Chapter Ten
"It isn't like them to flee," Polydeuces hissed. Inoy had been enjoying a moment of contemplation, concerning how and where to direct their conduct towards Hyperion's capture. Already, the fact Hyperion had beaten the Havoc Squad's best martial artist half to death with minimal effort then retreated was already in keeping with what he remembered of him. Their journeys through Nar Shaddaa when he was a wandering Padawan were still as fresh on his mind as if they happened yesterday.
"Pardon?" asked Llimetch. Polydeuces, the younger of the two of them and more inexperienced had been pacing and mumbling to himself quietly.
"It's not like those who claim affinity to the Dark Side to flee! The Sith Master Octavian and I fought against always stood their ground. Brother or no, this one's a coward," Polydeuces snapped.
"Wrong, this one's a survivor. He's counting on the fear, intimidation, and surprise he instilled into Havor Squad with his martial skills to hold over long enough to vanish. It's the kind of tactics he used when he and I traversed the inner slums of Nar Shaddaa on a journey of mutual survival. I clung to him and his partner Seth then provided intel wherever I could find it about how best we were to move. Seth wasn't the big brains of the two of them but he was better suited to brawling than even Hyperion was... Weequays are like that with their tougher skin," Inoy said.
"But he's got the prowess to beat us all, if his pulverization of one of our officers serves as indication. Why would he want to flee when he could wipe us out?" Polydeuces asked.
"We're on his world and he knows it. The only chance he stands of protecting himself, his property, and that kid is if he disappears to where he alone commands the edge. I hope I'm wrong about him brainwashing that kid but even if I am, they'll be convinced we mean to kill them. That Havoc Squad soldier didn't exactly do a good job of being polite about why he'd come," Inoy said.
"What? Was he supposed to say, 'Hi Hyperion, I'm with Havoc Squad. I'm here to arrest you for your crimes during the war with the Sith so would you kindly turn around and offer your hands for me to cuff? Thank you!' Was he supposed to be formal in a galaxy that doesn't tolerate war criminals?" Polydeuces asked.
The way he phrased it made the older Nautolan Jedi chuckle before he explained himself. "No, maybe not but there are better ways he could've gone about it then just waltzing up with a gun. Now Hyperion's guard is up and since he's not exactly in his prime, he knows that if he can stack the playing field as high in his favor as he possibly can, he can repel us. He does have the Force, in fact I'd still wager that even after all these years it'd still take the both of us working together to bring him down... maybe even throw your Master in there for extra credit. Regardless, Hyperion is no fool and he knows when he'd be outmatched if he faced us out in the open," Inoy said.
He remembered his days when he was impetuous as this human before him, remembered when the universe seemed full of possibility, life, and happiness. Experience, not excluding his travels with Hyperion and Seth, had taught him otherwise of course. "So what do you suggest we do?" Polydeuces asked.
"I suggest we call for some local help, see if we can find out if Hyperion has made an enemy or two among the Talids or the others who live here. If so, we can use that to our advantage: they know the land better than we do and know the best ways we can box him in. Even if we succeed in that, capturing him won't be any small feat in of itself and he'll want to know that the kid will be spared if my suspicions about his relationship are correct," Inoy said.
"Of course it won't be a small task to bring him in but it'll be much more fun," Polydeuces said.
"Your enjoyment of conflict is not the Jedi way. And it's most certain as hell not the way Dantius trained you. I know that because I was the one who persuaded him to take up a Padawan learner. I'm the reason you aren't in the Agricultural Corps right now, kid," Inoy told him. Inoy didn't understand why he was referring to Polydeuces as a "kid" when he himself was twenty-five years of age.
As far as he could figure, it was possible it was because he was chosen to be Dantius' Padawan learner at seven and had stayed with him for ten years before undergoing the Trials. Polydeuces wasn't even eighteen years of age when he first became a Knight and already, Inoy was seeing signs that may have been a mistake. Not because Dantius was a bad teacher, quite the contrary: Inoy had himself picked up some of his first lightsaber tips from him. But rather because the Sith that Polydeuces faced down were already broken and defeated.
They had no morale left with which to continue to persevere and their deaths had served only to boost an ego that war had a habit of curtailing at its height. There was no one in the hotheaded Knight's recent experience that was quite the measure of Hyperion in skill and tenacity. Among those that Polydeuces had destroyed, skilled though they were, there was also no one with Hyperion's experience in killing both Light and Dark Side users despite leaning one way himself. Hyperion had killed enough Jedi to know how to deal with the likes of Polydeuces with ease while the reverse could not be said of young Polydeuces.
"So what do we do when we have our local guides?" Polydeuces asked after a moment had passed.
"We encourage them to box him in through the top twenty most likely paths he can use to escape out the mountains. If possible, we get the full strength of any tribes they belong to so we can cut him off at more paths than that. We make it impossible for anything to go in or out without so much as one of our sentries seeing then we wait. Even if he's packed ten million nutrition bars, his supplies won't last forever and he'll have to come out. If he's anything like the Dark Siders we've fought, the impatience will get to him long before we have to worry about that," Inoy said. And with that plan in mind, they set in motion what they hoped would result in a quick and peaceful capture of the two.
"And if he is more patient than the typical Sith?" Polydeuces asked.
"Even if he is, that kid isn't. Not yet, anyway... Sooner or later the boy will want out of the mountains and likely sooner than Hyperion will. We use that to draw out Hyperion and then we'll have them both so long as Hyperion doesn't whip out a lightsaber. If he can still wield one the way I remember he did then Havoc Squad doesn't stand a chance," Inoy explained.
"Just how do you know him, anyway?" asked Polydeuces.
"Remember the Confederacy?" Inoy asked. Polydeuces thought about the name for a moment, the Confederacy having been an attempted third faction that gave voice to those systems caught between the Sith and the Jedi. It accepted defectors from both sides and its Force-sensitives attempted to emulate the code of balance proscribed by the ancient Je'daii of Tython. But infraction amongst the Force-sensitives, combined with lack of resources led to the Confederacy's dissolution before it gained significant traction. Polydeuces was easily old enough to have known of it if he were attentive to political climate in its day, which it seemed he was.
"Dantius found his way into the ranks, in fact he became the right hand man to one of the original leaders of the Grey Order the Confederacy had attempted to start up. But his master directed him back to the Jedi when he foresaw the failure of the Order. I went about searching for him or anyone I'd known in the Vornu temple after it fell and bumped into Hyperion on Oba Diah. Imagine my surprise when a trained Sith was willing to save my life after I'd been captured by the crime boss there. I was going to be given over to an Inquisitor for interrogation as a result of coming out of Vornu when Hyperion came for me," Inoy explained.
"A Dark Side wielder saving the life of a Jedi Padawan? I don't get it," Polydeuces admitted.
"To your credit, most who wield the Dark Side wouldn't have given a second thought to letting the wolves consume me. But Hyperion had been questioning his life and the goals with which he pursued living because his life had been based around revenge against Dantius. The longer he lived without that goal, the more he began to question whether his life had any value. He gave me an amulet that he'd kept from childhood as the last shred of humanity he had left so that he could surrender himself to his revenge. One of the few keepsakes I've hidden from the Council all this time and will likely keep hidden from even Dantius to the day I die," Inoy said.
"Unless I tell him," Polydeuces replied, Inoy glaring him down in the moments after that statement. Polydeuces chuckled it off, assuring him that he was just joking about telling Dantius about the amulet. The fact that Dantius had even waited to tell Polydeuces anything in all the eleven years they'd know one another was unsettling enough without Polydeuces adding anything else onto his plate.
"I think I know just the local we're going to reach. Unfortunately, he hasn't been seen in some time and when he was seen, he served criminal aims by making weapons the Republic couldn't counter," Inoy said. He hated the fact he had to even think about encountering the Bimm blacksmith and engineer once again, much less making him talk about Hyperion. But it seemed like the great Fabro, a fugitive he had been looking for anyway, was going to be yet another capture for the great Inoy Llimetch.
Chapter Eleven
Some days passed in relative silence as Hyperion and Menelaus continued their way to the cavern of the specter. About a day or so earlier, they'd seen a Republic ship land at the forge of Fabro and then fly off in the direction of the cave they were headed to. Hyperion and Menelaus quickly ducked into the open cavity of a tree at one point in order to avoid the night vision lights whilst the ship went on ahead. "How do they know we're headed for the specter?" Menelaus asked.
"If Fabro was captured and then persuaded to talk for a reduced sentence, they know the cavern to the specter and maybe even how we intended to capture the Specter. But there's something familiar about a presence on the ship, a presence I haven't felt since... since..." Hyperion replied. Could it be that someone he had once known was on board that ship, en route to try and stop him from continuing his journey? As he and his son edged closer to the mountain where the cave of the specter dwelled, the presence grew stronger. At once, Hyperion knew it was someone from his past but he also knew it was more powerful than it'd been when he last met.
He and his son climbed the mountain from an angle where he hoped the specter's dark presence would camouflage his arrival and that if his child. "Who comes into my house of pain, seeking knowledge that only I would give?" said a voice at once ethereal yet audible. It sounded like it swung between the realms of the living and the dead with Menelaus unable to understand what was going on. Before the Zabrak boy could ask, Hyperion told him to be quiet in case the Jedi responded to the specter's demand.
"One who would seek knowledge on the being called Hyperion and his boy Menelaus. The Bimm said that they would be coming to your cave before he tried to attack us. When we were forced to destroy his shop, he agreed to come quietly with Havoc Squad to serve his sentence for the crimes he committed against the Republic," said a voice he could tell was Human.
"I am Jedi Knight Inoy Llimetch of the Dantooine Order. With Polydeuces, I have come on behalf of his former Master Dantius Octavian to capture Hyperion. Can you tell us where he is, if you know?" said another voice. Impossible! How could Inoy have found me after all these years and why would he come onto Ando Prime: it can't be healthy for the likes of him Hyperion silently chided to himself.
The last time he'd ever seen the Nautolan, Inoy had been a fourteen-year-old Padawan of the Jedi Order who hadn't even found a steady Master to train him until Knight Tethys came. By then, Hyperion had torn off his mechanical arm of the time to free himself from the rubble of the destruction Tethy's old rival Lord Ishido had caused. Hyperion had never thought he would see the Nautolan again, much less that he would be a Jedi Knight when their paths crossed again in this life.
"How do you know that Hyperion travels with a child, eh? Did the Bimm truly say that Hyperion had a child in his company or did he have a horned Bimm with him?" the specter teased.
"Signs pointed to the child being just that and Bimm don't have horns. Now tell us what we have come to know!" Polydeuces exclaimed.
"You Jedi have already done your worst to me. Millennia before, you cast me from my home and disembodied me, tying me to this cave with the promise that I'd only come begin to come back when innocents were murdered. So take thine threats, take thine questions, take thine concerns about the one called Hyperion and leave me to my devices," said the specter. What reason does the specter have for not cooperating with the Jedi? What horror could they have committed against her that would make her so rebellious? Hyperion asked himself silently.
He watched a human emerge first, who he guessed was the younger and more impulsive Jedi Knight. Then a bulkier but taller and older Nautolan stepped forth through the entry and Hyperion knew there was no mistaking it. Flashbacks of the times in Nar Shaddaa, where the kid had then wielded a lightfoil whilst Seth al Ugolio had wielded a shoto and lightsaber, both with blood-red blades, and he had wielded a single red blade. My, my, my Hyperion thought, how you have grown into the robes of the Jedi.
He was almost detected when Inoy turned and looked to the peak of the mountain, probably thinking that he sensed Hyperion's presence. When he didn't pursue the matter or even activate his lightsaber, Hyperion guessed by the footsteps that he was walking away from the cave. Poking his head back over the cliffside after he couldn't hear anything, his suspicion was confirmed which allowed him and his son to jump down to the entrance and see the specter.
"Ah the very topic of discussion has arrived to speak with me. The bald human and his Zabrak child, how can I help you?" said the spirit.
"You can start by telling me why you turned the Jedi away even knowing where we were. Menelaus, make sure they've left please," Hyperion said, pausing until Menelaus nodded and left. Then he turned his attention back to the specter and waited for it to answer his question about the Jedi.
"Many millennia ago, I was a part of the First Great Schism in the Jedi Order. I sided with Xendor and his consort Arden Lyn, offering my power so that they could get around when the Republic denied them ships. My magic gave them the power to form their Legions and find their own ships to take the fight to the Republic and their beloved Jedi Order. When the war was over and the Legions of Lettow had lost, I was cursed to live an existence of ageless discorporation in this cave with the promise that I'd only begin to reform when the blood of innocents was spilled by a Jedi or a Republic soldier," the specter said.
"And I'm guessing that happened or else you wouldn't be manifesting a face before me," Hyperion said. The specter nodded and added the next part which probably explained the reason for Hyperion possessing his ring.
"Now I am to linger until the day the Prison Ring, capable of imprisoning specters like myself and carrying them great distances, is found and used on me! Imagine my irritation when these Jedi came to ask their questions of me," the specter replied. Hyperion nodded, more than understanding the suffering that the Jedi had tended to cause on those who had a difference of opinion on their views of the Force. He himself was victim to that on more than one occasion when he was a galaxy-faring assassin for hire.
It was one of the main reasons that he killed Jedi was precisely because they tried to resolve his difference of opinion on the Force through violence. "I have the Prison Ring. Shall I bind you to it?" Hyperion offered. The specter grew excited at the prospect of finally being free of her prison but hesitated. When Hyperion made to ask her what she was hesitating about, she spoke her mind.
"In case you can't resurrect me, there is something you need know. The longer you hold the secrets of your true nature from the boy, the more damage you'll do when he finds out. He will resent you and you could lose him forever," the specter warned.
"There is much I wouldn't have him know if I could avoid it. He needs not know the kind of monster I once was when I was a young man. Not while he is still as innocent as he is," Hyperion admitted to her.
"So you value your privacy and your secrecy over your own child? Doesn't seem like very much of a way of life for the two of you," said the specter. Hyperion groaned with a bit of a razzle to it before replying that he was going to imprison her spirit in the ring now. Having learned the incantation before Fabro gave him the ring, he thought it and used the Force to echo it across to the specter via telepathy. It worked and the spirit was soon imprisoned, every single ounce of dark energy in the cave disappearing as soon as it was with exception noted to the deaths and torture that occurred here.
Menelaus was back just in time to see that Hyperion had completely absorbed the spirit into the ring and was ready to go. "The Jedi are nowhere to be found, I did see the ship flying over the mountains though and it looks like they're going to cover the whole range. Probably would be a good idea to stay in here until well after they've left our field of vision," he told his foster father.
"Then we will give it a few days before we decide whether to stay or to get a move on to the other side of the mountain range. We'll see what we can do about making a turnaround towards the nearest town once we've escaped the mountains. Come, get comfortable in this cave while I look around," Hyperion said. Menelaus obeyed and even orated his excitement at being able to not worry about whether they were going to travel or stay. If only for a little while.
