Chapter 18
Foyi looked over to Rayf with an expression she hoped exuded confidence, but she felt it not at all as her regard turned back to the Mandallian Giant, who even now was stalking around the perimeter of the room, inexorably striding toward the single entrance to the cage in the center. She had little time to consider her next actions or any type of strategy she might use against such an opponent, for the hands of the thugs about her began to fly across the length of her body, searching for the straps and fasteners of her armor and ripping it free of her form in short, jerking motions. A pair of Weequay and a Houk came away with her Zeison Sha armor divided between them, leaving her dressed only in a sleeveless tunic and cargo pants, her garments still damp and stained with sweat. She felt suddenly cold, the sweat still lingering on her exposed arms cooling rapidly in the strangely cold air. She turned her head to glare at the trio that had procured her armor, dividing it into its constituent pieces between the three of them, most likely to try and add the high-quality pieces to their own armor, or to sell it to some black market fence. As she was forced to stand, she jabbed an angry finger in their direction, growling, "Keep that the way it is; I'll be back for it."
All she got in response were sneers of disbelief and scoffs at the arrogance she displayed, considering her size compared to that of the Mandallian and his unknown fighting prowess. Before she could say anything more, she was shoved forward, the several pairs of arms on her own practically carrying her to the door of the cage, in which her opponent already waited. Without further ceremony, she was tossed inside, and barely had her feet cleared the doorway then the barred door swung closed with a rattling sound of finality, as though it were the lid to her casket. The crowd and entourage of Yuelo that had been deathly silent before began to enter into rowdy conversation once again, placing bets on which of the combatants would survive the longest, who would draw first blood, and who would remain standing in the cage while the other lay bleeding. She noted subconsciously that most of the bets being placed were in the Mandallian Giant's favor, though she tried not to let this concern her. She turned her regard outside the cage, catching Rayf's eyes; the man was virtually torturing himself with worry and fear, the veneer of placid serenity he normally wore ripped to shreds. Belatedly, she realized that she must mean far more to him than she had first believed for his nerves to be so frazzled, and she sent him another mental current of assurance, though his unheard response was merely a swirling miasma of fear and denial. He struggled against those keeping him still, and received another blaster stock to his back, after which his arms were wrenched above his head and held there firmly. Foyi let anger seep into her conscious, calling upon her Zeison Sha training, which taught her that emotions and passions could be harnessed when they were needed, becoming useful tools and weapons that helped sharpen a Warrior's focus in battle and made them indomitable and deadly combatants when necessary. She could feel the Dark Side swimming about the periphery of that anger, lurking in the depths of the unfathomable sea that was the Force, awaiting her beck and call, but she ignored it and kept control of herself and the emotions she was allowing to the fore. She had called upon its seductive and destructive power enough in recent days, and would help neither herself, Rayf, or Tama by succumbing to it now.
She ignored the Mandallian pacing and seething on the far end of the cage and glared through the grid of bars at the leering Hutt upon the dais. She spread her empty hands and drew herself up straight, hoping that she did not appear as exhausted as she actually was. "What weapons do we get?"
A chorus of derisive laughter erupted around the room, and Yuelo's horrid grin split his grotesque face again. "Only the weapons evolution has deemed necessary to grant you." Yuelo's hand came up, palm facing upward, the picture of a benevolent overlord. "You have agreed to this fight, for my favor and the life of your 'cousin', and thus you will conform to the rules laid down for it. You face Koreb Sott today, the reigning and undefeated champion of these cage fights." At the mention of the Mandallian's name, the crowd could not contain its cheer, drowning out the rest of Yuelo's words in a thunderous roar to motivate the Mandallian Giant, calling for the spilling of Twi'lek blood. Yuelo's smile never left his face as he allowed his minions and guests to quiet down again, though his voice was raised when he continued his speech, so that all those gathered could hear him clearly. "Today, this little Twi'lek fights for the lives of her 'cousin', herself, and for the favor of myself after so grievously assaulting this fine establishment, its reputation, and the reputation of myself as well. Today, Koreb Sott fights for greater fame, glory, and the ever-expanding trove of credits he so rightly earns, which will double in size if he brings me the tails off the head of this..." Here Yuelo paused as he remembered he still did not know Foyi's true name, and then decided that it mattered not. "This...this Mysterious Stranger!" Another roar of approval mixed with jeers and cries of hatred at this pronouncement, while Foyi wrinkled her brow in an expression of disgust; she would have chosen a different monicker, if the choice had been up to her, though she doubted it truly mattered. She was just turning to face her opponent when Yuelo bellowed, "Begin!"
Foyi barely had time to react before she felt a sudden vibration in her scalp and lekku as the ray shields were projected on the interior of the cage, keeping the dueling combatants confined. At the same time, Sott gave his own bellow, a war cry of fury and bloodlust, and charged across the intervening space, his stride sending immense, thundering shocks through the ground at her feet. Foyi saw him coming, and despite the aches and sluggishness still in her legs, she had little difficulty in sidestepping the charge, allowing him to continue straight into the ray shield, which knocked him back a step with a piercing electric whine. Foyi drew on the Force to give her strength and felt the exhaustion that had been sitting like an unwelcome guest within her muscles fade away as she danced to the side, narrowly avoiding a swing from the Mandallian's immense, bloodied fist. She failed to see the second swing, however, though the Force provided her a split-second of warning, allowing her to catch the blow aimed for her head as a glancing strike to her shoulder. Even so, the startling strength behind Sott's strike numbed her arm from the shoulder down, and spun her to the stone floor, where she tucked into a roll of flailing limbs. She continued her roll as she sensed her opponent approaching, and came up into a crouch. Foyi spun around in time to see Sott lunging for her with both arms outstretched, attempting to catch her in a lethal embrace. She dropped into a somersault that carried her between the Mandallian's legs, coming up with a swinging kick that planted the heel of her boot into the back of Sott's left leg. He buckled, going down to one knee with little more than a grunt, and Foyi sprang to her feet again, aiming a trio of fast, light punches into the back of his skull, attempting to rattle him enough to put him out of the fight. She cried out in pain after the first strike, though, pulling her hands back as though she had been bitten by something poisonous; it had been like hitting a wall of solid duracrete, and she was fairly certain her knuckles had been hammered into a more squamous state by the blows.
Sott came back to his feet slowly as Foyi backpedaled, testing his leg, which seemed to be uninjured, and glowering with evil intent at her. He lunged for her again with his left hand, causing Foyi to dodge to the right, putting her in reach of his right hand, which snaked forward like a gorm-worm and seized hold of her tchin as she tried to duck. She felt pain radiating through her skull and down to the base of her spine as Sott gave a snarl and bodily hauled her above the floor, using the lek seized in his crushing grip as a pivot from which to throw her through the air. Foyi experienced a brief, rapturous moment of pain and weightlessness before she impacted with the ray shields, off of which she rebounded with no small measure of pain shooting through her body. Foyi rolled to a stop on the floor, agony arcing through her frame as she felt like her tchin was hanging onto her skull by only a fragment of skin, the energy discharge she had taken directly from the ray shields causing convulsions and spasmodic seconds of lost consciousness. She was barely aware of Sott's thundering stride, then his hand reaching down for her tchun, and she gave a shout of anguish that was little more than a squeal as he gripped her head-tail tightly, cranked her neck back with a rough gesture, and then smote her across the face with his free hand. Foyi almost lost consciousness completely from the blow, for it was like being struck in the face by a landspeeder at top velocity. Only her desperate and tenuous hold on the Force pulled her back from the brink of unaware oblivion, but she could do nothing as Sott cranked her head to the side again and used his strength and momentum to flip her on her back. His next attack was to her abdomen, a stomp from his foot that vacated all the air in her lungs while prompting her to vomit whatever had been her last meal. Foyi rolled over on her stomach, ignoring the agony knifing through her spine and guts, for it was either that or choke on the regurgitated contents of her stomach. She heard a collective gasp of disgust from the crowd, and felt the emotional anguish of Rayf, where he continued to struggle against his captors.
Foyi languidly attempted to get up to her palms and knees, which only prompted another kick to her stomach from the Mandallian Giant, and while the strike was vicious enough to prompt more vomit from her throat, it did not have the ferocity behind it the others did. Sott had deemed her weak and unworthy, and wished to prolong the fight for his own perverse amusement. The Mandallian began to pace close beside her, waiting for her to recover her strength enough to at least get back to her feet. Dimly, past the ringing in her skull and the thumping of her overtaxed heart in her ears, Foyi could hear the chanting of the crowd, calling over and again for her death, begging Koreb Sott, their favored champion, to finish her off. She could feel Sott reveling in her pain and fear, in the adoration heaped upon him by the crowd, in the screams for her death. He lived for this, fed on the violence and the recognition it brought him, as though it were the only sustenance from which he gained nutrients.
Foyi continued to crawl away from him, even as he easily kept pace with her pathetic movements, gasping and spitting bile and foul, half-digested nutrient bars and synthesized proteins. Desperately, she reached out to the Force, begging its cool waters to submerge her, to fill her with the power necessary to survive, but the waves were too turbulent, made so by the pain her mind could not separate itself from, and the tantalizing call of the Dark Side, urging her to call upon it, to become an avenging, demonic presence, to rise with unlimited power and rip her enemy to shreds. She shook her head even as she continued to gasp for air; she just wanted to immerse herself in the Force to grant her the means by which she might survive. To use it in any way overtly was an unnecessary risk, a last resort. One she may have come to now.
Foyi felt the perimeter of the ray shield before her, having crawled to the far side of the cage. She could feel the vibrations of the scintillating energy field on her brow, a static on her skin not dissimilar to the impatience rising in her opponent, whose pacing had stopped, replaced by purposeful strides toward her. He had had enough, and the continued goading of the crowd had made the decision to end the fight once and for all for him. Foyi looked back over her shoulder to see the Mandallian Giant striding toward her, flexing his shoulders, his fists clenching. Foyi rolled over on her back and attempted to stand again, but Sott was suddenly there, his massive foot pressing down on her chest and keeping her flat on the ground. He raised his right fist above his head, to bring it crashing down upon her with all the force of a starship in reentry, and it was in that moment that she understood that she would not make it out of this cage alive. And with that realization, the clarity, the calm, she had been seeking in order to call upon the Force suffused her being, and suddenly she felt one with the universe, with her surroundings, detached from her body and the pain that debilitated it. Perhaps she could no longer save herself, but if she failed here, Rayf would die, and Tama would be left alone, with no one to come to her aid. She could not let either one of those things happen.
She perceived Sott's fist descending toward her face as though from a great distance and over an agonizing length of time, for she was one with the Force now, and she knew what must be done. Her left hand came up, her palm facing the Mandallian, and the air rippled as the Force gathered about her and ascended in a great rush of thunder and energy. With an expression of surprise that was almost comical, Sott felt invisible force shove him past the point of his equilibrium, and he fell on his posterior with a grunt, not injured in the slightest, but granting Foyi enough time and space to come up into a crouch. Ignoring the confused and indignant Mandallian Giant, Foyi turned to face the cage's walls, where through the ray shields and the bars, she could see Rayf watching her with abject fear across his face, still held down to his knees by no less than four of Yuelo's thugs. His mouth opened wide in shock as he realized she was ignoring her opponent in order to help him, and he was about to yell something when Foyi's hands came up again and gestured, mimicking the thoughts she bent toward their enemies. The Force surged in violent waves, and the four thugs restraining Rayf were suddenly thrown away from him in all directions, giving shouts of fear and surprise, two of which ended in agony as they struck the hard surfaces of a wall and the dais. Yuelo gave a squawk of consternation as the thug who hit the dais struck the corner edge of it hard enough that his momentum carried him atop its surface to slam against Yuelo's prodigious bulk, knocking the air from him in a great rush of wind. The crowd's shouts were beginning to turn from jeers and exultations to cries of confusion and fear, for as soon as the guards were sent flying in Foyi's telekinetic grip, Rayf leapt to his feet in a rush. He threw himself into the nearest guard, bowling the unfortunate Nikto over, where he received a vicious but precise stomp to the throat from Rayf's boot while he was sprawled flat on his back. As the Nikto fell, he released his hold on his weapon, a VES-700 Pulse Rifle, a blaster that fired a short-range cone of deadly energy across a nine meter area of effect. Rayf caught the Pulse Rifle as it was loosed in midair, shouldered it, and turned it on the small crowd of guards standing before the dais, triggering two bursts and filling the intervening space with fatal waves of energy. The guards that were still attempting to bring their own weapons to bear gave horrid cries of agony as the energy fluctuations ripped through them, and they collapsed in heaps of smoldering garments, rent and bleeding flesh, and superheated armor pieces. Not all those caught in the blasts were killed, but they were incapacitated by agonizing burns or severed limbs and extremities, filling the air with the sounds of their cries.
Yuelo bellowed an unintelligible thunder, and more guards began to clamber into the room from the same doorway in which they had entered, bringing their blasters to their shoulders and firing with careful aim at the Matukai Adept. But Rayf was an unstoppable force of the supernatural now, his body, mind, and actions fully merged with the Force, such that he anticipated each blaster bolt aimed his way long before it came remotely close to damaging him. He spun, sidestepped, and dodged, triggering two more pulses and laying low half a dozen armed guards with flashes of fire, smoke, and blood. None of his widespread waves of deadly energy hit anyone in the crowd, nor did they come anywhere close to the cage, but the spectators either threw themselves behind tables or to the floor, or sprinted for the only exit they were aware of in uncontrollable fear, causing a jam of pressing, flailing bodies that prevented more guards from entering the room.
As the air filled with the cacophony of screams and the concussive whines of blasterfire, the atmosphere suffused with acrid smoke and thin mists of spilled blood, Foyi turned back to her opponent, letting peace wash over her as she awaited the final blow that would end her life. But the punch or kick from the Mandallian Giant never came; he was no longer looking at her, was not even near her. He had lumbered to the other side of the cage, where he was busy slamming his blood-soaked fists against the ray shields, ignoring the stinging pains rippling up his arms, howling for someone outside to lower the energy fields and let him loose. She was uncertain whether he wanted to get out of the cage because he wished to escape the carnage that was rapidly overtaking the room, or wanted to slake his thirst for blood by joining the fray. Whatever the reason, he seemed to have forgotten her completely, which would not necessarily be a detrimental situation to him had Foyi been any other Twi'lek girl.
But Foyi, despite her exhaustion, despite the grievous injuries she had suffered recently and just within the last few moments, was no simple Twi'lek girl. She was a Zeison Sha Warrior, and one with the Force.
Foyi drew upon the Force completely and found that she could stand once more, not because she wanted to, not in a sense of defiance or desperation, but because she simply must. She stretched out with her hands to either side of her and telekinetically gripped a few of the ray shield projectors; they quivered in their bases, and with a thought, they seemed to implode, crumpling in on themselves in showers of sparks, fragments of metal and circuitry. There was a flash as the ray shields wavered, then shorted out completely, winking out of existence, for the remaining functional projectors could not bear the increased strain on their energy reserves caused by compensating for the damaged ones, and burned out. Koreb Sott gasped as the ray shields switched off, then looked over his shoulder to see Foyi limping toward him, one hand clutching her bruised and heaving abdomen, the other stretched toward him, palm facing forward. He sneered as he turned to face her, but that sneer became a look of dismay as the Force erupted from her palm in an invisible wave of violence, striking him fully in the chest and hurling him against the door with such velocity that his bulk smashed straight through it, flinging its bent frame wide as he sailed with a howl into the tables ringing the outer edges of the room. Foyi continued her stride forward, hobbling through the open doorway into a scene of utter chaos. The bodies of guards were strewn across the floor, burns from the Pulse Rifle and blaster bolts slashed through their forms, while others appeared to have been injured or even killed by blunt force trauma or vicious slashes. Foyi looked toward the area just before the dais, and was momentarily enraptured by the skills of the Matukai embodied in Rayf, for he had slung the VES-700 across his back after retrieving his wan-shen, still in the process of piecing it back together even as he spun it through wide slashes, lightning jabs, vicious cuts, and lethal stabs. His movements were mere blurs of frenzied, flurried action, but every motion was precise, methodical, measured for just the correct amount of Force and energy, never overextending himself and seldom missing his mark, despite the snarl of ferocity etched into his features. He dodged back and forth as blasterfire converged on his position, dropping into rolls only to come up into a crouch to stab a Houk between armor plates on his abdomen at the very edge of his reach, then falling back into a reversed somersault and springing upright, sending a Gran sprawling with a jab from his elbow. A small cluster of Yuelo's guards attempted to surround him and gun him down with sustained fire, but they came too close, Rayf leaping above their heads just as they triggered their blasters. They screamed as almost every one of them suffered multiple hits from friendly fire, though only one collapsed from high-intensity burns and loss of blood. As the injured guards were reeling from their wounds, Rayf landed in their midst again and swung his wan-shen in a bloody arc about himself, maintaining a deadly spin while his polearm opened throats, severed tendons, and separated limbs and appendages. There was a collective cry of pain, followed by splutters and gurgles, and the squad fell collectively in a heap, Rayf the only one in the small crowd left standing, and barely a sweat breaking across his brow as he continued to whirl his bloodied wan-shen in a flashing orbit around his form.
Foyi's attention shifted past her comrade to the dais upon which sat Yuelo, the Hutt still growling and cursing amidst the chaos and cacophony, growing smaller as a small cadre of his remaining guards shuffled about him, shielding him with their armored bodies and blasters. Foyi shook her head to clear her vision, which was blurring at the periphery, and realized that the Hutt was not shrinking, but was descending; the dais was apparently a lift of some kind, which was rapidly retreating into the floor, no doubt leading to some hidden compartment of the cantina and an escape route. Foyi shuffled forward, out of the cage, the only reason she was still upright being the power of the Force, which had filled her nearly to bursting, the metaphysical energy and limitless potential of the Great Mystery becoming a strain on her body and mind, so that her skin was crawling with it, her head feeling like it might explode from the pressure. She cursed softly to herself, a word lost in the drowning vociferations of the panicked onlookers, the screams of the dying and mortally injured, the last staccato bursts of blasterfire as what remained of Yuelo's security tried desperately to land a shot on the whirlwind of metal and blood that was Rayf Moors. Foyi stumbled over the muddy boots of a dead Rodian and fell to her knees, but her attention was far beyond the physical pains she felt coursing through her body, as she reached out with her mind to find an object familiar to her, one that was like an extension of her own body. The discblade arose from a clutter of bodies near the dais, which had almost completely lowered out of sight, and came spinning toward her waiting palm. Feeling the comforting contours of the weapon's hilt, the weight of the blade curving about her fist, Foyi drew strength from the sense of completion the return of the traditional weapon of the Zeison Sha granted her and struggled to her feet again. As she did so, she heard another war cry to her side, and turned in time to see Koreb Sott had untangled himself from the table she had Force shoved him into, charging her again with his shocking stride. Foyi dropped into a crouch, bringing her discblade up above her head in preparation for a throw, while Sott scooped up a blaster rifle and brought it to his hip, firing a flurry of bolts directly at her. Foyi saw the bolts flying for her face and chest seconds before they connected, but with the Force, that was all the time she needed to dodge to the side, while arcing her arm forward and letting the discblade whirl like a spinning saw from her hand. The blaster bolts whipped past her shoulder and side close enough to evaporate sweat still clinging to her skin and her top, but her Force-assisted aim with her own weapon was true, the discblade sinking into his sternum with a wet, grinding noise as the curved blades chewed apart his scaled skin and spat blood in a bright spray across the bodies on the floor. Sott stopped in his tracks, his fingers loosening on his weapon, the blaster clattering to the floor as his eyes opened wide in disbelief. He craned his neck enough to see the discblade still spinning in his ribs, ejecting flayed flesh and gouts of blood, before it was telekinetically called back to Foyi's waiting hand with a strange sucking sound as it left the wound in the Mandallian Giant's chest. Their eyes met for a brief moment, Sott's gaze filled with a malaise of hatred, fear, and bewilderment, Foyi's gaze merely stoic and unfocused, perhaps mixed with a tinge of sadness as well, as though she were sorry to see Sott die in such a way. And as the discblade's handle slapped into her palm, Sott's small eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed forward, falling on his flattened face and eliciting a resounding shaking in the floor as his immense body struck.
Foyi gave a sigh of relief that became a gasp of pain and instinctively called upon the Force again, trying to keep herself upright and only partially succeeding, as she fell to one knee, her fist clenched around her dicblade, which she pushed into the floor to keep her steady. The din of battle had subsided around her, leaving the last, lingering moans and wet gurgles of the dying, the hiss of cooling metal and rock, the crackle of arcing electricity from damaged electronics about the room. She could still hear the whine of servomotors as Yuelo's lift continued descending into unknown depths, and dimly she realized that she had to get up and get after Yuelo if she was going to find the Shepherd and Tama. Foyi tried to straighten her hunched form, felt agony lance through her torso, and gave a sharp cry as she sank further into the metaphysical waters, willing it to cause the pain of her injuries subside. She knew this was an untenable situation, though, for she was rapidly approaching the limits of her own dependency upon the Force, and would soon have nothing left but pain.
She heard desperate footsteps to her side, and then Rayf was by her side, letting his wan-shen clatter to the floor as he dropped into a crouch beside her. His arms were suddenly around her shoulders, and she felt a cool sensation running through her body as she drank of his familiar and friendly presence in the Force, providing her serenity in the unspoken revelation that he refused to leave her side. His hands came up to either side of her face and turned her head to face him; her blurry vision took a moment to focus, his worried countenance swimming into focus. There was almost more anguish and pain on his own face than what she felt, though she knew without asking that he was largely unhurt save for scrapes and bruises; his expression was born of his concern for her condition. "Foyi? Foyi?! Speak to me! Are you still with me?"
Foyi coughed, her body quivering with barely-suppressed pain and the potential energy of the Force. She felt momentary dismay as she spat a large glob of blood and mucus on the floor, but the sensation came from far away, a mere observer of the sorry state she had found herself in. She met Rayf's pain-stricken eyes and gave a wan smile. "You look worse than I feel."
Rayf made no immediate answer, merely holding her close, clinging to her as though his life depended upon it. Had Foyi been feeling more like herself, she may have bristled at the touch, shoved him away even, but she merely consented herself to allowing him to embrace her and cradle her close, drawing comfort and strength from his Force presence, from the healing energies he was attempting to suffuse her with. She could tell that his talents in the Force did not lie along the realms of healing and regeneration, but he was trying as best he could to keep her alive. She could not see his face when he next spoke as her head was tucked against his shoulder, but his voice was thick with emotion. "You are the most stubborn and determined person I know, you know that? And that's coming from a Corellian."
Foyi gave a slight chuckle and immediately regretted it. She gently extricated herself from his arms and slowly clambered back to her feet, swaying slightly but remaining upright only because Rayf stood with her, and kept a strong grip on her shoulder. She grimaced and pulled on the waters of the Force, allowing the waves to trickle down over her and shove the pain aside to a place far removed from her conscious thoughts. The effort was incredibly taxing, and she almost collapsed from the act that was normally second nature to her. She would not be able to keep herself going in such a way for much longer, which meant they had little time to waste. She hefted her discblade, which suddenly felt as though it weighed dozens of kilos more than it actually did, and murmured, "Yuelo's getting away. We have to go after him."
Rayf only left her side when he was confident that she could stand on her own, then carefully peered down the rectangular pit left by the descending dais. He trotted back over, retrieving the discarded pieces of her armor from the bodies of the guards who had been intent on dividing her Zeison Sha armor and selling it. With careful but swift movements, Rayf helped her strap and belt the pieces back onto her frame, eliciting several gasps and tears of pain from her as he did so, but no further complaints. He grimaced in apology as he helped her back into her armor, then began speaking while she donned the breastplate. "I didn't see the lift, but its pitch-black in the shaft down there; either Yuelo didn't install any lights, or something we did up here has knocked out power to them. I could feel the Hutt and his minions down there, though. I didn't feel them moving too quickly, so I don't think they've reached the bottom yet. If we're going to go after him, now's the time, before Yuelo gets away in a speeder or skiff or ship or whatever the hell he has down there as an escape plan. And if he escapes, he'll bring more guards, probably with Anjiliac reinforcements. He and Zietta have worked together in the past, and though they aren't close, Zietta's going to see an attack on Yuelo by two rogue Force-users as a potential threat to the entire Anjiliac operations here in Point Nadir."
Foyi nodded, giving a last hiss of pain as Rayf tightened the final pieces of her armor about her. "Well, I don't know about you, but I've become quite tired of Point Nadir. Let's have another chat with Yuelo, and then we'll find Tama and not come back here until everyone we've met here forgets about us, or dies."
Rayf gave her a wry grin that did not reach his eyes. "Sounds like an excellent idea, kid." He squatted down by one of the bodies and hefted a large, unwieldy, but deadly weapon, presenting it to her with some measure of apprehension, as though he were concerned she would not be able to handle it. "Thought you might want your disruptor back. Could come in handy for whatever that murglak's got waiting down below for us."
Foyi took hold of the disruptor, sheathing her discblade first. The weapon felt heavy and leaden in her aching hands, though she felt that in her condition, a highly explosive energy rifle was probably an easier weapon to wield than one that required a throwing arm too injured and tired to do much with, and an exhausted mind that had little strength left for telekinetic control of the discblade. She gritted her teeth and consigned herself to carrying the disruptor rifle; she looked up to see Rayf retrieving his wan-shen and pulling half of it apart, leaving the bladed end and about half a meter of hilt still intact, making it more suited to a one-handed grip. He then searched through the bodies for a moment and stood with a grin as he found a WESTAR-34 Blaster Pistol not unlike the one he had possessed earlier, slipping it into the empty holster at his belt. He squatted down again, and his grin widened as he retrieved a utility belt heavy with short, thin cylinders with activation studs on the sides and clips on the top. Foyi gave him a confused expression, and he explained, gesturing to the objects on the belt. "These are WW-41 CryoBan grenades. They generate chemicals that flash freeze almost anything in their immediate blast radius, disrupting most droids and electronics, and giving organic opponents nasty cases of frostburn and nerve damage, keeping them frozen in place for a short time if we're lucky. These should give us the edge we need."
Foyi nodded and began walking toward the open pit that denoted the lift upon which Yuelo had made his escape. She stumbled as she did so, bracing the barrel of her disruptor on the stone floor to stop herself from falling over. Rayf was by her side in an instant, and his voice was hoarse with distress for her condition. "Are you sure you're up to this?"
Foyi took in a lengthy exhalation, ignoring the pain that slashed through her ribs in response. "I have to be. Yuelo knows where Tama is, and what 'the Shepherd's' done with her." She glanced back at the body of the Mandallian Giant, then gazed at all the corpses strewn across the floor, the destruction evident in the room. "And someone has to answer for this tragedy."
Rayf placed a supporting hand on her back, though she felt as though the touch was more for his benefit than hers, like he was afraid she would slip away completely if he did not maintain some sort of tactile sense of her presence. "Yuelo will for these deaths, and for what he caused to happen to you. Let's go hang a Hutt by his tail, shall we?"
The secret lift that allowed Yuelo and his remaining minions to escape the carnage of the cage room above lowered into the darkness, the malfunctioning glowstrips lining the turbolift's shaft flickering and causing harsh shadows to dance over the strained and fearful expressions of those huddling on the lift. Yuelo was thumping his tail nervously, the nictating membranes of his eyes flicking back and forth over his corneas in irritation, a result of the flashing intemittence of darkness and light. He could feel his blood thundering squamously in his ears, a result of the fear and anger that clenched the prodigious musculature and rolls of fat from his bulbous head all the way down to the tip of his tail. He had not felt this terrified in decades, not since he had been little more than a Huttlet just beginning to carve out a name for himself amongst the cutthroat politics and cultural tribulations of his species. He was a crime lord of little repute and power compared to some of his peers, but what little he had created for himself he had zealously innovated, protected, and grown over the course of his many years, building a reputation for competence and intelligence, matched only by his willingness to be ruthless when necessary. While in public he cultivated an image of foreboding and ambition, he inwardly doubted he would ever rise to the prestige of kajidii, and had learned to be content with the highly-profitable and respected establishment of the Cruelest Cut. But to have his position undermined so handily by only two low-lives he had been unable to discover the identities of, to have most of his bar trashed and hanging on the verge of ruination not once, but twice, in almost as many days, elicited both fear and fury in him. He was afraid of the two humanoids with the impossible powers and enviable luck, and that fear made him furious at not only them, but at himself, for falling into such a position of weakness, though he privately wondered what he could have done differently to prevent it. The lift beneath his dais had been a contingency that he had installed in the initial construction of the tunnels, warrens, and chambers that would become the Cruelest Cut, a backup plan for the remote possibility that someone may one day walk into his bar and deem themselves powerful and ferocious enough to challenge him. He had never believed he would have actually had to use it, which had led to increasing levels of neglect and entropic decay over the years as his men had become sloppy and apathetic in caring for it. The lift's servomotors made a squealing, grating noise that was agonizing upon his sensitive auditory membranes, and the lift shook so badly, he half-expected it to simply collapse and plummet them all to the bottom of the shaft, a fall he would most likely survive, though he could not necessarily say the same for the mercenaries gathered about him, his only means of protection from the human and Twi'lek with the impossible powers.
Finally, the lift reached the bottom of the shaft, grinding to a halt with a final scream of metal upon icy, brittle stone. A jagged doorway hewn from the asteroid's stone opened into a tunnel that sloped upward to a large cavern that Yuelo's minions had discovered in the process of carving out the corridors and caverns of the Cruelest Cut several dozen meters above their heads. It was unknown if the cavern had been a natural hollowing of Resh 9376, or if it represented the remnants of a failed mining operation by any number of previous denizens of the shadowport over the centuries, perhaps even a doomed expedition by Salovan Fische and his men. That cavern had been quickly expanded upon by Yuelo's orders, culminating in the construction of a lift to access it, and a tunnel that wound through the rock and underneath the Nest, terminating in a heavily-fortified warehouse Yuelo owned in the Trade District. In the middle of the cavern sat a hoversled, thick with collected dust and particles of ice, around which were arrayed several crates filled with armor, weapons, and spare power generators. Lumas on small stands began to effuse soft glows in response to their presence, casting the cavern in deep shadows competing with the pale light of their paltry illumination.
Yuelo tried to suppress a shiver that worked its way down to his tail as the lift came to a halt; he had forgotten how ridiculously cold it was down here, where only minimal life support systems had been installed. His guards, a collection of Weequay, Nikto, Houks, and even a Bothan, leapt off the lift with much enthusiasm and began running toward the repulsorsled and the crates of supplies, while Yuelo slid his bulk off the dais' flat surface and began to work his way across the slope of the ramp up into the cavern, the floor of which had been ground smooth long ago to make it easier for him to slide across. As he did so, his stubby hands pointed in turn to the repulsorsled and the crates, raising his voice to command attention, but being careful to keep it cool and collected, as if the carnage that had occurred in the room above them had not fazed him in the slightest. "Ukai, get on that hoversled and start her up; I want to be in my safehouse in the next five standard minutes, even if you have to push the sled behind me. Gar-Ilv, I want you and the rest of your men to get out the E-Web and set it up at the top of the ramp. Vape anything that comes down the lift after me, then get yourselves to the safehouse once it's clear. We'll all be back in the Cruelest Cut before the end of this rotation, assuming you intend to earn your pay today."
His men did not directly respond except to rush to complete their assigned tasks. The Bothan man sprinted for the hoversled and began fiddling with its controls, attempting to initiate a cold start. Meanwhile, the Weequay known as Gar-Ilv led several others to the crates, where they began extricating extra power packs, tibanna gas cartridges, and the constituent pieces of the bulky but powerful E-Web Heavy Repeating Blaster Yuelo's contacts had procured from the black market and secreted away here long ago. As they set up the weapon emplacement, Yuelo slid past them and gave a brief nod of his head, the only way he intended on showing his gratitude for their service at this point; if they wanted encouragement, they would be showered with it, as well as bonuses to their pay, as soon as they ensured his safety and the deaths of his enemies. He could faintly hear the last burst of blasterfire echoing down the shaft behind him, and dared hope that what remained of his security force had just ended the lives of the pair who had caused so much inconvenience. But then he remembered the Twi'lek girl, suffering damage and injury that would have felled a gundark, and yet reaching out with her mind to free her friend, then throwing Koreb Sott bodily through the door of the cage, and he remembered the Corellian, who had retrieved that strange polearm of his and gone into a frenzy with such speed and ferocity, over a dozen men armed with blasters had been unable to withstand his onslaught. Somehow, he doubted that any of the guards he had left in the room above had survived.
Yuelo tensed his muscles and put some extra speed behind his corpulent form, drawing within meters of the repulsorsled, though the vessel had yet to rise from the ground. The Bothan, Ukai, probably would have been sweating were his species capable of it, though the subtle shifts to the gradations of his fur that Yuelo had learned to read long ago showed that he was on the verge of panic. Ukai was desperately manipulating the controls of the vehicle, to which the hoversled's only response was a throaty, sputtering cough. Ukai glanced at his employer, and the glare the Hutt favored with him could have melted durasteel if expressions had had any sort of physical lethality. "What's wrong?" Yuelo asked in a flat voice, an undertone of threat readily apparent to the attentive and sensitive ears of the Bothan.
Ukai swallowed visibly, his ears flicking back and forth in anxiety. "I'm trying to start the sled, lorda, but it's been down here too long without maintenance. There's ice in the manifolds, and the servos are worn out."
"Will it run or not?"
The hoversled gave another cough that keened up into a whine for a moment before lowering in octave to a worrisome sputter. Ukai gritted his teeth. "I...don't know yet. I'll keep trying."
Yuelo continued to glower at him as he began to pull his bulk atop the sled, which made it whine for a moment as Ukai continued to try and initiate the startup sequence. "Know this, Ukai. Your attempts had better be fruitful; all of our lives may rely on you getting this slagheap running again."
Meanwhile, under the shouted orders of Gar-Ilv, Yuelo's guards had set up the E-Web and primed its power generator, which gave an appreciative whine as the weapon emplacement spooled up. Two guards were assigned to operate the heavy repeating blaster, a Houk and a Nikto, while the others either armed themselves with spare blasters from the other crates, or trotted over and began opening access ports on the repulsorsled, seeing what repairs they could make to get the vehicle moving. Yuelo watched all the activity with an air of disapproval, the weight of his regard being a greater motivator than any harsh words he could lever their direction. The sputtering of the vehicle began to level out, only to die again as Ukai attempted to force a cold start, eliciting several choice expletives in Bothan from him. Yuelo's tail was lashing back and forth, the only exterior indication of his fear, and he concentrated on making it lie still, for there was little he could do but bark orders and wait. Of course, he could try and slither down the tunnel on his own, but his bulk would make it nearly impossible to gain speed of any great significance, and if the human and Twi'lek were still alive and somehow got through the rest of his guards, they would run him down with little effort.
The Hutt heard a shout from Gar-Ilv, a guttural proclamation in Huttese so accented, Yuelo could not make out exactly what he said. He did not need to, though, for the Weequay was indicating a small device that had rattled down the shaft, a cylinder of glinting metal that rolled and bounced off the lift before suddenly disappearing in a flash of light and concussive force. A waft of gas and spray of chemicals painted several meters of the ramp's lowest point, as well as the level surface of the lift itself, spreading a corona of ice over the metal and stone. The glowstrips closest to the blast suddenly winked out and stayed dark, and the sound of the blast rolled up the ramp and reverberated with an echoing roar in the cavern's confines. The response of the Hutt's mercenaries was immediate, as they all stood at the top of the ramp and opened fire with their blasters into the shaft, filling the tunnel and the lift beyond with a withering fusillade of lethal energy and smoke, the cavern echoing with the din of the whines of blasterfire, the heavy stuttering of the E-Web, the nearly-constant explosions of the lasers impacting stone and ice, spraying shards of the harder materials about the interior of the tunnel and the lift with high-pitched pings. Yuelo instinctively attempted to cover his ears, but his stubby arms could not reach past the excessive layers of flesh and fat to contact his head. His guards sustained their fire, filling the corridor and the ramp with clouds of shrapnel glowing with heat, a miasma of superheated ice and evaporated moisture, producing a sanguine glow interspersed with frighteningly jagged shadows. In the midst of the continuing fire, two more CryoBan grenades dropped down the shaft and erupted with icy chemicals and vapors, further adding to the obscuring clouds of dust and ice in the tunnel, until Yuelo realized that he could not see anything through the haze, which crept farther up the ramp and was inexorably making it more difficult for any of his guards to actually see if anything was coming down the shaft or up the ramp to assault them.
Yuelo had to roar, "Cease fire!" at least four times before his guards heard him, and only reluctantly did the Nikto operating the E-Web let the turret spool down. The guards looked to him with confusion and trepidation, believing that their best tactic at this point was to continue firing into the corridor, discouraging anyone above from even attempting to come down the shaft. But Yuelo had realized that it was likely their enemies had been goading his guards into maintaining heavy fire simply to create the obscuring mist that now filled much of the ramp. Even now, that haze continued to swirl and hover, so thick with shards of rock, ice, and CryoBan chemicals, no one could see through it. Yuelo glared at Ukai, who had stopped trying to start the hoversled in favor of watching the display of firepower, but under the Hutt's cruel gaze, he immediately returned to his work.
Yuelo turned back to his guards, and was about to give them orders, to wait for the mist to clear, the dust to settle, and watch for signs of any movement in the shaft, when a small object came flying out of the mist like a soaring xuvva, heading directly for the E-Web and its gunners. Yuelo had no time to yell a warning when the cylindrical object struck the side of the E-Web's barrel and exploded, producing a cloud of frigid chemicals that blew the Nikto and Houk backward, and toppled those guards closest to them. The E-Web made a keening noise as its overheating metal was suddenly flash-frozen, and from his vantage point, Yuelo could see fractures rapidly opening on the weapon's chassis, while the power generator made a shrill noise as electricity arced from its ruined circuitry. The Nikto and Houk had no chance to scream as the CryoBan encased them in a thin layer of ice, and they collapsed to the floor, rigid and immobile. Gar-Ilv began shrieking as the chemicals rendered his right arm and right side immobile and numb, while another Weequay stared at his left arm and leg in shocked horror, as if he could not believe that those limbs refused to respond to his mental commands. The other guards recovered quickly, picking themselves up and filling the corridor with sporadic blasterfire, which only contributed to the reformation of the opaque mist, which had begun to dissipate until they retrained their fire. Yuelo screamed at them to step back, to not reveal their locations, but his guards could not hear him over the shrieks of blasterfire. The mist swirled again, and another CryoBan grenade came sailing up the ramp with impossible motions and speed, whereupon it exploded in the midst of several of his guards, flash-freezing three of them and injuring two more. That was the last straw, for the guards who remained standing began to spread out, retreating deeper into the cavern, firing occasional shots down the ramp at the opaque mist and chemicals. Yuelo gave them up for loss and turned to Ukai, practically shrieking in the Bothan's pointed ears, "Get this kriffing sled moving now!"
Ukai made a noise of denial and rage, and the repulsorsled coughed and sputtered before finally roaring to life, the sled beginning to rise off the icy floor, straining under the Hutt's weight. Yuelo shifted his bulk, turning to face the back of Ukai's head, opening his mouth to tell the Bothan to pilot the repulsorsled as fast as the vehicle would take them to the warehouse, but he was interrupted when a blasterbolt fired with pinpoint accuracy passed through the Bothan's throat, and he dropped without a sound, leaving a smear of blood and scraps of fur on the control console. Yuelo spun his enormous head to gaze in horror down the ramp, for the mist had parted itself in response to invisible hands, and emerging from the shaft filled with rubble and debris were the human and Twi'lek, charging up the ramp, the former at a breakneck sprint, the latter in a hobbling but determined gait. The human was the lead of the assault, though the way he always kept directly ahead of the Twi'lek revealed his intention to protect her from the guards' retaliation. In his left hand was a glinting blaster pistol, from which had emerged the shot that had killed Ukai, and his right gripped a shortened version of his strange and deadly spear, which slashed and whirled left and right as his remaining guards fired upon the human, the blade catching the blasterbolts and deflecting them into walls, ceiling, and even those who had fired them. Two more guards went down, victims to their own blasterbolts, before either the human or Twi'lek had fired a shot. The Twi'lek girl, her body tensed and limping with pain but her expression focused and serene, raised a disruptor rifle to her shoulder and triggered an emerald blast of energy, which impacted the ground at the feet of two guards and blew them across the chamber, shredding their limbs in the process. The ramp became a brief and bewildering atmosphere of smoke, stone shards, blaster bolts, and concussive disruptor blasts, and by the time the pair had reached the top of the ramp, where the disabled E-Web still sat, only two guards remained, firing a pair of bolts at the dark-skinned human, who batted them away as if they were an afterthought, while the green-skinned Twi'lek crested the ramp and triggered her disruptor, blowing them both away.
Yuelo had seen enough; he shoved Ukai's body aside with his bulk and heaved himself up to the controls, putting the vehicle into forward momentum. The repulsorsled whined as the throttle engaged, and it began to pull away from the cavern, heading deeper into the tunnel and toward the safehouse. But he had barely advanced a few meters before there was a green flash in his peripheral vision, and he felt his stomach drop to his tail as the sled jumped over a meter in height and flipped over, hurling Ukai's body against the wall of the tunnel and sending the Hutt rolling across the icy floor. Yuelo felt his head strike a jagged protrusion on the tunnel's wall and pain arced through the mantle within his head, but he did not swoon or lose consciousness; he would have had to suffer far more damage for that to be a possibility, fear keeping him aware. He struggled to right himself, grunting as he maneuvered his bulk around in a corkscrewing motion, his muscles straining to move the obese folds of flesh until his head and upper body were atop his tail and foot once more. He breathed heavily and cast his eyes about, trying to see through the acrid clouds of smoke and chilling vapor, the liquid shadows flowing through the atmosphere, guided by the malfunctioning lumas. The hoversled lay on its side just behind him, propped against the wall of the tunnel, its entire assembly scarred by energy scoring, one edge crumpled inward and smoldering. Ukai's body was crushed beneath the weight of the overturned vehicle, and Yuelo could not help but wonder if he would be next.
Then, stepping from the shadows and mists came a pair of silhouettes, materializing into the fearsome aspects of the human male and the Twi'lek female. Both had their weapons trained on him, though Yuelo noticed with no small measure of discomfort that the human had holstered his blaster and melee weapon in favor of the VES-700 Pulse Rifle he had been carrying on his back. Being a Hutt, Yuelo possessed a thick, slimy hide that was impervious to many types of damage from both melee and ranged weapons. It would take several blaster bolts of high-intensity to melt through his skin, exposing layers of blubber and fat that protected his vital organs. However, he highly doubted he could survive even a single blast from the Twi'lek's disruptor, and he did not even want to think about what a Pulse Rifle was capable of doing to a member of his species. He doubted its cone of energy would break his skin due to its less concentrated manner, though it was likely to heat the flesh to the point that his innards began to boil. Slowly, Yuelo raised his hands and tried to keep the fear from showing on his face.
The human sneered, though there was nothing but simmering rage in his eyes. "What's the matter, Yuelo? Got nothing to say now that you're outside your castle, with no one to protect you? Not so cruel and domineering now that you're about to be one creespa worm, huh?"
The Twi'lek girl took a step forward, still holding the disruptor at her side, while she placed one hand on her friend's arm, as much to calm him as support herself. Yuelo could see she was about ready to collapse, and he wracked his brain for a means by which he might turn this into an advantage, but he was in an untenable situation, as the human looked like he had survived the entire ordeal almost completely unscathed. Such an occurrence should not be possible, but so it was. Yuelo was defeated, yet he maintained a passive face, refusing to beg for his life but seriously considering it, he was so afraid that he would lose it while bereft of his power and dignity. The human seemed to calm down at her touch, and the Twi'lek looked up at the Hutt, a mixture of pain and sadness etched into her face, though her eyes were still sharp, and promised only horrid things for him should he choose not to cooperate. "It's time for a new deal, Yuelo," she said in a voice that only quavered slightly. "You tell us what we want to know, and we let you live. Simple as that."
Yuelo had the courage to scoff. "That's it? That's what you offer? Do you expect me to live long when my rivals hear of the damage you've done to the empire I've built for myself? You offer me death now, or death later. That is not much of a choice, little Twi'lek."
The Twi'lek shook her head. "You seem like a somewhat intelligent sentient, enough to know that if we don't get what we want now, we will kill you and rummage through what's left of your files, your records, and your holdings until we find what we need. You give us the information we need, and we leave you alone with what you have left, with the assumption that you will be able to turn that to your advantage and survive. Make your choice, Yuelo."
The human stepped closer with the Pulse Rifle, and Yuelo could see that if the Twi'lek let go of his arm, he would fire, no matter what the Hutt's next words were. Yuelo had caused the Twi'lek harm, the girl being important to him, and he would not let that act go unless she convinced him otherwise. Yuelo could appreciate the sentiment, even if he still hated the two who stood before him making threats. But they were threats they had proven already that they were more than capable of following up on; he truly did not have any choice in the matter. With a great sigh, he exhaled his held breath, then seemed to deflate, finally admitting to himself that he had been beaten by a superior foe. "I only deal with the Shepherd on an infrequent basis, and only when he contacts me for new slaves, always females of fourteen standard years, and males of twelve. The species doesn't matter, only the ages; why, he's never explained to me, nor anyone he's ever dealt with, as I doubt I am the only one. I've always used my partnership with Captain Vri and my connections with the Anjiliacs to acquire slaves that fit the requirements from their regular shipments, but only when he asks. He always pays well, through several shadow accounts spread throughout the galaxy, and he has his providers ship the slaves he wants to specific coordinates on Felucia, at an old landing platform abandoned by the Separatists after the Clone Wars, where he waits until my men leave the surface to pick up the slaves we've delivered. I've never spoken with the Shepherd in person, nor am I privy to what species or sex they belong to, if the Shepherd is even an organic being. There's even a bounty on the Shepherd, as the deaths of hundreds of children have been attributed to him, but so far, no one has been able to find him, and the bounty's never been as good as the credits he pays for even one slave that meets his prerequisites."
"So 'the Shepherd' is hiding somewhere in the jungles of Felucia?" the human asked skeptically.
Yuelo's nictating membranes covered his eyes for a moment, his approximation of a human shrug. "Or he has a ship land there when we're gone and takes the slaves somewhere else in the galaxy."
"And handing innocent children over to a known murderer for whatever sick purpose he desires has never occurred to you as wrong?" asked the Twi'lek, her face weary and saddened, though her voice was as sharp as a vibroblade.
Yuelo gave her an incredulous glance; the question was inane, in his estimation, far beyond the naivete he had originally attributed to her. "Perhaps I did not make myself clear. My entire relationship with the Shepherd is purely a series of infrequent but lucrative business transactions. I care not for what merchandise he wishes to acquire and purchase, only that by dealing with him, I have attained far more resources with which I could use to build my empire here." Yuelo made a grimace. "What remains of it, anyway..."
The human scoffed. "Your 'empire'? Yuelo, you owned a bar, maybe a few warehouses and ships, that's it. What Palpatine's got, that's an empire; you've just been squatting your slimy ass on a slagheap, and we just knocked it down to size for you a little." He gestured threateningly with the Pulse Rifle. "You should have taken the deal we offered, Yuelo. You've no one to blame for this save yourself, so quit your whining and give us the kriffing coordinates to that landing platform."
Yuelo eyed the barrel of the weapon pointed at his face, and briefly considered responding with a last show of defiance, but he weighed the value he placed on his own life against that which he assigned to his business arrangement with the Shepherd. It truly was not a choice. He gave another exhalation, a great wind of humid, fetid air, and rattled off the coordinates from memory, taking momentary pride in his ability to recall most information he had learned or viewed with great accuracy when he needed it. The Twi'lek girl glanced to the human and shouldered her disruptor while the human lowered his Pulse Rifle and withdrew a datapad. Once prompted, Yuelo repeated the coordinates, and after referencing the numbers against starcharts and the Holonet, the human confirmed that the coordinates originated from a remote location on Felucia. The human put his datapad in a pouch on his belt, then aimed his Pulse Rifle again; Yuelo could see him seriously considering firing upon the Hutt anyway, but Yuelo remained resolute, refusing to beg for his life even as the blood thundered in his ears, facing death straight in the face. The Hutt could see the human's trigger finger flexing, but his actions were cut short by a scathing look from the Twi'lek, who then gestured slowly with her own weapon down the tunnel that Yuelo had intended on escaping through. "This tunnel. Where does it lead?"
Yuelo swallowed; his throat had suddenly gone dry, which was incredibly unusual for a Hutt. "It comes up under a warehouse I have in the Trade District. A...safehouse, of sorts. Had I reached there, the two of you would not have been able to get to me."
A significant look passed between the human and Twi'lek, one that Yuelo could not fathom. He had never been particularly adept at reading humanoid expressions, especially the subtle ones. The human turned his smirking but enraged visage to the Hutt, muttering, "Good thing we got you first, eh?" He looked to the Twi'lek again, awaiting her lead, and the girl stepped closer to Yuelo, her nose turning up slightly at the heavy musk of his body odor. "Is there anything else you can tell us about the Shepherd? Anything else that would help us identify him, her, or it and rescue the slaves you've provided him?"
Yuelo let a sly grin split his lipless mouth, spreading his maw from one side of his head to the other. "There's more I could tell you, yes. But in exchange, I want something that will help me recover the losses I have suffered at your hands. That warehouse filled with contraband and glitterstim would be agreeable, and then I would happily tell you all that I know regarding the Shepherd, all I've heard and speculated."
The Twi'lek's gaze became brittle, and she shoved the barrel of her disruptor in the Hutt's belly. "That was the wrong answer, Yuelo. You lost your chance to negotiate or make deals back in that chamber above our heads. Spit out what you know, or we're all going to discover what a Hutt looks like on the inside."
Yuelo looked down at the disruptor in her hands; he could feel the heat of the barrel, which was still cooling after having been fired so recently, and that increase in pressure and heat elicited another thrill of scintillating fear through him. He swallowed again, then murmured, "As I said, no one knows much about the Shepherd. No one knows his true identity, where he came from, and where he currently resides. The only beings who get close to him are those he commissions for new slaves, but only through middle men, shadow accounts, and secret drop points. Hundreds of missing and murdered children have been credited to him, and he even has a death mark in several systems, though few, if any, have actually pursued the bounty because there is so little information to go on. What little is said about him is contradictory and suspect, though most rumors claim he is something...unnatural. That he has powers and abilities that shouldn't be possible. Like the two of you. Perhaps this is how he hides himself so well. Or perhaps his wish for child slaves has something to do with maintaining and growing those powers. I had assumed these rumors were just the superstitious mumblings of spicehead spacers, but after seeing the two of you, I wonder." Yuelo leaned forward, and had the sudden confidence to leer down at both of them. "If it's true, I hope you find him. The Shepherd's been around far longer than either one of you, and if he has similar powers, I doubt you could withstand him."
The Twi'lek gave her companion a look of alarm, but if the human was fazed by Yuelo's recounting of these rumors, he did not show it. "Care to continue being helpful, Yuelo, or have you nothing more to share?"
Yuelo grumbled in the back of his throat, a guttural sound that made his entire body quiver. "I have nothing more to say to either one of you. I have told you all I know about the Shepherd." He drew himself up to his full height, hoping the considerable size and weight he had on both of the interlopers made him look impressive. "If you're going to kill me, you had best get on with it."
The human looked as though he truly wanted to end Yuelo's life, but a soft touch on his shoulder from the Twi'lek girl made his rage deflate almost as quickly as it had arisen, and he stepped back, holding the Pulse Rifle in a leisurely stance across his body. The Twi'lek continued to cling to his shoulder, though she appeared to be doing so for support, rather than a means of tactile affection. "We're not going to kill you, Yuelo," came her voice, distant and sad. She also lowered her weapon, stabbing the barrel against the floor in a modicum support. "I realize it took some coercion, but you have proven to be more than useful, and we told you that if you helped us, we would spare your life. We will even leave your safehouse at the end of this tunnel intact, save for what we need from it, if necessary. But there is nothing you could say that would convince us you will not attempt to warn the Shepherd of our imminent arrival, to spite us if for no other gain on your part. So we're just going to keep you busy, give ourselves a headstart. I'm sure you understand." Before Yuelo could ask what it was that she intended to do, her hand lifted off the human's shoulder and stretched out in the direction of the collapsed and overturned repulsorsled. Yuelo could feel vibrations in his thick hide and his acute sensory organs as the air warped and took on a barely-perceptible hum around them, and to his horror, the repulsorsled began to rise into the air, despite being turned on its side and its repulsorlifts completely nonfunctional. The Twi'lek let out a soft groan as she strained, and the hoversled flipped over so that it was relatively horizontal, rising higher into the air and slowly coasting to hover above Yuelo. The Hutt gave a roar of denial and fear as the hoversled plummeted down upon him, its bulk ramming into his back and tail, eliciting another great exhalation from him. The weight of the vehicle pressed down on him, stunning him with its size and the force of the blow, pressing him against the floor of the chamber and rooting him there completely. Yuelo cried out in pain as the vehicle compressed his form, and began to wriggle and squirm, attempting to slide out from under it, the slippery nature of his form granting him an advantage to worming his way out of the tightening, confining space. But then the human stretched out his own hand behind him, and chunks of rubble and fully-laden crates sailed through the air at his beckoning, stacking themselves in a haphazard pile upon the flat surface of the hoversled, Yuelo emitting a shriek of pain as each new addition to the weight pressing him to the floor was added. Finally, the atmosphere stopped quivering, and both the human and the Twi'lek lowered their hands. Yuelo made an unintelligible sound of pure rage and frustration, for no matter how much he struggled, he could not free himself from the pile of debris that had been heaped upon him, nor could he angle himself in such a way that he could lift the detritus off of him with his arms; even if he could reach, he had not used his arms for anything strenuous in decades, and thus doubted he had the required strength. This was worse than being killed. This was pure humiliation, trapped within his own escape route, unable to free himself until someone came to find him, at which point whatever was left of his reputation would be truly destroyed. He continued to squirm and struggle, but he was only exhausting himself, and the objects piled atop him were shifting as he moved, so that he was only becoming more entangled. He finally heaved a sigh and stopped, glaring down at the pair as they began to walk away down the tunnel that would eventually lead to the warehouse he had used for emergencies. The Twi'lek girl looked to be barely standing upright now, and the human's arm was around her for support, though he was practically dragging her along with him as they hobbled further away. They did not even bother to look back at them as he roared in frustration again, screaming after them, "You had best flee Point Nadir while you still can, you mudcrutch whelps! When I get out of this, if you're still here, you'll wish you had killed me!"
Neither the human nor the Twi'lek responded as they disappeared around a corner of the tunnel, leaving Yuelo to wallow in miserable frustration, seething with anger and boiling rage as he considered how long it would take him to work his way out of his confinement by himself, if that was even possible. The idea of pitifully calling for help was beginning to have a greater appeal to him as he considered it, though without a comlink, he would have to wait until someone was close to the shaft of the ruined turbolift. When and if that would happen, he was uncertain, which only caused him to writhe and pant in even greater vexation.
Foyi could barely think straight as she leaned against Rayf's shoulder. Her feet felt as though GNK Power Droids had been tied to them, and she was certain that she was moving about as fast as the ponderously slow automata. Her ability to draw on the Force to restrain the jabbing arcs of pain crawling through her body, the aches and soreness of her muscles and bones that had been so savagely beaten by Koreb Sott, had diminished to the point of nearly nonexistence. She reached out to its calming waters, practically begging for it to wash over her with healing energies and rejuvenation, just enough to keep her walking. But she had already surpassed her limits several minutes ago, and the effort required to stride into battle and interrogate Yuelo had completely drained what remained of her energy. She heard Rayf murmuring something to her, which was meant to be comforting if she heard correctly, but it sounded as though his voice was coming from an impossible distance, distorted by space and time. She turned her head slowly to look at him, the motion seemingly taking days to complete, but all she saw was a dark smudge that could have been his face, with eyes like black pits of glistening liquid swimming back and forth across her vision. Those eyes seemed concerned, and a maw opened in that smudge, a hole that formed words that slithered into her ears like seeking, crawling kouhuns. "Foyi? Foyi?! Stay with me, kid!"
Foyi tried to mutter a false assurance that she was fine, that she just needed a little help moving faster, now that they knew where to look for Tama. Felucia. It was a name she had never heard before, a planet she knew nothing about. She wanted to ask him about the planet, what they might expect once they got there, how long they would have to be in the discombobulating miasma of hyperspace before they reached their destination. But her tongue was numb and unwieldy in her mouth, slipping past her lips and producing only saliva and inarticulate sounds. She gasped loudly as agony shot through her, and unbidden, her legs buckled beneath her, dragging Rayf down to the floor with her, as he was surprised by her sudden collapse. She could hear him calling her name, could feel his hands reaching down to her arms, sides, her face, but all these sensations came slowly and with great detachment, like she was a dissociated observer within her own body. Rayf's amorphous face slithered into view, a blur of black eyes and flapping jaws. "Foyi!" he cried, anguish apparent in his voice, even as dissonant as it had become. "Foyi! Come on, sweetheart, work with me here! We're almost there; stay with me!"
Foyi no longer felt the pain that had suffused her body only moments before, but a comforting, sleepy stupor was settling upon her mind and body. She was becoming completely numb, and she embraced it, having spent so much time exhausted and in pain she saw it as a far better alternative. Rayf said something else with great urgency, but she did not even try to make it out as she let the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness envelop her and plunge her beneath dark waves of sleep.