CHAPTER TWO
Blood trickled across the length of the vibroblade exiting the gaping wound of flesh and scarred, cauterized tissue from the neck of a deceased, overly bloated human male. The wound reeked of putrid blood and burnt flesh as a horrific façade of fear encompassed the face of the dead. The burly man twitched with the final nerve impulses brought upon death's embrace, the deed had been accomplished. A slender, crimson-skinned hand gripped the blade with a tightened ferocity as it plunged into the deceased's left eye socket. A streak of crimson blood erupted from the wound as the crush of flesh and bone tore into the skull, twisting and gutting brain matter.
"This is for my mother, bantha fodder!" An adolescent female voice cried. The vibroblade retracted from the eye. The slender hand moved the weapon toward the cadaver's loins.
"And this is for me you Hutt!"
Blood gushed from the cadaver's manhood as flesh popped and tore from the blade's searing vibrations. Blood and flesh began to seep onto the gray-metal floor. Another pale hand that ended in raven nails grabbed the blade from the young murderer.
"You took the life of one as it had destroyed yours. You have proven yourself to our coven," the voice of Tera echoed upon the room.
"I've never hurt anyone," cried the younger voice.
"He hurt you, Hol'en. He deserved nothing less than death. You killed out of passion, out of anger. You have embraced the darkness to be the fourth that we desire. Join us to awake the One True Sith," Tera cooed.
Tera embraced Hol'en, easing her back onto her feet. Hol'en's silky, emerald dress stained with the blood and flesh of her step-father. Tera stretched a long, slender arm toward the distressed half-breed Twi'lek girl, her open palm faced toward the ceiling. Her long black fingernails clicked as she motioned toward Hol'en. With an equally warm embrace, Hol'en's blood-splattered hand grasped Tera's. Their hands interlocked in comforting solace as Tera guided Hol'en's steps over the fallen predator.
Mandin and Cresta had been waiting outside of the ramshackle apartment that Hol'en had shared with her mother and step-father. Nal Hutta's rampant nightlife trickled across the back alley where the pair waited. Laughter and imbibing echoed across the air that smelled like cheap ales and various viscous body fluids from multitudes of species. A pair of Rodians cavorted in the distance amidst molded trash and the hint of deathsticks seeping their pores.
Hol'en's mother would not return home for days at a time; selling herself and deathsticks to make ends meet. This human was the latest in a series of step-fathers; some human others of races whose hearts were more sinister. Hol'en never knew who her father was, but knew he was a Zabrakian trader that her mother was forced to service. Her mother, on the other hand was a red-tinted Twi'lek who sold herself amongst the sleazy Hutt-controlled cantinas and drug dens. The Twi'lek genes dominated those of her Zabrak father enough to distinguish her as a Twi'lek, even though the Zabrakian horns featured prominently upon her lekku.
Twi'leks cursed her mother for keeping such a baneful child, and no Zabrakian considered her part of their clans. It was Tera and her friends who took to her as a sister. She had only to prove herself.
"When your mother finds this disease of a human, we will be far distant from Nal Hutta," Tera comforted.
"Where are we going from here?" Mandin quested.
"To the moon, Nar Shaddaa. We should be able to find a spacer to take us to our destination. "
The Red Dawn navigated amongst the miasma of sulfur and methane that blanketed Roth in a poisonous mixture. Zayne scrutinized the shield meter as the gauge slowly decreased and regain strength only to diminish again. With each fractional decline in shield integrity, the constant charge of the shield generator gave him two more fractions of time. Prior to entry, Zayne managed to divert enough power to shields to counterbalance the turbulence of atmospheric entry and to propel himself and his consignment to the hazardous surface.
The pale green atmosphere smothered the gray, gooey surface that Zayne presumed to have once been continents. Constant monitoring of the planetary surface by See-ThreeQue Eight revealed that methane gas spewed from gas pockets which gradually erupted upon the shell. What had not been covered by viscous bog was flush with forests of decayed and rotting trees. Relics of ancient, decomposed buildings and desolate civilizations were scarred into a continental forest stretching across the equator in the western hemisphere. A once great city lay in ruin; either from a war long fought in a previous life or from the fester that befell the planet.
"What is this place?" Zayne inquired aloud.
"Sir, I am not versed in the ways of human ideology, but I believe we are as close to the concept of 'Chaos' as can be imagined."
"Impossible. It is only an ideology, not a tangible place. But this planet seems to exist only to serve death. Do you know where we are going?"
"Sir, I believe that our destination lies on the opposite hemisphere, just south of the northern pole."
The Red Dawn veered northward, across the polar plane along a vast bog that had once been a naturally icy ocean. As The Red Dawn cleared upon the northern expanse of grey marsh, an outline of a distant continent appeared upon the left side of the viewport. Caustic rains sizzled across the transparisteel viewports with the sounds of cooked lard as the craft glided across a vast oceanic expanse. A faint continental outline loomed in the distance on the far right side of the viewport.
The majestic ship idled across the atmosphere listing toward the eastern most continent on the horizon. Tera presented her majestic, seductive grace inside the cockpit, running a single finger across the back of Zayne's neck. The pointed nail sent chills down his spine, breaking his concentration.
"What did you want? Can't you see I'm trying to land us safely?"
"We're here." Tera proclaimed.
Tera slithered her ruby tongue along his right ear lobe. Her left hand encompassed the back of Zayne's neck as her right hand slinked across his chest. See-ThreeQue Eight watched in amazement at the perversity of her affection. She turned toward the droid, revealing a sinister grin of pearly white teeth, with slight fangs for canines.
"Sorry, I don't care much for droids. I like my mates to be human. You can keep watching, though."
"Where are we landing?" Zayne regained his composure, "I see miles and miles of faux forestry, I can't land this thing in a swamp either."
"The Force will guide you to your landing." Tera's tongue slithered arcane beliefs.
"I don't believe in the Force," Zayne remembered.
"Karkin' atheist! "
On her proclamation, The Red Dawn violently shifted westerly on the continent. The vessel auto-corrected its position in relation to hemisphere gliding toward a small clearing that had revealed itself amongst the rot and muck. The rotten forests seemed to move away from a patch of cleared almost harvestable land large enough to accommodate a Republic Star Destroyer, almost as if the trees themselves had been controlled by the Force to welcome their arrival.
The Red Dawn extracted its landing gear without manipulation from the pilot or his droid, as called by destiny. With a loud thud, the ship had kissed land. Zayne cursed in his breath. In his many years of being a pilot Zayne had never witnessed a ship land as his had recently done.
"What did you do?"
"I did nothing. This was the work of the One True Sith. He wants us here, Zayne. It is by destiny you landed." An innocent smile widened upon her face. If she had not been a pupil of the dark side, Zayne might have found himself marrying her.
"Destiny my ass! " Zayne released his safety harness and removed himself from his pilot's seat.
A pounding pulse burst inside Zayne's head as pressure in his skull pressed against his eyes. He clutched his temples in reaction, dropping to his knees. His face winced in pain, cheeks darkened as blood rushed in. Zayne clenched his teeth in agony unable to move from his crouched position that migrated into the fetal. See-ThreeQue Eight unexplainably powered down, lifeless and eerily still.
Be silent, or be silenced. A sinister, guttural voice reverberated upon the whole of the ship with the force of a planetary quake. Tera dropped to her knees.
"Master," she shouted, crying tears of joy that washed down her face into her makeup.
Zayne gradually recovered his consciousness, his body frigid and stiff, gradually increased to body temperatures. The engines whined and wailed to a stop as Zayne regained his hearing, the perpendicular floor moved in a blur as his sight came back into focus. He remained motionless on the ground, his nerves tingling across his spine and extremities to regain the common touch. His heart thumped away in his chest, pounding softer and slower with each pulse echoing quieter than the last continuing onward toward basic reflex.
Zayne lifted himself off the durasteel floor, only to witness Tera's shapely form retreating from the cockpit. He paused to gaze at her swagger in distrustful spite. Struggling with his increasing strength, he made his way back into the pilot's seat; shaking his head and sighing reliefs. See-ThreeQue Eight rebooted, his vocoder cycling through many of his programmed languages; dialects Zayne had yet to hear reverberated from the droid's mouth slit. His head shook and tilted, servomotors whining with each motion. His oculars glowed, dimmed and brightened in random cycles during the reboot phase.
"Oh dear," See-ThreeQue Eight proclaimed in a wry Basic accent that Zayne recognized as a human accent used amongst most Imperial officers of his father's day. He had heard the same accent before as he faintly remembered speaking on occasion to Her Majesty, Leia Organa Solo's golden droid.
"Are you ok?" Zayne asked.
"I don't know. Beginning programming core scan, now." His voice returned to the standard dialect.
See-ThreeQue Eight dimmed his power consumption to divert power toward his programming core, his ocular sockets flashed repeatedly to signal processing was occurring. After a few moments of self-diagnosis, See-ThreeQue Eight returned with a peculiar statement.
"Sir, I believe I have found a new language in my library. I can't make it out as the language does not appear on any known Imperial or Republic charts. Cross-referencing the consonant-vowel placement, conjugations and sentence structure, the language is obscenely close to that of the Infinite Empire, yet more primitive."
"Infinite Empire? You mean the ancient Rakatan?"
"Yes sir, but it appears to predate them."
"Would you be able to speak it?"
"No sir. My vocoder cannot synthesize this language; I am only capable of synthesizing languages that are in current use. I can only hear it and interpret."
Zayne turned his attention toward the outside view; an olive tinted sky filled with swirling clouds of methane and sulfur. His shields registered ninety-two percent as an acidic bath engulfed the external hull. He flicked a switch to activate the high-intensity lights that dominated the four corners of the cockpit that protruded from the primary hull of the ship. The soupy skies swirled and shifted as if startled by a sudden introduction of life.
He arose from his seat, motioned for his droid to remain and exited toward the passenger quarters to lecture his cargo.
"We only have two life-suits onboard my ship. I count four of you. How do you expect to survive this climate?"
"The Force," Mandin confidently answered. The other three women were gathering their supplies: daggers and other assorted weapons. None of them carried a lightsaber, as Zayne came to understood that Force-users wielded. Tera clutched the ancient tome firmly underneath her left arm, snuggled against her ample chest that Zayne couldn't help but notice bulged from her sheer, raven dress.
"You're delirious. I don't think that even Luke Skywalker could survive this planet."
The utterance of that vile name summoned a violent tear in Tera's heart. A name she had learned to forget, but remembered only for the sake of her mission. Tera removed her vibroblade from the sheath on her right hip, rushing to meet the blade tip to Zayne's chest in a fit of rage. Her teeth clenched at the very sound of Luke's invocation.
"I find your lack of faith disturbing, Zayne."
Zayne yanked the blade off of his chest, "You're crazy if you're going out there without a life-suit. You don't even know where you're going."
"There's a temple, about five kilometers from this landing zone," Tera answered.
"Five kilometers? The atmosphere is a sulfur-methane soup with the occasional storm of volcanic ash. As we speak, our shields deplete slowly. We have five hours till hull damage, I'm leaving this karkin' hell-hole before then; with or without you."
Tera cynically cackled at Zayne's remark. She turned around to face her sisters, "Do you hear that girls? He thinks he's going to just leave us here."
The other girls returned her mad laughter. Mandin and Cresta swayed over to flank Zayne's shoulders; their pale arms erupted from ebony dresses to caress his chest and face. Mandin ran her crimson tipped lips over Zayne's right ear as heavy breaths parted from her sensuous orifice. Cresta scratched her purple nails across Zayne's neck from his right side. Hol'en embraced her innocent lekku against Zayne's pelvis and legs as she kneeled below Cresta. Her red-tinted arms ran the length of his left leg, inching closer toward his manliness.
"Call your schutta off of me!" Zayne demanded. Hol'en glanced upward at Zayne's face; her countenance became an obvious reaction toward Zayne's insult. Tera eyed toward Hol'en's disturbed expression.
"You have upset our sweet Hol'en. How could you?"
"Look! You're on this planet, and you have your choice to follow my lead as the only skilled pilot on this rock. You do what you came to do, and then we leave."
"Don't you hear the voices that have put you in comatose? That is the Voice of the Sith. The Almighty One who embodies all the dark side. He is our reason for being here."
Tera's appearance escalated into a fierce tempo.
"That's fine; you kids go dabble in your sorcery. I'll be here when you're done. Five hours. We're burning shields."
As Zayne finished his sentence, a planetary quake rocked The Red Dawn and her passengers. All succumbed to the mighty upheaval, falling toward the durasteel surface of her floors. Zayne reached for his communicator in his vest pocket.
"See-ThreeQue Eight, what the frak was that?"
"Sir, I believe that this planetary surface isn't entirely stable."
"Not entirely stable, huh? Captain Obvious, I think we figured that one out while in orbit."
"Sir, you might want to come up here and take a look outside."
Another violent shift rocked the vessel. Mandin and Cresta tumbled port-side followed by Tera and Hol'en. The ancient tome had become removed from Tera's grasp sliding across the floor toward her feet. Zayne struggled to regain his footing to march his way toward the cockpit. Another convulsion caused him to brace himself upon one of the walls. When he made his way into the cockpit, the viewport was encased by the silhouette of a massive being that blocked all natural light coming into the ship.
"What the kark?"
"I don't know, sir."
Massive spines stretching dozens of meters in length lined the dorsal side of the creature that stood close to ten meters to shoulder at each of its six legs. Zayne estimated the beast was at least one hundred meters from tip to tail. The gargantuan head peered around and with each footing the creature moved to align itself rocked The Red Dawn repeatedly under the mini quakes. Horny spikes adorned the crown of the character as violent, ruby eyes flanking the skull peered into Zayne's soul. The head itself looked as if it weighed the mass of an X-Wing. The creature opened its razor-sharp beak and wailed a call which Zayne could not tell if it was one for mating or fighting.
The shrieking breath rushed violently upon The Red Dawn's hull, klaxons blared to alert the crew to a dangerous situation. Zayne stood motionless, to hopefully alert the creature to feel safe. Each of the creature's mammoth legs ended in six piercing claws on each foot. The beast appeared to be a hunter, but what Zayne couldn't tell if this thing was on the top or bottom of this planet's food chain. His answer came soon.
Another native, this one capable of flight swooped toward the first. The flying beast's wings blotted out what remained of the white dwarf's waning light that leaked through the burning miasma. Outside the ship, the flying beast homed in on the land creature. It too shared equally massive size and weight; a slender raven body nose-dived upon the land creature. Leathery wings swept back to aide in the attack, its gaping jaw erupted in a cataclysmic outburst of blue and purple flames aimed at its prey.
In a flash, the land beast outside of The Red Dawn was encased in a scorching torture of bizarre fire. By this time, Tera had accompanied Zayne inside the cockpit; her eyes a mixture of fear and excitement as she watched the dance play in front of her. The ancient book grasped in her hands. The land beast embraced a defensive stance, its calcium-based armor protecting its vitals from the heat of the attacking flame. As the flying fauna made a return attack, the land creature appeared to bulge.
In a show of pain and suffering, the land beast yelled and screamed as a number of its dorsal spines exited upon a rush of greenish-purple liquid that erupted from the base of the spines, flushing across its back and the viewport of The Red Dawn in a surge of brutal display. Four of the spines pierced the guts and splintered the left wing of the flying beast as gravity and inertia caused it to dive-bomb into the boggy sea a few hundred yards away from the battle site. The creature wailed, splashing the quagmire with its uninjured wing. Zayne noticed each time the remaining wing removed from the bog, more and more of the appendage had begun to corrode before the creature ceased wailing; surrendering to the mordant ocean.
Tera craned her neck to meet Zayne's eyes. For the first time since they met, Zayne detected a sense of fear well up inside her. She clutched the ancient book amongst her chest, which Zayne eyed ever vigilant.
"What is in that book?" Zayne no longer feared her reprisal for asking questions. He knew she truly felt fear. Tera hesitated a moment. She was strong in the Force, unlike her sisters and had noticeable training, yet concealed her abilities enough to disguise them. The overwhelming fear that gripped her soul in the last few moments relinquished the mind trick she had placed on Zayne for the past week. A dark force, more powerful than she had ever envisioned, made its presence known; a force that negated her own capability.
Both creatures had been manifest of pure dark side energies. Predator and prey, a grand theater to demonstrate the powers of the planet; the pure dark side, a force sought for centuries now encountered by a one who was just an Adept in scale. Korriban, Byss, Prakith, Lehon, none of these planets compared to the Force exhibited on Roth. This was Chaos, this was the Dark Side.
"Death is in this book," she stuttered, "the death of the galaxy. We are here to free the One True Sith from his entombment; the galaxy will tremble and fall at his might."
Tera cackled gleefully at the thought. A swirl of dark side energies encompassed her figure in a brilliant display of purple and blue flame. She outstretched her arms in the loving embrace as the ancient tome lifted itself to hover a few feet in front of her. Zayne stepped back, attempting to exit the cockpit chambers, startled by the upheaval in darkness that surrounded his fare. Tera's eyes began to glow a bright vermilion. Sparks of dark side energies danced across her teeth as she grinned madly.
My vessels will leave your ship, mortal. Or you will die! A heavy-throated voice growled in Basic as Tera became the medium. She pointed a raven-nailed finger toward Zayne as her feet lifted a few inches above the surface of the cockpit floor. Zayne dropped to his knees once again, his brain pulsing with the dark side energies he felt manifesting from Tera.
"What are you? Why are you doing this to me?" Zayne screamed in agony.
Know that I will be your salvation. Tera's master relaxed his grip upon Zayne's body. Zayne began to pant heavily, each heartbeat slowing to normal pace. He raised his sweaty brow upward toward Tera in a humbled approach as her body drifted back to the surface.
"Your master's mad. No one could survive this caustic world."
"You underestimate the powers of the dark side," she proclaimed.
Zayne picked himself from the floor. He brushed his brown hair back into place with his gloved fingers. He moved away from Tera toward the cockpit door to lead her to the passenger quarters. The Sith Sisters, as he came to call them realized the fiasco that occurred in the cockpit and embraced Tera, their leader to calm her down. As Tera approached her coven, she muttered below her breath in an arcane tongue. The dialect of the language profoundly elaborated its consonants in staccato. She canted an old spell; one Zayne surmised came from her book. Three-Que-eight jilted his head slightly as she spoke, almost recognizing her speech patterns.
"Open the door," Mandin ordered confidently.
"You'll die out there. If the monsters don't get you, the atmosphere will."
"Master will protect us. Let us leave as he commanded."
"Then I'll see you in Hell," Zayne muttered.
Tera heard the words under his breath. Zayne pressed his anger into a button to unleash the cargo bay hatch which was the only entrance into The Red Dawn. The portal's hydraulics whined and stressed as the hatch angled toward the ground. From inside, the caustic odor reeked of bantha dung mixed with the acidic burns penetrating his lungs for the few moments he left the door open. Zayne covered his nose and mouth from the seething sulfuric stench, his eyes noticeably reacting with tears and red veins across his orbs.
"We're already in hell, lover." Tera remarked as her fellow sisters exited the ship. As Hol'en, the last to leave, hurried her feet upon the planetary surface, Zayne lifted the egress hatch. No sooner than he could breathe again the hatch sealed him away from the girls.
