Chapter 15: Event
The death of Sidi Driss woke Corran Horn out of some kind of trance. Outside the wall sized viewport before him three ships in formation skimmed pastel colors circling featureless pits, round mouths, tunnels like a giant creature's slippery throat..!
Something cool and hard pressed against Corran's forehead and pricked the skin. "You killed him!" Corran found himself screaming and realized he could not move. The pale Twi'lek stepped away from the blue containment field Corran was suspended in, a blinking disk-shape in one hand.
"I didn't kill anyone." He said, incredibly calmly. He crossed the room and pushed the disk into a computer console. The walls were slightly curving in this room, to meet the concave row of windows. The containment field faced the windows, and the computer console and a small door were set into the right wall. Corran's thoughts felt fuzzy. There must have been something gone off, some kind of grenade or the like--the quality of technology here could not be underestimated. He tested the bonds of the containment field and found it predictably strong in both the electrical and mechanical components. If you cut the electricity here, he thought not without bitterness, it would be helpless. And where are Kell and De'shar?
Leeondro K'Saavis entered with his Whiphid guard and Corran struggled against the field, his green eyes glaring. "You can't keep us here. There's family, allies, all Jedi, who know exactly where we were going."
"And won't expect you back for days." The inventor smoothly said without turning from the computer he was now facing. "I hear traffic can be terrible around the black hole cluster lately." He cackled at his own sarcasm. He turned then and Corran saw that he had been working on a machine like the one Corran and De'shar had captured; the blackish louvered shape was unmistakable.
K'Saavis pressed a button that had not been on the captured machine, and the computer screen behind him showed the wide windows before Corran on one half and a radar-like sweep reader on the other.
The machine had a tail, Corran noticed, a cord trailing off the back ending in a thin antennae or spike.
"The original version of this wonderful technology," K'Saavis began saying, and Corran listened because he wanted to know. "could not put someone in a specified time. Now it can be set to do that as well as track where the time traveler is going. But I didn't even know it worked until your friend left. Thank you."
"Luke Skywalker was not a test subject for your inventions!"
K'Saavis started. "Skywalker? Hm, well he's gone now it doesn't matter." But clearly he had been unsettled, and Corran vowed to remember that.
"You, however, are a wonderful test subject." He continued, and set the machine at the base of the containment field. The two Whiphids had taken up positions to either side of him.
K'Saavis clicked the containment field off. Corran fell, pain shooting through his legs from the suspension. With Jedi quickness the Whiphids moved in in case of any trouble but there was no need--the machine was rushing up at him and he had to catch himself on the base or fall onto the sharp white tucks of the Whiphids. He knew what would happen when his hands brushed the sphere; he saw Luke again holding the thing and pushing him away. Corran yelled wordlessly but some control had already been activated, K'Saavis was smiling. A quick, cool and mundane touch and the machine dropped away from his splayed hands as he dissolved.