The room was dark. It was the first thing Corey noticed when he stepped into the huge circular audience chamber, buried deep within the Falleen Prince Xizor's mansion on Naboo. He stood in the center of the huge chamber, stepping into a shaft of daylight that shone down from an aperture in the ceiling.
He knew there were many others in the room around him, even if he didn't have the luxury of seeing them. He could feel their gazes on him, feel their anger and their contempt.
He ignored them all, instead standing at attention and hooking his gauntleted arms behind his back.
"You summoned me?" he asked.
There was no answer, only silence emanating from the darkness surrounding him. Corey waited exactly five seconds before saying, "I can only assume that it's because of what happened on Telos."
Again, he was met with only silence. After a time, he sighed and said, "Pardon my impudence, Prince, but I can't tell you what you want if I don't know what it is."
Finally, a voice spoke. It was the calm, smoothly seductive voice of a Falleen male.
"I am very disappointed with your work, Corey Black," the voice said. "You told me that your security force would be able to keep my supply depots safe."
"You didn't tell me that we'd be guarding it against a walking death machine," Corey replied evenly, narrowing his eyes behind his multi-colored helmet.
"You are a bounty hunter. You are trained to handle all manner of threats."
"This guy killed fifteen Mandalorians. Well-trained Mandalorians. Friends of mine."
"That is irrelevant," Prince Xizor's voice snapped. "What is of interest to me is my clients, who will now be robbed of another shipment of spices."
Corey laughed, shaking his head. "You don't get it, do you? This thing wasn't after your drugs. It just appeared out of nowhere, killed everything in sight, then disappeared. It didn't steal your drugs, it burned the supply depot to the ground."
There was a long pause, then Xizor said, "Explain yourself. What happened at Depot Fifteen?"
Corey took a deep breath, then said, "As you're aware, I was hired as a security overseer for Depot Fifteen on the Telosian Plains. I said that I wouldn't be able to defend the depot with your di'kutla grunts, so I hired on fifteen Mando'ade to bolster the security forces."
"Yes," Xizor said, his voice silky-soft with contempt and anger. "I hired them at great expense, as I recall."
Corey shrugged. "It's not cheap to hire the best."
"And yet you still failed to keep the post intact," Xizor said.
"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Corey said. "This guy tore through us like flittersilk. There wasn't much else we could do."
"What happened on the day in question?" came another Falleen voice, a female this time. "Go into every detail you can remember."
Corey stared at the floor thoughtfully for a time, ignoring the flashing information thrown up by his helmet's HUD. He gathered his thoughts, thinking of what to say.
"This guy attacked at dawn," he began. "All fifteen of us were on patrol around the perimeter when Ruusaan noticed a breach in the perimeter defense. She went to check it out, thinking it was just a wild Kath hound or something. She was gone for fifteen minutes before we sent someone to look for her."
"And?" Xizor pressed insistently.
"Someone had ripped her head from her shoulders and spitted her body on the razor wire on the top of the compound fence," Corey snapped. The sight haunted him even now, two weeks later. "There was blood everywhere, and her head was missing. We could only assume that whoever - whatever - had killed her had taken it with as a trophy or something."
He grimaced and looked in the direction he assumed Prince Xizor was sitting. "I've been from one end of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of horrible things that would make even hardened special forces troopers wet their armor. Hell, I've done a lot of those things. But this?"
He shook his head and murmured, "It was the most ori'suumyc thing I've ever seen. I felt like I was going to throw up."
There was a long pause from Xizor before the prince murmured, "You have my attention. Continue."
"Things only got worse after that," Corey explained. "Perimeter breaches started showing all over the compound, but when our guys got there to check it out, there was nothing there. We ran around for hours trying to lock down the compound, and everything started to calm down around noon. We thought it was over, so we sent a few guys to investigate the scene where Ruusaan had been murdered. You know, to run cleanup, try to get her body down from the razor-wire, see if there had been anything we'd missed on our previous investigative run."
Corey frowned and held out his hands about two feet apart. "The team found these huge three-toed tracks about this wide all around the place. And they were fresh. Whatever had made them had been there only a few minutes before."
"Show us," Xizor commanded.
Corey tapped a command into his gauntlet datapad and a shimmering image of the footprints sprang to life in the air in front of him, rotating slowly.
"They said the footprints looked vaguely reptilian in origin," Corey said, staring at the holo, "and that whatever the thing was, it must have weighed almost half a ton. But they couldn't think of anything that would make this kind of tracks."
"A local species, perhaps?" came the female Falleen's voice.
He shook his head again. "The investigative group only had enough time to transmit the holos back before we lost contact with them. We knew instantly that whatever had killed Ruusaan had come back, so we headed out there to back them up."
"And what did you find?"
Corey shuddered at the memory as he said, "We weren't able to get a good look at... well, anything. We found our guys fighting as we got there, just firing in random directions. And there was this... thing, running past them, ripping them limb from limb. Every time someone landed a hit on it, it didn't even flinch."
He took another deep breath, almost able to hear the sounds of the battle in his head: the snap of blasterfire, the roaring of the creature, the screams of Mandalorians as the thing tore through flesh and bone with such ease that they may as well have been fighting naked. He shook his head and said, "Paak was the first to go, and that alone should have warned us to get out of there; he was the toughest shabuir we had on site. The thing jumped at him, knocked him to the ground, and ripped his throat out with its teeth. One of our other vode tried to get in there to help him, but the thing just swiped at him and knocked his head off with a single stroke, like it must have done with Ruusaan."
"Why didn't you subdue it with stun rounds?" the female Falleen demanded.
"What, you don't think we tried that?" Corey snapped. "I'm telling you, this thing was kriffing indestructible. I tried to attack it with a shabla lightsaber and it didn't do anything!"
"Calm yourself, bounty hunter," Xizor's voice said, demanding obedience. "And explain what happened."
Corey shook his head, breathing hard and clenching his fists. "This thing tore through us, killing one Mando after another. We could barely walk, the ground was so slick with blood, and any time we had to stop to reload our weapons the thing would just launch itself at us."
"How was it that you managed to survive?" came a deep voice that may have been human.
"I was knocked unconscious by the thing," Corey explained, scowling at the memory. "I shot at it with my jetpack rocket and the damned thing grabbed the rocket out of the air. It threw it back at me, and I caught the brunt of the explosion in the chest plate. My beskar'gam took most of the force of the explosion, but I was paralyzed from the neck down.
"It would have killed me," he said. "I was lying on the ground, unable to move, and it stepped on my chest. It... it bent over me and stared at me with these gold eyes. It was drooling like a rancor, and I remember it having all these razor-sharp teeth."
He winced at the memory, then continued, "It pulled this huge sword out of a sheath on its back and pressed it to my neck. I thought it was going to kill me too, but..."
"But what?" the human voice asked. "What happened?"
"The last of my security force managed to get up and shoot it twice in the head," Corey said. "That drew the thing's attention away from me. After that, it must have... forgotten about me, or thought I wasn't worth the effort. It ripped my friend in half before moving on to the depot. "
He sighed, staring distractedly at the floor for a moment before saying, "This thing... it enjoyed what it was doing. It was having fun killing us, and that's a viciousness that I've never seen before. It makes me sick, and I'm a freakin' Mandalorian."
"Did this... thing take any items from Depot Fifteen?" asked the female Falleen.
"No," Corey said, shaking his head. "It just tossed an incendiary detonator through the front door and blew the place to hell. The depot burned for four hours, destroying everything inside."
"And where did this mysterious attacker go?" Xizor asked coldly. "Did it have a transport?"
"No," Corey said. "It took off on foot and disappeared into the foothills to the east. A couple hours later, one of your Black Sun supply runs stopped by and found the depot in ruins. They picked me up, reported the incident to you... and here we are."
"Indeed," Xizor said quietly, thoughtfully. After a long pause, he said, "Very well. You may leave. Your reports have proven most... enlightening."
"And what are your next orders? Do you want me to track this thing down?"
"No," came the female Falleen's voice. "You have proven inept at merely guarding a depot against this being, even with fifteen fellow Mandalorians at your back. You will be contacted when we have further need of your services.
Corey bowed at the waist, fuming inside at the contempt in the female's voice. Then he spun on his heel and stormed out of the large, dark room. Once again, he could feel the multitude of gazes on him as he left, and when the large entrance door slid shut behind him, he'd never felt more relieved in his life.
He shook his head and cursed as he strode through the extravagant hallways of Xizor's mansion, heading back for the landing pad where he'd left his ship.
Whatever this thing was, it needed to be dealt with. It had killed fellow Mando'ade, brothers and sisters of all true Mandalorians. That made this a personal fight for any Mando in the galaxy. And even if Xizor wouldn't trust him to get the job done, Corey knew someone he would.
He just hoped the bounty hunter would be up to the challenge.
Within the dark room, Prince Xizor stroked his chin slowly, narrowing his violet eyes. "It is obvious that this being is not simply a dissatisfied ex-employee as has been previously suggested."
"This is the fifth attack this month," said the female Falleen sitting to his left. "It is growing increasingly difficult to keep these hits under wraps."
"This has to be dealt with," came the deep human man's voice from the shadows.
Xizor nodded in agreement. This was a situation that threatened his entire organization. If his customers caught wind that there was something out there destroying supply depots, they wouldn't think their business was safe with Xizor, and they would gladly turn to lesser beings like Jabba the Hutt or Sekha.
It was a long time before Xizor and murmured, "We shall deal with this as we have in the past. There is no reason to spend our own time and credits to bring this being in."
He turned to the female Falleen sitting next to him and said, "Spread the word. There will be a great reward for any being willing to investigate and capture this mysterious attacker. I want this bounty on all channels open to us; I want to see it on Imperial databases, to hear it whispered in the halls of Jabba the Hutt's palace. I want every bounty hunter in the galaxy to hear of this, and I want them on the job as soon as possible."
The Falleen female murmured, "It shall be done."
Xizor turned back to the shaft of light that Corey Black had occupied only moments before.
"By this time next week," he murmured, "I want that being's head on a pike in the center of this room."