Star Wars: The Korasa Trial
Chapter Two:
Consciousness came grudgingly, and Kagen immediately wished it hadn't. After a moment he realized that he would be better off assessing what didn't hurt. The oppressive terror he had felt on the platform no longer lingered, but he could not quite shake the nagging sense that he had missed something important.
With some relief, he concluded that nothing felt broken – painful, certainly – but that was to be expected. He was lying on a hard cot, in a dark room. Moving one hand slightly, he suppressed a shiver; the coarse fabric was deeply cold, except where his body had warmed it.
He sat up cautiously, bruised muscles throbbing in mild protest. Two rudimentary lighting strips ran overhead, presently dimmed, the only adornments the metal-walled cell offered. Somewhere he could hear some sort of air exchanger running, a shrill hum that began to grate against his ears.
Steadying himself, he reached out to the Force, pushing past his reluctance at what he might find. The nagging feeling returned, foreboding, and for a moment his breath caught in his throat. He couldn't sense Dahy, or Dorn, but that could be explained if only they were too far away from him. A Jedi always has hope, he thought, without conviction; he felt strangely hollow.
With a small start, he snatched at his lightsaber, but came away with only a handful of cloth. He dropped his hand down. Not truly surprising; it was a blow nonetheless. A low cry of dismay escaped him, echoing and overloud in the stillness. The sound faded slowly until only his ragged breathing remained. He put his head in his hands – an un-meditative posture, but that seemed of little consequence.
The Force hung heavy around him, it tore through him, offering no respite. He stretched out to it, trying to find some pattern to the wild tumult but it surged on regardless. Dazed and wretched, he pulled away. In greater part it subsided, a sullen presence lingering, beyond his ability to dispel. Shaken as he was, it was several long moments before he realized that the cell door had slid open.
He looked up sharply, wincing as his body remonstrated the sudden movement. A woman, human at first glance, entered blithely, a glow-rod held against the gloom. She was quite short, pale eyes darting to the far corner. Visibly wilting, she stomped across the small room, detaching a worn hydrospanner from her belt.
A stream of foreign words broke the long-standing silence as she tinkered with a battered heating stick; slightly apologetic sounding. Something clanged onto the floor and the woman hissed in indignation, thumping the cylindrical unit and replacing whatever part had forsaken its duty. The device spluttered feebly – her shoulders went quite stiff as if she were contemplating a violent end for it – then whirred back into life.
An orange glow radiated from the restored unit. Gratefully, Kagen felt a wave of warmth breaking over his numbed limbs. The woman eyed the heating stick a moment longer, daring it to misbehave, before turning to face the young Togruta. She apologised again; the words were unfamiliar, but her intention quite apparent. With a flash of understanding she broke off, trying instead a few solitary phrases, each quite different.
Kagen recognized a few of the languages, but shook his head – he scarcely knew two words of any of the tongues introduced in his studies, save his native language of Togruti. Looking faintly disappointed, she hooked the hydrospanner back onto her belt.
"I suppose you speak Basic then?" she said blandly, glancing back over her shoulder. Briefly dumbfounded, he stared blankly at her. Her expression fell slightly; she began to say something else.
"I speak Basic," he replied hurriedly. Brightening, she nodded at him.
"Good. You are a Jedi?" Her expression was one of mild interest; she might have been chatting in a cantina for all the disquiet she showed. Kagen wondered if it was worth concealing that fact, but he could sense no ill feeling directed towards him.
"I am…Kagen – that is, I am a Padawan, not yet a full Jedi," he said thickly, hoping he hadn't made a mistake.
"Thank you. The heating unit; I fixed it yesterday but the power cell keeps coming loose, I beg your pardon. It'll last for a while now." Still rather at a loss, Kagen could only nod as she muttered something about being unable to use the local grid.
"We were shot down, where is this – the shield…?" he asked uncertainly.
"Hmm?" she said vaguely; she had been eying the heating stick suspiciously. "Gaara; second largest moon of Kamino; you did not come from there or else you'd have at least recognized the language. In short, this is an off the record testing facility, long abandoned by its creators but still floundering in the muddle they left behind. There's a combined projector/deflector shield to keep it all from discovery. " She nodded in conclusion, the door sliding up at her approach.
"Wait – please!" Kagen said dumbly; his head was beginning to spin. There were too many questions all clamouring for attention.
"Who are you?" he croaked eventually. The girl – for she didn't seem much older than he was – considered him, without pity.
"Yasue. You're safe here, for the moment; rest while you can because we cannot stay put for more than a few hours," she said flatly, the door sliding down behind her.
Kagen started after her; already her presence was becoming faint. Two taut breaths later, and it had vanished entirely, leaving him quite alone again. Panic rose in his throat, robbing him of his strength and he fell back onto the cot.
Time dragged on unbearably, the high-pitched whine of the air exchangers combining with the louder drone of the heating unit. He dozed fitfully, coming awake every few minutes with the queer remembrance of where he was. After an hour he slept a little; it eased his bodily discomfort a little, but did nothing to lessen the barely constrained dread that wrenched at his core.
Eventually he came back to himself, jolting in to full consciousness at impressive death-rattle of the heating stick. Opening his eyes, he stared blearily at it; already the orange glow had dimmed. It was tempting to stay prone, just staring up at the parallel lines of rivets across the ceiling, but he forced himself up.
His body ached, persistent, but it was much improved. The sound of the air exchangers still buzzed unpleasantly in his ears. Kagen frowned; Yasue had mentioned that the heating unit had been fixed a whole day before, but he had no idea how long he had been in the cell.
Hunger would suggest at least half a day, but it was difficult to tell. He approached the door warily; doubtful as to if it would open for him. It did, sliding into its housing without complaint. Stepping through, he found himself in a curved hallway; it was continued upwards through another level. Unmarked doors stood closed at intervals down the stark walls.
Above him, distant footsteps rang against the exposed plating. Craning his neck back, he thought he saw someone pass over one of the crosswise catwalks. The tall corridor was better lit than the cell, and as he watched another traversed the narrow space. There was no conversation, but it was reassuring to know there were other living people nearby.
Of course, it was entirely possible that they were all enemies; considering this, Kagen reached out cautiously. He caught a flicker of intent that might have been one of them, but it twisted free of his grasp almost immediately. There was so much noise, the Force shifting so violently as to distort any one sensation like smoke. He could not find them again; but there was no cry of alarm or challenge at his clumsy probe; the shadows passed overhead without hesitating in the least.
He walked slowly down the hallway, deliberately quiet. Passing three doors, he reached a branch point. The following corridor looked identical to the first; with some trepidation, he turned to be sure of which one he had come from. There were several angular characters inked on the durasteel walls and he was fairly sure he could recognize the one that marked the right direction.
The arc of the structure was wide enough to hide the next intersection until the first was out of site. Again there were four passageways; one running in both directions, perpendicular to the curving path that looked to continue in a full circle. He was rather pleased to see that the wider hall came to an end, not twenty paces distant at the heavy blast doors that had to lead to the exterior. It relieved the feeling of monotonous immensity anyway. The corridor opposite similarly drew to a close, framing an important looking door.
A red light flashed as he came nearer, but like the cell door, it opened smoothly. It revealed a cavernous dome, the ceiling arcing to a centre many times his height. Gleaming disks covered its surface; the offshoots of the air exchange system, currently inactive. Cross-legged, Yasue sat to one side, very still.
A small sphere of glass was balanced on her fingertips. It looked quite delicate; vulnerable as it was, supported only by the narrow tripod formed from her first three fingers. In the muted light he saw had not been mistaken; she was almost certainly human, dust-coloured hair falling in a short veil around her face. Her pale eyes were closed, though he could almost convince himself that he saw her hair stir in the wind from her breath.
Maybe it was the dome, but the harsh twisting in the Force seemed to have slowed. Several steps away there was not a flicker of her presence; for a moment his breath caught in despair. Then her face shifted, a small hiss of air twitched away a few dangling strands.
"Grief, you're noisy," she said, opening one eye, gently reproachful. Kagen could only stare at her for a long moment, sudden relief depriving him of speech. With her free hand, she flicked the stray strands of hair away, opening both eyes to observe him fully. The little orb remained balanced, glinting.
"You need to slow down," she murmured. "You cannot direct the Force here; it goes where it and you will only wear yourself down trying. Wrenching at it like that will also alert anyone who's listening; thankfully only me and maybe Si'en. But that will keep." Managing to keep her right hand relatively still, she stood up. For a shining moment – and he could see the mild satisfaction on her face – the globe stayed motionless. Then it fell; she caught it deftly with her other hand, and it was only after he heard the muted clink that he realized it was prosthetic.
The dull finish had been worn down to the metal in some places, but it was hard to tell the extent of the replacement. Dark armour covered her forearms and torso, the shaped pieces close enough in colour to make the mechanic limb inconspicuous. But the hand itself was unusual, amorphous spheres serving as fingertips and joints that were traditionally fashioned in metal, more closely based on the original shapes. Some sensitivity had been reintroduced, clearly, as she handled the small object easily, but the prosthesis was distinctly military.
The armour, fixed onto a slightly lighter jumpsuit, fitted well enough; it was only the armguards that seemed too loose, padded with plain sleeves in the same shade as her long skirt. The hard-wearing fabric was not unlike his Jedi robes, but bleached of its original colour, and her weapon had been slotted haphazardly between the securing bands of cloth. The glass sphere quickly joined it, clacking against some other item stashed within.
"I was about to come and get you; the Mid-Gates close in less than an hour." She made no further comment, just led the way back through the halls. Kagen followed, some small degree of hope rising.
"What happened; after the platform collapsed?"
"Si'en brought you in. We lost seven people in that blast," she replied, her stride turned quite rigid.
"I'm sorry. There was a man with me; and another escape pod, do you know…?" Yasue turned to meet his eyes as the cell door slid open.
"No one else has been found yet," she said bluntly. "The attack was unanticipated, not in concurrence with their previous raids. Four Kouven, no less: the ones with black masks. The explosion was almost nine hours ago," she added. Throwing the deceased heating stick a disgusted look, she slid out a shallow compartment from the cot's base. Inside was Kagen's lightsaber, undamaged; though his utility belt beside it looked a little battered.
Yasue handed them to him, placing the heating unit in the drawer below. It just fit, but she managed pack in the hydrospanner and another more obscure tool between two of its conduction plates.
"This is the maintenance level; outside the Mid-Gates there's no artificial atmosphere, but the moon's own is bearable. We're in one of the Dome Complexes, 318-14; there's at least one cell set up with a heating stick and airscrubber in each. The sound carries a long way down here but we have decoy activations, so one can usually assume half a day before Byaven – white masks – come to investigate."
"At the platform I saw one person in a mask; red and white," Kagen offered.
"One of ours then; Gaara has massive cloning facilities, the only ones still functional located in the Lower Hemisphere, all under the control of a very dangerous being. Byaven, Kouven; there are six lines of clones produced and you can distinguish them by their stabilizer masks. White bands and so on, but the base colour is black. Members of the Hunter Divisions, like my party, have white-based masks, mostly for the sake of it," she finished vaguely, waving the cracked example she had tied to her waist. It looked rather like a Kath Hound, long dark lines for eyes, with pointed ears, and another set inked on in blue.
"There was someone else," Kagen began reluctantly. "Human; he had no mask at all."
"Kariven don't always wear their masks; they're mostly medics and mechanics, but it's rare to see them this far out. They're usually quite fair, and always have green markings on their armour."
"No, he had dark hair. He was quite…evil." Yasue studied him for a moment, perturbed. He met her eyes steadily, sure in his recollection. Nodding finally, she muttered something indecorous under her breath and snatched out a crude comlink. She deactivated it after a handful of words and shut her eyes.
"Communications are restricted; I'll enquire after your companion tomorrow but the Mid-Gates are locked down and we need to move. The next dome is a half-sec – about four kilometres – away. If you have something you can eat quickly in that fancy belt, feel free; I'm going to shut down the airscrubber," she said unhappily, traipsing into the hallway.
There was a fine coating of dust on both belt and weapon. Kagen brushed the worst of it off and coaxed the twisted clasp back together. His comlink was gone, but three food capsules remained, all intact. Swallowing the substitute meal took only a few seconds; not particularly fulfilling, but it worked. More gratifying was the weight of his lightsaber now restored to its position over his hip.
Yasue's presence had disappeared again, but it did not cause him the same extent of unease as before. The hum of the airscrubber petered out a moment later, dispelling the worst of the remainder. Fed – after a fashion – he felt greatly recovered. He hoped fervently that Dahy and the clones had fared as well.
Suppressing a pang of hopelessness, he sat down, stretching a little. His leg particularly, still claimed grievance, aching occasionally. He reached out to the Force, tentatively, feeling foolish in his caution, but loath to repeat his earlier failure. It swelled around him, a roiling, ominous mass, but there it stopped.
Kagen stayed that way a while, the currents shifting uncomfortably against him. He was dimly aware that the pain in his leg had lessened; more pressing was the fluttering alarm nearby. Reflexively, he tried to draw it in – the resulting flood of sensation quite swallowed him – and for a long moment he floundered under the weight of it all. Then it was abruptly, forcibly gone, and Yasue there, dragging him out of the cell as the lights all shut off.
"Sou!" she hissed vehemently. "We have to move now," she repeated, eyes huge in the semi-darkness. A stun baton cackled in her hand, glaringly bright charge dancing along its length. Her mask hung around her neck in two pieces, connected by two taut strands of tape, the tapered lines of its eyes now forming an elongated grin; quite sinister.
Stumbling in the darkness, Kagen grasped blindly at the Force to steady himself.
"No!" Yasue insisted; for the first time since landing he felt her frustration clearly, and a nagging sort of dismay that was directed more universally, before he found himself put firmly away from it. She hauled him along the narrow corridor, their footsteps ringing out into the shadows. The narrow corridors seemed unbearably close now, the light from Yasue's weapon vanishing less than a metre out.
They passed through another intersection, the empty space on either side echoing queerly through Kagen's short montrals. Ahead, Yasue came to a halt. The door to the dome's centre slid up with an appallingly loud hiss. Kagen felt the disturbance; something shifting in the yawning stillness. His hand closed around the cool hilt of his lightsaber, thumbing the green blade into life as he stepped around Yasue.
There was no help for it; she seemed to have frozen in place, her weapon pointing at the ground. He stretched out to the Force in earnest. It surged around him, and he brought his sabre around in a wide arc. The dark slit-eyes of the stabilizer mask flashed in the glowing blade's wake, and the man fell down into blackness. Kagen felt his death; it tore at him, merging with the overbearing sense of anguish that twisted through the chamber. But fresh stabs of intent and anger blazed beside him, and the sickening realization dawned on him even as the two red-white blades ignited. His own weapon was too far out, and he could only block one.
His momentum carried him forward, and he caught the first blow easily, rolling under its red light and wrenching the hilt of his sabre around into a movement he knew he wouldn't complete. Close enough to see the angular symbols scored into the black metal face, he struck out with the Force; the man jerked back, but the Force push had been woefully flimsy. Kagen shut his eyes involuntarily as the brilliant scarlet blade continued on its inexorable sweep towards him.
It didn't make much difference, save to soften the glare a little more. His heartbeat rang in his ears together with his breathing, denoting his continued existence even in its last painful seconds. A gust of wind stirred his robes, cool against his skin. The light had passed over him, and he opened his eyes, almost bemused, to see the human bringing his lightsaber around again from a strike that had gone far too wide. A wave of heat marked its passage, suddenly negated as a harsh wall of air blew past, hurling the man into obscurity.
A weighty thump announced his demise as he connected with the curving walls. Kagen turned slowly, the steady glow of his sabre mixing with the ever-shifting lights of Yasue's weapon. It hung in her artificial hand, casting a slight silhouette on the ground where the second man had fallen. Her right arm was partially outstretched, fingers still curled in a vague gesture.
As his eyes adjusted, Kagen saw another mask glinting behind her, its bearer stretched out on the floor. The dull sound of the last man's fall had lingered, and he was acutely aware that he had heard other such sounds during the fight. More dark patches resolved themselves; three in a sad little row beside her, more slumped against the walls. He gave up counting, just looking at her. She gazed back, curiosity standing out on her pale face as she lowered her hand.