A Measure of Fury

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

TWO DAYS AGO​

ARDA​

WILD SPACE​

The message came to Arda in a bottle. Specifically, an empty bottle labelled Whyren's Reserve, the galaxy's new symbol of losing home irreplaceably. It passed from hand to hand before winding up where it was supposed to go: to the cat-eyed man with silver hair, the wanderer who killed what most needed killing. At one point, someone tried to open it, and that didn't go well.

Within the bottle was a vellum scroll, tight-rolled and bound with the tassels of a forked bone talisman. The scroll, carefully inked, encompassed two ideas: a sketch and a word. The sketch was a woman's bust, from the shoulders up: a long thin neck, heavy lips, hollow cheeks, a high forehead. In total and in combination they looked something like a caricature, and maybe that had been the artist's intent. It was difficult to say: he hadn't been very good. Presumably, though, the face had struck a chord in a heart familiar with missing persons reports and possessed of unique contacts. Beneath the sketch, the artist had written a single syllable in the language of the ancient Sith.

***​

TODAY​

OSWAFT STATION​

ORBITING LAEKIA​

LEVANTINE SANCTUM​

WILD SPACE​

​

The Diplomacy seminar descended into a lull as the instructor -- a man Alec hated on general principle; she was failing the course -- went to the door. He had, and maintained, an air of mild annoyance at being thrown off his stride. For this particular seminar, the professor put more truck in his own exposition than in presenters or discussion time, regardless of emphasis on the readings. She couldn't stand that.

Still a touch on the sour side in the face department, the professor -- a Levantine captain -- turned from the door and ahemmed the class to summon their attention. "Cadet Rekali?"

"Mm?"

"Someone to see you."

Alec gave a slow blink. She couldn't catch the visitor's identity, not through the door from this angle. Someone else around the circle hissed a word she didn't catch.

"Now, Cadet."

Beneath the table, Alec's hands closed into fists until her knuckles cracked. But whoever this visitor was, he or she was continuing to inconvenience this particular professor, and Alec could only approve of that. She stood, ignored the teacher, and stepped through the door. It closed behind her with the soft hiss of a well-maintained station servohatch. Oswaft Station was, in some respects, state-of-the-art, and it killed her soul. No room for wearing honest work coveralls or anything remotely grease-stained.

Her most blue-collar days of dress sense had nothing on her visitor when it came to sheer incongruity. Large parts of Levantine space, and most of the regions roundabout, were downright post-apocalyptic hardscrabble environments. She enjoyed living in places like that. The Levantine Astronautical Academy on Oswaft Station could only be described as sterile -- bright pastel colors, one-note cadet uniforms, all the metal clean and polished enough that it felt somehow soft to the eye.

And for contrast...

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Past her, behind the auto-hatch, the Instructor cleared his throat with great attention to phlegmatic snorts. Cadets, transferal teacher assistants, personnel in clipped flight suits passed them by. A few broke into stares midstride. A class of schooling fighters, flying at half-impulse, rumbled by soundlessly past a length of viewport. They both stared at each other in the quiet. He was a man, obviously, tall and broad at the shoulders, with a face like an axe-edge and scar-tissue running up in smooth lines across his cheek bones and eyes. There were nicks, tears, a score of blemishes dotting over his throat. Through some unnatural artifice, the iris and pupil were misshapen: the former hued to gold, the latter slit as a cat's glare. White hair tied back round the back of his skull and hung along his nape, lending a martial visage to a powerful build. The dress was a costume of leather and chain-link, draped in a muddy cloak fallen over his shoulders. Offsetting his poorer look and sorrier attire were a pair of splendid blades strapped across his spine in battered scabbards. He smelled of rain, loam, a mixture of iron and earth. The man was roughly a head taller, but he cocked his shoulders and brow forward in a curt nod.

“Sorry to take you away,” He said. “Your name came with heavy referrals, miss Rekali. My name is Seydon. Sometimes, I work with patrols through the Levant. I've been told you know your way around ships like a surgeon. And you can pilot. Navigate. 'Thread the eye of a needle blind'. So I need your help, miss Rekali.”

[member="Alec Rekali"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

The Core Worlds would have said he had a regressive aesthetic. The Outer Rim would have shrugged. Wild Space? In Wild Space he fit right in. And when you got down to it, Wild Space was a lot bigger than it used to be. Tens of millions of worlds had never exited the Dark Age. The Frontier Corps were always finding new places where skill with metal blades and armor remained relevant.

"It's Captain Rekali," she said, glancing around. Here she was Cadet Rekali, even if she'd led a year-and-a-half expedition through the Kathol Outback. "And don't worry 'bout taking me away. Dullest fething class." She folded her arms, not for distance but for warmth. Space was cold. "I know who you are; you trained with my grandpa on Contruum for a bit. As for surgery and maps and needles, I'm not that good...but I'm pretty fething good with ships, anything up to frigate size I reckon. Knowing you, though, I'm betting we're talking a smaller boat, something fast and made for solo ops. That's the kind of ship I grew up on.

"The main complication and my terms are one an' the same. Your name has weight to some. Put in a word, the Academy can call this field experience credits, and maybe I pass this semester even with time off to help you."

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“Captain,” Seydon corrected, another short nod. Sometimes it itched awfully when professional accomplishment was snubbed, forgotten, overlooked, or 'buggered' as how Shev would have put it. Even without mean intention. But the old man also taught that no one got to decide whether or not they gave offence to someone. Seydon drew up an aged, ratty travel purse that hung off his left hip. Cadets running about the station perimeter midst their Phys-Ed period jogged by, glancing their way. He was like a mud stain on legs. Something the janitor forgot to scrub. Out of pace, out of time, and looking older than he was. Seydon passed a roll of vellum parchment into Alec Rekali's hands, then explained himself whilst she glanced over the drawn caricature and a scrawled noun.

“Her name's Rosa Gunn, nee Mazhar,” He said. “She's a Levantine. And she's my wife. We married six years ago. But I haven't seen her for just as long. She'd gone missing round Laekia and when I tried picking up her trail, I was stonewalled. I've still been looking. Then, out of the blue, I get that. So I'm off the Path until I get to the bottom of what this means. That's where you come in, Captain. The Relentless needs a better helmsman.”

They strolled up to the viewport, and Seydon gestured at a prow hovering out in the dark. She was a long-beaked crow of a vessel, with stubbed and angular lateral wings, dressed in onyx and jet plating extending down to a discrete pocket of linked fusion engine nozzles. “She'll take you anywhere.”

[member="Alec Rekali"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

She felt her eyes bug out on two occasions. Once for that gorgeous ship, and once, somewhat earlier and more importantly, when he showed her the message. The picture meant nothing to her -- twiggy woman, flat features, all brooding around the eyes -- but the word hit her hard. She parsed the Sith hieroglyphs, mouthing each Kittât letter to make sure she was getting it right. The ancient Sith alphabet lacked a V sound, but there existed a sort of pidgin or creole Sith -- like the word 'Sith' itself ('tsis' in the original), or the word 'Korriban.' She wasn't a scholar, but knowing Ancient Sith was a survival trait these days. She mulled the word over in her mind as she scrutinized the ship, weighing the talisman in her palm.

"Whoever sent this," she said slowly, "was leading you to a certain place for sure. The talisman is a Tashai bond-tracker, from Tash-Taral. Think a less-plundered, less-important Korriban that's just about impossible to reach; it's near Levantine space. Well, think Korriban crossed with Tatooine. Mos Eisley plus things that go bump in the night. A bond-tracker lets you sense things that have a Force-bond with your target, or so I hear. There might have been something about blood activation; I'm not a Force-user, and I can't remember how it works. But this is a lot more specific than just one planet. See, Tash-Taral has ruins from other Dark Side cults apart from the Sith -- Tund folks and some others. And that word...Vahl. My daddy's parents were both half-Vahla, so I'm only quarter-blood, but I was raised to the lore. It's a furnace we'll be walking into, and no mistake. My people ain't that tolerant of interference."

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Seydon took back the miniscule talisman, turning it over through his fingers. Roughly seven centimetres of some cold, flinty bone that managed to chill his nail-caps through the leather, marked with scrimshaw ink that welled over a grim-mouthed hawk. He had vague knowledge of several backwater Force-enabled traditions, but nothing like the encyclopedic know-of some assumed were a dunaan's province. Tash-Taral: bone littered death world home to sprawling, sub-cutaneous necropolises. Vahl: a reclusive species trying to stave off extinction, noted for many, terrible reputations. Seydon felt his faculties racing, a thousand miles an hour. It was possibility, but furtive, strange, enticing. He clenched the bone-pin in his fist and palmed it away into a cuirass pocket.

“Go pack your things. Whatever you need. Say some goodbyes, if you have to,” He said. “I'll have a word with the faculty.”

They parted on a curt nod. Seydon turned away and began navigating his way to several flight control lounges, searching out a few key instructors with notable say in student privileges. It was brief meetings sitting on plush upholstery, placating semi-bored and gently alarmed ex-naval personnel. There was always a wide panorama view-screen close on hand to watch the day-cycle drills: students throttling in modified spitfire interceptors, chasing target drones, wrestling with formation disciplines while their squad leaders barked halting orders.

Alec Rekali? They knew her. She came with a reputation and most respected her for it. There was friction between herself and some lecturers that left her bored and itchy for 'practical'. But she was a stellar force in the student body. They were loathe to let wriggle out of her semester curriculum. Seydon braced against the grind of iho smoke drifting up his nose; practically every 'senior personnel' broke with rules on station etiquette and chain-smoked tawdrily. He listened to the slides of phlegm, snot, and carcinogens in their throats. Eventually, they broke over to his arguments, and a few made generous promises regarding extra-curricular accrediting. Seydon took their word with an implacable smile, rose, and departed for Hanger 9. There would be the alchemist stations, the small equipment benches, the fusion forge and his growing library and beastiary. The training circles, the small gym, time aside for meditative practices. Anticipation was a threnody in his mind, dampened the palms inside his gloves. Something like full, grim purpose put power into his stride.

[member="Alec Rekali"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Seydon of Arda"]

Alec wouldn't have known a threnody if it bit her, and the meditation area struck her as a decent place for pizza and spice. That was no more than an absentminded thought, though. Interesting as the Relentless was, inside and out, the message stuck in her head and forestalled her excitement. She'd been to Tash-Taral once, with the Levantine flotilla that had drilled through the comet shield and established relations with the locals. She'd come away unnerved by the planet's localized zeitgeist. Tash-Taral was much like Tatooine, except for the Korriban-style Sith ruins protruding from the sand. On Tash-Taral, monsters were a fact of life, in day or night.

And some of those monsters might be her relatives. The Vahla bloodline and culture had produced explorers and fair traders, but also human-sacrificing cultists and sociopathic priestesses. To pass through Vahla scrutiny was to undergo tests of fire and scars, things her parents had never told her and her grandfather had largely denied. But it had been a long time since Ember Rekali was his granddaughter's sole source on things Vahla. Port Shardrock, on Yavin IV, had a large minority population of their people. In the starport around the Massassi temples, she'd learned what she was, or at least what a quarter of her might make her be. At least she wasn't Force-sensitive in any remotely significant way. That Dark Side inclination had no foothold for traction.

Thought occupied her; she set up shop in an unused bunk by autopilot. One ship's guest bunk was about the same as another. As Seydon's boot-heels on deckplate carried through the corridor, she blinked and realized she'd already settled in without realizing what she was doing. "I took this bunk," she said as he came in. "Hope that's fine. I'm...sort of in a fog. Nothing chemical, just a little on edge."

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He strode up, buckling off a length of hauberk coating. Seydon, midst the jangle of pressed metal ringlets, glanced cursorily over her appropriated bunking. A rucksack or three, coats, boots, mechanic's chests, what looked like a small travel case done up in Wookie-styled leather, and herself kitted with odd-and-end finery. Both of them looked dishevelled. In the autopilot modules, it stank like cooked air and an electric odour of thrumming power feeds coiled round coolant sheathes. As he entered through, they felt the boot decking judder, just slightly, and anti-grav quietly roll as it wrestled from Oswaft Station.

“It's fine,” He said.

Then, he dropped a length of duffel bag onto the deck, and strode away to the mess. There was a sound of running water, drawn up from holding ballasts idling in the ship's belly. Quiet made the freezing void-ache on the hall crackle through frame joists. A beat; the witcher returned through a portcullis, passing a blunt, tin cup raising steam from a hissing brew. As an afterthought, giving it and a small mess-plate over to Alec, he plumbed a lemon slice from a pocket and dashed a handful of droplets into the mix.

“Chamomile,” Seydon said. “Housewives solution for antsy nerves. ...What?” He felt a look come his way. “Pilot's nest is up this way. C'mon.”

[member="Alec Rekali"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Alec murmured her thanks, and sipped the tea pensively as she followed. Her excitement about the ship was beginning to fade as the enormity of the task set in. The Vahla were no joke. Most of the stories about sacrifice, fire rituals, formal scarification -- the bulk of that was true. And Vahla had a natural affinity for the Dark Side of the Force, an affinity that her family had always fought. She'd struggled with the anger for years, even though she was only one-quarter Vahla.

And most of the Vahla had followed Isolda to the One Sith, in a single wandering fleet. That left only a few stragglers from different families, outcasts or independents -- people like the Rekali clan. People who had no patience for the Sith nor trust in their messianic agendas. People who believed that the leaders of the 'united' Vahla might have farsight enough to have found the ancient lost homeworld...and hubris enough to have hidden the fact for their own purposes.

To reconnect with those people, though...that was an undertaking of dangerous significance. Vahla didn't necessarily hold the belief that the enemy of your enemy was your friend. Nor did they have much use for hospitality.

She shared these worries, and the anecdotes and history behind them, with [member="Seydon of Arda"] as they made their way toward Tash-Taral.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

And on Tash-Taral, something else stirred, deep in the guts of a five-thousand-year-old catacomb. The something was an ageing man, kneeling on stone, surrounded by braziers and a ring of bone charms. The wards held back a circle of hungry pelko bugs, attracted to the Force at work. The fire in the braziers pulsed with his heartbeat. He was stripped to the waist, heavy with desert sweat and the heat of the flames. The sweat formed patterns over the ritual scars that made runes across his body.

"Have you felt it?" he murmured to the pelko swarm, and to the cold purple eyes that watched his ritual from above. "Something is coming. The Light Side, and the Dark. And all of it...family. I think...it's time to see more clearly."

He stood, and the fires died. The tomb wicked away the heat in a heartbeat. Sith and Tundite crypts filled Tash-Taral, but this place had runes and memories of another kind entirely. With a moment's hesitation, he kicked away one of the bone charms. The pelko bugs swarmed over him in seconds, and pain drove him back to his knees. He'd spent his whole life building up an immunity to the venoms of Tash-Taral and its Sithspawn, but enough pelko venom entered his bloodstream to kill a normal man.

And by the principles of Calypho, he saw.

FIN