For all Wookiee-lovers, I'm sorry about what happened to Quagga the Wookiee last chapter. Originally it was Rebus who was going to die, nobbly sacrificing himself with a thermal detonator to defeat the enemies. But I thought it would set a bad example and harm body positivity for the only fat member of the1 heroes to commit suicide, so I changed it. I hope my readers appreciate that. I'm almost out of alcohol.
"Ah, Katarn...Katarn, what are ya doing to me—taking me deeper into this place?! Haven't I—haven't I suffered enough?!"
Rebus's croaking protests and complaints came and went, spaced out by labored breathing. Zak wasn't sure how long the guy had been been here, forced to work forty-hour shifts under the lash of Saw Gerrera, but it was almost impressive how he remained paunchy and out of shape in spite of that. The ruffled work trousers and torn wifebeater were unflattering and totally insufficient to hide his rippling, swinging flabs of greasy flesh. Continually he had to slap at the bacta bandages covering his wounds, lest they peel free of his slick skin as he moved.
Hand in hand with his sister, Zak ran along near the back of the group near Rebus, R2-Q8, and Dr. Z, with Jan Ors covering them. The only organic member of the strike team not sporting new bacta bandages was Mort, whose heavy commando armor was pocked and crisscrossed with a dozen laser hits; MIMIC and 5/DX were also visibly damaged.
Leading from the front, Kyle Katarn didn't give even a backward glance to Rebus's whining. As well as his battered, caf-colored blast jacket, he now wore Quagga's bandolier. Back in the workshop he had solemnly taken it up along with the fallen Wookiee's bowcaster, though both were still damp with their original owner's blood. With the addition of an Imperial repeater gun he had found among the debris, Kyle was back to looking like a walking arsenal.
Or rather a running one, as the newly regrouped strike team charged down the corridor in pursuit of Jaykay, Dr. Fale Rottwerm...and Uncle Hoole.
"Was it really him?" Zak hissed. "A-are you sure?"
Tash nodded. "As sure as I'm here next to you! I just wish he hadn't run off like that. I don't know...I don't know what he's thinking."
Zak fell silent. It was a sentiment they had shared many, many times since the mysterious Shi'ido had first taken them into his care. Sadly, quite a few of those times had been after Kiva, where Hoole finally admitted his past as an Imperial scientist and his role in that planet's devastation. And at Brint-wo he had disappeared yet again, with no explanation, only now to return more suddenly than ever before, to help Wade save Zak from that crazy crab-droid.
Uncle Hoole was back. Somewhere up ahead, right now. It made Zak feel so many different things, all at once, that he thought he'd be sick.
Suddenly Kyle Katarn raised an open hand, and the strike team slid to a halt. "You there!" he called. "Are you Mammon Hoole?!"
Zak's heart jumped. Tash yanked his hand, and the two elbowed their way through the strike team. By the time they came up beside Kyle they were swaying on legs made of air, supporting one another.
He recognized this corridor: it was the entrance to Rottwerm's laboratory, but strewn with bits of debris and spilled fluids. A lean, haggard-looking humanoid figure was stepping awkwardly from the doorway, scouring ooze from his right hand with a rag. At the sound of his name, the man looked up, his long gray face betraying only mild interest. "I am."
He seemed ready to say something else, but Kyle interrupted him. "Damn it—Dr. Z, get up here! This guy's wounded!"
As the Ruurian's many legs clicked furiously, Zak's eyes lowered to the burning hole in the Shi'ido's lower left abdomen. "UNCLE HOOLE!" he and Tash shouted together.
They rushed forward, outpacing Kyle and Dr. Zaposug as Hoole sank against the doorframe. "I...apologize for inconveniencing you," he said mildly. "I could not find a medkit inside the lab. A strange...oversight of Rottwerm's, considering he was a doctor."
Mort and Wade already had their blasters trained on the entrance, though there was no sign of movement in the lab. "Rottwerm!" echoed Kyle Katarn. "Is he in there? What happened?"
"He is...no more. Along with his creation."
"Uncle Hoole! Uncle Hoole, stay with us! It's us!" cried Zak as he and Tash clung to him, on the verge of panic. Hoole's voice was faint, his dark eyes unfocused. At Kyle and Jan's urging, they reluctantly backed off a little so that Zaposug could tend to him.
"Exhaustion, malnourishment, slight blood sugar deficiency...," the Ruurian muttered impatiently; he was reading off the screen of his medical scanner. "Ah! Not to worry. The wound is not fatal. Nothing some bacta won't fix. Just a moment."
With that he began to administer stimshots and bacta injections. While the strike team stood guard and busied themselves with other things, Zak hugged his sister and waited to explode. It wasn't the first time they'd seen their uncle hurt or helpless, but that didn't make it any easier.
After a few tense moments, Hoole's mind came out of hyperspace. "Tash. Zak... I'm so very glad you're alive. I wish that I could've arrived to help sooner, but—"
The Arrandas nearly trampled poor Dr. Z as they rushed to hug their uncle, who returned their embrace—awkwardly, as he always did. Before either could calm down enough to speak coherently, a wide, thick shadow fell upon them. "Emperor's Black Bones, you're alive!" gasped Rebus.
"I might say the same for you," Hoole answered mildly.
Wade Vox looked sideways at them. "Hold on a minute. What do you two have to do with each other? Not to mention, you disappeared at Brint-wo months ago—the kids told us all about it. So what the kriff are you doing here?"
Hoole's tone, when he answered, was suddenly icy. "You need not thank me for aiding you back in the workshop. However, I'd appreciate you moderating your language while in the presence of my charges."
Wade opened his mouth to retort, but Kyle smoothly stepped in. "That's reasonable enough, but Wade's right. You do have some explaining to do."
"And who might you be?" inquired Hoole. "For that matter, what organization do you all belong to?"
"The name's Kyle Katarn, and we're...we were part of the Rebel Alliance."
"They're called the Bryar Force, and they're trying to stop the Transcendent," Zak explained, gesticulating. "They rescued me from Nar Shaddaa, and then we went and saved Tash on the Hospital Platform together! They're really prime, Uncle Hoole. They're heroes, just like Luke Skywalker!"
"That's not important right now," said Kyle, waving the boy silent. "What are you doing in Pinnacle Base?"
Hoole grunted as Zaposug made the final bacta injection. "There is little time to explain, but I—originally I came here as a spy, months ago, but it not by choice. Since then I've been a prisoner, more or less, forced to hide in various disguises. Though I eventually found an ally in the former Moff Rebus, I often could do little more than remain hidden and steal scraps of food to survive."
Zak frowned up at Rebus. So this guy the Transcendent had enslaved to work on their machines was not only an Imperial, but a former Moff?
"That's horrible!" said Tash. "But...who were you supposed to spy on these people for?"
Uncle Hoole's eyes hardened. "A creature they call Trioculus—the Imperial Overseer of Kessel. He captured me, then had me smuggled into this place by his henchman, a bounty hunter named Jodo Kast... You know those names?" he added, studying his new companions closely.
"Kast helped us break into the base, though he ditched us not long ago," Kyle explained. "Trioculus is the one who sent us here. We might never have found this place without his help."
"Hm... That is at once fortunate and dangerous."
Zak was confused, as up till now he had not wondered how Kyle and the others managed to find Pinnacle Base. He didn't know who these new characters were, but they sounded like bad news—especially an Imperial with a name like Trioculus. The disturbed look Tash's face told him he was right. Something else was bothering him, though, something very urgent, but with all this excitement and the adults still talking, he couldn't seem to remember...
"You're right about that," Jan Ors was saying. "Personally, I'm surprised we could trust that slime this far. But if he already had an agent on the inside, why would he not tell us?"
Kyle shrugged. "He knew that Tash was with us, and that we wanted to rescue Zak. Maybe he thought we'd be less willing to cooperate with him if he admitted to putting their uncle in danger...or getting him killed."
"We don't have time for this right now. I'm able to stand. If you would, please..." The pained urgency in Hoole's voice was alarming. Dr. Z withdrew as Kyle took the Shi'ido's hand and pulled him up. Zak and Tash stayed close. "Katarn, I promise to explain everything in due time, but we're likely still in danger here. What's more important, however, is that there is another—"
That was it, Zak realized. Everyone flinched as he lurched away and pressed his face between his hands."Oh no—OH, NO! I'm so kriffing stupid, I forgot all about EZRA!"
"We know," Kyle said to Hoole, immediately recovering his wits. "Rebus told us. There's another kid being taken...where? The sublevel?"
They turned to the former Moff, whose pudgy face was losing what little color it still had left. "Yeah, the—the ruins. There's only one lift that, uh, goes down there, and it's on this level. B-between the second and third guard stations—"
Kyle whirled to the astromech droid and said, "R2, show us on the map! Now!" He hefted Quagga's bloodstained bowcaster, and his eyes were full of a desperation and ferocity that seemed rare, even to tough Rebel soldiers like these people. Zak kept his head cradled as the memories of Ezra crashed upon him, carrying with them his own vow, his need to try to help that poor boy...
But he was taken away before they put me under, Zak thought, and that was hours ago. What are the chances...
He drifted back to his sister and uncle. Supporting himself in their embrace, Zak finally started to feel how hungry and exhausted and ragged and miserable he was, how much he wanted to sleep and wake up back on Alderaan and be a kid again...
Yet all too soon, he heard R2-Q8's holoprojector switch off and the clicking of the adults' blasters. "Everyone move!" ordered Kyle.
Despite being addled by the fighting in the workshop, Kyle kept Quagga's bowcaster shouldered and his senses sharp, ready for anything as he led his team toward the indicated turbolift. But they stepped into no ambushes, met no further resistance. From the looks of things, they had wiped out Pinnacle Base's garrison as thoroughly as they had its starfighter complement, leaving nothing left but dust-mice, mynocks, and other vermin nosing through the fresh corpses, debris, and refuse. Besides that, they had saved Zak Arranda (again) along with two additional prisoners of which they'd been previously unaware—and all this while sustaining only a single casualty. In military terms, they could hardly have asked for such a mission to go more smoothly.
Kyle Katarn was accustomed to thinking in military terms, but he was also an incurable perfectionist. He hated losing. He hated not being good enough. It was why the losses at Far Qasqi had tempted him, so briefly but so strongly, to quit. It was why the bowcaster in his arms and the bandolier draped over his shoulder were heavy beyond their material properties, why he could smell nothing at all except the blood of the brave Wookiee to whom they had once belonged.
It was why everything else he carried felt uncannily heavy—things like the SE-14r light repeating blaster, holstered where his father's bryar pistol should have been. Even that little gemstone Tash had given him seemed to tug down on his blast jacket. It was the weight of command, of responsibility, of the trust that good people had placed on him.
Soldier though he was, Kyle Katarn had never quite been able to make himself swallow the concept of acceptable casualties, acceptable losses, acceptable failures. Not in the Burad Gorge on Dantooine.
Not on the asteroid AX-456.
Not at Restuss.
Not at Far Qasqi.
"That's it, Katarn, that's—we're—we're here."
Rebus had not needed to announce it, even if he weren't seemingly on the verge of a heart attack. It was a large, freight-sized elevator—impossible to miss. Rusty, run-down, but obviously serviceable, it was ordinary and mundane in every single way—there wasn't even an extra lock on the controls—but as Kyle came to a stop in front of it, he thought he heard something...felt something...tasted something...
He held his breath, trying to still his entire body, to empty his mind of distractions. Maybe it was something to do with the Force, some kind of warning. In front of him nothing happened, nothing changed that was perceptible to the senses, but as he stared and seconds went by, the open space of the elevator started to look different, look wrong, as if it was upside down or inside out, or as if Kyle was upside down or inside out, looking backwards through his own eyes at a gross figment of form that had gotten jumbled up somewhere in his head.
He blinked, and the elevator was just an elevator again. Just another part of the mission.
While on the way here, they had already commed Natalie Darr, asking her to do a sweep with the Bloodshark's sensors. Apart from the Bryar Force, the only humanoid life signs left in the facility were a cluster a hundred or so meters below.
Again the hangar bay full of empty shuttles, all recently arrived, flashed through Kyle's mind. The Transcendent was down there. The true leaders, the elite, had barricaded themselves down there in the center of an ancient ruin with an innocent boy named Ezra. Ezra, whose unspeakable abuse and eventual death would be the offering to their deity, Cycsila.
It was the epicenter of the waves of corruption that had poisoned the Rebel Alliance, that had destroyed countless innocents, that had consumed Kyle Katarn's life.
It was the beginning and it was the end.
"Y-you can't be serious. We can't go down there."
By now, Kyle had been given more than enough time to get used to Rebus's whining. The former Moff had always been a coward, never a fighter by any stretch, and he'd obviously been tortured and traumatized during his time here.
As Kyle faced his companions, Zak Arranda took a step forward, saying, "We have to."
He was restrained by Hoole, who had also taken Tash by the shoulder. "I cannot allow that—under any circumstances."
"But Uncle Hoole—"
"Enough. I'm in charge of this mission." Kyle hated how harsh, how strained his own voice had become. "Wade, Mort, Rookie One—you're with me. We're going to get Ezra and finish this. The rest of you stay here."
It made the most tactical sense. The astromech couldn't fight, while the other droids were damaged, and 5/DX was low on missiles. Meanwhile, Hoole, Tash, and Zak were technically civilians (unusual abilities aside), the doctor had no combat skills, and Rebus would be worse than useless in a fight. And all of them would need somebody to keep them safe.
"Hold on one minute, Kyle," said Jan, her eyes razor-keen.
He brushed past her, though it felt like ripping a hole in his chest. "Jan, I need you and Payvees to keep this elevator secure—and make sure nothing happens to these people.."
Saying this, he relieved the Gran of his remaining store of grenades, then distributed them to his squadmates. For good measure, he entrusted his Imperial repeater to Rookie One, who deserved a heavier weapon than a DH-17 pistol.
"That kid needs my help—" Zak started fiercely, but a squeeze on his shoulder from Hoole brought him up short.
"I won't let you be put in any more danger," his uncle said sternly. "Either of you. Zak, Tash, I'm proud of you both, but you've done enough. This is their fight."
Kyle gave his bowcaster a final check, then looked up—and, of course, Jan was there, looking at him.
"If we don't make it back, you need to get these people to safety," he told her.
It was a reasonable, soldierly thing to say. He was informally in charge, and she was informally his second in command—and Far Qasqi had come unpleasantly close to passing the baton on to her.
Jan's face hardened, and she stepped close enough that he could taste her next words: "You'd better make it back, Kyle."
His heart beat a few times before he could so much as breathe.
"Hey, it's me," he said with a wink.
As soon as the lift door opened, Kyle's squad filed out, blasters at the ready. Mort had volunteered to take point; though quite damaged, his commando armor would still do the best job of absorbing the initial burst of fire, should they encounter an ambush. However, they encountered no such thing outside the lift.
"It's quiet as a tomb," the veteran grunted softly. His helmet sported a tactical spot-lamp, while Kyle and the others made do with a head lamp and glowrods, respectively. All sent pale beams wandering through the dark. Kyle craned his neck up to find a ceiling high enough to accommodate an Imperial chicken walker. Wherever they looked it was rock, but in the workshop it had been rough, uneven, and reddish in color. Here, hundreds of meters below Pinnacle Base, every surface was perfectly smooth and flat.
The atmosphere was different, too; Kyle wrinkled his nose against it, and in under a minute his eyes started to itch. He'd thought he knew what a dry moon was like from Gromas 16, but this was a whole different kind of gra. Breathing in the dust of eons, he glanced at Mort's helmeted head and missed his stormtrooper armor for the first time in years.
Though they had their own lights, there was a dim glowlamp mounted in the middle of the ceiling, and they could just make out others at the ends of the tunnels branching off from this first cave. Where they should go was not obvious, trails traveled down each of them through the dust.
"You getting anything?" Kyle asked the commando, whose armor also included some short-range sensors.
"Yeah, I'm picking up vitals... This way."
As he started off down the first tunnel, his armored boot kicked something pale and hard that looked like a bone, though what creature it belonged to, Kyle couldn't guess. Glancing down as he passed it, he thought of a piece broken off from something like a seashell.
The scope of the first cave was no anomaly. Every vaulted corridor was wide enough to fit two or even three landspeeders. From time to time the squad needed to drop down staggered ledges which, in hindsight, looked rather like stairs designed for a race of titans. The purposes of the various rooms, bare of furniture, artwork, or any decorations, were impossible to guess. Aside from dust trails, the only signs that anyone had ever been here were the occasional weak glowrods, as well as the pieces of bone (or whatever they were) which lay scattered along the rooms' edges.
"I don't think the Rebels carved any of this out," commented Wade at some point. "I'm not seeing any equipment."
Rookie One agreed. "They didn't. This used to be an alien outpost. Built by the Gree, according to that file."
"The Gree? Who were they?"
The pilot swept his glowrod up a fifteen-meter wall. "I don't know. I never heard of a species this tall."
In some walls they saw niches, in some floors wide, shallow alcoves lined with fragments of what looked like metal, perhaps the remnants of technology that had been broken or torn out, the remains left to the ages.
The strange, sick, alienating feeling that had come upon Kyle before entering the lift hadn't quite gone away, and while he tried to ignore it, other distractions tugged at his mind. He kept thinking about that document they'd found in Utric Sandov's office, which he had struggled to comprehend. Odd combinations of phrases that he'd seen repeated dozens, hundreds of times in succession, intruded on him.
The Technicians. The Broken Door. The Trespassers. Unworld is the True Universe. This Universe is a False Universe. Cycsila is the Skinless Serpent.
Monad Seeds that contain Quintessence live in the blood of Actual Gods, which is why they are food for Mother Cycsila.
The Technicians broke the Door...
It all sounded like nonsense, pure madness, but Kyle knew it had to be more than that. The transcendence of sex and species through mutilation; the ritualistic abduction, rape, and sacrifice of children to a being called Cycsila—these ideas were not the product of one man who just happened to go crazy one day and write it all down. Just like Crix Madine hadn't been a lone, deranged youngling predator. This was a conspiracy, animated by a belief, a driving force. And whatever that force was, it had come from this place. From something that Krane, Rottwerm, Gullet, Gerrera, and the Rebels with them had found here—before spreading it across the Alliance and beyond.
Following Mort, flanked by Wade and Rookie One, Kyle went deeper and deeper into the ruins.
"Does anyone else feel kind of...weird? Sick, maybe?" asked Wade.
Rookie One answered him. "I...yeah, kind of. Maybe it's just the air?"
"What do you mean, sick?" said Kyle, studying Wade's face by his light's outer glow. The gunslinger looked pale and jittery, but somehow not in the same way as he had during the break-in on Kessel.
"I dunno, it's almost like I get dizzy for a second, or like I ate something bad, or..."
Kyle gritted his teeth. "What is it?"
"The walls are making me nervous." Wade grimaced, obviously knowing how stupid he sounded. "I look at 'em, or see 'em out the corner of my eye, and it's like some part of my brain doesn't know what they are. As if they're watching me or about to jump me or, or something."
"Rebus said this place changes shape," Rookie One reminded them.
"In case you forgot, Rebus was also being held captive and tortured by these people for a year," Kyle snapped. "He's half off his repulsors."
"True." The pilot's voice was flat. Kyle knew that he hadn't convinced him any more than he had himself.
"I still don't like this," Wade said a minute later. "It's not just my nerves, and it sure as space isn't dust in the air. Something here's rotten...evil. We're sensing it in the Force." He looked sharply at Kyle as if daring him to disagree.
"Mort?"
"I've had a few weird feelings down here," the commando said. "More important, those life signals are close."
The next moment they rounded another bend. Rather than a tall, vaulted arch, this corridor ended at the metal wall of a small, modular prefab shelter. Full-strength light spilled from a humanoid-sized doorway.
"That's no ancient Gree structure," whispered Rookie One.
Inside they found no guards, nor any other defenses. The prefab's only notable feature was a long, rectangular room filled with forty or fifty lockers.
Each one was open.
Each one contained a set of clothes. No two were the same. Some had hats, gloves, and other such accessories, but all were complete, including boots or shoes, socks, and even undergarments, all hanging or folded up or otherwise neatly arranged.
Wade walked down the room's length, inspecting the lockers as he went. "Huh... Fancy," he remarked dully.
Kyle followed and saw what he meant. The clothes were all different, but none of them were cheap.
Rebel uniforms.
Alliance Naval Security, Lieutenant Commander.
Alliance Navy, Line Admiral.
Alliance Intelligence, Inspector General.
Fancy suits. Lights, darks. Tunics and cloaks. Some bejeweled, others plain. Kyle thought of the ex-senators and dignitaries and other politicians who made up the Alliance Advisory Council.
Wade spoke again. "Guess our three-eyed friend wasn't just paranoid."
Kyle went on, passing a series of Imperial uniforms. White, black, gray, olive, khaki. Code cylinders, grid insignia, command caps.
More suits, cloaks, capes, finery. More uniforms, but not military: Tagge Corporation, Zann Remanufacturing, Sienar Fleet Systems. CSA, CEC, even the Banking Clan.
Kyle blinked, moved on. Already he was almost to the end, Mort and Rookie One right behind him, Wade right ahead.
Wade suddenly spread his legs because his knees were shaking. His face went as colorless as a Doshian jellyfish. "Oh, by the..."
Kyle and the others were with him in a second, looking into the last locker.
Hanging there was a simple gown, frayed at the edges and mottled with stains, some of which were obviously blood. It was the only thing in the last locker.
And it was definitely too small for an adult.
Staring, Kyle tried to swallow.
The gown hung there, motionless, gradually looking less like itself and more like other things, more like an off-white stain on the wall or a face pressed flat or something else that it wasn't that it wasn't that it wasn't that it wasn't
When he finally came back to himself, he felt like he'd been running full-tilt. Every breath was a bomb going off in his chest. He said, "Move."
The prefab had a second door opposite the one they had entered through. The chamber it led into was much, much larger than any they had seen so far, but it had been artificially truncated. Kyle thought it was supposed to be a dome big enough to fit an Imperial Titan dropship, but a huge convex slab of durasteel kept them isolated in a sliver of space along the edge. A slit ran along the wall, and a huge door was set in the middle.
This one obviously locked.
"Mort, check the controls."
"On it."
Kyle didn't like how his voice was shaking. He slung the bowcaster and started to pace, flexing his fists, while the commando affixed a scramble key to the door panel and calibrated it. The device beeped and blinked, and he stepped back.
"It's opening, but...it'll take time." Mort faced his companions, hidden as usual behind his helmet, but dread carried through his vocoder. "There's five blast doors, sir, and it's only built to open them one by one."
"Stang it all," hissed Wade as he gnawed on the back of his glove.
"This is insane. Insane." Kyle shook his head and glared at the giant metal vault. "I don't think even 5/DX could blow through that, if we had him here..."
The scramble key beeped again and there was a low, nearly imperceptible groan as the innermost blast door began to slide open.
At the same time, something else opened: the slit which banded the metallic wall, revealing a transparisteel viewport seven or eight meters thick.
Kyle and his squad mates traded looks. The faces of Wade Vox and Rookie One were stone, wiped as blank as Mort's helmet by trepidation. Even so, there was something pleading in them, hopelessly childlike, as though he had the power to spare them.
But if any of this had been up to him, no one living in this galaxy would have set foot on Da Soocha V.
He had neither the power nor the right to avert his eyes, and neither did they.
As soon as he took one step, the others fell in, and they lined up in front of the viewport. It was thick and dusty, but overall remarkably clear, as transparisteel always was.
The room beyond was as big as Kyle had guessed, its dome studded with glowlamps. Most of the floor was eaten up by a pit of uncertain depth, itself crowned by a ring of metal, eight or nine meters thick. Not smooth like the rock, it was instead segmented and uneven, looking like some eclectic, cobbled-together machine.
A small crowd of some forty or fifty people had coalesced on the near side of the pit, kneeling toward it. The same people who had left their clothes in the prefab's lockers. At the front of them loomed a tentacled mound gristle, undulating and shining in the glowlamps' light.
Kyle's eyes waded through the assembly like the subterranean sewage rivers of Anoat City or Ord Mantell. Most of the humanoids were facing away, and at a glance he saw no particular features that he would recognize. However, that creature at the front was Mairan, a telepathic species of which he knew only by reputation...and by one of the files R2-Q8 brought from Searchlight. It could only be Lieutenant Colonel Bor Gullet, who'd been assigned to Pinnacle Base to head its Intelligence operations.
Pieces of the red abyss from the image caster cut into Kyle's thoughts like glass shards, jagged puzzle pieces trying to fit themselves into place. The bodies from that hell, the humanoid bodies, their positions their actions the things they were doing—sometimes they'd been kneeling. What's more, there had been bodies that weren't humanoid, bloated shapes with splayed, lashing tentacles.
Two jagged pieces came together as he realized: if the red abyss was instructions, a prototype, a rubric, then the scene playing out before him was its enactment, its blasphemous incarnation.
Everyone was kneeling before Gullet. Was this their goddess, Cycsila? Was this the heart of the cult—madmen worshiping a mad Mairan, who had used its telepathic powers to enslave them?
Faced away from the window, the adoring assembly formed a single anonymous mass, all of them slick and shining like Bor Gullet itself. A ripple of motion passed through them, from back to front, like a wave—
Rookie One stifled a choking sound. Mort's helmeted head started to pivot back and forth, slightly faster each time. Wade Vox was talking under his breath. "Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Don't, just don't. Don't tell me, don't... NOOO!"
The gunslinger's shout left Kyle's ear ringing, but he still heard the blood churning in his ears—a dull roar. From the center of the dripping throng, two of Bor Gullet's tentacles had risen. They cradled a small, limp form.
Rookie One said something. Wade and Mort ran to the door, froze in front of the panel with the still-blinking scramble key. The gunslinger cursed. His DL-44 XT went off five times. He cursed and returned to the window, along with the commando. Kyle Katarn had not blinked. The blast doors were still grinding open, one at a time, their sound quieter than his own heart.
While Wade pounded on the glass and screamed, while Mort shook his head, while Rookie One hung his head and whimpered, Ezra was borne up over the heads of his tormentors, carried toward Bor Gullet as lightly as a cloud.
Then over Bor Gullet's blob-shaped head as well.
Then past Bor Gullet, at which point Kyle—his mind eroded and pared and scraped down to the absolute essentials, to the components that observed and analyzed and evaluated—realized that the Mairan had been facing away from the multitude all along. Cradled in its tendrils, Ezra floated on several more meters before being laid down on the rim of strange machinery before the edge of the pit.
As the tentacles withdrew, one of them brushed a dark scar which curled along the crown of Ezra's head.
The boy twitched and sat up, his shoulders slumped, his head lolling, facing the pit.
And something came out of it.
Long and flexible, serpentine, it rose up some meters from the hole before curling to flow down toward the offered child in a sinuous motion. The whole thing was covered in convex shells that glimmered gold with reflected light. Kyle could find no eyes, no other obvious sense organs, no mouth. Some of the shells—or plates, or scales, whatever they were—some of them contracted in its descent, while others spread apart. Thick fluid of some kind oozed between them and spilled out in glistening streams, percolated from the body beneath...but the body beneath seemed to just be a thick, quivering tendril of raw meat.
Cycsila.
The Skinless Serpent.
When Cycsila came close enough to touch its offering, the scales nearest dissolved to a silver liquid which splashed over Ezra, immediately hardening into a bright metallic shell which encased him. Torrents of ichor wept from raw wounds left by the melted scales, dressing the shell and overflowing into crevices and alcoves and channels in the surrounding machinery. A second later the shell disappeared from view as Cycsila slipped down over it as though she—it—the tendril itself—was actually hollow, or had perhaps hollowed itself to accommodate its meal. The golden scale-covered coil shuddered and compacted, squeezing out another splashing burst of ichor, then arose and withdrew into the pit. Where Ezra had been, there was only a shining puddle, slowly seeping outward.
Kyle Katarn blinked.
Wade Vox had stopped screaming.
A short distance away, the scramble key chimed. The fourth out of five blast doors was in the process of opening.
Beyond the layered transparisteel, Bor Gullet started to move, and so did the assembly of the Transcendent, beginning—or perhaps resuming—what had been shown and indicated what the Bryar Force had found in the image caster, in the red abyss.
Clamping his eyes shut, Kyle observed a floundering movement somewhere low in his gut, a stirring, a tilting. Around him, he heard aimless footsteps and sounds of drained, abject disgust. It was the natural reaction of humanity beginning to assert itself.
Though the greater part of him never wanted to open his eyes again, he did so. A glance—peripheral, no closer than necessary—told that the cultists were still out there, moving.
The symphony of flesh—that's what they called it, came a flat voice from the edge of his mind, like a droid reading off a databank.
The last human thought that Kyle indulged before freezing that part of himself and hiding it someplace far, far away was, Least Jan and the others didn't have to see.
Then—
"Squad. With me."
That voice—he either didn't recognize it, or hadn't heard it in years. It was calm, clipped, dead to emotion, filtered. It could have come from a stormtrooper's helmet speaker.
Gripping Quagga's bowcaster, he positioned himself in front of the archway and waited. Eventually Wade, Rookie One, and Mort joined him, none saying a word. The scramble key continued to blink and the blast doors continued to move, the grinding of metal much louder than before. A much stranger sound reached their ears when all the doors lay open.
To apply the word music here would be to desecrate it, but nothing else would come close. Strange tones, most often rings, knells, and peals. Occasionally there were choked spurts of a bass tone that seemed to vibrate through the architecture, like a giant stomach growling. All of it seemed to be strung together, one sequence flowing or staggering into the next, linked in a frayed mockery of pattern and form.
The opened blast doors cleared a lightless tunnel through the durasteel wall. The squad paused at the end, each of them clinging to the walls. From there the dome in its entirety could be seen: the smooth rock running around that strange ring of assembled metal. Two stone's throws directly ahead were Bor Gullet and the rest of the Transcendent. None of them appeared to have noticed the door opening.
Kyle turned and looked over the shrouded forms of his squad mates, the men he had chosen for this grim task, vainly searching for their eyes in the dark.
He gave his orders. "Thermals first. I'll try to get Gullet. Mort, go left. Rookie One, follow me to the right. Wade, stay here and give us fire support. Watch for stragglers, and don't let anyone past you." Wetting his lips, he summed things up: "Nobody leaves that room alive but us."
There were whispered acknowledgments, quiet rustles of movement, crisp beeps as thermal detonators were primed.
Raising the bowcaster, Kyle stepped out into the dim light, Rookie One close behind him, and it began.
Watching the elevator was just as nerve-wracking as it was boring. Both the Bloodshark's sensors and R2-Q8's pretty well guaranteed that the main levels of Pinnacle Base were clear of dangers, and with Jan Ors, MIMIC, Payvees, and 5/DX standing guard in the nearby corridors, it stood to reason that Da Soocha V was as safe for them as they could possibly get.
But actually relaxing was totally out of the question, and Tash wasn't the only one who knew it. Moff Rebus aimlessly wandered back and forth and scratched his stubbled, fat face, too agitated to sit down in spite of his injuries and exhaustion. Having given up on urging him to rest, Dr. Zaposug lay coiled in a corner, though his antennae remained erect and alert. R2-Q8 appeared similarly restless for a droid, keeping its portable sensors extended from the compartments of its dome.
The outlier was Uncle Hoole, who—apart from displaying slight discomfort from his wound—remained so poised and calm, you'd think he was the one in charge of the situation. He rested on the floor not far from Rebus with legs crossed, long fingers interlaced, and back straight as a sensor mast. Across from him, the Arranda kids sat on their butts against the nearest wall. Tash could see the elevator's open door right over her uncle's shoulder, the elevator leading to the sublevel, where Kyle and the others had gone to confront the last of the Transcendent and save a boy called Ezra.
Waiting and wondering what was going to happen next was terrible in itself, but Tash fancied she also sensed dark stirrings and emanations far below. She was more sure of what she felt from her brother, who aside from ordinary nerves was holding in his own turmoil; he'd met Ezra during his brief imprisonment here and felt responsible for saving him, and there would be no consoling him until all this was over.
In the meantime, though, Uncle Hoole was taking the opportunity to explain his disappearance and months of absence. Tash and Zak were excited to hear—and equally grateful for the distraction.
To their astonishment, the story began with DV-9—Hoole's droid who had acted as his personal assistant, as well as Tash and Zak's tutor during many of their earlier adventures. Deevee currently worked at the Galactic Research Academy on Koaan, and the Arrandas had not been in contact with him for nearly a standard year, but the droid sent Hoole a clandestine message shortly before they arrived at the Brint-wo Space Colony. Apparently some mysterious person had come to the academy and asked after Hoole, speaking of a vague scholarly project that would be of interest to him.
"Obviously this aroused my suspicions," Hoole explained, "since we're wanted by the Empire. However, I wished to investigate—to find out who exactly was looking for me. I meant to visit a contact or two, ask them to look into it, so I left you on Brint-wo."
"With no explanation," Zak said flatly.
Pain passed over the Shi'ido's face—which was something that rarely happened. "Yes. I was wrong to do so, but I convinced myself the two of you would be all right, and I wouldn't have far to travel to meet my nearest contact. I truly expected to be back in a few standard days."
"So why weren't you?" asked Tash.
"I never made it to my contact. While still on my way to him I was captured by Jodo Kast and taken aboard his ship."
"I bet he was the one Deevee was talking about." Zak's eyes were on the floor. "He set a trap for you, hoping you'd investigate—and you walked right into it."
Tash frowned at her brother. He was letting his anger leak out. Their uncle, however, remained calm, only wrinkling his brow thoughtfully. "I considered that myself. In hindsight, though, it seems unlikely. Kast is a very dangerous combatant. Not as much as Boba Fett (who I initially mistook him for), but he was able to capture me. However, he talked a great deal while holding me prisoner. If he were clever enough to lay that sort of trap for me, I'm confident he would have told me so. My guess is, he simply found me by chance and decided to collect the Empire bounty."
"Yeah, that sounds like him—he's a real braggart," Tash scoffed.
Hoole resumed his narrative, explaining that since Jodo Kast was already being employed by a ranking Imperial, he'd decided to take the prisoner to collect the bounty from that employer—who, of course, was Supreme Slavelord Trioculus on Kessel.
"I'm actually fortunate it was him. Though Trioculus is fanatically loyal to the Emperor, he's also an exceptionally vain creature, far more so than most Imperial officials. He takes great pleasure in controlling others and proving his authority. It also turned out that he knew some things about Project Starscream and how it ended. But he'd somehow gotten the impression that I was personally responsible for Gog's death—and since Gog had been found to be scheming against Palpatine, Trioculus was grateful to me. I decided not to correct him."
Peripherally, Tash thought the way her uncle was talking about Trioculus seemed a little odd, especially calling him a creature. Then again, just remembering her close encounter with the Supreme Slavelord was giving her the creeps.
"Using his mistaken good will toward me, I was able to bargain for my life, but at a heavy cost. He agreed that he would not turn me over to the Empire, but only if I used my shapeshifting powers to act as a spy on his behalf, and help him infiltrate a certain criminal organization—"
"Which was the Transcendent," Tash finished for him.
Hoole nodded. "He gave me no opportunity to escape. Jodo Kast smuggled me aboard the cultists' bulk freighter, and I was then able to sneak into Pinnacle Base itself. As a Shi'ido I could take many disguises, sometimes appearing as a guard, other times as vermin, in order to evade detection and gather information." He sighed shortly. "However, I'm not as great a spy as Trioculus wished me to be, and my work proved very difficult. The security measures here were tricky, and there were a great many guards about—as well as other, far more dangerous threats."
He bowed his head. His dark eyes seemed too heavy to keep open. "Despite my ineptitude, I was able to learn who—what—the Transcendent is, and what they have done to the Rebel Alliance...by eavesdropping, but also by clandestinely accessing their computers. That was also how I learned about the Hospital Platform...and the two of you..." His voice withered close to silence. "...and what was being done to you there. Only then did I realize what a truly horrible mistake I had made, leaving you alone at Brint-wo, but now I was trapped here. The security was too heavy for me to reach the hangar. For days, sometimes even weeks at a time, I could do little more than stay hidden and steal what food I could to survive. I couldn't even find the means to send a message and ask for help. I was...essentially helpless."
For a long moment Hoole neither moved nor spoke. Hunched over slightly, he remained as tall and dignified as ever—yet in the Force Tash could see that he wished to shrink away into nothingness. Out the corner of her eye she could see Zak studying the Shi'ido, no longer glaring at the floor. Hoole rarely expressed his emotions, but they knew full well that he felt things as deeply as any sentient being. And only once before could they ever recall seeing him so miserable, so lonesome: on the planet Kiva, where an experiment that he'd worked on with Borborygmus Gog had been used to wipe out the native population. Despite the fact Gog had deceived him into thinking the experiment would be save, Hoole had still been so guilt-ridden that he almost gave himself up to the vengeance of the Kivan's wrathful spirits. Now he blamed himself for abandoning Zak and Tash, and for all the abuse they had suffered at the hands of Utric Sandov and Deena Demarakesh. Now he looked as if he was offering himself up for the vengeance of his nephew and niece.
Tash wouldn't presume to speak for her brother, but after everything she'd been through...
It wasn't just her memories of Kiva. It was also her recent days of being stuck in close quarters with Kyle Katarn, Wade Vox, and Kentamine Farwanderer: watching them, listening to them, sensing the fury of their inner struggles radiating into the Force...
Being stuck with them—these strong, resourceful, brilliant, kind-hearted adults who did so much good and yet never, ever forgave themselves for their mistakes...
Tash was tired putting up with it. Tired of letting good people hate themselves. And she could sense that Hoole was hiding something in his despairing thoughts—something of which he thought himself unworthy.
She was about to reach into the darkness for it, but Zak surprised her by finding it out first. His face lit up like a brand-new power converter. "Hey, wait a parsec, that's not entirely true! You were able to do some things! You—there was—days ago, when that space freak Rottwerm was taking he into his lab to, to cut me up, there was a mynock that tried to follow us inside. That was you, wasn't it?! And just a minute later, he had me strapped into that machine..." Zak shuddered at the awful memory, in spite of his excitement. "...the power went out! You did that, too—you saved me!"
Uncle Hoole looked startled. He took a moment to compose himself before answering, but Tash knew that Zak's guess was a complete bullseye. She wondered if he'd used the Force to understand their uncle's thoughts.
"It wasn't just me. It was a great shock when I discovered you'd been taken here as a prisoner. My worst fear, aside from Tash being brought as well. I panicked and made my way to you disguised as a beast, but Rottwerm had you too well-guarded—I didn't have a chance, especially while Jaykay was there. I knew about the surgical machine, so the only thing I could do to help you at all was to temporarily damage the power grid."
"Wow! But how'd you do that?" asked Zak, leaning forward. "I didn't know you knew that much about that type of thing."
"I don't—but as I said, it wasn't just me. While slowly and ineptly gathering information, I made an unexpected ally." Saying this, Hoole nodded up at the chunky man who was meandering nearby.
Tash gasped. "Wait—you mean Rebus?!"
Rebus stopped and faced them, shoving his meaty hands into his pockets.
Hoole continued, "Once I realized that the Transcendent's chief mechanic had not been chemically brainwashed and was instead merely a slave, I clandestinely forged an alliance. Together we agreed to make preparations to sabotage Pinnacle Base—or at least cause enough trouble to allow for an escape attempt. Progress remained slow, and we were nowhere near ready by the time you were brought here, but we'd laid some preparations to disrupt the facility's power, so I made use of that to buy you time."
Zak shook his head, radiating admiration. "Wow, Uncle Hoole. I really owe you big, again."
"You owe much more thanks to Rebus," retorted Hoole with a fraction of his familiar sternness. "Were it not for him, I'd never have been able to disrupt the power grid at all—or to release the virus which disrupted the computer security system when your friends began their assault."
"So that was you, too!" cried Tash, remembering Jan and R2-Q8's confusion when slicing the system earlier.
Hoole's eyes tightened. "Tash, Zak, listen to me. I was trapped here, unnoticed, for several months, but Rebus was a slave in this place for a full standard year. He was overworked, beaten, and humiliated many times—including after we disrupted the power grid to save you. The cultists blamed him, thinking he'd simply done a poor job of repairing it. Yet even under torture, he did not reveal my presence." He looked up at the Imperial, who rocked back and forth, his pudgy face turning a deep rose. "When I first observed Rebus, I took him for an inveterate coward, but there is more to him than meets the eye, even if he won't admit it. We are deeply indebted to this man."
Zak and Tash stared at the fat ex-Imperial, allowing it to sink in, before thanking him in unison.
"Oh, well, I—I just kind of, uh—you know..." Rebus mumbled and went back to pacing.
Seemingly thawed from his despondency, Hoole concluded. "Once I ascertained Pinnacle Base was under attack, I saw no choice but to play all our cards, so I sabotaged the computer security, then went to the workshop, hoping to find some way to save you, Zak, as well as to rendezvous with Rebus and whoever it was that had apparently come to help us. You know the rest."
"You saved me again—well, helped save me," Zak said after moment. Then, smiling wryly, he added, "It seems to take a lot a lot of people to keep me outta trouble these days."
"Oh, yeah. You're a bigger handful than ever before," Tash agreed
The two chuckled, then laughed—and laughed some more. Tash herself knew it wasn't much of a joke, but for some reason it wouldn't let them go, and as they continued laughing, something incredible happened: they noticed that Uncle Hoole had joined in.
That actually was funny enough to keep it going. After all, Hoole had to be the most serious person on this side of the Rim. When was the last time anyone had seen him laugh at all, let alone laugh so hard he was shaking and...
Folding in on himself and crying?
Oh, no...
The two saw it at the same time and scrambled over to hug their uncle, who covered his long face in his hands.
"Zak, Tash," he croaked. "I failed you so terribly...I shouldn't have left you, but I did and you were..."
Tash heard her brother pant a few times as he tried to force words out. She understood he was having trouble not simply because of his own tears, but because surrendering anger and bitterness wasn't actually easy at all.
And like many of Zak's struggles, it was something Tash couldn't help him with.
"It'll be okay, Uncle Hoole," he said finally. "We forgive you and...and we'll all be okay once we're out of here."
Zak, you laserbrain—I wanted to say that, thought Tash. Sniffling, she settled for nodding into her uncle's shoulder.
"When we're off this moon, things will be different," Hoole promised. "And I'm never leaving you again."
Some time later they put their hearts back together and let go of each other. Slumping back against the wall, Tash felt almost ready to fall asleep right then and there. Instead, though, her eyes became wide and alert, riveted on the elevator—which stood open and empty, exactly the same as before.
Her spine prickled. Her ears twitched. If she didn't know better, Tash would think she was hearing...music? Some kind of bizarre alien lullaby?
Hoole raised an eyebrow at her, already back to his stoic self. "What is wrong?"
Tash murmured that she wasn't sure, then shifted to a kneeling position, pointing herself at the elevator. "Something wrong's happening down there," she told them when she felt sure of it. "Something...weird. I can sense it."
Every eye and photoreceptor in the room turned or at least glanced her way. Trying to ignore them, she flipped her braid back over her shoulder.
"Can you by chance sense Katarn, or any of the others?" Hoole asked at length.
She closed her eyes and concentrated for a bit. Opening them again, she hugged herself; when she was in the Force, the cold feeling had been worse. So had the ugly sound, whatever it had been. "I'm pretty sure I can sense Kyle. He's...he's in some kind of trouble," she said carefully, keeping to a whisper. She looked seriously at her brother. "I think he needs help."
"No," Hoole told her instantly. "I'm aware you've honed your abilities, Tash, but we have no idea what sort of dangers are below. I have no intention—"
"I never said I think we should go down there," she assured him. "I just think maybe he...maybe I could send some encouragement. Through the Force."
The look on Zak's face was complicated. "You can do that?"
"Maybe. Jedi always said minds are part of the Force, like everything else. And it doesn't really matter how big or small something is, or how far away we are from each other."
"...Do you think I could help?"
Hoole raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
"Let's find out," said Tash. She offered her hand, and Zak took it.
CHAPTER COMPLETE
PASSWORD: UMAK