STAR WARS

THE CRIMSON BLIGHT

Episode 4: The search

OUTER RIM: Tingel arm

The Chiss captain asked again, the confusion plainly visible on his face. "Are you sure these new coordinates are accurate?"

Qaton shrugged his shoulder. "The Coordinates was received on the right frequency."

The Bounty hunters on Okan's ship had been told to wait out on the edges of the tingle arm, until they received the coordinates on where to bring their captive Jedi master. But now that they had received the coordinates, they pointed to somewhere in uncharted space, which was believed to be series of dangerous asteroid belts.

"This just doesn't sit right with me." Okan said. The two main reasons why he had agreed to this mission in the first place was that, the pay would come quickly and in considerable quantity, and that the burden of keeping a jedi subdued quickly would be lifted from their shoulders and on to someone else's. The not inconsiderable part about it all being over and done with a flic of a switch, was definitely not the case.

Zugi, the female zabrak, rose and gave them a stern look of intimidation. "What are we waiting for! If that is the drop off point, I suggest we get there now!"

"I'm pretty sure, we all are tired of waiting. We could always drop out of hyperspace a few parsecs before our destination, just in case." Qaton suggested with a snie smile.

Okan looked at them all, sighed and said in heavy tone. "If you are all sure that this info is accurate, then I will set the course now."


Two hours later, they re-emerged from hyperspace to find a small solar system in their front viewpoint. Okan checked the navi computer. Apparently the coordinates pointed to a small planet orbiting a red dwarf star.

"Yo captain, is there any sign of life out here?" Qaton asked curiously, as he entered the cockpit.

"I've located where we are suppose to go, wake the others." Okan replied, and pulled the lever to accelerate his spacecraft.

A few minutes later the ship landed on the mountainous world, illuminated by the dwarf star, which bathed the planet in a ominous red glow. The surface seemed mostly barren, except for a few curled up tree like plants.

As soon as Okan stepped foot on the planet, he felt a cold feeling rise up in him, simultaneously one of his mental protections implants began to get rather hot, showing signs of a stressful workload. "This planet is sick... I won't stay here longer than absolutely necessary."

He shared a glance with Zugi, she nodded in return to signal that she noticed the abnormality too.

Two human women in uniforms of the typical Tenkan colors of green and orange approached them. "Bring the jedi, our client is waiting." They commanded in unison.

"One jedi coming up." Qaton replied in an enthusiastically loud voice, as Helgu came down the ramp pushing a hover lifter, carried the incapacitated Kel'dorian jedi master, in front of him. Qaton himself carrying the black artifact that kept the jedi in check.

Zak looked carefully around at the red mountains surrounding the landing area as he followed the group onto the planet.

Zugi too began to feel a chill, not only did the two women speak like they were in a trance of a sort, but Qaton's voice seemed unusually faint in her mind.

Zak spotted something that looked something like a mutated mynoc "...Wha-at... is... tha-at!" he shuttered.

"Something that will devour your flesh!" Helgu made a wide grin as he deliberately tried to scare the Twi'lek for his own amusement.

At first Zak stood his ground and looked to overcome his fear of this being, but this only lasted until he spotted countless of the winged creatures. "I'll..." but in his fright, he didn't even finish sentence, before franticly fleeing back on to the ship.

Helgu laughed wickedly, as the pink Twi'lek ran back the way he had come from. "Weakling." He smirked with a sinister smile.

Qaton chuckled at the display. "Afraid of a few indigenous creatures."

The laugher of his teammates was sending a faint echo through Okan's mind, "Maybe Zak, in reality, has the better idea of going back."

The two women in front led them from a narrow pathway and into a cave. To Okan, the trip to their destination felt like a lifetime, while in actuality, only a few minutes had past since they landed.

They entered a cave in the side of one of the red mountains and started down a corridor lit only by purple flames burning from the evenly spaced stone brazziers. At the end of the corridor, was a large purple lit room, filled with various exotic artifacts, completely alien to the visiting bounty hunters.

A tall being clad in a black cloak stood waiting as they approached with the jedi. A cold shadow crept over all of them, Okan began to feel really ill, as a barely audible voice spoke in his head in an echoing dry tone. "Relax... soon you will be rewarded and all your fears will be a thing of the past."

Okan felt like he was falling asleep from pure fatigue, until the mental protection chip in his brain gave him a sudden, painful jolt. It snapped him back to full concisioness. He turned around and kicked the adrenalin enhancing feature of his suite into overdrive, and as he sprinted back towards the ship as fast as he could, he noticed Zugi above him, flying away an orange flame tongue spouting from her jetpack.

Qaton looked confused at his comrades suddenly fleeing. "What are you doing! Don't you want the reward? Well... more for the rest of us." He smiled at Helgu, who mimicked the smile in return.

The dark hooded figure looked at the two newcomers, bid them welcome in a very dry voice. "Welcome, bounty hunters. I see you have brought what I wanted, and in excellent condition. As agreed upon, I have the credits you wanted right here."

"We don't need a reward." Qaton replied chipper and added very enthusiastically. "We will be happy just to serve you, no matter what your wish may be."

"Sure thing, credits are not our desirer, use us anyway you want." Helgu commented eagerly, with an unusual faintness in his otherwise deep voice.

"Very well." The dark hooded figure replied in his dusty dry voice. "I'll make good use of you two."


Back at the ship, Zak was hiding in a corner, fighting the urge to take the ship and fly away on his own. He nearly had a heart attack, when someone lowered the landing ramp, and aimed a blaster pistol at his two comrades that had just returned.

"It feels like my brain is about to explode!" Okan cried out in agony, as he collapsed on the floor.

Zugi yanked her helmet off and threw it against one of the walls. "Make it STOP!" She cried and crashed to the floor, feeling the neural chip in her brain, burning like a firestorm of pain, her fingers tearing at the implant beneath the skin.

"Zak... get us out of here!" Okan shouted in desperation.

Luckily, the terrorfied Twi'lek knew just enough of the ships systems to get the engines roaring and take off from this nightmare of a planet.

Both Okan and Zugi felt like their skulls would crack at any moment from the extremely loud old ship engines, but at least it meant that they were finally safe, from whatever that being had been doing to them.

Unfortunately, the noise didn't stop there, as blaster cannons from small Tengen ships were starting to fire on them. "We are going to die!" Zak cried as he tried to outmaneuver the smaller space crafts.

With the last ounce of his strength, Okan crawled his way to the cockpit. "Zak! Configure the navi computer, the hull will hold long enough."

Zak punched in the coordinates for a random planet faraway, followed by a quick pull of the lever engaging the hyperdrive. The viewport was filled with stars, as the ship jumped to lightspeed.

Everyone collapsed in a seat or on the floor - they had made it out alive.


Drummond Kass: Brisa's skyscraper

Terrow was seated in his new office with a cup of caf on his desk. Since early this morning, he had been up researching the failed mission, which had led to the union with their republic siblings. He stretch his arms and fingers for a brief moment, before returning to the task at hand. For several hours, he had been trying to link suitable suspects to the stations take over and in the end, its destruction. One link was to the bounty hunter guild of the Tenkan Syndicate. Imperial agents already in place, spying on the government of Ord Canfre, had been re-tasked to monitor all syndicate activities, but so far nothing had turned up.

The day before, he and Tikala had set up a slave quarter, for what she called the unfortunate ones. She had openly told him how much she disliked slavery and that she would never refer to them as such. She even specified that she would not tolerate any mistreatment of these poor Twi'leks, to which he had replied that he personally wouldn't harm them in anyway whatsoever, but he couldn't say for sure what Briza would do. Tikala had simply replied that she would defend the Twi'leks in such a case. Of course he already knew what Mathorn would do in the case of mistreatment, and he had mentioned what their brother had done to the Twi'lek's former master, giving Tikala a bit of a shock.

Since Terrow and Tikala were put in charge of the... former slaves, they had decided to teach them some basic skills. Having been fairly young when they had been forced into slavery, none of the Twi'leks had received any basic education, but Terrow had noticed a few of them, who had seemed smart enough to become descent cooks, mechanics and even pilots.

In order to save time, and not bare the burden of teaching personally, he had programmed one of the droids to act as a teacher, by using software from the republic schooling system's central datacore.

And now, he sat and waited for an encrypted report from the republic's strategic information service or SIS for short, so he could get Tikala to verify it and decrypt it, in the hopes of narrowing down their search for the bounty hunters who was responsible for the theft of an imperial dreadnought as well as the kidnapping of a jedi master.


Briza lay on her bed pondering the words of her younger sister. "...like you are another part of me." It was still early, and the sky was dark as night outside. "Could I do something similar? Let me see." She sat up, began to concentrate and reached out with the force. She sensed Mathorn sleeping a few levels below, and more faintly Terrow in a state of concentration, but she was only able to make out bits and pieces of the information he was processing. This wasn't all though, there was another being, like a shadowy cocoon. After a moment, it was as if it accepted her and invited her to enter the cocoon.


Tikala was meditating, as she had been doing the entire night. Still in a trance like state, she sensed someone dark, but at the same time very familiar, trying to mentally connect with her through the force. She smiled, as she let her older sister enter her inner self.


Briza was surrounded by what seemed to be a world of intensive bright light, as if she had just entered a sun. It felt so warm and peaceful, but the intensity of the light power felt extremely overwhelming. It was too much for her. She lost her concentration and she was once again back in her room. She felt weak, vulnerable and shattered. That had been very unlike anything she had ever experienced before. It had been so alien, so calm and harmonious, like a shining world of pure light. She had to lay down for a moment to regain her strength. "Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion I gain strength." she mumbled to herself, but her own words sounded hollow to her, like the meaning had been stripped away.


Tikala sensed the darkside gathering in her sister, but also waning again shortly after. "I wonder how powerful a hold the darkside have over you, my sister." Tikala pondered in silence. The predominant feeling she got, was a bundle of chaotic desires clustered inside her sister. She could feel the strong attachment Briza felt towards everyone she considered her family.

She entered her trance state again, but it didn't take long before another interference occurred. This time in the form of a knock on her door. With a small hand wave, the door slit to the side. "Please come in." She politely invited and opened her eyes to see Terrow standing on the other side.

"Good morning Tikala, I hope you have slept... meditated well." Terrow corrected himself in a polite manner.

Tikala smiled up at him as she rose from her cross legged position. "Yes I have thank you. I have started to get use to your home worlds atmosphere."

"That's good to hear." Terrow smiled in return, but then, changing to a more serious expression, he continued. "I've just received an encrypted message from the republic."

Tikala guessed that was the case and the reason for her little brothers visit. "I will be with in a minute."

"I'll give you space." Terrow replied and left the room to prepare the system for the decryption process.


Briza felt she had laid down long enough and got out of bed. She stretched her body and opened the door to the walk in closet to pick something suitable to wear for the day. She chose a scarlet colored set, made from the softest velvet available in imperial space. When she had dressed, she wandered about in her home for some time. It was still hard to believe, that no more than few days ago, it had all belonged to her deceased master, a Darth of high stature and that she had just been an apprentice. She looked around to see if anyone else was up yet, and found Terrow and Tikala with their full attention concentrated on a monitor, apparently displaying some very imported text.

"Good morning you two." Briza greeted them as she moved in closer to see what the fuss was about.

Tikala turned her head and replied with a greeting of her own. "Good morning sister Briza."

"Good morning my lord." Terrow to replied politely, but didn't take his eyes of the monitor. "We have received some important files from the republic, detailing every ship docked on the Dathomirian space-station before its destruction. We are looking through it now."

"I assume the acquisition of these files have something to do with our contacts on the jedi counsel?" Briza guessed, as she looked at the displayed content, to get a sense of the work they were doing.

"That is correct. We received these files from the SIS, the same files the third member of our group managed download from the space-stations datacore." Tikala chipperly informed with a smile.

"I see." Briza replied. She would have asked Tikala if she would be her sparring partner for her morning exercise, but the circumstances dictated otherwise, so she decided to check if her next best option was available.


Briza knocked on the door to Mathorns room and waited for a second, when no one answered and only snoring could be heard, she just pressed a button, making the door slide to the side. Inside, Mathorn was still asleep in his bed. "Wake up!" She uttered firmly, but when that didn't seem to help ether, she violently slammed her left fist into his chest.

Mathorn awoke when he felt danger right above him, but as he even opened his eyes someone or something strong, slammed all the air out of him. Stunned, confused and shocked, he wailed various insults at his older sister, but the lack of air made his attempt at speech barely audible.

"You are TOO easy to assassinate with these sloppy reflexes. Considered this your punishment, and GET UP! You and I are going to be sparring now!" Briza demanded and marched out of the small sleeping chamber.

"Note to self... meditate, not sleep, or big sis will kill me." Mathorn mumbled to himself as he got dressed, the pain already subsiding.

As Mathorn walked around, trying to find the turbo lift, he too notice his younger siblings talking and pointing. "Good morning siblings of awesomeness"

Tikala turned around and with a very serious look on her face stated. "Mathorn! We need to discuss your aggressive feelings."

"Now? I don't think big sis wants to wait for me." Mathorn replied in an off handed manner, trying to avoid another lectures he didn't want.

Tikala gave him a very serious look and spoke firmly. "Listen! I known the lure of the darkside is strong, especially on this world, but don't let it dictate your actions, … and whatever you do, stay calm and focused. It's the only way you won't be consumed by the darkness of this planet."

"Yes sis... No more fist fights, and I will not kill any more slavers for the time being." Mathorn muttered in a sluggish tone and wandered towards the turbo lift. Entering the lift, he pressed a button which would take him to the training chamber several stories below, where Briza were waiting.