Lineage IX
Chapter 2.
Mama Biggins, as the proprietress styled herself, kept a generous table and made sure that her –strictly bipedal- guests availed themselves of its bounty, waiting upon the motley crew in person, her rough-spun skirts and petticoats hitched just high enough to reveal the precautionary blaster holstered beneath a stained apron.
"Now then," she chided her latest arrival. "Best thing for a hangover is jerzzil gut – help yourself, then. And caff?"
Wearily, the traveler requested tea, though he harbored little hope of this unlikely wish being granted.
"What's that, eh? Tea? This isn't some Coreworld dainty-house, sir." She poured a dark sludge into his chipped cup. "F's good enough for starships, it'll do fer us, we say 'round here. Drink up, then."
Personal preferences eroded by the blunting edge of necessity, the tall pilgrim raised the mug to his lips and sampled the brew. It tasted of charred earth and bitterness. "Thank you." Blue milk softened the caff's biting aftertaste.
Mama Biggins hoisted her considerable girth into the adjacent chair, straddling its seat and leaning two plump elbows upon the table, her ample bosom threatening to spill over its defensive fortifications. "My pleasure, Mr, ah..?"
He smiled, congratulating himself for paying for last night's lodgings in cash, a convenient means of exchange which did not require the awkward question of identity. Deftly changing the subject, he nodded at the blaster strapped upon her thigh. "Is that for intruders or for guests who don't pay?" he jestingly inquired.
Her mirth set the table and her own sumptuous curves to shaking; the traveler averted his eyes and applied himself to the local fare, painfully cognizant that his next meal might be long deferred.
"Oh, that's for ruffians that try to barge in here uninvited," Mama Biggins informed him. "Not that all the folks who stays here is exactly saints neither. And what about you, hm? You're not looking like a saint to me. I'll lay a wager I'm not the only one at this table with a concealed weapon about my person, eh?"
Ignoring the salacious undercurrent of her question, he merely inclined his head politely. "Not a saint, but a seeker."
"Oh ho ho… a seeker is it? After yer fortune like most hereabouts, or after more… simple pleasures?"
Her interlocutor brushed stray crumbs from his short beard with the hand-cloth and regarded her thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair. "There are other things one may seek… as for example, wisdom."
This declaration produced a bout of uproarious laughter. Mama poured herself a cup of the same bitter caff she had served her guest, and tipped it down her throat without ceremony. "Wisdom," she snorted. "Oh well, if you're a weed-smoking mystical sort, you'd better look up the Old One. He's just your type."
The tall, weather-worn man offered her a pale, skeptical smile. "I thought he was but a local folk legend."
A sly wink. "Most does. But he's out there in the swamps, all the same. I saw him myself when I were a girl – and they do say he's still mucking about out there. Barmy as hell's moons, too. Full of wise sayings for you, and magic and hokey old religion. You like wisdom an' phlo-sophy, you'll like his pipe dreams."
"Perhaps so."
His hostess waved an indulgent hand at his folly and hoisted herself upward again. "I've cleaning up to do – will you be needing the room again tonight?"
"No... I shall be on my way. My thanks for your hospitality."
Mama Biggins merely lit up a thin cheroot and started clearing away the dishes and crockery, watching appreciatively as the stranger rose and sauntered out her front door, his graceful, athletic figure quickly blending in among the milling crowd filling the main thoroughfare's dusty ruts.
The things were vile.
Serrated mandibles snatching and sawing frenziedly, dozens of undulating stubs set in a reticulated fleshy underside, blank opaque eyes squirming in bulging sockets, puckered front orifices dripping a viscous slime, a scent of choking putrefaction clinging to their pulsing, thick-crusted bodies.
And the Force: redolent with mindless hunger, with visceral, thoughtless wrath.
The younger Jedi of the pair was not to be blamed if, despite all his rigorous years of training, he gagged and stumbled back a pace, coming up against the older man as they faced off against the invading horde back-to-back.
"Utterly repulsive," Yan Dooku remarked, implacably calm. "I quite agree."
And this sufficed for small-talk antecedent to the fray; in the next moment, they were fully engaged, staving off death by a hairsbreadth as the legion of monstrosities descended upon them in a writhing mass. One green and two blue saber blades flashed and burned in the suffocating dark, carving hot and sticky scars across nightmarish mountains of flesh, severing stumps and seeking mandibles, burying themselves deep in roving eyeballs or the uplifted stretch of pale flesh beneath the things' heads.
Hot gore spilled like rain; the scent of roasted meat mingled with the decayed stench of the worms' skin; the press of undulating bodies seethed and stormed like an agitated sea. The wielders of lightning flew from their place and darted here and there, leaping from the head of this monster to the angrily thrashing tail of that. The screaming dissonance of the blades reached a strident pitch as sparks flew from the low limestone ceiling and burned in exposed flesh, boots slipped and scrabbled in the reeking detritus of battle.
They landed near one of the larger wormholes.
"This way," Dooku commanded.
His apprentice bared his teeth in repugnance, casting one last fierce look at the contorted mass of flesh and smoldering wounds behind them, and then dashed down the low-roofed tunnel at his master's heels.
They wound steadily upward, following the trail carved through the mountain's heart by its oldest denizens. Side passages opened to left and right, but the Sentinel forged an unwavering trail, honed instincts and the Force guiding him as surely as a beacon light, the echoing sounds of slithering pursuit driving them forward at a hunched run.
At last they reached the terminus of this subterranean way, plunging with a shared cry of relief into the chill and thin air high above B'tmoth Xal. The city's ruins spread before them, illuminated by dying phospho lamps; above, a lethargic scattering of stars looked wearily upon their antics. Coughing, gasping in great lungfuls of air both refreshing and too sharp to satisfy their lungs, half-sliding down the ice-slicked slopes, they stumbled and scraped their way to a small outcropping and came to a halt, pausing long enough to replace weapons at their belts and to make wry appraisal of their clothing.
"Hm," was Dooku's caustic estimation of their filthy appearance.
His padawan's mouth thinned into a censorious line as he regarded his own grime-smeared tunics and trousers. "Uncivilized," he grumbled.
"And little to show for our troubles, either," the elder man observed, grimly. "Let us descend and take our leave; we have already outstayed our welcome, I imagine."
"Yes, Master."
They tramped down the frigid and barren mountainside, wrapped in dark cloaks, their breath curling wraithlike behind them as they wound their way along the stony trail to the distant capitol city and their reluctant hosts.
"How much to rent a swamp bike?"
"I'm not going to rent you a bike, Offworlder," the Trandoshan growled, turning his head a trifle to the left and expectorating a sticky glob into the gutter. "I don't know you."
The traveler shifted impatiently. He raised a hand in the gesture of compulsion. "But I am a trustworthy fellow," he asserted in a mellow, mellifluous voice.
The reptilian's gimlet eyes narrowed obstinately. "Like chisssszzk you are." He accented the obscenity with a long sibilant breath, his forked tongue flickering over scaly lips.
Stymied, the stranger leaned against the countertop. "You have a bike for sale, surely," he suggested.
This was more to the ruffian's liking. "Ssssale? Yesss, maybe. Sssomehting in the back."
The tall man followed the ambling salesman into a ramshackle lot behind the main storefront – a yard surrounded by electrowire fencing and packed to the gills with rusting and decrepit machinery, bit sand pieces piled in bins along the perimeter, a few gutted hulks occupying the center of the cluttered space.
"Ssswamp bike. Let'sssee. Here we are." Twin rows of sharpened teeth flashed in a parody of a smile; the Trandoshan waved a clawed hand at the hacked-together skeleton of a swoop mounted upon a standard hydro-repulsor platform.
The tall man examined the welding seams, mouth hardening as he appraised the shoddy workmanship. "This is all you have?"
"Ten thoussssand."
Haggling was a skill more important than etiquette here; the stranger released a contemptuous breath. "I'll give you three if you throw in an extra fuel cell. This one's half depleted.
The Trandoshan's slatted nostrils flared red. "Five thoussssand, then."
"Thirty-five hundred." It was all he had – but then again, this was all he needed. For the present moment.
Pleased with the terms of highway robbery, the reptilian vehicle-monger blinked, nictitating membranes rapidly sliding over glassy eyes. "I'll sssssee about that fuel cell." He shuffled his way to an adjacent storage shed while the ad hoc bike's new owner slammed the access panels shut and brushed cobwebs from the intakes. Though the sun had not yet crawled its way to the meridian, Nal Hutta's humid heat already sent itching rivulets of sweat down his back. He sighed, twisting his abundant graying hair into a thick braid and fastening it with a small leather thong. A mosquito the size of his left hand settled upon his shoulder, and he brushed it aside.
Eventually the scurrilous shop owner returned with the promised power cell and fitted it into the bike's drive system. Credits exchanged hands, and the vehicle wheezed to life in a spluttering cloud of dirt and filthy exhaust. The grav regulators took a few seconds to adjust the repulsor field, but it did finally wobble its way off the ground, vibrating loudly.
"My thanks."
The stranger roared down the main street and out of town, leaving a glorious tornado of brown and gritty dust in his wake.
The B'tmothi High Priest met them at the gates, an armed guard of twenty flanking him, as though to forbid entrance by force of arms.
"You are not welcome here, desecrators." The words grated past his hoarse throat, echoed in the eyes of the honor guard, visible behind the obscuring face-masks. "Word has reached me of what you have done. And you will not bring the blood of the Guardians within our walls." He gestured to the clotted stains upon their garments and boots.
Yan Dooku's haughty gaze swept over the B'tmothi warriors. "Do you bring these men to protect you from harm, or to lend weight to your idle words?"
Beside him, his younger counterpart flinched, but kept his silence, eyes downcast though both hands rested lightly upon his burnished 'saber hilts.
The Priest bristled, raising a tattooed chin. "Both, perhaps."
The silver haired man's knife like smile was colder than the icy heights they had just descended. "I assure you – the first is unnecessary. And the second-" a short, dark chuckle – "would be highly ineffective."
The B'tmothi's bloodshot eyes ranged slowly over the speaker's relaxed posture, lighting on the gleaming weapon's hilt at his side. His face twisted in resentment. "In such arrogance walk all the servants of false Light." His ritual staff rose skyward, toward the bleeding disc crawling its weary way across the elliptic. "Sol-Ra sees your blasphemies, even those you utter in your deepest hearts. And he shall weigh them in the scales on the day of judgment."
Dooku inclined his head, sardonically. "Then we shall postpone our disagreement until that august occasion." He stepped forward, one fold of his cloak tossed over a shoulder, eyes flashing with a dangerous light. Two of the most mettlesome guards barred his path with pikes, while the others drew back.
The padawan inhaled deeply, hands moving to his own weapons. A line appeared between his brows, but still he said nothing.
"You will yield," the Sentinel commanded, the Force like a blunt hammer thundering into the quavering minds of his reluctant opponents.
The men fell back, as though physically injured, crumpling into those behind him.
"We shall be leaving now," the elegant Jedi master informed the High Priest, striding past with condescending grace. And then, over his shoulder, "Padawan."
The younger man followed, after a hesitant moment in which he opened his mouth as though to address the stricken B'tmothi and then decided against it, lapsing into a strict deference and pushing his way past the humiliated company before the spell of Dooku's contempt could lose its efficacy.
The ship was docked only a short distance away. They strode swiftly through the dying city, purposefully oblivious to the stares that lit upon them from open windows, to the expressions of horror that their gore-spattered clothing inspired.
"I feel your agitation," Dooku addressed his companion, without looking back.
A smoldering pause. "…Yes, Master."
They rounded a corner, sending a passel of curious children scurrying away in all directions. "This is not evolving into another, ah… issue, is it?" The coldly jesting tone velveted a keen-edged warning.
His protégé exhaled slowly, watching the terrorized B'tmothi retreat before them, the veiled women withdrawing into doorways, children fleeing their presence, the Force vibrant with alarm and fear. "I would not dare argue with your wisdom, Master," the young man murmured, blue eyes glinting with a hard light fit to match the Sentinel's own steely spirit. "Particularly when all opposition is met with such an open display of superiority."
Dooku ignored the jibe. Or seemed to. They ascended a shallow stairwell leading to a broken plaza. "Ah. The old argument. Might does not make right."
His younger companion bounded up the steps beside him, cloak rippling about his heels. "So I have been taught."
The irony was not wasted on the silver haired man. "Indeed. However, this does not preclude the use of might in the service of right, does it?"
"No, Master." A grudging admission.
Dooku's serene pace never faltered as they entered the outskirts of B'Tmoth Xal's disused spaceport, and the single Republic shuttle sitting upon landing prongs across the duracrete pad. "Nor in the service of teaching, do you not agree?"
His padawan smiled, a wary and joyless twitch of the mouth. "I assure you such would be both unnecessary and highly ineffective."
They halted; Dooku turned full to face his companion, bringing the young man up short. The Sentinel's dark eyes burned beneath the jutting silver brows, the challenge reflected in their brilliant depths. "Someday your sharp tongue will be your undoing, my friend," he replied, the smile tugging at his own thin mouth not reaching those somber pools. "Let us hear no more of it during our return journey."
A deep bow, received with aloof satisfaction. "Yes, Master."
"Hm." The Sentinel's mien smoothed to placidity, and he led the way up the ramp.
A few minutes later, the Jedi left B'tmoth forever, ascending into skies red with mourning, and abandoning its people to the doubtful mercy of their long-forsaken deities.