Twelve
"Sir, are we going to hide in a closet or at least try and link up with Colonel Arkaan?"
Hoday fixed Jaig with a glare, one hand still pressed to his ear, trying desperately to get a hold of the other party.
The group had found a set of emergency stairs and descended a few levels before Hoday found a small room. They'd paused in the room for several minutes whilst the Jedi tried unsuccessfully to raise anyone on the comm. Arkaan, the pilot of the gunship, Raysh and the Iron Fist had all gone quiet, and coupled with the shutdown of the bridge, Hoday was beginning to get seriously worried, and it looked like the troopers around him were getting nervous too.
"We'd be best off linking back up with Arkaan and the others," he replied finally. "But I can't get hold of anyone."
"What's our next move then?" asked Jay.
"We head for the CIC. Like you said earlier, it's the most logical place for someone to do this from. We find them, and we get answers. I'm not leaving this ship until we do get answers."
"Are you sure you want to find them, sir? Chances are they do not want to meet us, and I'm not entirely sure I want to meet them either."
"You have your orders, Sergeant. Move out."
Jay tapped a few keys and Jaig found himself staring at a modified map of the Indomitable, another blue line leading into the heart of the ship. The sergeant flicked a few fingers and the troopers quickly stacked up on the door, opening it in a heartbeat and pushing through, securing the corridor beyond. Hoday and Jay followed closely behind, and they moved very quickly back to the bank of turbo-lifts.
Hoday looked up at the doors and held his finger over the call button. The group exchanged looks behind the Jedi's back as he paused.
"Sergeant," said Hoday after a while. "Where are the nearest stairs?"
"Back the way we came and across. It's a long way to go, General."
"Your men are fit and healthy, Jaig, I trust they'll take it in their stride."
Hoday turned and began walking back towards the room they'd been occupying. Jaig glanced at Jay and shrugged apologetically before moving after the Jedi.
The group spent what felt like weeks jogging down the stairs. The superstructure jutting up from the main body of the ship was usually accessed via turbo-lift, and for good reason. Hundreds of steps were hard-going, even for the clone troopers, trained since birth to be soldiers, and, not surprisingly, Jay found the going very tough. Jaig ordered one of the troopers to help him out, but even so, the group found themselves slowing down and sometimes stopping altogether so the flagging pair could keep up.
The stairs seemed to go on forever, and even Hoday, with his Force-enhanced stamina, was beginning to think that they should've risked taking the turbo-lift, when Jaig called a halt.
"We're not there yet, but we can't reach the CIC if we go any further down this stair-well."
"No more stairs," gasped Jay.
"How many more levels?" asked Hoday, ignoring the young man leaning against the wall.
"Only two, but we need to go through that corridor and take two lefts."
"Let me see the map."
Jay raised a shaking finger and tapped a few keys, sending the map to the Jedi, and it appeared next to Hoday's face inside his helmet.
"We're almost directly above it," said Hoday quietly after a few seconds studying the map.
With a snap-hiss, he ignited his lightsabre.
"Sergeant, check the corridor," he ordered.
Jaig extended an arm, and the troopers surrounded the hatchway separating them from the corridor. One of the troopers unlatched the door, unlocking it for the sergeant, and Jaig raised a foot and booted it open. The heavy door swung open and clanged against the wall beside the door as the sergeant and two troopers stormed into the corridor.
An empty but lit corridor greeted them, and Hoday and Jay stepped into the corridor.
"Thank you for that dramatic entrance, sergeant. Now it's my turn."
Hoday moved forward until he was standing about a third of the way down the corridor. His eyes flicked to the icon in his helmet for a second, then raised the lightsabre. Bringing it straight down, he stabbed it into the deck, moving it at an angle, sawing it through the deck until he'd cut a large circle. He extended a hand and the circular piece of deck floated into the air, away from the hole, the edges still glowing red. He deactivated his lightsabre and lowered the metal plug gently, trying to make as little noise as possible.
Jaig looked at the Jedi and shook his head.
"Check it."
Two of the troopers lay down on either side of the hole and poked their heads through, closely followed by their carbines.
"Clear," they called.
One of them swung themselves around and dropped down into the hole. Their comms clicked, and the rest of the troopers dropped through into the room below. Hoday and Jay lowered themselves down and looked around.
The troopers began to secure the room and check the entrances, but Hoday stopped them, reactivating his lightsabre. He raised it again, but paused upon seeing Jay. He turned and frowned at him, making Jaig and the other troopers turn to see what he was doing.
Jay had the gloved fingers of one hand pressed against the wall and had his helmet very close to the surface of the wall. He was moving his head, like he was reading something, but all the others could see was a blank wall.
"Jay?" said Hoday quietly. "Are you alright?"
"Just reading the walls. What language is this?"
"What language is what?"
"This!" exclaimed Jay, pointing to various different points on the blank, grey wall.
Hoday stepped up next to him and concentrated on the wall, running a finger over the surface. As his finger passed, something appeared beneath his fingers, but disappeared as soon as he looked more carefully at it. He swiped his hand over the wall again, and, for a split second, blood-red inscriptions appeared, runes he didn't recognise flashing up then disappearing before he'd even registered their existence, replaced by the purple-tinged grey, lit as it was by his lightsabre.
"I…" he stammered. "I can see it for a second, but then it goes. What do you see?"
"General, it's a blank wall," interrupted Jaig.
"Shut up, Jaig," snapped Hoday, and the clone sergeant stepped back, completely taken aback.
"I can't read it, but it's all over the walls. There's some streaks over here, like whoever painted it splashed some on the wall, and here, there's a drawing of…well, some kind of talisman, with stick figures surrounding it."
"Can your recognise the writing at all?"
"No, it's nothing like Aurebesh, and but it does look a bit like the Mando'a I've seen on Arkaan, Ori and Raven's armour, but there's too many differences."
Hoday blinked hard at the wall, and, like before, the script appeared before flickering away into nothingness.
"I have a bad feeling about this," he murmured.
"General, we need to get moving," said Jaig quietly.
Hoday turned and nodded at him, before pulling at Jay's arm.
"Come on, Jay. Take some still-shots with your visor and you can look back at them later."
Jay nodded and his helmet clicked a few times, until he turned back to the others. Two of the troopers were sharing uneasy glances beneath their helmets, but the looks went unnoticed by the Jedi and Jay. Having spent a lot of his life in a helmet, Jaig caught the looks, but ignored them, knowing full well that, had Raysh, Shane, or even one of the Mandalorians been there, he would've been giving them the same looks. But as the senior trooper in the group, it was down to him to maintain the morale of the troops, something a non-clone would find very difficult.
Hoday lifted the lightsabre again, but this time to fiddle with the controls on it. The group watched as the blade shrunk to only a few inches long, and, satisfied, Hoday crouched on the floor. Very carefully, he slid the blade into the floor, then dragged it around in a large, slow circle. When the circle was completed, Hoday withdrew the lightsabre and readjusted the blade back to full-length, then readied himself, crouching at the outside edge of the circle, one hand extended.
He looked up at Jaig, who, quickly understanding, placed his men around the edges of the circle, ready to jump down and secure whatever they found in the CIC. Jay stepped back, going down onto one knee, but kept his carbine ready.
Jaig raised a hand with three fingers up. Looking at Hoday, he slowly lowered them, one-by-one. As the last finger fell, Hoday flexed his arm, and the circle exploded downwards, the Jedi throwing the Force onto the weakened section with massive concussive force.
Jaig was first down, followed closely by one of the troopers. They immediately swept left and right as Hoday dropped down between them. The three of them spread out, giving the remaining troopers more room to jump down, and all four spread out in the low room, checking each corner. Jay lowered himself down carefully and stared at the walls surrounding them.
Red lights in each of the corners lent a very creepy air to the low, dark room, and the blue and green-tinged consoles around the room only added to the odd coloured gloom surrounding them. A table in the middle of the room had a faint holographic display of the local star-field hovering above it, and thick black cables snaked their way from jury-rigged ports in the display out through an open door.
But what caught the team's attention was what covered the walls between the consoles, the ceiling, and even the deck beneath their feet. Thick runic writings were on every surface they could see that wasn't taken up by equipment, and where there wasn't writing, there were primitive drawings depicting different scenes of worship and what looked like ritual sacrifices.
"Are you seeing this, Sergeant?" muttered Hoday. The added purple light of his lightsabre was throwing odd shadows, hiding some of the writing in the different shade of light.
"I can see them this time, sir," whispered Jaig.
"I told you!" said Jay, immediately sweeping his visor around and capturing as many still pictures as he could. The light from his spotlight illuminated various phrases and lines, and the troopers spread out, each trying to make sense of what they were seeing.
"It almost looks like blood," whispered one of the troopers.
Hoday pulled off his helmet and laid a hand on the wall, wiping it slightly. His hand came away and he looked at it, passing his thumb across his fingers.
"I think it is blood," he said quietly.
Immediately, the tension in the room rose, and the men took a step back from the walls, unconsciously gripping their carbines tightly. Jay stopped taking pictures and hefted his own carbine, looking around the room and at Hoday. The Jedi looked down at his feet, noticing the cables for the first time, and pointed them out to the troopers.
"Sergeant, these cables don't look like they belong. If we follow them, we should find who's in control."
Reluctantly, Jaig gave a few terse orders, and the troopers moved through the door, checking the corridor beyond. One of them gestured behind him, and the others moved into the corridor behind them.
Unlike the CIC, the corridor beyond was brightly lit, and its walls were mercifully clear of the suspiciously gruesome writings. On the wall immediately beside the door, a large single icon glowed balefully, but otherwise, there was no evidence of the creepy graffiti seen inside the CIC. The cables themselves were gathered into a bundle on one side of the corridor and continued down the length of the passageway until it snaked up the wall and into a hole in the ceiling.
The passageway ended in a T-junction, and Hoday indicated for the clone troopers to take the lead. Jaig stepped forward, with the troopers behind him, and Jay close behind.
Ahead, a white-armoured figure appeared and the group stopped, confused.
"Trooper!" called out Hoday.
The figure stopped and turned, a full-length DC15 rifle in his hands. Even from the distance they were from the figure, they could see something was wrong. The armour he was wearing was instantly recognizable to every person there, with only Hoday and Jay being the ones not intimately familiar with the plates and pouches the figure wore. The helmet, however, whilst similar, was different. Expecting to see the t-visored helmet the trooper all wore, the almost face-like white helmet of the figure gave them all pause, and the frowned head turned slowly to regard them.
"Trooper!" called out Hoday again. "Identify yourself!"
Instead of answering, the figure merely leveled the rifle and opened fire.