A Hunt In The Deep Forest, Part 2

Nox and Khem had just left the fourth hidden commando base and made their way to the fifth and last of the known hidden commando bases in the Western Sector. They ran especially hard, because one of the commandos had gotten out a single worded warning over a short range audio communicator before Nox could cut him down.

"SITH...!"

Neither of them wanted the commandos to escape. Darth Nox did not want them to disappear into the deep forests to one day attack Imperial assets again, and Khem Val hadn't eaten more than a couple of bites. He was famished.

Creeping silently, carefully, the last few hundred meters towards the Republic Commando base, Khem spotted a Republic model 23-B94 sensor probe, and signaled Nox to its presence. The tiny sensor probe looked like, and moved like, an arachnid. It used photo-flexing technology to blend in with it's surroundings.

It camouflaged itself by using low level emissions force fields to bend light around itself, making it seem invisible. However, if it moved, it could be seen because of the lag photo-flexing technology suffered. It was unable to bend the light of it's immediate background quickly and smoothly enough as it changed locations.

In effect, it seemed to shimmer as it moved. So, if it was on a large green leaf, and then moved onto a patch of brown soil, it seemed to flicker between green and brown until it came to a stop. Then it would seem to vanish from view again.

Since the probe moved, it meant that its operator had not yet spotted Darth Nox and Khem Val. It also meant that the commando operating the probe droid was within two hundred meters, the maximum operator controlled range of this particular model.

These droids also had a very short battery life, meaning it had just been deployed. Nox surmised that meant that the warning had been received and that the commandos were ready for him.

"Good!" Nox thought savagely to himself, "The fools have decided to stay and fight me!"

The shack used as the commando's base was less than two hundred meters ahead surrounded by thick forest foliage. Nox waited for the droid to move again, he'd lost sight of it. When it did, he used The Force to pull it into his hands. Then he used The Force to crush it between his hands, instantly destroying the probe.

Khem Val broke his silence to say, "Now they know we are here. They are not in the hovel. I shall go right, you go left. We shall encircle the hovel, and crush them in the bush around it."

Nox, nodding his agreement, said, "Shout for me if you see the Jedi."

Khem, with a sudden craving for Jedi meat, said, "As you say, master, but I hope you shall grant him to me, and not attempt to bind him to your will."

Khem Val immediately bolted to the right.

Nox went left, thinking to himself, "Jedi are too stubborn to so easily bind to one's will."

Again, a stubborn Ashara Zavros came to his thoughts. He smiled admiringly at her strong force of will. Again, he began to miss her terribly. Nox forcibly shoved her memory out of his thoughts, as the forest exploded in blaster fire.

Blaster bolts seared the air as they broiled passed Nox's head. These blaster bolts exploded on the vegetation around him as he dodged the bolts. He immediately realized the bolts were much larger and much more powerful than any blaster rifle had any business producing.

Nox thought in disgust, "Blast! They even have a portable blaster cannon among them!"

The bolts led him right to the blaster cannon operator and three of his teammates. Nox's sabrestaff became a blur of deep red light, as he darted from commando to commando in the thick brush cutting the four team members down, along with the surrounding vegetation. Quite suddenly, he felt himself flying end over end - with such force! His first thought was that he'd been caught in a bomb blast! However, he felt no heat from such a blast. It hurt an awful lot though.

Nox used The Force to recover in mid air and, barely avoiding smashing into some of the tree trunks, landed on his hands and knees. Nox winced as he saw that he'd barely missed chopping his own fingers off. The beam of his own sabrestaff was a bare few centimeters from his free hand on the ground, which momentarily caught ablaze.

He shouted as he scrambled back onto his feet, "Khem! There's a Jedi here, somewhere!"

Khem's shout, muted by the forest foliage, and occluded by the sounds of blaster fire, came back, "Then... *... shall ...*east well!"

The blaster fire suddenly ceased. Silence crashed onto Nox's ears.

Nox shouted into the dead silence, "Khem, they're running! Don't let them escape!"

Nox ran into the thick brush from where he'd last seen blaster bolts emanating. Suddenly, the loud explosive pop of a tree snapping in two filled his ears. His eyes immediately caught sight of the top part of a tree flying towards him.

He leaped over its leafy branches and watched as the upper part of the trunk swept beneath him. As he landed, the lower part of the trunk, its roots clumped with clay dirt, slammed into him and sent him flying.

Nox shook his head to clear the fog out of his mind, as he fought to recover his senses and regain his feet. He spat out a mouth full of clay dirt. His ears were ringing, and he hadn't fully recovered, but he countered with a massive Force Push. Anything that wasn't bolted, rooted, or otherwise firmly tethered to the ground was beaten back with a hammering force.

The sound of thousands of tree branches snapping and dozens of small to medium sized tree trunks breaking in two, and getting blown back, was unlike anything he'd heard before. However, he didn't dwell on that. Instead, he waited for the Jedi's counter.

A scream, and a few voices moaning in pain told Nox he'd hurt some of the fleeing commandos. A brief moment later, he heard them scream again as Khem Val found them and finished them off.

Nox expected the Jedi to go after Khem Val, to save his comrades. However, when Nox moved to join him, the Jedi leaped at him from behind a felled tree, acrobatically flipping through the air and twirling his deep-red, two-bladed light saber. Nox leapt sideways, avoiding the attack, and used force lighting to counter attack the Jedi Shadow, a Jedi trained in the arts of stealth and assassination.

The masked Jedi, wearing subdued colored armor under his dark robes, deflected the lightning barrage with his saber staff, plunging one end of his staff into the ground to direct the lightning into the ground. Then he lunged forward in the attack.

Nox used a spinning move with his saber staff which forced the Jedi to halt his charging attack. Then Nox countered with another Force Push, sending the Jedi flying back, and immediately followed that up with another lighting attack. This time he had connected. She screamed from the searing agony of the lightning attack.

Nox thought, "A woman?! So strong!"

An image of Ashara, battling fiercely, flashed through his mind. Her image returned and would not leave his thoughts. He began to miss her, terribly. Nox found that he had trouble getting her image from his mind. Instead, he waxed nostalgic for her embrace.

Then Nox howled out a furiously anguished shout, as the realization came to him that the Jedi was using force persuasion to cloud his mind using the memory of his late wife. He shook off the Jedi's mind trick and then scanned his surroundings with The Force, to search for her in the thick trees and brush.

Nox expected her to attack again, but it remained quiet. Khem Val, stepping over broken tree boughs, felled trees, and avoiding ragged tree stumps sticking up from the ground, had joined Nox in the clearing that had been created earlier by Nox's explosive Force Push attack. Nox, now joined by Khem Val, waited a moment before realizing that she may have left the battle. He and Khem Val moved to where Nox had last seen her and searched.

After a thorough search, the two concluded that she had indeed gone, or had hid very well. Nox asked Khem, "How many commandos did we get?"

Khem Val answered, "I slew three, and the three that you wounded with the trees."

Nox, doing the math, concluded, "With the four I killed at the start of this mess, it means we got ten of them." Nox, shaking his head in disappointment, concluded, "Then, two escaped with the Jedi assassin."

Jedi rarely used assassination to solve problems, but those trained in the arts were referred by the Jedi as Shadows. However, the Sith only viewed that as Jedi hypocrisy and called them as they saw them, assassins.

Nox signaled Khem, indicating that he suspected the Jedi was still in the area. Khem signaled that he agreed.

Aloud, Nox said to Khem, "Well, grab whichever of these dead commandos seem tasty to you. You can eat him when we get back to base."

Khem Val, pointing at a felled commando and relishing his coming meal said, "This one here smells the best!"

From the markings on the armor, Nox concluded that it had to be the lieutenant leading the commando team. As Khem bent to pick up the body, the lieutenant groaned.

Khem said excitedly to Nox, "Ha! He yet lives! Then he shall remain fresh until I begin to feast on his flesh!"

Apparently, that was more than the Jedi could take. She came out from hiding and attacked Khem. Khem Val threw the lieutenant at her, but instead of dodging, she caught him, then fled. Weighed down by his body, she could not move as quickly, nor as stealthily.

Nox pursued her, but after a short chase that lasted all of ten paces, he stopped suddenly as the realization came to him that he was following a phantom. Somehow, she had used Force Persuasion again to trick him into following shadows. Nox cleared his mind and focused as he tried to sense the fleeing Jedi, but to no avail. She hid her presence with such expertise.

Khem, laughing at Nox, commented, "I wondered when my master would wake from his dreaming and cease to chase ghosts!"

Nox retorted lamely, "Yes, but you've lost your dinner."

Khem Val, realizing the truth of Nox's lame retort, said grimly, "We shall hunt her, and she shall become my food."

Nox and Khem collected the identity tags from the dead around them.

As they did, Nox observed, "You know, Khem. You could just pick any one of these other commandos up for your dinner."

Khem Val turned his nose up at the notion, saying, "They smell terrible! Their meat is not worth considering."

Shrugging his shoulders, which hurt, and which reminded him of what the Jedi had done to him, Nox said, "Let us return."

Nox and Khem wasted no more time. It was late in the afternoon when the two began to run, not so hard this time, to the East and South until they came across a dirt road. It was later in the afternoon, when the two searched the area thoroughly, before Nox called for a shuttle to extract them from the forest.

As they sat, waiting for the shuttle's arrival, Khem Val observed, "My master, three commandos have escaped with their lives, and the Jedi Master."

Nox nodded his head, repeating, "And the Jedi Master."

Nox got out a kolto injector from his utility belt. He jabbed it into his bicep, through his flexible armor, to numb the pain that was starting to become quite a nuisance to him as the adrenaline in his bloodstream diminished.

Some time had passed as they sat waiting for the shuttle to arrive. Darth Nox had gotten in contact with Vulgren and gave new orders.

"There is no choice," he said. And then, "You'll need to send some of those broken troops to the commando bases that I trashed. I want them to collect any intel that may be found in them. Hurry."

He cut off his portable holo-transmitter before Vulgren could reply. A few hours after that, a shuttle finally arrived. It was dusk when Nox and Khem boarded and found a Black Ops team already on board. Nox was greeted by Lieutenant Dains Miltner.

"We are deeply honored to ride a shuttle back to base with our Dark Lord of The Sith fresh from battle! We've just completed our mission to recover intel from the devastation that you've left behind."

Miltner shook his head and smiled in deep admiration and awe.

Nox thought to himself, "No wonder the shuttle took so damned long getting to me." Then he asked the Black Ops team leader, "Did you find anything useful?"

Dains Miltner answered, "Lots of data pads, unit insignias, body counts, the usual stuff, Dark Lord. It still needs to be analyzed to determine what it all means, Dark Lord."

Nox nodded his understanding as he handed the identification tags, he'd collected from the dead commandos, over to the Black Ops team leader.

Miltner exclaimed, as he accepted the tags from Darth Nox, "Ah! There they are!"

Once strapped into his seat, Nox leaned back and closed his eyes to take a brief nap for the short flight back to the settlement. Khem Val, however, remained awake and kept his eyes on the Black Ops team sitting dangerously close to his master.