Morpheus Rising: Part 1
Mind Heist
"Hey!" It was the last word to ever leave the guard's lips.
Hael thumbed the activation button on his lightsaber, and in one jerking motion, characteristic of his preferred Form, Juyo, he cut a deep gash in the man's throat, before he could even deactivate the safety on his blaster. The snap-hiss! of his blood-red weapon activating and closing down again was far louder than he would have preferred, but he could do nothing about the noise; it would have to be tolerated.
Beside him, his comrade-in-arms, Dengel Gengronn, pulled out his twin-bladed weapon and held it at the ready, should the need arise. The leaders of their expedition, Masqua Ren and Theera Delaine walked ahead of the two apprentices, their measured strides carrying them far beyond the others, who had been ordered to protect the rear of the group. Between the four Sith strode a tall man in Mandalorian armour, his helmet clipped to his belt and a long-barrelled sniper rifle in his hand. His blazing red hair was like a beacon in the relative dark of the courtyard as he stalked in between the two rows of guards- not that he would need them if he was opposed.
The only things moving in the entire courtyard were a pair of birds in the towering wroshyr tree in the corner, whose singing was silenced the instant the quintet entered the vicinity, leaving their progress unhindered down the pathway to the front door. Their footsteps were muffled by their custom-made rubber-soled shoes, and their personalized stealth field generators, though turned off, were ready for activation at a moment's notice if need be.
"You've got two hostiles inside, on either side of the door." The voice over the microphone was not a droid's, but close in both intensity and emotion. "The scanners show they look like Weequays, but I can't be sure. Watch yourselves."
Hael clipped his lightsaber to his belt and drew a silenced projectile pistol from the holster at his side, flicking the safety off and holding it at the ready. He kept his eyes on his feet, so as to not trip on something, but his gaze constantly flicked upwards around himself, scanning his surroundings. It was eerily quiet, unnaturally, in fact, as if someone had turned a sound dampener on that eclipsed the entirety of the planet, and the only sounds that escaped it were those made by the Mandalorian's boots on the cobblestone floors.
Ahead of him, Masqua and Theera came to a halt just outside the doorway at the far end of the courtyard, which was made of a rich, reddish wood that gleamed with a fresh layer of varnish. This man is used to the sweet life. Must be nice. Hael knelt down, gripping his blaster in both hands and holding it nose to the ground. His black helmet's comm connections brought him audio of his allies' heavy breathing, and the sound of Dengel humming a song to himself to calm his nerves. "Any idea why Morden wanted us to do this? Or did he just order you, too?" He knew that the helmet would not let any sound escape, but still he spoke in a whisper.
"You're his apprentice- shouldn't he have told you? Or does he send you off to your death like everyone else on his team?" Theera's nasal, self-assured tone was infuriating, but Hael kept his response polite, as was the rule when talking to your superiors in the Sith Legions- he hated that rule.
"He tells me all that I need to know."
"Which isn't all that much, apparently." Dengel's tone was hardly ever unkind, but there was an ever-present edge to it that bespoke of a great loathing inside him, no matter how far he buried it. Yet another hopeless case the Sith have taken in, it seems.
Masqua placed a small, circular device over the control panel that activated the door, and a moment later, a green light flicked on in the centre of it, and the Sith opened the door, firing two shots inside first, which found their targets perfectly, it seemed, while giving off no more than a soft hiss upon discharge. They advanced into the mansion. Just before he walked through the door, Hael glanced upwards, and saw the thirteen other floors that stretched upwards, the intricate exterior appearing like something out of a holovid. It was an imposing sight, knowing that they would have to somehow make their way, unseen, to the very top floor to accomplish their mission. Soon after, the sight was swallowed by the top of the doorframe.
In reality, Morden had told him why they had been sent on this mission: "the power of the mind" had been his direct quotation. He said that there was a personal Holocron of the man who owned the mansion, detailing all his work on the higher functions of the mind, and what could be done with or to it through the many means there were in the Galaxy, and Morden coveted the Holocron and the secrets held within. He would not say anything more than that, but he did mention that there would be more than just basic security involved; he had told Hael to 'keep his anchor in reality', whatever that meant.
"You're going to make a right here, and at the third intersection of corridors, turn left and you'll come to a turbolift which leads to the lower levels, and the maintenance hallways." The voice clicked off again, leaving Hael's helmet filled with the sounds of his comrades breathing again. Then it came back, "Watch it, you've got a patrol of droids coming down the hall behind you; there's eight of them."
They scurried into the various doorways, but the Mandalorian simply vanished on the spot, and a few moments later, the droids came into view. They were massive, supported by a unicycle wheel and wielding what looked like illegally-modified repeating blaster carbines where their hands should have been. Hael was scared even to breathe, and instead held it in until they passed, hoping that the Mandalorian would not try anything stupid, like trying to shoot them in the backs; their armour plating looked equally illegal outside of the military. The Mandalorian's shadow vanished, as well, eliminating all traces of him immediately, and the droids passed him, completely oblivious. Hael dared not breathe as they passed by, not knowing what enhancements they had been given by their master, and by the time they had passed by, he could feel his lungs contracting. Just as his vision began to fade, the droids passed him by. Their footsteps grew quieter as they progressed farther away from them, and when they could no longer be heard, the Sith came out of hiding, and the Mandalorian shimmered into visibility again.
Advancing at a more wary pace, they crept along the hall, passing doorways made of the same rare wood and paintings by various esteemed authors of past decades which looked to be genuine originals, but Hael was not well acquainted with the world of luxury, so his appraisal was hardly bankable. When they reached the intersection, they all stopped just before it while the Mandalorian went ahead with his stealth field generator on to check for hostiles. Seeing none, he signalled to them to come along, and they followed their advisor's directions down to the turbolift. Masqua stepped forward again, and with a fusion cutter in his precise hands, he sliced open the panel that required a code to access and in moments, he had wired it open again, before replacing the cover.
The turbolift was cramped, circular, and made of a doctor's-uniform blue hued metal; they were forced to take two trips, with Theera and the Mandalorian down first, and Dengel, Masqua and Hael second. The wait seemed endless while the first trip was made; it was obviously a long way down. Hael kept himself flattened against the wall, in case another patrol came along, every second raising the chances of them being spotted, and every minute an hour of anxiety. Masqua and his slicers' ways had made sure that the security cameras would be looped for exactly two hours, but there was no way of knowing whether or not they had any corrective measures, so at any moment, the alarms might go off and give them away. When he saw a patrol coming his way, his heart leaped into his throat, and his stomach clenched up, making it hard to move. At the intersection, they did not turn, and kept coming on their way, and the lift was barely three hundred meters down the hall; the doorway was barely deep enough to hide him and Masqua, while Dengel was stationed in the next doorway, at the other end of the hall. The patrol seemed to consist of more of the gigantic droids, though their weaponry seemed to be a different make; he couldn't identify it from a distance.
They approached at a slow, yet steady pace, and though Hael searched the entire area, he could not see a single means of cover, not in the floor, not in the walls, not even in a crevasse on the roof; their target had obviously taken pains to make sure his house was nearly impossible to hide in. Just as he became certain the droids could see him, the turbolift opened, and an arm pulled him and his two remaining allies inside, before closing the door as soon as they were inside.
"Cutting it kind of close, aren't you?" The Mandalorian's only response was a miniscule tilt of his head, which had been covered by his helmet, and was playing host to a large splattering of something an extremely dark shade of blue. It looked to be similar to Thermion blood.
The turbolift descended for a few seconds, before opening into a scene of slaughter. Theera stood in the centre of the hallway, and her red lightsaber was drawn and plunged into the stomach of a massive Trandoshan. Dead bodies littered the ground, and they were all either killed by a cauterizing weapon or something that must have been the Mandalorian's extendable vibroblade. Theera shoved the Trandoshan off, and her blade deactivated. Then, motioning for the others to follow her, she walked off down the brightly-lit maintenance corridors.
The walls were an offensive white hue, which combined with the bright light made Hael's eyes sore, while the floors were a sickening yellow; it was no doubt designed to dissuade the weak of both heart and constitution to go any further- this no doubt meant that they were nearing their goal. Indeed, the maintenance tunnels were a short trek down the agonizing hallway, and as Masqua's blade sank into the manhole covering the entrance, Hael began to truly appreciate the inoffensive darkness of the musty corridors of Korriban. They filed through the hole in the shaft, and in agonizing contrast, were plunged into absolute darkness.
"No lights!" Masqua ordered. "Can't risk it. Use your powers."
Hael reached out with his senses, and a hazy outline of his surroundings presented themselves to his inner eye. It felt like he merely remembered where to go; he couldn't see them, in either the backs of his eyes or the fronts, but he knew exactly where everything and everyone was. It was an eerie feeling.
A narrow access ladder was at the far end of the tunnel, where it curved upward and went for hundreds of meters to the very top floor. When they reached the ladder, Hael made the mistake of reaching upward, and 'saw' the massive height they had to climb, and was almost driven to give up- only the knowledge of what would await him if he did that kept him from turning tail.
"We have to use the ladder- the ascension cables would make too much noise. Theera, you first. I'll go after, and you- Mandalorian- will go after me. Hael and Dengel follow behind in whatever order you want." Masqua motioned toward the ladder.
"Any particular reason why you want to be under the only woman in the group?" Hael could imagine the knowing smirk on the Mandalorian's face as he heard the clambering of the ladder start as Theera mounted it.
"Enough of that." The Lord's whispered threat cut the snickers of Dengel and Hael short. "We're here to work."
"Don't remind us, remind yourself."
The look Masqua gave him would have frozen over a star.
Theera ascended the ladder, and Masqua followed, despite the laughing of his comrades, and the others followed suit. Hael forced the thoughts of what would happen should he fall out of his mind, and put one hand in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, up and up and up for what seemed like hours. The grunting of his companions did nothing to ease his unease, and when Dengel swore as he found out just how much farther they had yet to go, it made him even worse. The humour of a moment before had died away, and in its place there was nothing but something bordering on terror. It was not panic, but rather a sort of limbo between serenity and complete and total terror, as if a single gust of wind would push him over the edge of the cliff and into the pit of anxiety. That choice of algorism didn't help either.
For too long they climbed; the stairway to heaven would have been shorter. Hael could do nothing else to ease the anxiety that he felt building up inside of him, so he started to hum a song to himself, after turning off the microphone on his helmet. It helped for a while, but when it ended, he had no desire to sing it again, or to start up another one, so he tried talking to himself, starting up a conversation, and that crashed to a halt pretty quickly. It was as if his mind deliberately wanted to make him suffer through every moment of this torture. When Theera finally whispered that the tunnel ended up ahead, it was not a second too soon. From up ahead, he could hear the sounds of a silenced vibrosaw cutting through the metal of the tunnel entrance, followed by shuffling as the others filed through the makeshift exit, and when he finally emerged into a place with firm ground underneath his feet, he felt the sudden urge to kiss it, though he somehow managed to restrain himself.
"Ok, everyone- let's get going. Intel says his safe-room is three doors down on the left- Mando, you got this, right?"
The Mandalorian shrugged. "I'm insulted by the notion that I may not be."
Masqua checked the pressure gauge on his suit's wrist. "These things have power enough for two hours more- when that time's over, the cloaking devices will shut down in seconds, and we'll be sitting ducks. We've gotta get this job done and be out of here before then. Is that clear?"
"Masqua?" Dengel chuckled.
"Yeah?"
"You worry too much. Now let's go."
The Mandalorian made quick work of the security measures around the door, and he led the way with a cocky stride, into the safe-room, helmet on and blaster ready.
The room was empty. There was not a single thing in it; the walls, floors, and ceiling were all a uniform wooden panel, and even the door was covered by rows of dark brown wooden boards.
"Well, that shows how reliable your intel really is." The Mandalorian turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.
"Wait." Masqua's eyes narrowed, and they searched the room with a calculating gaze, as if picking out which board to hack to pieces first. In an instant, his lightsaber appeared, ignited, in his hands, and he glided to the other side of the room before cutting a hole through the wall, which fell through into a dark room beyond. "See?" He smirked. "Very reliable."
He led the way into the room, his red lightsaber illuminating it to a certain degree. Hael followed, and he could instantly feel the size of the room, easily the size of an Imperial Fleet command ship; obviously the building was a lot larger than they had first suspected.
"Spooky," Dengel announced, his voice echoing through the room. "Anyone got a glow-rod big enough to light this place up a bit?"
'Keep your voice down, di'kut." The Mandalorian snapped. "If there's anyone in here, they know we're here now, thanks to your king-size mouth."
As if on some kind of cue, the lights went on, but they were not any kind of artificial light; it was the light of a water-filled cave. The ceiling was too high to be seen, and the walls to either side were invisible as well, but they could see far enough ahead to make out a bridge over a thousand-foot-deep chasm with water at the bottom. The floor, walls, and bridge were all made of stone, an uncut rock that could not have been brought inside the building.
"Does anyone remember seeing that this building was actually pretty small? It didn't have a mountain behind it or anything." Dengel unclipped his lightsaber and held it, un-activated, by his side.
"Something's weird here." The Mandalorian raised his blaster and fired a shot into the cave, which rebounded off the rock and into the chasm before meeting the water at the bottom and causing an eruption of sizzling steam. "Laser blasts don't bounce off rocks."
"You're right." Masqua muttered. "Stay sharp."
The Mandalorian followed, mumbling under his breath. "Stay sharp. Right. Of course, all-mighty Master. Whatever you say. If you're not careful, I'll shove something sharp up your—"
"There's something moving over there." Theera pointed into the shadows off to their right. "Something big."
Masqua angled his lightsaber over in the direction she indicated, and at that instant, a massive creature slammed into him, knocking the blade from his hand, which extinguished itself and plunged them into darkness again. They heard Masqua's screaming as the thing pushed him forward, and then the screams grew magnified, as if he had suddenly entered a bigger room with an extreme reverb, and suddenly they stopped, and were replaced by the sound of an almighty splash. Silence followed.
The Mandalorian grunted, "Hmmph. Never liked him anyway."
Theera, however, merely stood, stock-still, with her mouth hanging open and a tear in her eye. The Mandalorian snapped his fingers in front of her face. "Hey! Doll-face! Wake up! He's dead; get over it. We've got to finish the mission." She followed him without a word. Hael did the same, still in shock.
The Bridge seemed the only logical place to go. It was a long, plain expanse of rock, too easy to cross for them to fall for it; Dengel tore the top button off of his tunic and tossed it onto the bridge, about a dozen meters in, and immediately a rock stalagmite erupted from the ground, like a switchblade popping open, and Hael could see that the button had been impaled at the dead centre by the razor-sharp tip of the rock formation.
"Well, that's problematic." The Mandalorian stepped forward, his head cocked to the side analytically. "Do we know where the Holocron is supposed to be?"
"Obviously across the bridge. The problem is if there's actually a way across it.." Hael pointed to a tunnel, barely visible, at the other end of the precipice, delving into another mountain face like a wormhole into space, with nothing but darkness beyond.
"Do you think that we might have come the wrong way?" Theera asked. "Maybe this man knew that, in case there would be people coming along to steal his treasure, he made it impossible to get there the conventional way, and only through some back passage from the other side of the mountain could we get to the Holocron, and this is only a diversion? It's what I would do."
"Yeah, it would be a smart idea, except for one small point of concern that must be addressed. The Mandalorian turned his head back to face her.
"What's that?"
"There are no mountains on this planet. None that reach the twelfth story of a mansion in the middle of a field."
"You mean...?"
"Yep. The Mind Doctor has got three more patients."
"Sir, we have a perimeter breach; we have to leave, now." The man's personal assistant burst into his study, and was met with a raised hand in the universal "wait" signal.
"We've had an unexpected spike of good luck in this so-called perimeter breach. They've found my safe-room, now I can finally see if it works." The man turned back to the view screen, raising a glass of a fine champagne in a mute toast to the secretary's health.
"But we're in danger here. We have to leave." The Twi'lek woman reached over his desk and opened the black case that would normally contain a writing stylus. Instead of a pen, she drew out a smell black remote, with a red button in the middle, which she compressed, meriting the sound of disused metal scraping against more metal, and a door swung open next to the antique fireplace in the wall.
"We will. But first I must know whether my work has born any fruit. Then we can leave, my dear. Please allow me a small amount of academic curiosity. Ready my ship, and I will meet you there in a few minutes."
"As you wish."
This was pure genius. It was terrifying, but genius nonetheless. It was straightforward enough in concept, but in execution, it was quite difficult. But that's what makes it fun. He glanced down into the chasm beneath him, before directing his gaze back up immediately before his mind would cause the world, however artificial it was, to spin. Up ahead, the Mandalorian waited impatiently, holding his liquid cable line taught while Hael tread across it toward the other side of the trench.
"You can hurry up any decade you want," he called over. "Aren't you Force-users supposed to be good at this kind of stuff?"
"Shut up." It was all Hael could manage, approaching the halfway point, where he would be at the most dangerous point of his trek. The line began to wobble, and Hael's mind started to flash through the consequences of falling; the plummet, the impact, and the sight of his mangled body sinking to the bottom of the water below, he seized those images and tore them to pieces, using the scraps to fuel the fires of the dark side inside him, and in turn using it to propel him forward across the line to the ledge beyond, in the blink of an eye. He felt like kissing the ground when his feet set down upon it, but out of sheer will, he resisted the urge.
"You see? That's what I'm talking about." The Mandalorian offered a fist, but Hael didn't meet it with his; he was still fighting the urge to vomit.
He refused to watch as Theera and Dengel crossed the gap, and all the while, his thoughts wandered to Masqua's fate. He had never liked the man, for the Inquisitor had always exerted a calm, insufferable aura of superiority and distain toward others with whom he came in contact, like he was some sort of god, and all other people were beneath his notice, mere puppets to his will, or toys to satisfy his wants and desires. He opened up and accepted the rest of Morden's choice task force after a few months of service with them, but Hael had always got the feeling that he was hiding something, that he had some other goal in mind. He had sworn his loyalty to Morden and the Sith with enough fervour and fealty, but that didn't necessarily mean that he would keep up his loyalty to the cause when it no longer fit his plans. At a mere forty years old, he was much wiser and more cunning than the rest of them gave him credit for, and for that, Hael had never trusted him.
But on the other hand, he had saved their lives more times than Hael could care to count- didn't that mean something? That he felt some kind of companionship or kinship with them, that he couldn't bear to see them die, and so had intervened for sentimental reasons as well as logical? Hael wished he could find some humanity in the man, some sign that he was not some kind of unemotional robot created for the selfsame task of killing and exploiting the galaxy. Hael was the kind of man who looked for the good in others, and when he didn't find any, he planted the seeds of goodness, despite his being a Sith.
That Masqua had fallen made him wish he had somehow helped in making the dead man a little better while he had been alive, and he got the feeling that he had failed at it.
"Do you suppose he's really dead?" Theera suddenly appeared by his side, gazing down into the precipice below. "This is some kind of mind game, so do you think he's really still alive, just out of the simulation? Or has his mind been shattered because he has died?"
"The only way we'll ever find out is if we get out of here. But we can't leave without the Holocron." Hael turned to face her, and saw genuine tears on her face. He didn't pursue why they were there, and simply put a hand on her shoulder. It felt odd, seeing as how she was not all that much older than he, and yet she was so much older in the mind, and he was the one comforting her. "Keep faith."
"What is faith?" She grumbled, brushing his hand aside.
"It's what keeps us going when nothing else can." He left it at that, and walked away in the direction of the tunnel.
Masqua awoke with a start, and his lightsaber was in his hands, ready to fend off any attacker. Only there were none.
He glanced around, and took in his surroundings. The others were all around him, lying on the ground in a tumbled mess, seemingly unconscious. The large room was a dull gray, entirely metal, and plain, with no furniture, no other people, nothing. He could see the hole he had cut through the wall beside him, and the safe-room, where he knew his goal lay now. There must be another room somewhere off the safe-room somewhere. He stood up, and approached the left-hand wall, his lightsaber raised to fend off any unforeseen attackers.
He couldn't sense anything beyond the wall, but when he checked the room where his cohorts were still unconscious, he found he couldn't sense them either, or anything beyond that wall either, so he could not rely on his senses in here. He plunged his lightsaber into the wall, and jerked it around, carving a hole into the wood and the metal beneath it, exposing the room beyond. It seemed to be a workshop, filled to the brim with mechanical implements and holobooks, and an old service droid, shut down in the corner. There were no doors in the room, so Masqua moved on to the other wall. After producing a hole from the wall, he stepped inside, and saw what he was looking for- the mansion's proprietor's study. It looked much the same as the workshop, though a little tidier, and there was a master computer on an otherwise barren desk at the far end of the room, where the swivel-chair which was nearby was still spinning from its owner's recent hasty evacuation. Masqua could see no one in the room, but he kept his eyes peeled for any signs of movement, all the while expecting someone to leap from behind a bookshelf or under a folding table and stick a vibroblade into his back. Masqua approached the master computer, and pulled the swivel chair up to sit down in it. Stepping out of his comfort zone was something he seemed to be doing a lot more often nowadays; he hated slicing. The word evoked a sense of quick, effective slashes that took down defenses easily and momentarily, but the art of hacking a system was anything but that. Sure, some slicers could do it in a matter of seconds, but those were the expert guys that charge both arms and legs for their service; he didn't have the time, patience, or stomach to get that good at a skill he could just get logistics to pick up a guy to do.
He inserted the opener utensil he was required to carry into the incoming port, and the screen came online and the device began to search through the passcode directory until it found the most commonly used selection of letters on that screen, and after a few tries at scrambling them into the correct code, it hit upon the right one, and the screen changed to the home desktop which, strangely, was a picture of the Sith Empire's Insignia, surrounded by Aurebesh letters reading "United by less than bond or blood". Masqua couldn't tell what that meant; he assumed it meant something along the lines of a sarcastic jab that the Sith were not united- maybe this "professor" Morden had told them about had a sense of humour or a really negative outlook on the Sith.
On the screen, there were no icons, and the taskbar on the side had only the directory, which read "Empty" when he touched it with his finger. He opened it, and inside found another folder, entitled "System Commands".
"Not so empty, now are you?" He opened the folder, and a long list of commands, all highlighted in red with a warning "do not use" beside them, appeared, all pertaining to a "machine", which could only mean the mind manipulating device in which he had just perished.
That bit at his pride, having been killed by a simulated dumb animal, only to find that he really hadn't died- what if it hadn't been a simulation? What if he had actually been faced with a situation like that, and he really did tumble over the edge to his death at the bottom of a cliff? He thought he had trained himself to be ready for all kinds of confrontations, and yet when faced with a simple Bullmarl, he had been sent to his watery death after a mere two seconds of surprise. He resolved to read more books on "how to survive obscure dangerous situations".
The list of commands in the folder consisted of a small variety, including "Building Lockdown", and "High Alert". But the ones he found he needed were at the very bottom: "Shut down Mind Game" and "Holocron Defenses Shut Down"- he was just about to activate them, when the door opened behind him.
"Don't do that." He wheeled around to see a Twi'lek woman standing in the doorway, with a blaster in her hand. It was levelled perfectly with his face, and she looked as though she knew how to use a weapon.
"And why not?" He cocked his head back a little, exposing his throat and looking at her down his nose.
"Because I'll shoot you if you do," she said, matter-of-factly.
"Ah. Of course. The violence factor." He smirked. "You do know that blasters do really very little against a Sith? So I could just kill you now, and then get back to my work here. What's to stop me?"
"This." She pulled the trigger, and instead of a single discharge, in the form of a bolt, a wave of energy poured from the muzzle of her weapon, and when they met Masqua, he felt as though he were drowning in molten iron, with a constant thrum of heat and jarring pain that sent him reeling into the bookshelf to his right, which he slid down to the floor, writhing. As his vision went dark, he felt her putting stun cuffs on him, which gave him immense relief as he slipped into the welcome arms of unconsciousness, having escaped the pincers of something worse.
The Holocron's light illuminated the cavern as Hael climbed his way down the ledge to the floor, where the object waited on its pedestal. Theera, Dengel, and the Mandalorian followed, close behind, the choruses of grunts of strain and sharp intakes of breath as their hands met something with an edge sounding like some exotic choir performing a song from a savage planet. He picked his way down the sheer face of the cliff at an agonizingly slow rate, all the while wanting nothing more than to leap down and grab the Holocron, thereby ending the whole scenario in the blink of an eye. But he knew that it had to be more complicated than that. It always was.
He was right.
As soon as he set foot on the ground, the entire structure of the cave changed. The room rotated, as if on a horizontal pivot, until he was standing on the ceiling, which had just been the floor, but the Holocron had not moved, and was now directly above him, and he could swear that if it had a gatekeeper like the rest of them, the man would be laughing. Then the voice came.
"You didn't think it would be that easy, now did you?" The voice was a rich baritone, and it made Hael think of those corny holovision infomercial voices, with a forced intensity that was somehow cheerful, like a game-show host just as he was about the throw a pie in someone's face. Though Hael knew that there would be worse things than pie in here. "Now here's what you've gotta do," the voice continued. "You've got to complete my challenges, all ten of them, before you can get the Holocron. If you're smart, strong, and foolhardy enough to complete them, then you're welcome to have it, but if not, then I'm sorry to say that you'll never make it out of here."
"Oh, frak. I've seen this 'vid before." The Mandalorian groaned. "Screw it." He raised his arm, and fired the liquid cable at the Holocron. It stuck into the rock formation on which it rested- Hael wondered if he could call it 'resting on it', as the formation was above it, now that it was upside-down- and he pulled. The line vanished in an instant, and was replaced by a snake, which let go of the rock, and turned around to hiss at the Mandalorian before darting forward to bite him. The Mando fired one shot through its open mouth, and it fell down dead, twitching as its nervous system fried. "This just keeps getting weirder."
"Pass the snacks, this movie looks good." Dengel walked forward, and looked around expectantly. "So what's the first challenge, Oh Great And Evil One?"
"The first trial is the trial of skill, much like that of the Jedi Order. If you can survive the next five minutes, then you can move on to the next challenge."
Their weapons vanished, and appeared next to the Holocron, slowly rotating and spinning as if caught in a zero-gravity hole.
"Oh, kark."
The floor burst open, and what seemed like a horde of mud poured out. Hael realized that they were bugs, and instantly he sent them careening back with a wave of the Force, into the wall opposite. They lay there, stunned, for a few moments, and then got up, shook themselves, and charged again. He couldn't tell what species of insect they were, but he knew that t they must have been poisonous, as they were never harmless creepy-crawlies in these games, so he treated them as hostiles, and acted accordingly.
"Everyone get back!" He stretched his hands out in front of him, fingers pointing at the insects, and a barrage of Force lightning came pouring from them, enveloping the swarm in a curtain of electricity, charring them all to death. The barrage took up all of Hael's concentration and will to sustain, and the corners of his eyesight began to darken the longer he kept it up. He saw the room itself begin to flicker, though he knew that it was only his failing sight playing tricks on him, and he realized his endurance time was running out. When he felt his knees begin to buckle, he ceased the onslaught, and the lightning emptied itself out into the floor, where a massive pile of ashes lay where the bugs had been a minute before.
"I hate bugs." He growled, and dropped his smoking hands to his side.
"Impressive, Sith." The voice came back. "Now let's see what's next on the list."
When he woke up, Masqua could feel the constant vibrating of a ship engine, and the tightness of the cuffs on his wrists as the ship ascended into the air, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the Twi'lek in front of him, with her blaster pointed at his face.
"Move and you're dead," she greeted him.
"Good morning to you, too," he smirked. "I'm Masqua, by the way. I don't suppose I get to know your name?"
"No, you don't."
"Of course not."
He was seated in an extremely uncomfortable position, but he didn't dare adjust himself, or he knew the Twi'lek shutta would follow through with her threat of shooting him upon his moving at all. Instead, he sighed and resigned himself to a long, silent trip.
"So where exactly are we headed?" He asked,
"Classified," was his only answer.
"You sound like a soldier."
"Maybe I am."
"No you're not."
She didn't bother pursuing the argument, but all the same, she glared at him, and he could tell that she was envisioning pulling the trigger and what he would look like with a blaster hole in his face. He wouldn't let that fantasy become a reality, though he wasn't sure how he was to avert such a fate while bound hand and foot.
"So how do I fit into your plans?" he asked, wringing his hands to test the strength of the bonds.
"You don't. So we're going to drop you once we get going."
"Space me?"
"No. Drop you. In the atmosphere. Then you'll be able to burn on your way down to the surface." She seemed to take some sadistic pleasure in telling him the details of his imminent death.
"How violent." He knew here that stalling for time wasn't going to work, so he tried a different tactic. Come on, Morden trained me up enough to get out of a bloody pair of handcuffs. Let's get a move on!
"Don't move anywhere." The Twi'lek instructed him. She trudged off, grabbing hold of any secured object to steady herself against the bucking of the ship.
It must be a small ship, for it to be tossing around so much, even in high winds. Masqua could see numerous ways to use this to his advantage, but he decided the simplest way was the best in this case, and opted for it.
The Force could be a powerful ally when subtlety was needed, and especially when it came to subtly breaking free of stun cuffs; he felt through the bonds' inner workings with his mind and, applying pressure in key places, he felt them power down in an instant, leaving him free to tear himself out with minimal effort. He could hear the Twi'lek returning, her swears and curses as the ship bucked beneath her heralding her arrival long before. Masqua rose to his feet, and searched the room for his lightsaber, though his search yielded no results before he had to react to the Twi'lek's arrival. He flattened himself beside the door, and when it opened, he waited as the Twi'lek started at the sight of Masqua not being where he had been, and as she rushed in the door to investigate. When she was in the room, he hit the switch that made the door slide shut, and let the moment sink in when she saw him standing there, a grim smile on his face.
"Time to die."
"Most impressive." The Voice With No Source was frantic, though he tried to sound calm; Hael knew it to be an exceedingly ineffective ruse. "You have proven yourself quite worthy. All ten challenges have been overcome, though I have a personal query before I yield the Holocron up to you. Why is it that you desire my property?"
"Our Master desires it, and—"
"And so he sends you to come and fetch it, then? How tragic. For a moment, I thought you were flattering me for academic purposes. It seems I was wrong. But why does your Master desire it?"
The question made Hael realize just how little Morden actually told him. Nothing. He didn't know what the Holocron did- he had found that out on his own. He didn't know what Morden hoped to gain with it, or what he hoped to use it for, except as torment for those he wanted to agonize with impossible worlds and scenarios. Or perhaps it was just for personal, perverted use; Hael could think of several ways of using a mind-world-creator for such purposes. Either way, Hael knew less than he should, and he didn't like that, mainly because of the fact that this point may cause them to lose what they had come to retrieve, should the Voice With No Source not like it either.
But he didn't have to tell the truth, either. Better to weave a lie to bolster the Voice's pride and get the Holocron than to tell the truth and risk losing it.
"He is a doctor in the art of the Mind, and when he discovered that you had made such progress in this field, then he coveted your Holocron, so as to learn what you have learned."
"YOU ARE LYING!" The Voice suddenly came from directly behind him, and Hael whirled around and dropped into a fighting stance, before coming face-to-face with nobody. "You know nothing about why he desires my work. I see your mind, Sith, and it is mine. You are in my world now, Sith, and you will never leave. This Machine, my Conduit, will never fall into the hands of lesser men such as your Master. You will die here, and now."
The cave walls began to tremble, then quake, and contract, slowly crushing each other as they formed a perfect stone square that continued to close in, defying Theera and Dengel's attempts to push it back with the Force. Hael and the Mandalorian stood back-to-back, trying to find a way out, and finding none. Hael's senses could find no chink in the walls, no weaknesses, nothing, and there were no Powers of the Force that could save one from the mind. Save from the mind... he thought... Hael remembered how the room had flickered when he had electrocuted the insects, though he had thought it to have been just his eyesight failing him as his body tired, but perhaps? Morden had mentioned the mind once in his teachings... he had said something about it...
"The Force is controlled by the mind, the greatest tool of any being. The mind is the ruler of the body, and answers only to the soul. As long as your mind can function, the Force is your tool." It was a long shot, but it was worth a try.
He unleashed a torrent of lightning at the oncoming walls, calling for the others to do the same, and he put all his strength behind the blast, all his will to survive, all his desire to see the real world again after this unreal not-world, and he found new strength in his will. The blast continues, pumping electricity into the mind machine, and he could feel strange jolts of electricity flowing through him, though no stray bolts touched him. He hoped that meant he had been right. His vision started to blur again, but he paid no heed, and simply continued his barrage, ignoring the growing, throbbing pain in his head. He saw the room begin to flicker again, and this time he paid attention to it, and saw the details: through the small cracks, and hexagons of emptiness, he could just make out the features of another room, with the walls covered in metal plates and with strange instruments, the kinds of which one would expect in either a dentist's or a doctor's office.
The cracks were growing larger when the migraine came, like a power drill boring into his temples, and he faltered in his onslaught. The walls, meanwhile, had been growing ever closer, and if he reached out far enough, he could touch them. They were running out of time, fast, and he didn't know if they could continue this quick enough.
The others were likewise affected by the migraines, and they clawed at their temples and screamed, ceasing all attempts to stop the walls from crushing them.
"Hey, everyone?" The Mandalorian said, holding up his satchel. "Would this help?" He reached in, and lobbed three electrostatic grenades at the walls, where they stuck, and the countdown began. "Now keep doing your thing, unless you wanna die!"
This shook them out of their agony, though it did not take away the pain. They continued their assault, and waited for the five seconds which felt like five hours for the grenades to detonate. The fracturing world continued to sizzle in and out of focus, and when the grenades discharged their millions of volts into the walls, it went into complete overload. Hael felt his head split apart, and he screamed in pure agony, screwing his eyes shut and clamping his hands over his ears. He lost all senses except the pain; he couldn't hear the others screaming, or the sounds of the machine overloading, he couldn't see anything, and couldn't smell the smoke streaming through the seams of the room in the real world. When he opened his eyes, there was nothing to see, and he fell into the abyss behind his eyes.
The Twi'lek responded as he had expected, and fired the gun at him. Masqua leapt aside, out of the range of the rays, and thrust a hand out at her, calling upon the Force and causing her to fall backwards, and the gun went flying from her hands, off to the other side of the cargo hold. He grinned and tightened his grip on her through the Force into a choking throttle, and she screamed. He clenched his fist, and her neck snapped with a satisfying crack! and she fell to the floor. Upon a quick search, he found his lightsaber in her pocket, and he ran into the cockpit with it in his hands, readying himself in case there was another person in there to kill.
"Alert. The escape pod has been jettisoned," The automated speakers announced, and he got his answer.
Then who's driving?
The sudden downward change in direction answered that question as well.
The real world had never been such a welcome sight. Hael got up off the patch of scorched grounds where his Force Lightning had overpowered the Machine, and left the Mind Room immediately.
"Let's not do that again." The Mandalorian growled as he stood up and approached the Holocron, which was in the middle of the tiny room in which they had been subjected to the misery of mind games. "You think there's any more defenses on this thing?"
"No." Theera walked up and seized it, dropping the metal artefact into her satchel. "And screw it if it does."
"Now there's a mental picture I really didn't need." Dengel picked himself up, and left the room. "Where's Masqua?"
"Right here." The voice came from the least likely of directions: up. Hael looked skyward, and saw, through a window in the ceiling, a man with an activated red lightsaber, which he used to slash an opening in the window and drop through.
"How'd you get there?" Theera asked.
"You don't want to know. Long story short, I flew. Now let's get the hell off this planet before I have a psychotic episode."
"Sounds like a plan."
End of Episode One.
