A/N: Sorry this chapter took so long to get up, my computer crashed.
Yes, they are fairly new Knights, this being their second or third mission,
this is something that will be address later as the story goes on. ~grin~
And believe it or not, I am really trying to keep some semblance of a plot-driven fic, some parts may or may not have a point later on, like that thing with the sabers in Chapter Two. (Where in the Seven Hells am I going to put *THAT* later on?) And I still have yet to figure out italics. Any hints.....?
Don't know how long this one will be, but Hours of Midnight is the oddity of anything I've ever written. I'm a firm believer in happy endings. I like happy endings:)
Okay. Standard issue disclaimer: I do not own SW or the characters- except for my own, hey, I take what I can get-nor anything related to Koontz or any other horror movie I'm pulling shadow plot bunnies from. A/N: Shadow plot bunnies are the evil counterparts to the regular plot bunnies.
And a big huge thanks to all those who have reviewed so far!
All set then? Good. Continue with the ewwness!
Chapter Three-Twilight Continued
Or are their dark fears exaggerated?
Are these doom-criers addlepated?
Qui-Gon woke from a black sleep in which he had been chased by some formless danger until he'd bolted upright in his cot with a soundless cry on his lips. His heart hammered in his chest, like one of Dram's gremlins had somehow possessed it and was now intend on pounding it to a pulp with a sonic-hammer and twelve of his cousins.
Stupid gremlins.
He took a deep breath to calm himself, winced from the smell of over- cooked meat that was undoubtedly the remnants of breakfast, rose from his cramped cot and dressed without ceremony. Dram ran around half-dressed, but there was no reason he had to.
Fully awake but with the memory of last nights hellish dream still tagging at the edges of his awareness, the Knight ambled out into the hallway, noting that neither Mace nor Janny had decided to grace the Wake Angel with their presence-their doors were still both firmly closed, but the faint sounds of a shower being run trickled from Dram's quarters, trying to wash the smell of the Kiss off.
Qui-Gon took an experimental sniff of his shirt.
~Stop it you fool, who cares if you have a SLIGHT odor? You're here to find Adsion and Maris's killer, not smell rosy fresh.~
Fortified with that thought, the tall Jedi headed for the monitoring room, a small alcove just off the cock-pit door.
To his surprise, Peire was there, hunched over one of the blinking control panels with his strangely light green eyes glued to a screen with scrolling letters and numbers that flashed across the flat surface.
"Captain's log. I'm decoding it." the usually reserved Jedi from the planet Baris-noted for their oddly colored blue hair and white skin-said before Qui-Gon was aware that Peire was aware that he was in the room.
"Oh…..good." Qui-Gon blinked in confusion. ~Sneaky as a Adonian pop weasel~ he thought.
Peire didn't look up, so Qui-Gon took a seat next to him, trying to see what the other was up to without appearing nosy.
He failed. Perhaps this was a Jedi trait he'd yet to pick up.
Peire scooted over--to make room and not because he smelled, Qui-Gon told himself--enough so that the other could see the screen before returning to his work. With nothing to do besides watch numbers, the tall Knight busied himself with pulling up the security files from another console and began scanning them with a critical eye, searching for anything to might lead to a clue.
"Captain Jerit said that the Twilight Kiss was carrying supplies to the Rim colonies, right?" Peire's monotone voice broke-in. Qui-Gon looked up, his eyes already twitching from the strain of watching the tiny screen and every detail that might be important.
"Yeah, uhhh.....food and materials for shelter and clothing, so-on so- forth. Why?"
The Barisian Jedi pointed to a clutch of letters on the upper section of the screen. "Twelve days into the flight and six before we recieved the mayday from Padawan Mynal, the Twilight Kiss intercepted a call from a Republic crusier out of the Ghar system, they investigated on Adsion's insistance, but when they boarded the crusier, they found it abandoned, and that it had been left in a hurry. The captain of the Kiss confered with Master Adsion, and they concluded that perhaps the crew took a shuttle to one of the closer planets in the system. On a off note, they sent a message to the Ghar military in order to ascertain what happened, and they had yet to hear a response."
"And that has to do with the Kiss's cargo.......?"
Peire's pale green eyes seemed to grow brighter with the promise of a mystery. "Captain Plym of the Twilight Kiss ordered any salvagable materials taken from the crusier and added to the Kiss. If I can find the updated cargo list, I can see if the crusier carried anything of notice."
"You mean," Qui-Gon said with a glance to the hallway, where the crew of the Wake Angel was stirring with increasing activity. "If they managed to drag aboard the very thing that killed them."
* * * *
Is the end of the world a-coming?
Is that the devil they hear humming?
Are those doomsday bells a-ringing?
Is that the devil they hear singing?
"Any better?"
"Yeah, image is loud and clear.......Hey! Stop it!" Mace yelled, stomping down on Dram's hand as the blond yanked off his boot. "You're supposed to be fixing the link's feed!"
"And you're wearing my damn socks." the blond replied easily, tossing his friend his boot and plopping down in the ajoining chair while Mace huffed and returned his foot back into his boot. "They better be back in my room by tomorrow, and clean."
Mace stuck his tongue out at him and smacked the monitor that they were sitting in front of smartly on the side, granting him a static free screen, and a view of the docking hall of the Twilight Kiss.
Dram rubbed his hands together and then wrapped the around a wheel-like device with a slew of wires connecting it to a control box that sat on front of him. "Aight," he drawled in Adonian slang with the grin of someone who was in their element. "Let's creep."
The Creeper, one of Dram's many inventions that had evolved into something actually useful, was a cat sized robotic cockroach in Mace's view. It had eight spindily legs, a flat, insectile body that he barely kept from stepping on when he happened to look at it, and two bulbous eyes that was currently their view into the ghost ship.
Dram carefully preesed down on a footpad located on the floor in front of him and the Creeper scurried forward, the halls of the Twilight Kiss flashing by in blurs of gray.
"Hey, let off the gas." Mace protested. He was in charge of the camera that was mounted on the Creeper's back, just in case Dram missed something on the primary viewer.
Dram grinned but let off the footpad a tad. The Creeper continued at the pace of a normal, cautious human.
"Coming to a branch off, anything?"
The dark skined Knight checked the other screen at his side, one that displayed a grid-map of the Kiss. A blue dot that designated the Creeper was the only thing on the screen. "Clear. Come off it Janny, you really think some serial killer is hiding out on the Kiss? We would have picked him up by now."
The blond took a corner and almost toppled with the weight of the camera. The Creeper reeled for a moment and steadied itself before continuing. Mace sent Dram a sidelong look and returned to his camera monitor.
"Closing in on the cock-pit." Dram announced. It was his plan to check the entire ship with this method before Qui-Gon insisted that they needed a workout and decided that they clear it manually.
"Still clear."
The cock-pit door was still open, allowing the Creeper in without hassle. The surely vibrant shades of red were lost with the washout of light emiting from the frontal bulbs on the Creeper's shoulders, but Dram could still tell they remained. His face twisted in disgust at the senseless deaths, Mace clapped him on the shoulder. "We'll find who did it Janny."
Dram nodded and turned the Creeper around, arrowing for the cargo bay, singing one of his favorite songs-and one of his master's least favorite- under his breath. Mace winced.
Aurora and the Supernovas.
"It's a classic." Dram stated to his friend with a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"Classic piece of shi--what in the Sith is that?"
Dram halted the Creeper a good ten feet from the cargo bay archway. Not even the lights of the robot could slice through the dark midnight that had enveloped the area. "What?"
Mace panned his camera around, his eyes searching. "I thought......." he trailed off, narrowing his eyes at the screen. Nothing but depthless dark, darker than Death, Dram thought with a chill.
"Maybe a womp rat?" the blond suggested hopfully, edging forward with the Creeper.
Mace risked a glance at the grid-map and shook his head. "With this scanner, I'd pick up a mouse. Nerves." he added.
Dram nodded, still not sure, creeped ahead, his hands gripping the wheel so tightly that his knuckles showed white through the light bronze of his skin. "I'll take what's behind Door Number Two please," he joked lightly, more to himself than Mace.
"There!" the other snapped, jabbing at Dram's screen. The camera zoomed in as the robot scuttled forward. Shadows roiled as the metal beast approached and Dram stopped uncertainly. A faint, echoing noise, reminicant of footsteps on the floor of an empty room, nipped at their ears. Both Jedi looked at one another, eyes wide.
"There's someone in there......." Mace whispered.
And then a heavy hand dropped down on both of the edgy Knights shoulders. Dram let lose a reflexive shriek and dove to the side, taking a jumble of wires and the control stick for the Creeper with him. Mace threw up his hands and screamed, falling backwards in his chair and hitting the floor with hardly a pause in his frantic yelling.
Qui-Gon Jinn looked down at his dark friend, hands on hips and shaking his head in disgust. Peire looked around the tall Knight's shoulder curiously, holding a small data-pad in one hand.
"And you call yourselves Jedi." Jinn asked doubtfully. Mace scrambled to his feet, trying to salvage whatever amount of dignity he could, and adjusted the sleeve of his shirt.
"Qui-Gon.....Peire." he greeted. "You surprised us greatly."
"Couldn't tell."
"Surprised my bantha, I think I wet my pants." said Dram as he pulled himself out of the wires and stood, unabashed as he checked the seat of his pants for that tell-tale wetness. He then grinned brightly at Qui-Gon.
"Finished?" the older Knight asked.
"Not by a long shot." the blond said cheerfully, then scowled at his control stick and the monitor. "There was something there."
Qui-Gon nodded.
Mace and Dram exchanged knowing looks of dread.
"We're going on that damn ship aren't we?" Mace asked, rubbing hs temples while Dram again checked his pants.
Qui-Gon nodded again. "Peire'll stay on the Angel and monitor our progress while we retrieve the cargo records for the Kiss--"
"What is this "WE" stuff?" Dram whispered loudly.
"--and see if WE can scare up any new information to report to Master Yoda."
Mace looked plantivily at Dram. "I hate it when he says "We.""
"Ditto my folically challenged friend."
"Besides," Qui-Gon said as he walked out to retrieve a spare data-pad.
"Here it comes." Dram muttered.
"You guys could use the exersice."
And believe it or not, I am really trying to keep some semblance of a plot-driven fic, some parts may or may not have a point later on, like that thing with the sabers in Chapter Two. (Where in the Seven Hells am I going to put *THAT* later on?) And I still have yet to figure out italics. Any hints.....?
Don't know how long this one will be, but Hours of Midnight is the oddity of anything I've ever written. I'm a firm believer in happy endings. I like happy endings:)
Okay. Standard issue disclaimer: I do not own SW or the characters- except for my own, hey, I take what I can get-nor anything related to Koontz or any other horror movie I'm pulling shadow plot bunnies from. A/N: Shadow plot bunnies are the evil counterparts to the regular plot bunnies.
And a big huge thanks to all those who have reviewed so far!
All set then? Good. Continue with the ewwness!
Chapter Three-Twilight Continued
Or are their dark fears exaggerated?
Are these doom-criers addlepated?
Qui-Gon woke from a black sleep in which he had been chased by some formless danger until he'd bolted upright in his cot with a soundless cry on his lips. His heart hammered in his chest, like one of Dram's gremlins had somehow possessed it and was now intend on pounding it to a pulp with a sonic-hammer and twelve of his cousins.
Stupid gremlins.
He took a deep breath to calm himself, winced from the smell of over- cooked meat that was undoubtedly the remnants of breakfast, rose from his cramped cot and dressed without ceremony. Dram ran around half-dressed, but there was no reason he had to.
Fully awake but with the memory of last nights hellish dream still tagging at the edges of his awareness, the Knight ambled out into the hallway, noting that neither Mace nor Janny had decided to grace the Wake Angel with their presence-their doors were still both firmly closed, but the faint sounds of a shower being run trickled from Dram's quarters, trying to wash the smell of the Kiss off.
Qui-Gon took an experimental sniff of his shirt.
~Stop it you fool, who cares if you have a SLIGHT odor? You're here to find Adsion and Maris's killer, not smell rosy fresh.~
Fortified with that thought, the tall Jedi headed for the monitoring room, a small alcove just off the cock-pit door.
To his surprise, Peire was there, hunched over one of the blinking control panels with his strangely light green eyes glued to a screen with scrolling letters and numbers that flashed across the flat surface.
"Captain's log. I'm decoding it." the usually reserved Jedi from the planet Baris-noted for their oddly colored blue hair and white skin-said before Qui-Gon was aware that Peire was aware that he was in the room.
"Oh…..good." Qui-Gon blinked in confusion. ~Sneaky as a Adonian pop weasel~ he thought.
Peire didn't look up, so Qui-Gon took a seat next to him, trying to see what the other was up to without appearing nosy.
He failed. Perhaps this was a Jedi trait he'd yet to pick up.
Peire scooted over--to make room and not because he smelled, Qui-Gon told himself--enough so that the other could see the screen before returning to his work. With nothing to do besides watch numbers, the tall Knight busied himself with pulling up the security files from another console and began scanning them with a critical eye, searching for anything to might lead to a clue.
"Captain Jerit said that the Twilight Kiss was carrying supplies to the Rim colonies, right?" Peire's monotone voice broke-in. Qui-Gon looked up, his eyes already twitching from the strain of watching the tiny screen and every detail that might be important.
"Yeah, uhhh.....food and materials for shelter and clothing, so-on so- forth. Why?"
The Barisian Jedi pointed to a clutch of letters on the upper section of the screen. "Twelve days into the flight and six before we recieved the mayday from Padawan Mynal, the Twilight Kiss intercepted a call from a Republic crusier out of the Ghar system, they investigated on Adsion's insistance, but when they boarded the crusier, they found it abandoned, and that it had been left in a hurry. The captain of the Kiss confered with Master Adsion, and they concluded that perhaps the crew took a shuttle to one of the closer planets in the system. On a off note, they sent a message to the Ghar military in order to ascertain what happened, and they had yet to hear a response."
"And that has to do with the Kiss's cargo.......?"
Peire's pale green eyes seemed to grow brighter with the promise of a mystery. "Captain Plym of the Twilight Kiss ordered any salvagable materials taken from the crusier and added to the Kiss. If I can find the updated cargo list, I can see if the crusier carried anything of notice."
"You mean," Qui-Gon said with a glance to the hallway, where the crew of the Wake Angel was stirring with increasing activity. "If they managed to drag aboard the very thing that killed them."
* * * *
Is the end of the world a-coming?
Is that the devil they hear humming?
Are those doomsday bells a-ringing?
Is that the devil they hear singing?
"Any better?"
"Yeah, image is loud and clear.......Hey! Stop it!" Mace yelled, stomping down on Dram's hand as the blond yanked off his boot. "You're supposed to be fixing the link's feed!"
"And you're wearing my damn socks." the blond replied easily, tossing his friend his boot and plopping down in the ajoining chair while Mace huffed and returned his foot back into his boot. "They better be back in my room by tomorrow, and clean."
Mace stuck his tongue out at him and smacked the monitor that they were sitting in front of smartly on the side, granting him a static free screen, and a view of the docking hall of the Twilight Kiss.
Dram rubbed his hands together and then wrapped the around a wheel-like device with a slew of wires connecting it to a control box that sat on front of him. "Aight," he drawled in Adonian slang with the grin of someone who was in their element. "Let's creep."
The Creeper, one of Dram's many inventions that had evolved into something actually useful, was a cat sized robotic cockroach in Mace's view. It had eight spindily legs, a flat, insectile body that he barely kept from stepping on when he happened to look at it, and two bulbous eyes that was currently their view into the ghost ship.
Dram carefully preesed down on a footpad located on the floor in front of him and the Creeper scurried forward, the halls of the Twilight Kiss flashing by in blurs of gray.
"Hey, let off the gas." Mace protested. He was in charge of the camera that was mounted on the Creeper's back, just in case Dram missed something on the primary viewer.
Dram grinned but let off the footpad a tad. The Creeper continued at the pace of a normal, cautious human.
"Coming to a branch off, anything?"
The dark skined Knight checked the other screen at his side, one that displayed a grid-map of the Kiss. A blue dot that designated the Creeper was the only thing on the screen. "Clear. Come off it Janny, you really think some serial killer is hiding out on the Kiss? We would have picked him up by now."
The blond took a corner and almost toppled with the weight of the camera. The Creeper reeled for a moment and steadied itself before continuing. Mace sent Dram a sidelong look and returned to his camera monitor.
"Closing in on the cock-pit." Dram announced. It was his plan to check the entire ship with this method before Qui-Gon insisted that they needed a workout and decided that they clear it manually.
"Still clear."
The cock-pit door was still open, allowing the Creeper in without hassle. The surely vibrant shades of red were lost with the washout of light emiting from the frontal bulbs on the Creeper's shoulders, but Dram could still tell they remained. His face twisted in disgust at the senseless deaths, Mace clapped him on the shoulder. "We'll find who did it Janny."
Dram nodded and turned the Creeper around, arrowing for the cargo bay, singing one of his favorite songs-and one of his master's least favorite- under his breath. Mace winced.
Aurora and the Supernovas.
"It's a classic." Dram stated to his friend with a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"Classic piece of shi--what in the Sith is that?"
Dram halted the Creeper a good ten feet from the cargo bay archway. Not even the lights of the robot could slice through the dark midnight that had enveloped the area. "What?"
Mace panned his camera around, his eyes searching. "I thought......." he trailed off, narrowing his eyes at the screen. Nothing but depthless dark, darker than Death, Dram thought with a chill.
"Maybe a womp rat?" the blond suggested hopfully, edging forward with the Creeper.
Mace risked a glance at the grid-map and shook his head. "With this scanner, I'd pick up a mouse. Nerves." he added.
Dram nodded, still not sure, creeped ahead, his hands gripping the wheel so tightly that his knuckles showed white through the light bronze of his skin. "I'll take what's behind Door Number Two please," he joked lightly, more to himself than Mace.
"There!" the other snapped, jabbing at Dram's screen. The camera zoomed in as the robot scuttled forward. Shadows roiled as the metal beast approached and Dram stopped uncertainly. A faint, echoing noise, reminicant of footsteps on the floor of an empty room, nipped at their ears. Both Jedi looked at one another, eyes wide.
"There's someone in there......." Mace whispered.
And then a heavy hand dropped down on both of the edgy Knights shoulders. Dram let lose a reflexive shriek and dove to the side, taking a jumble of wires and the control stick for the Creeper with him. Mace threw up his hands and screamed, falling backwards in his chair and hitting the floor with hardly a pause in his frantic yelling.
Qui-Gon Jinn looked down at his dark friend, hands on hips and shaking his head in disgust. Peire looked around the tall Knight's shoulder curiously, holding a small data-pad in one hand.
"And you call yourselves Jedi." Jinn asked doubtfully. Mace scrambled to his feet, trying to salvage whatever amount of dignity he could, and adjusted the sleeve of his shirt.
"Qui-Gon.....Peire." he greeted. "You surprised us greatly."
"Couldn't tell."
"Surprised my bantha, I think I wet my pants." said Dram as he pulled himself out of the wires and stood, unabashed as he checked the seat of his pants for that tell-tale wetness. He then grinned brightly at Qui-Gon.
"Finished?" the older Knight asked.
"Not by a long shot." the blond said cheerfully, then scowled at his control stick and the monitor. "There was something there."
Qui-Gon nodded.
Mace and Dram exchanged knowing looks of dread.
"We're going on that damn ship aren't we?" Mace asked, rubbing hs temples while Dram again checked his pants.
Qui-Gon nodded again. "Peire'll stay on the Angel and monitor our progress while we retrieve the cargo records for the Kiss--"
"What is this "WE" stuff?" Dram whispered loudly.
"--and see if WE can scare up any new information to report to Master Yoda."
Mace looked plantivily at Dram. "I hate it when he says "We.""
"Ditto my folically challenged friend."
"Besides," Qui-Gon said as he walked out to retrieve a spare data-pad.
"Here it comes." Dram muttered.
"You guys could use the exersice."