All around me Dromund Kaas teemed with life. Bugs were everywhere. Through the force, I could sense little specks of life crawling up the trees, hiding in the leaves of bushes, crawling through the deep green growth all over the ground, even digging through the mud beneath my feet. When I closed my eyes to focus more fully on the energy around me, it was almost blindingly bright. Everything shone in my mind, from the massive trees around that were often part of larger root networks, extending miles underground, to the small feathered rodents chittering in the trees above me. The great spreading canopies above provided decent shelter from the sun and wind, but I suspected that they would not shield me much from the rains, should the weather return to its usual dour state.
Khem and I strode quietly through the jungle, our packs slung over our shoulders. It was my first time actually traversing the environment of the Sith Capital, and I didn't like it. My boots were covered in thick sludge made from the dirt that had mixed with the water that was everywhere on this planet. It was dark and slimy and stunk of decay. The brown trunks of trees were covered in a thick, green coating of some plant that was almost soft to my touch. And although our passage caused the bugs in our near vicinity to grow quiet, the distant shrieking of their fellows was almost overwhelming. Certainly it hid the lesser noises around us. I felt constantly on edge, hyper aware of how cacophonous the forest was to my ears and through the force.
Khem was alert, but he didn't seem to expect a sudden attack. I certainly didn't feel any imminent threats through the force. The forest almost seemed peaceful, and in spite of the deep dark force energy that enveloped the planet by dint of the sheer number of Sith and artifacts and tombs here, the force felt living and vibrant and energetic. Engrossed in my walking meditation, I stepped right into a puddle that turned out to be much deeper than it first appeared. My boot went entirely into the water up to my knee, and I stumbled, the weight of my pack overbalancing me and preventing me from catching myself. My hands and claws plunged into the dirty ground, and it took me several tries to rip my foot free from the muck at the bottom of the hole. The Dashade scoffed, making no move to help me.
"You are a foolish child," he said, lip curled in disgust. "Your inattention makes you weak! You will fall prey to the beasts in the forest and I will be deprived of my vengeance."
"Careful, Khem, I might start to think you care about me," I retorted, swiping my filthy hands on my robes.
"I will feast on your bones!" he growled.
"Yawn," I retorted, rechecking my datapad. We were still on track to reaching the first prototype generator within a couple of hours, and I was eager to deal with this task and get on with my secret mission. In spite of the worry of Lady Zash and the caution of Commander Rilen, I wasn't really too concerned about killing these frenzied jungle beasts. I knew that for Khem, the only thing more shameful than being honorbound to a weak apprentice would be allowing said weak apprentice to die while under his protection. He stomped on and I scrambled to keep up, narrowly missing a second hole.
"How much has Dromund Kaas changed since you were here last?" I asked finally, after another hour had passed. Khem had deliberately set a fast pace, and I was having difficulty keeping up, slipping and sliding around on the wet ground as I was. I knew that talking about the past was one of the few activities that he actually enjoyed doing, and I hoped that he would slow down to explain. He eyed me suspiciously, but I didn't let my unease show on my face.
"The city is changed," he huffed eventually, stretching his arms to the sky and rolling out his shoulders. "Before, the powerful built great, grand estates there and around them sprang up the hovels of slaves and servants. Now the whole city is dead, flat, gray, like a hospital. Everything looks the same. There is no beauty. There are also no slums. When my Lord Tulak Hord ruled, the city was a monument to the power of the sith. Now it is a monument to the sniveling bureaucracy that thinks it runs the Empire." He used a word that invoked the mewling of an infant in Catharese, and I smiled at the image.
"I wish I could have seen it," I said sincerely.
"There are surely images preserved," he said, although I wasn't so sure. It had been a long time since Tulak Hord walked Dromund Kaas. He slowed his pace a little, and I stepped up beside him.
"And how has the jungle changed?" I asked.
"It has not," he said. "The mountains and rivers have altered but little, and the trees and plants are much the same as during the time of my Lord. I long to test myself against the beasts of forests. I spent many nights hunting the great creatures that roamed beneath the sky."
"What is the best way to kill a Yozusk?" I asked. I'd studied the different predators of Dromund Kaas during our speeder right out, but I was curious to see if his response would differ from the official advice in my bestiary.
"They are fast," he warned. "They cannot see well, but they follow their sense of smell and they can sense the vibrations of your movement through their long front legs. They have a large frill of bone that protects them like a shield. But when they raise it against you, they are vulnerable underneath and behind it. If you are quick, you can duck below or around and strike where the flesh is soft, without armor."
"How do they fare against lightning?" I asked.
"You must learn to fight in other ways," he warned me. "The beasts of the jungle may not fall to such attacks. You will need to learn the common attacks of the enemies you will face so as to be prepared to counter them beyond your flashy tricks."
He was right, of course. At a distance, I was proficient enough with lightning to be able to hold off many enemies, but if they surprised me and managed to get close enough to strike, I was vulnerable. I pondered the different ways I might be able to take on the beasts of the jungle as we trekked deeper into the forest.
We encountered our first affected creature shortly before noon. It was a medium sized beast, four-legged, about as tall as my knee and rather fast. It came careening out of the trees, jaws open wide to take a bite of us, and I readied lightning as Khem took three quick steps in front of me and with one powerful blow, cleaved it entirely in half with a sickening squelching sound. It screamed, a desperate howl that petered off rather quickly as it stopped jerking, blood welling from its middle.
"You must prepare," Khem warned me again. I shrugged under my pack again, feeling it rub awkwardly against the fur on my shoulders. It had been many months since I'd carried a burden on my back, and I wasn't used to the feeling anymore. I could tell that my skin and fur were chafing, but the only person around to hear my complaints was the Dashade, and so I didn't bother. I knew he was carrying much more weight than I was. I focused on the feeling, letting the minor pain grow in my heart and pulling the force more closely around me as we continued on our journey.
"We are coming up on the first sensor," announced Khem eventually. He'd taken over navigating about an hour in when I hadn't been sure the best way to get around a small hill. I nodded.
"I can hear it," I said, trying to ignore the way my fur wanted to stand on end. The sound was barely at the edge of my hearing range, and it itched and twitched in my neck.
"Be on your guard," he said. I drew my lightsaber and shed my pack, holding it loosely in my off hand. I was ready to drop it and fry any creature that attacked us. We walked forward slowly, preparing to encounter any enemies. I reached out with the force, looking for any unusually large sparks of light within the brightness of the jungle surrounding us.
"There," I whispered, indicating the direction that rang in my senses. "Something large that way."
"Has it spotted us?" rumbled Khem in reply, angling himself to face the threat better.
"Not yet, I think," I said. "It's staying put for now." I could see the edge of the clearing finally, a blackened area where the Imperial military had demoed trees and burned the flora to create large enough space for the engineering transport ships to land and deploy the prototype sonic generators. We strode through the tall grass until we reached the barren area and could move more freely. My chest felt tight, standing this close to the tall durasteel pillar that housed the technology designed to drive away jungle predators. Even though it didn't hurt me, it was uncomfortably present in my body, a bone-thrumming vibration that seemed to be perpetually getting higher and higher but never disappearing from my hearing. It was disorienting.
I pulled out the explosive to place it at the base of the small tower, but as I was getting ready to arm the device, a thought occurred to me. I stepped back to give it clearance, just in case, and drew on the force. Lightning arced across the sky, hot and difficult to see clearly in the bright sunlight of the day. It hit the top of the tower with a very loud crack, but the spinning transmitter dishes didn't skip a beat. The energy was easily channeled down the tower into the ground along one of several obvious grounding paths that had been installed to defend against Dromund Kaas' many thunderstorms.
"The beasts will have heard that!" Khem growled, and sure enough, the large creature was bounding towards us when I reached out with the force to check his position. I took another second to see if there were any other creatures coming at us, but there wasn't anything else nearby and I didn't want to spend the time to search farther away. I grabbed the dishes at the top of the tower with the force and pulled with all my might. The engine that drove the rotating dish strained and clicked as I kept it from moving. I wasn't being dragged, although it almost felt like the effort I was putting forth should've made me skid along the ground. The motor groaned loudly as the dish creaked forward a quarter revolution; I dug my claws into my palms and the pain fed my grasp on the Dark Side. It swelled around me, biting and cold and quite the contrast to the warmth of the cheerful sun. I forced the dish to grind to a halt and then begin to inch in reverse as the metal began to make an awful screeching noise that almost paralleled the high-pitched whine that was still being emitted from the tower. Smoke rose from groove where the dish attached to the piller, and I felt something break. The dish sagged, dangling almost free, so I yanked hard one last time with the force and grinned with satisfaction as it flew across the clearing to crash into the ground. The incessant drone of the sonic emitter vanished.
"Prepare, Sith!" snarled Khem as a large creature burst from the trees. It was running on all fours, but as it saw us, it lurched upright so that it could attack us with its powerful, clawed forearms. Standing, it was much taller than both of us, almost twice Khem's height and close to triple mine. It was covered by thick, rough scales in a greenish brown that blended in nicely with the bark of the mossy trees. Large ridges of bone framed its head and face, giving the illusion that his deep set eyes were peeping out of the slit of a helmet. That was all I could see before it was on us.
Khem stood fast, his blade ready to block the onslaught. He nimbly skipped over the first swipe as he blocked the second with his weapon. There was a loud crack, but incredibly, the claws held fast and didn't break. The monster screeched in his face, and the bone frill around its face flared in a move that was probably intimidating to other creatures, but Khem Val was beyond such things. He roared right back, and his offhand flashed forward to grab one of the spikes. He yanked forcefully, sending the beast's face into the ground and slashing its upper back, scoring the scales there and coming away coated in brownish blood. It jerked free and stepped back a pace to gather itself, and I finally recognized it as a jurgoran. I didn't expect it to retreat, for the books suggested that as the apex predator of Dromund Kaas it was vicious and unrelenting. It was merely seeking another opening to attack again. Khem didn't give him the chance.
He stepped forward, using his vibroblade again to block the slashing attack that the jurgoran tried to implement with its massive fangs. Close as he was, the beast couldn't effectively swing its arms, nor could it kick him with the large barbed spurs on its feet. It backed up again and Khem stabbed upwards, into the joint beneath one large arm. His blade slid deeply into the flesh, emerging on the other side of the joint. The shriek of the monster drowned out the sound of its arm slicing free and dropping to the ground. The other arm came whipping around, not at an angle to claw him, but enough to almost send him sprawling. Ever the warrior, he rolled to his feet having never lost hold of his weapon and lunged for the monster's back as it turned its glowing eyes on me.
I'd stayed well clear until then, but I used the force to wrap around the creature and push, slowing it as it tried to lunge forward at me. Lightning came sparking to hand as I flung myself sideways out of its path. Khem struck it again in the back of one of its large legs, targeting another joint and bringing it down as it screamed once more. It rolled, blood splattering everywhere as it threw him off. The Dashade was back on it before it could push itself up to its feet again, hobbling the second leg. The trees echoed from its roars of pain and fury, and the silence was shocking when Khem managed to shove his blade deeply into the base of the creature's skull at the back of its head.
Even though I hadn't been really afraid of it, trusting my companion to dispatch the creature, my blood was pumping and my claws were extended. Staring at the dead beast, I wondered how long it would take me to be able to fight something that fast and that strong, what strategies I might be able to employ to protect myself. And once Khem was gone, assuming I survived that encounter (and I certainly hoped Lady Zash had some contingency plan for that situation!), I would have to be able to defend myself. Frankly, there was no guarantee I would even make it that far.
Lightning seemed to come as easy as breathing to me, and on Korriban, I'd seen in Lady Zash's hands how it could instantly deal death. Perhaps that would be my path to power. Certainly I had leaned upon it thus far to cover my shortcomings with a lightsaber. Or perhaps some other power might be more effective, like gripping the creature with the force to slow or stop or even lift it off of its feet, giving me the opportunity to fight or flee.
"You brought it down upon us!" snarled Khem, interrupting my thoughts as he wiped his sword on the grass with one hand and dug around in one of his belt pouches for a cloth with the other. "You acted with no warning, no thought for me."
"It would've heard the explosion Khem, you're overreacting," I said dismissively as he began to clean the jurgoran blood off of his hands before beginning on his sword. "And we told Commander Rilen that we'd kill the beasts for him anyways."
"Since I am the one facing the beasts, I deserve to be the one that, that...that sets the table!" he snarled, struggling to find the right words to use in the language that we both shared. "To be the one to choose the ground. The fight."
"I can allow you that, but don't forget you serve me, Khem," I retorted. "My will is what matters here."
"Yes, you reckless child!" He scrubbed the last of the blood off his fingers and began to meticulously wipe away every drop in every small groove of the ancient broadsword. "But you cannot succeed if you bring death upon us both!"
"You weren't close to death," I scoffed again. "That jurgoran didn't have a chance against you." He harumphed loudly, but I sensed that my flattery had appeased him somewhat. The vigor with which he cared for his weapon became less hostile and more impersonal. Still, his words remained ever harsh and his tone didn't change.
"You lack the strength and control to be so careless," said Khem. "The great Sith could act as you do because they wielded the full might of the force. Their skills with a lightsaber were far beyond what you could ever hope to achieve! The wilds of Dromund Kaas held no fear for them." He sneered as he sheathed his broadsword again. "Let's go."
For another hour and a half, we trekked through the woods towards the second array. Standard sonic emitters needed to be placed every 5-20 meters, depending on their power and size, but these prototypes were kilometers apart, sending out their signals far into the jungle. I could appreciate how convenient such a development would be. The range would more than make up for the added cost of construction, should they ever get the technology perfected. As it was, as I entered range and began to hear the whining once more, we still had almost a kilometer to walk.
"There's a group of them near the emitter," I told Khem, reaching out with the force. "Four of them."
"What are they?"
"I don't know," I admitted. "But they don't seem as big as the jurgoran."
"Stay behind me," he commanded. I did as he bid, trying to stay quiet as he slipped silently between the trees. When we got near, he left me behind and crept ever so carefully towards the edge of the clearing around the emitter. He was back a few seconds later.
"Vine cats," he said. "Three adults and a child. No challenge if I were alone, but protecting you adds a difficulty."
"I can take care of myself," I protested automatically, even though we both knew it was a lie.
"Stay back in the trees," he grunted finally. "They have been driven mad by the emitter. They will see me and concentrate their attacks on me and not notice you as long as you are quiet."
"Just do your job and get on with it," I hissed in a low voice. He eased his way through the bushes into the clearing, and I followed, keeping myself in the shadows behind a great tree trunk so that I could watch the fight progress.
It took me a long while to spot them. Khem was almost halfway around the clearing before they left the tree cover and sprinted at him. They were more reptile than mammal, and their name clearly came from the feline way that vine cats moved and climbed and fought, rather than an overtly feline appearance. They had thick, leathery skin, and the bumpy texture combined with the dappled greenish color helped them camouflage into the trees and foliage. Their heads were dominated by powerful jaws and teeth that were almost comically large. The creatures could barely close their mouths! They had long, thick claws and a whiplike tail that had something at the end-perhaps barbs or spines of some sort? I wondered how much of their appearance and abilities were original to their species and how much of it had been bred into them by the ancient Sith. It certainly seemed like an unnatural, if lethal combination.
I'd never seen vine cats fight before, and the first thing I noticed about them was their speed. They prowled around, snarling viciously and snapping their teeth, trying to intimidate Khem. With blurring agility, they would lunge forward, biting and snapping as they twisted onto their backs to free up their front limbs to rip and claw at their enemy. Then they would roll and dash out of range before the Dashade could counterattack.
Khem had wisely backed up towards a large tree the moment the beasts had broken cover to attack him. Now as they stalked around him, screaming their fury to the sky, they couldn't surround him or attack his back. Their flashing claws scraped his broadsword and once or twice his bracers as he blocked a swipe that was too fast for me to see, although I heard the shriek of claws on metal. The beasts were fighting as a pack, but it didn't seem very cohesive to me. The vine cats rarely attacked together, as my guidebook said they were known to do; occasionally they even seemed to get in each other's way. I wondered if that was the sonic emitter-induced mania showing through. The Dashade tried to parry them where he could, but it was clear that in such a situation, his strategy was to defend patiently until he got the chance to strike.
The young cat was the first to give him that opportunity. It was a blur at the distance I stood, but I heard the yowl of the death howl and the distinctive, meaty thud as Khem's sword made contact with the beast's chest. It staggered back; my servant had struck a blow that stretched up over its shoulder and clearly severed tendons and muscles, based on how it struggled to stand. It collapsed to the ground, and one of the other beasts, perhaps driven into more of a frenzy by the blood, turned to savage the dying creature. Khem neatly beheaded it, and now that he was down to just two enemies, I saw him shift into a more aggressive stance.
Both remaining vine cats leaped forward, turning their bodies to face their gaping, toothy maws up towards Khem's head and arms as they swiped simultaneously at his body with their long claws. He dodged one and blocked the other, forced back by the weight of the creature's body. Khem chanced one quick swing at the creature on the ground, but he didn't have time for more than that because its friend had already recovered from overshooting its leap and was already back, howling defiance.
Khem angled his blade to reflect the sun at one of them as he hacked at the other. No longer using the tree at his back, he was now constantly on the move, circling the fight so that the vine cats got in each other's way, impeding their ability to do the short charging leaps that they seemed so fond of. Whenever he got them lined up, he would attack the closest beast, and the pressure of his advance combined with the way the other vine cat blocked his victim's retreat allowed him to get a few minor strikes in. I made a mental note to practice that tactic in the Sith Citadel training rooms later.
A flicker of movement caught my eye. Khem was facing the clearing and the sonic emitter in the center, me and the forest behind him. A fifth vine cat was racing through the trees, leaping from branch to branch effortlessly, targeting the Dashade. Khem showed no sign of hearing or recognizing the attack, and I was too far away to scream a warning in time, not with the battle cries of the creatures he was already fighting. I ran forward, one hand coming up as I dug deeply into the Dark Side around me. The Force was full of hatred and death and danger, but it lacked the malice that usually accompanied sentient attackers, which helped me turn it towards the purpose of protecting my servant; I focused my mind and forced lightning to launch across the dozens of meters that separated us, my will entirely concentrated on striking the vine cat before it ambushed Khem.
It felt like slow motion, immersed as I was in the Force. I watched the beast's muscles gather and its tail lash as it launched out of a tree towards Khem's unprotected back. The bright, purple energy erupting from my fingers arced across the sky, lighting up the ground as it crackled and burned. Perhaps it was the sound of my lightning that warned him. Perhaps it was some noise that the beast had made, like the scrape of its claws on the jungle wood or a battle cry. Regardless, Khem instantly stepped to the side and half-turned, angling his body so that anything behind him was now within his field of vision. His broadsword flicked up to meet the leaping beast just as my attack reached it.
In all of my desperation, I had entirely focused on making sure a powerful burst of lightning reached the fifth vine cat in time. My lightning struck the beast and concentrated there for one fraction of a moment, and then to my horror it arced uncontrollably across the space to strike Khem, who was preparing to cleave the animal in half. I felt it strike the Dashade, felt his pain and surprise through the force, even though he instantly twisted to allow his implants to disperse the electric attack as I jerked my hand away, pulling the lightning off of the vine cat and by extension, him. With all that, Khem was forced to abandon his strike and dodge clumsily instead. The intended victim of my electricity landed in a crumpled heap, yelping pitifully and shaking violently. Khem rushed forward and killed it easily, his aggression forcing the other two beasts back.
The fight was over a few seconds later. The vine cats accidentally collided in their attacks on Khem, and he stabbed first one and then the other while they were tangled in each others' claws and tails. As their death throes echoed across the clearing, I started walking towards them, reaching out with my senses to confirm that nothing else lurked in the trees, waiting to attack either of us. I found only small jungle creatures who were hiding after the cacophony of the battle. Now that the large predators were dead, they would start to reemerge.
Khem's fury would've been obvious to the most force-blind person, but I was a Sith, so the strength of his emotions burned to my senses like a fire as I came closer and closer. I wasn't sure if an apology would make him more or less angry. Probably more, I reasoned, since it was a display of weakness and humility. On the other hand, displaying arrogance or ignoring the event all together would demonstrate false arrogance and false strength. I chose to strike a middle ground. "I didn't know it could leap to multiple targets," I said abruptly as I reached him. "I will learn to control that."
"You are a disgrace to the name Sith," he rumbled, so disgusted I could almost taste it. "When I feast upon you, no torture will be enough to repay the shame that is being bound to you. Were my Lord Tulak Hord to return and see me this way, I would beg for him to take my life rather than taint his glory with my unworthiness."
"Whatever you say," I sighed, reaching out with the force to destroy the second emitter. There was no reasoning with him in this temper. As the metal tower cracked and sparked and the irritating whine died away, I felt a pulse of anticipation. One step closer to my real mission.