Dark Destinies
Chapter Two
When they woke, the ship was hanging in orbit above a barren, desolate planet.
"This must be the mission site that was in the data chip. We're to search, apparently…We'll know what we're looking for when we find it." Carefully, Vico piloted the ship down.
"This place is awful," Jenisa shivered, looking around. Small dust clouds drifted past the ship's ramp. "It feels…wrong. Like scavenger birds over their prey. Something knows we're here."
Vico nodded. "It feels creepy. But I've heard stories about things like this. We must be here to confront our fears or something."
"But there's nothing to confront! It's all just rocks and dust, and that horrible empty watching."
Vico looked at her, concerned. She was trembling, lips pressed together in a tense line. "Jeni, it's okay. We're going to find what we were sent for, and then we're going to leave."
She managed a small smile. "Thanks, Vic. Where do you think we should start looking?"
"We could try up in the hills there," he suggested.
Unloading their speeder bikes and closing the ship, they set off. It didn't take them long to reach the hills, which on closer inspection were dotted with caves. Choosing one, they walked in. The small handlights they carried illuminated their path; and it was a path, the cave's floor perfectly smooth, with a slight downwards slope. With some wariness, they noted smaller passages leading off. From one of these, abruptly, there glittered a pair of eyes, red in the handlights' beams.
The creature that leapt at them was like nothing they had seen before, with slavering, fang-filled jaws, a spiky tail, and almost reptilian skin. Nico's blade flashed blue in his free hand, severing a needle-clawed paw. The animal snarled, staggering forward on its three remaining limbs, but he stepped aside and deftly beheaded it.
"What was that?"
"Ugly, fierce, and unhappy about visitors?"
Jenisa laughed briefly. "No, what kind of creature? I've never seen anything that looked like that before."
"No idea. Some kind of lizard-hound thing."
They kept walking, looking around often, in case there were more of the lizard-hounds. At another tunnel intersection, Vico paused, as something metallic glinted amid the shadows. Jenisa stopped, watching as he investigated.
"Security droid of some kind. Broken," he called back.
Suddenly, the caverns shook. A tremor brought rocks tumbling down, and Jenisa was forced to jump backwards to avoid being hit. She stared at the wall of rubble. They were separated.
She ignited her lightsaber, preparing to cut her way through, but a ripple in the Force warned her. Jenisa turned, skewering a lizard-hound even as it leapt at her. Its weight and momentum knocked her over, the dead creature on top, her lightsaber turned off instantly to avoid injuring herself.
