Sundown was almost past when Khem and I reached the Communications Array, deep within the jungle. We hadn't encountered any more beasts since the fight with the vine cats at the second emitter; the third had stood entirely alone in its clearing, and I'd ripped the dish free with the force without incident. Now, as we stood in the last vestiges of sunlight, seeing the first stars winking into existence above us as dark clouds gathered on the horizon, I gathered my courage.
I'd spent all day wondering how I was going to do this. Darth Skotia's artifact hid somewhere within this communications hub, and I had no idea how I was going to find it. Lady Zash had provided me security footage of the item I was looking for-It was a heavy stone tablet, carved and ornately painted and gilded in some language I didn't understand. It was going to be a challenge to carry it out, as large as it was.
"Let us in," I commanded as soon as the communication screen on the gate lit up. "There are insane beasts out here and it looks like there's another storm rolling in." The winds, which were traveling ahead of the storm, made the communications tower above us sway and groan in the gusts.
"My lady, we are a secure facility," the voice on the other end of the line protested. "By order of Darth Skotia, we cannot let you in."
"I'm not going to risk my life out here because you're following some outdated protocol or other!" I said dismissively, feeling my pulse skyrocket. "You will let me in, and you'll do it now, or you will face my wrath and the wrath of my master."
"I'm sorry my lady," he repeated. "I can summon an emergency speeder to fetch you, but that is all."
"You will regret that," I warned him. The screen went blank, and I fumed. Well, that answered a few of my questions. I drew my lightsaber and tested the blade against the large gate; it took a moment to find the proper settings, but then it began to slice through the durasteel door with moderate effort. Khem scoffed at me, but what else was new? I was going to succeed, and the first hurdle was getting in.
"My Lady? My Lady? My Lady, the security measures are active! Leave immediately!" warned somebody fairly frantically. I paused in my efforts to casually stab the center of the comms screen, and it sparked and went dead. It was slow going. Molten metal dripped around me as my blade carefully outlined the entire gate. I really only needed to cut open a section of the door wide enough for myself and Khem to squeeze through, but since I knew I might have to intimidate or even torture them into cooperating, I cut the whole thing almost entirely open before I blasted it open with a concentrated push. For a brief second, I worried that it would flop weakly down onto the ground, ruining the effect I was going for, but as the force exploded out of my hands in a powerful push, the metal door blasted backwards to crash against the comms building several meters away.
All of my practice in Lady Zash's dining room paid off. Two auto turrets hanging above the building's entrance turned their barrels on us and began to shoot, but the first bolt splashed off of the force shield that I instantly raised around myself. Khem lunged forward to shield me with the bulk of his body, greatsword in hand, even as I dove out of the line of fire. He snarled in pain when a couple of shots struck him in the thigh and the side as he retreated to stand with me behind the ragged edges of the gate. There was minimal damage to his skin, tough as it was, and he was fully ready to ignore his injury and charge forward, but I didn't want him to be at anything less than his best. I placed my hand on his shoulder, forcing the dark side into his body, encountering whatever natural resistance Dashades typically had against the Force. I concentrated my fear of failure and my fury at nearly being killed and pushed past it, targeting the charred portions of his flesh and compelling it to grow together. He hissed long and low as he experienced the agony that typically accompanied a dark side healing, but he did not pull away until I released him.
"I've got this," I said. Summing lightning to my hand was effortless. It tingled in my fist, desperate to leap forward and destroy something. I reached out with the force, sensing where my targets would be. Then I reached around the door frame and let fly. Power crackled across the space, surrounding first one auto turret and then the other, frying the components within in a shower of sparks almost unseen within the electrical storm I was calling forth. I made sure they were well and truly destroyed, not just disrupted, before I let it die.
"Come, Monster," I said, feeling the rising winds push through my fur. "Let's go."
"My lady, please!" babbled somebody through the intercom at the door. "We must obey Darth Skotia!"
"Do you still think you have a chance of surviving this encounter?" I asked, enjoying the way the cruel taunt felt on my lips. "Your best hope is to flee before me."
"I will enter first," growled Khem. I nodded, drawing my lightsaber again to cut through this smaller door. It was much easier to slice open than the first. I stabbed right through the maglock mechanism, destroying it, and then carefully pulled with the force. A blaster bolt exploded through the gap in the door, narrowly missing Khem's shoulder, and I paused my work of opening the door to consider. I'd never tried this before, but in theory, it should work the same way, I mused. I wrapped the force around my Dashade, feeling it hug his body as I focused on surrounding him, not influencing him and thereby avoiding his kind's innate force resistance.
"Leave them alive if possible. Go," I ordered, giving the door one last yank. He burst in with a roar that made the room tremble. Two technicians inside screamed and frantically fired their blasters at him, but most of their shots went wide in their terror. One hit but dispersed harmlessly off of the force shield that I was holding around Khem. My Dashade crossed the room in two giant strides and slashed his blade down, cutting deeply into one man's blaster pistol and severing a couple fingers. The other technician was thrown into the wall as Khem grabbed his gun in one hand and yanked. He struck a console with the sound of bones breaking and crumbled to the ground.
"Sith!" snarled Khem. "I am finished."
"Well done, Khem," I praised him as I entered the room. The two men before me offered no more resistance. One was still dazed, blinking confusedly at us, while the other had dropped to his face, clutching his bleeding hand and begging for mercy in a voice that shook and hitched with terror. I knew that any attempt at physical, brutish intimidation would be overshadowed by the presence of the Deshade beside me, and so I deliberately took a different tack.
"Show me Skotia's vault," I demanded, keeping my voice low and smooth and filling it with all of the menace I could muster. The cowering man turned his head slightly to glance up at me as I stood over him, never once lifting his face from the floor.
"We cannot get in, Lady," he babbled. "It's sealed and only his apprentices have the codes to unlock it."
"It might take a while, but I'm sure I can get in," I said, reigniting my lightsaber so that the tip burned a hole in the floor near his face. Rather too near his face, actually. I misjudged the angle of my blade and almost killed the technician by accident. The man flinched violently away. "Now get up and show me the door."
"It's just that one, Lady," he said, gesturing at the larger with a hand covered in blood. It was a standard set of blast doors, similar to the ones I'd seen on the Black Talon. They were unshielded, but I guessed that the metal was probably half a meter thick, unlike the scant couple of centimeters I'd cut through to get into this compound. I briefly considered using some of the explosive charges I still had, but I worried that either they wouldn't be powerful enough, or worse, that they would destroy my precious prize within. No, it was the slow and steady way for me.
"What other protections are there?" I asked, reaching deeply into the force to sense the truthfulness of his answer.
"Nothing, Lady, nothing!" he babbled. "Darth Skotia wouldn't dare entrust his secrets to us." All I could sense from him was terror. His cheek left odd smears in the blood on the floor as he spoke.
"Watch them, Khem," I said.
The entire Communication Center wasn't very large, but it was brightly lit and clean. I stood in a small room with consoles lining the walls. Large displays monitored various signals and frequencies and other things that I didn't understand or recognize. A door on one side of the room led to the technicians' small housing quarters, where they lived while on call at the facility. Beside it, a second door led to a small mechanical room which hummed and whirred, providing power, climate controls, and recirculating the water used in the refresher. On the other side of the room, the large heavy blast doors waited innocently, dominating the space.
I stepped outside briefly to examine the outside wall of the building, wondering if there was a vent or perhaps a more obvious vulnerability to use when breaking into the vault, but there was none. It had entirely unremarkable, windowless, gray duracrete walls. The storm was roaring in, and I dreaded what the weather would be like when Khem and I ended up leaving. The winds were cold, and I assumed that the rain that accompanied them would be even more so.
With no reason to stay outside, I went back in and placed myself in front of Skotia's vault. I briefly considered trying to cut through a wall to enter, but I had no guarantee that I wouldn't damage something important that was up against the wall, so I faced the blast door, turned up my saber as high as it would go, and plunged the weapon into the durasteel. It was like trying to drag a staff through deep sand. The metal was definitely giving way before my blade, but it was heavy and slow; I'd never experienced such resistance with my lightsaber before. Inch by inch, I cut a deep slash straight through the central locking mechanism, hoping that with the lock severed, the mechanical default would be for the door to open. No such luck. It stayed solidly shut, and I scowled at it a moment before readjusting my grip (the heat was making my palms sweat like mad) and dragging it in a large circle, trying to cut a space large enough for Khem and I to enter easily, particularly if there were wardroids waiting inside to attack us. When I made it around, I extinguished my lightsaber, but I couldn't replace it on my belt right away because of the immense heat radiating from the end due to its proximity to the molten metal. Finally I just gave up and set it on the floor. I didn't need it, and I was in a hurry. Behind me, the dazed technician had finally regained his senses. Khem kicked him once, and he crawled to cower on the floor beside his coworker.
Using the force, I pulled and tugged, concentrating with all my might. The heavy metal barely shifted at all. It was much, much heavier than anything I'd ever tried to move before. I pulled and twisted, digging my claws into my skin and biting my tongue to try to reach a higher level of rage and fear, but it wasn't working. Fine. I retrieved my lightsaber and began the slightly humiliating and largely tedious task of cutting it into smaller wedges and removing the door piece by piece.
Overall it took me well over 40 minutes to get in. The lights inside had flickered on when I'd tripped a motion sensor with a door piece, and I'd spotted a space much smaller than I'd expected, thanks to the thickly reinforced walls. It was barely bigger than a speeder, and there were a few chests and cases placed haphazardly around its perimeter. It was much less grand and fancy than I had imagined. I carefully climbed inside, avoiding the metal blast door, which was burning hot and even still almost molten in places.
I began carefully opening each box, listening to the force for any sign of a trap. One box contained a set of vials full of some shimmery bluish pearlescent liquid. I scrupulously set that to one side without disturbing them. Another had a set of blaster pistols inside. I wasn't sure what was remarkable about them, but Skotia had kept them here, in his secret blackmail vault, for a reason. I found a long box containing a set of ancient-looking vibroswords and resisted the urge to touch them just in case they'd been poisoned, as I knew such blades often were. Many chests held datapads that were devoid of anything except holorecordings. I watched one, my disgust increasing at every second until finally I couldn't stomach the sight any longer. The cyborg Darth apparently enjoyed blackmailing many people, even those of lesser importance, and he was not above bugging someone's bedchamber to do it.
Against the back wall, I finally found what I was looking for. I opened a case to reveal a large stone slab cushioned in silk. It matched the images Lady Zash had shown me. I beamed with triumph and sealed it back up again. It was heavy, but despite my small size, I was strong and I lifted it with ease. Then I paused. There were still a few more chests to open, and I didn't know what they contained. My curiosity was killing me. I set my prize back down and quickly went back to searching through the boxes.
Most contained more holorecordings or weapons, but one chest contained a series of thumb-sized statues of various beasts intricately carved from some deep purple stone that was shiny and smooth. Each had tiny jeweled eyes and claws. They were beautiful. I wanted them. I knew it was a risk, but I took the whole box. They were too mesmerizing to be left behind to the fate that awaited everything else.
"I have it, Khem," I said in Catharese, as I climbed carefully out of the vault with my two chests in my arms.
"Let us depart then," he said urgently, glancing back out the damaged door at the darkness outside. "The wind grows more powerful."
"No witnesses," I said, tipping my head towards the two men. He nodded briskly, and with two quick slashes, they were beheaded. It was almost too fast for the second man to react, and I found myself grateful for his speed. They had been in a terrible position, marked for death either way. I was glad that they'd attacked me; it made their deaths feel more justifiable somehow. I ran back outside to fetch our packs; the wind was truly whipping the trees back and forth now, and the sky was black with the oncoming storm; only the floodlights of the comms tower illuminated the area.
I dropped them at Khem's feet, indicating the artefact's chest. "If we're going to get out of here any time soon, you'll need to carry that for me," I said matter-of-factly. He grunted but didn't argue the point. "We'll need to get far away from here before we can even think about making camp."
After using the refresher, I pulled out the three explosive charges that still remained inert in my pack. I'd intended to use my lightsaber and lightning to destroy the cameras and any console that could potentially store security footage, but the devices would take care of that for me. They might even direct suspicion away from me, I reflected. I placed one in the vault, getting it all ready to explode in 5 minutes. Then the other two I laid on opposite sides of the console room.
"Ready?" I asked. Khem nodded. I'd slipped my stolen treasures into my satchel, so with one last glance to make sure there wasn't anything I missed, I armed the explosives, one after the other. We quickly hurried out into the storm. Then we froze. Someone was waiting for us in the empty gateway.