in the region,” Vath chuckled drily. “They are quite popular, being fast, well armored, and the only ships known which can reproduce!”
Suddenly, six ships appears over the horizon, firing madly in a tight formation which raked the front of the scarab bomber with plasma. He saw the indicators for the forward shields reaching critical. But as he was about to shout at Vath, the ship shuddered and Larry saw two globes of crimson fire streak out from the ship.
“And the only ships that can grow their own firestorm torpedoes,” Vath’s rasp seemed singularly self-satisfied.
The fiery globes reached the scarab fighters in less than a second and exploded into a firestorm of red and blue plasma which expanded across the surface of Dar Kaleel. Larry pulled the ship away from the firestorm as he saw the last scarab fighter torn to pieces. He squeezed hard on the throttle padding and the ship leaped away from the planet.
Larry reached quickly forward and rotated the forward holo to watch their back. He heard Kala gasp as Dar Kaleel glowed blue-white and exploded outward, sending a halo of fire and debris flying over their heads. He saw the rear shield pelted by tiny particles rushing away from the planet, but as he caught up to the Bear Claw and Cameron’s battered vessel the shields held.
He looked back at the expanding cloud of debris and sighed.
“Too bad my ship was in that thing,” He sighed over the comlink as they approached the jump point. He saw calculations scrolling across a display as Bob relayed the coordinates to the flight computer in the scarab bomber. “I’ll sure miss my X-wing.”
“Don’t worry, rookie,” Cameron laughed over the intercom. “No matter what the imperial says, rules of the Alliance say that any enemy ship brought in belong to the man it. That means you should either get to keep this monster or trade it in for something better.”
Shibu’s rumbling laugh echoed across the comlink.
“Don’t go wasting your wad on anything like the Cat’s ship, kid,” His graveled voice was full of mirth. “It handles like a bantha in heat!”
Cameron growled back at the demolitionist. “You’d be the only one around here to know, partner. The rest of us don't consider livestock to be close friends.”
“Okay, people, time to jump to light-speed!” Bob’s voice came across the comlink, his voice full of pride at his team. “I think the barnyard stories can wait for the FarStar. I think we’re due that shower the Admiral promised.”
Hyperspace blossomed around them and they were absorbed into the mottled glow of space-beyond-space. The sky around the expanding dust cloud of what had been Dar Kaleel was pulled at lightly by the gravity of the Dar Yash nebula light years away and the white dwarf sun of the lonely system burned in silence.
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