Star Wars: The Korasa Trial
Chapter 3:
"They're all dead," Kagen said dully, not quite sure if he was asking or stating a fact. Nodding shortly, Yasue turned away, her lips moving soundlessly. Kagen was struck by with the rather morbid notion that she was counting the bodies – it was confirmed a moment later, when she muttered to herself "fourteen". It was an appalling number, for a battle of a scant few minutes; made more so by her apparent indifference.
Without warning, the lighting strips stuttered back into life, throwing the dome into sharp relief. Yasue tutted under her breath, shutting her baton off. The left over charge spluttered noisily down the shaft as she prised the power cell from its casing. She tucked the weapon into her sash, more concerned with the charred line across her mechanic arm. The fabric-covered armour – and the better part of her sleeve – was unceremoniously cast aside as she scrubbed at the black residue underneath.
The prosthesis itself was quite skeletal, lacking any cosmetic plating, but for the battered metal shell that ran along the forearm. The replacement continued past her elbow, ending somewhere under the remaining sleeve, for she moved her shoulder too easily for it to be fully mechanical. Then, abruptly, Yasue jerked the guard plate back, a complete 180o, while she tinkered with the wiring underneath.
Something sparked; she gave a tiny, plaintive yelp, and swung the guard back into place. A fine stab of pain lanced through the Force; quickly dissipated in the roiling aftermath of so many deaths in succession. Kagen was deeply aware of it, instinctively drawing away and closing himself off to it.
"That was dangerous," Yasue sighed, closing her eyes. Kagen stood in silence a moment longer, until she opened one eye, watching him expectantly. His lightsaber wavered in his hand, casting a slight green shadow. Belatedly he shut it off, the hilt slick with cold sweat. He clipped it back onto his belt purely by habit, gazing around the dome and the crumpled forms that littered the floor.
"You're not injured are you?" she said eventually, a little anxiously. "Oh, that's a Kouven, Byaven and Araven," she added when he shook his head, flapping her hand to encompass the fallen soldiers. "Black, white and silver markings respectively; on the stabilizer masks; and Kouven are Force-sensitive."
Kagen shook his head to clear it, trying to match her dispassionate appraisal of the scene. The masks shone in the artificial light; most of them looked new, bright white markings drawn exactly across the metal faces, but the man stretched out below him was a plainly different. In addition to the grey clone armour, he wore an overlying robe, dark as the short-cropped hair that blurred into the unbroken black face. His mask was less perfect, pitted with silver, a thick line scored across it, and his hand was still curled around his lightsaber.
It was a crude weapon, duplicate of those carried by the two other robed men; he himself was a replica. The same height and colouring, they were identical but for the scars of previous battles etched onto the masks and armour of each one. Realisation was slow in coming; that Force-sensitivity could be cloned was wholly wrong, clearly possible, but still –
"Not good," Yasue said suddenly; her comlink was emitting quiet static, and a dim klaxon began to sound. She hurried to the far door, stepping neatly around one of the bodies. "Come on!" she said more insistently when he hesitated.
She led the way through the corridors, too quickly to make sense of the markings. Their footsteps seemed absurdly loud now, the continuous alarm joined by an artificially polite voice repeating instructions in the same unfamiliar language that Yasue was using as she snapped a few orders over an alternate channel.
They turned onto a wider path, this time moving in a direct line away from the centre. Kagen took a half step back as a tall being appeared at a branch point ahead of them, even as Yasue stuck her arm out to check him. The alien nodded at him, overlarge eyes dominating the pale skull; bent down, his head still cleared Kagen's thrice over, and he simply towered over Yasue.
"My lieutenant, Zea," Yasue muttered, halting where the corridor ended in a pair of huge blast doors. "How far behind are they – in Basic if you please," she amended, cutting short his softly spoken, incomprehensible explanation.
"Tem-dana has Obee, they are trying to delay the lockdown," Zea said neutrally, the words affected and strange.
"There were fourteen in the centre, how many came past you?" Yasue spoke without looking at him, plugging numbers into the security panel beside the doors.
"Only four Byaven. There are at least two unaccounted for, but their unit must have crossed the Rift after the first attack. Obee detected some minor movement outside Dome Complex 318-16, possibly Si'en."
"She's further away than that I think… There were three Kouven with that unit, more than there's been for a long time, but this sector is a dead end…ah!" She rounded on the Padawan behind them, ignoring the persistent nagging of the klaxon and the security console beeping uncooperatively.
"You said your ship was attacked; by what?" Her voice was clipped and more strained than he'd heard it.
"I don't know, there were starfighters I didn't recognize – pirates maybe, then the pods were caught by ion fire." The furrow in her brow deepened, not for his mean explanation, but terse reproof directed inward and wrought with apprehension.
"But your ship; it crashed here?"
"We jettisoned in the escape pods before then but I don't understand how we got through the shields," he replied quickly, startled by the sudden clarity in the Force. Zea felt cold, not unperturbed, but not at all worried for his companions' sake; unlike Yasue who was vaguely concerned about more things than he could make sense of. They all seemed to stem from the same dull fear, a presence that slid over her consciousness; then the sense changed and they were all summarily dismissed.
"The shields were specifically designed to prevent any lightspeed-capable vessels reaching the surface, so your pods may not have registered, but there are no pirates in Kaminoan space; not for long anyway, and especially not near this moon. If they were after your ship, they'd have brought it down as intact as possible –" she broke off as the console began another sequence of negative beeps, but the rest were lost in the high-pitched shriek of tearing metal.
It rose intolerably; Kagen didn't remember falling, but pain was clawing its way inwards, driving out all thought, the Force far beyond reach. He lay on the cold floor, unable to do anything but exist as time dragged on. The sound throbbed in his ears, an agonizing heartbeat that rose and fell with his own ragged breathing that he felt rather than heard.
It slowed eventually, shrinking to a steady urgent beeping. A glowing orb hovered before the blast doors, a green light flashing at its core. It was a droid of some sort, not actually glowing, but with a fusioncutter tuned onto the control panel. Kagen pulled away as rough hands pulled him up, sick and dazed. Yasue stood next to the droid, glancing between the besieged controls and the Padawan; more bewildered than hurt. Another human was supporting him, an apologetic grimace sliding across his face. He said something slowly, pressing a breather into Kagen's hand, his own hanging from a cord around his neck.
The droid whistled sharply, barely audible, as the great doors shuddered apart. Kagen staggered backwards; something bad was coming, but the words wouldn't come. Air rushed silently out into the darkness and with equal silence, a red blade ignited.
The Kouven barrelled through them, his lightsaber slicing into the durasteel wall. Yasue had already moved, her baton flaring into life. The two weapons met an instant later, painfully bright. For an instant white-blue charge wreathed the connection, then the lightsaber hilt shattered. The clone never faltered, drawing a second saber with his good hand as the other dropped to his side in ruin. Kagen saw the great red arc of his strike and no more; the human – Tem – had dragged him out of the doorway.
Zea came behind, and the droid, following the curved walls of the dome structure. Long seconds later, Yasue appeared, the broken halves of her mask swinging loose. She fumbled with her own breather, the light of the stun baton giving out as she reeled after them, but Kagen could feel the Force radiating from her.
It steadied him, strength seeping into his limbs. The blast doors crashed together, somewhere behind them, rendering the darkness absolute. His hearing was returning, though his ears rang unpleasantly. His perception through the Force was clearer; the immense curved wall of the dome extending to an unseen ceiling, Yasue and her companions running alongside it, and a rounded hole where the droidhovered in the air.
Kagen caught the flicker of warning, even as the curving wall was suddenly defined against the reddish gleam of blaster fire. He was already rolling forward when Yasue knocked the other two down, an invisible hand that forced them under the line of fire. Black and white stabilizer masks gleamed in the light of a second volley.
Yasue stepped towards them, eyes half-closed, a vast shudder running through the Force. Her presence in the Force had all but vanished, deliberately; Kagen caught a trace of the dreadful will behind the attack, but she had closed herself off almost entirely. The blurred presence of the clones was simply erased. An eerie stillness crept in around them; the echoes of blaster fire lingering in all directions.
"That was a full unit of Byaven and there's still one missing from the first," Yasue said flatly, her breathing fractionally faster than it had been. Obee, go in front please; we're heading for Dome 16 and I want to find that last Ven." Tem paused, his assault rifle pointed at the floor, as he adjusted to the sudden lack of opposition.
"Ouken?" he asked, not quite disapproving, but not at ease.
"They shut down the specific complex we were in and a mere coincidence is pretty unlikely. If the last one is another Kouven around, it might make another try at Jedi-da here. An ouken is the fastest way to dispatch them and they already know we're out here." She flapped her hand distractedly, reattaching the cord that had come loose from her breather. Tem's face was momentarily revealed as Obee drifted past; set and serious, but he nodded in agreement.
"How many are in a unit?" Kagen spoke up reluctantly, not entirely sure he wanted to know, but he doubted there would be much conversation once they started to move. There was something apologetic about the way she looked at him; but not quite sympathy.
"Only twenty, but that usually includes several Araven or a Kouven. That one by the door, he almost got you; ouken, a Force-drawn illusion, so I beg your pardon for that. Again." Kagen nodded, accepting the apology automatically, and trying to put his recollections in some semblance of order.
There had been a sound, pretty loud; he was sure because the others were speaking very carefully to make themselves understood. The Force could be used to manipulate the senses, but it had been so excessively painful, unlike any Jedi techniques known to him. And Yasue felt guilty; hardly in crippling amounts, but her sense remained distant and more cross with herself than anything else. She'd turned away again, following the droid out from the dome's wall, but there was still no fathoming how she had destroyed the clones; and how she could remain completely unconcerned.
"Obee, mark time," Yasue called ahead. "I think we just started the third battle of Sector three-eighteen."