Dromund Kaas: Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own

[Velok the Younger]

DROMUND KAAS
HYTHE PARK
COMMANDER BOUDICA'S OFFICE

"It's possible I could arrange for their relocation, either through my business partners or some sort of Mandalorian intervention. Not that you'd especially want the Mandalorians poking around."

"Have you ever seen a mass relocation from a disaster area, Lady Rave?" Boudica was the definition of weatherbeaten, as close to an NCO-style Sith as one could imagine. Tough, phlegmatic, responsible for continued operation under a serious burden, professionally exasperated with ignorant superiors. Rave tried not to mind. "When we're talking mass space transport for six hundred thousand people, transit attrition rates approach one percent per day. That's not sustainable, to say nothing of what happens when they get wherever they're going. Hythe Park is short on everything from anesthetics to contraceptives to protocol droids, but it's better than shantytowns built in bulk freighter holds, or on some unwanted piece of land a few hundred million miles away."

"Then what do you need?"

"To know what the catch is, first off."

"Let's call it a cost. A fair one, too. I've seen enough leaders make sacrifices to know that you're not just doing this for power. You mean to build something. I can get you the tools in exchange for two things. The first is something to mark down for the Mandalorian ledgers, even if it's marked down as useless or broken or destroyed -- some kind of Force artifact, no matter how minor, will help me justify this excursion. The second is your personal assistance in investigating Jurgoran Prison under the old Dark Temple. The cell-pits, to be precise. I deal in terentatek, there's upwards of two dozen in there, and I need to plant a fairly bulky coma gas dispenser in the bottom levels. I do that, my droids can secure and remove the terentateks, this region becomes safer, I become ridiculously wealthy. Let me sweeten the pot a little." She removed her ring and held it out until Boudica took it. "Minor Sith amulet. Allows you to see in the dark." She gestured through the window at the permanently overcast sky. "I trust you can find uses for it."

 

[Velok the Younger]

Every Sith had secrets, on Kaas more than ever, so Rave was watching for the flicker of eyelid or tension of hand that betrayed knowledge -- watching with eyes that had seen near eighty years of life, if one counted the experience of Sira Ves. And she knew, and Boudica knew that she knew, and Rave smiled a little and moved on. "Perhaps," she said to ease the tension, "we'll find something to satisfy the Mandalorians in Jurgoran Prison."

"The cruel send their embarrassments there, even now." Boudica wet her lips. "If you mean to coma gas the place and remove the wardens, you'll be a pariah for years. That's not a mark that'll do me much good, nor my situation."

"Come quietly, then. If this works, there's no telling how well -- I only know one way in, from Velok's files." That admission was an indiscretion, an accident even, an artifact of splitting her attention too many ways, and she saw Boudica's eyes narrow in contemplation. "If this works, Force alone knows how many terentateks there are, how many can or will be sedated, how many can be removed. I daresay the prison will stay functional enough with a mere five Master-killers rather than, say, twenty."

"I may regret asking this -- in fact, Lady Rave, I already do -- but why do you need fifteen terentateks?"

"Livestock."

 

[Chloe Blake]

[member="Ember Rekali"]

Chloe would watch with wonder as Ember went through the process of creating the Watcher. She would take note of everything, as much as she could considering the ritual had not been cast, and sense the shift and manipulation of the currents of the Force as he poured the energy into the stone.

“So you use the surrounding energy of the location to make it?” she would ask for clarification, “To tie it into the overall sensation of watching and guarding the area as it’s purpose?”

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chloe Blake"]

"That's how I sustain the pattern, aye," said the old Master, eyes closed in concentration, "but it's more than that. Places hold memories, impressions of what's happened, of the people that lived here. Weave enough common elements together out of those old echos, and you make a sort of construct out of what people felt about this place, this entranceway. Forbidding. There's probably a way that wouldn't require the location to exist for a few hundred or thousand years before the Watcher's creation, but if there is I don't know it."

The process ended long after sunset, and he rose with creaking joints, to shamble back toward the turbolift. "Think I'm going to turn in."

 

[Velok the Younger]

It came as little surprise to Rave that Commander Boudica knew a way down into Jurgoran Prison. The channel angled down through frozen mangrove swamps, its grimy walls flat from the touch of laser cutters. Each channel wall formed a cross-section of the swamp -- brown ice to mud and stone, oval-sliced mangrove route, fish as imprints or as half the fish they used to be, depending on how long the cutter lingered and whether their flesh had thawed during the cut. The trench floor was slick underfoot until it descended into the rock layer and met up with a fusion-burned gap in a collapsed bunker. By that point the ice-walls stretched thirty feet up.

"No door," Rave said as they passed through into darkness.

Boudica shot her a glance that could have meant anything. "Nobody and nothing wants to go down here. Those that could escape through here run into the jailers half a mile that way." She pointed straight down. "If you're wrong and you take too many of them, even assuming you can find or make exit routes big enough-"

"If too many prisoners get out and it seems a problem, I'll send back Seydon, or one like him."

"That one would never-"

"Or one like him."

"There's no-one like him."

Rave caught up with Boudica at the broken edge of a vertical shaft ten metres wide. "Well, a girl can dream." She stepped off and fell.

 

[Velok the Younger]

She could manage that fall, but the coma gas dispenser was not so durable. A thumb toggled a repulsorpack cinched around her hips, and her fall arrested itself. Old bone crunched beneath her boots. Adjusting the dispenser on her shoulder, she glanced up the shaft. Boudica was descending like an acrobat might, if empowered by the Dark Side -- back-ejects from curved wall to curved wall, all the way down. As gravel rained down from the walls, Rave leaped up ten metres or so to the nearest gap, a man-sized aperture into a terentatek-sized hallway. The odor of their feces and spoor trickled through the stagnant air, blending with an undercurrent of human waste and death. Boudica's final leap put her behind Rave, and the Nightsister moved out into the larger hall. The commander's eyes flicked over the coma gas dispenser. "Your gadget survive?"

"Fully functional, so far as I can tell. Lead on."

"From here I don't know the way," said Boudica quietly

Rave shrugged. "Well, you've gotten me this far, so I've got nothing to complain about. There'll be about forty labor droids coming down this shaft soon -- either enlarge the gap for them, or stick with me. Your call."

She loped off into the dark, trusting her ring for vision; Boudica, it seemed, was willing to do the same. The commander caught up with her shortly. "You're too loud down here, Lady Rave."

"Terentatek don't listen for sound so much as other things, Commander, and I'm scattering our presence. They know something's here, but they don't know where. My hope is that means we'll avoid stumbling over a sleeping specimen on our way-" She cut herself off as another passage hove into view, a broken gap in a floor ten feet thick. Terentatek claws had marked the stone edges over and over again. "-down."

 

[Chloe Blake]

Chloe’s hands would automatically reach out to steady [member="Ember Rekali"], as he made his way onward towards the turbolift. “I think that ain’t too bad of a call there,” she’d say in agreement, a notable tone of concern in her voice.

“Takes a toll on the body, it seems.” she’d comment, the Warden using what strength she had to help Ember if he’d a need in walking.

“Want me to get you anything? Water?” she’d ask, the genuine concern in her blue eyes. “Maybe something to eat?” the offer of a warm meal would likely settle the man, that is if he wasn’t feeling too nauseous. It was a wonder to see Ember create a watcher from pulling the ambient energies of the ancient Jedi Academy, but it was clear that it took a large amount of power reserve and concentration. Perhaps next time, she’ll be able to bear a portion of the burden.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Chloe Blake"]
"Heh. Thanks anyways, thanks anyways. I'll just walk it off. It's a tough business, don't get me wrong, and more technical than I'd like, but it's useful is what it is, in the right situation and location. Force knows my wife and I used to make these all over this old city on Ossus, a city we'd turned into a training ground. All and sundry could stop in there. We had a couple of Disciples of Twilight, Iron Knights, even a Warden or two. This was years back." He paused at the top of the turbolift. "Eh, ignore me. Don't worry about the food, though I'll take you up on that tomorrow if I can. Too many memories here. Heavy diet, so to speak. G'night, Chloe."

 

[Velok the Younger]

"Lady Rave?"

"Yes, Commander?"

They hung from rappelling lines, descending into the terentatek nest. They communicated only in whispers, not daring to use telepathy around terentateks.

"Your ring's stopped working."

"It's a minor effect. This darkness -- something about this place, an item or a memory -- is dampening it."

"You can't see either?"

"Not without lighting up their Force senses. Poor hearing, terentateks, but they don't need it, not for the prey they prefer. I'm out of rope, so you must be too. Not sure I want to tempt fate by dropping anything." They were still close, bumping into each other in the dark, whispering like confidants. "Unless it's us -- or the dispenser. Are you still sealed?"

"Not sure, Lady Rave. Is the dispenser durable enough to drop?"

"Should be, and if it's not, the only vulnerable parts I can think of are the ones that would release the gas anyway. I think this is as far as we go. Reel for the top-"

Boudica's lightsabre slashed out above Rave in harmony with the hum of the climbing tackle retracting. Off-balance from the coma gas dispenser in one hand, Rave only half-drew Entropy in response, and by then she was falling. She spat a Dathomiri curse and channeled the Force just slightly, her bladetip drawing an elongated rune in midair as she hauled it clear of its sheath. A bastardized spell of sorts, simple by many standards -- nothing to do with defense against the terentateks, awareness of their position or condition, cognizance of the type and range of the onrushing floor, nothing like that. Just an adiabatic shield.

Entropy slashed into the coma gas tank, and the dispenser kicked like a ronto, slamming her sideways as she fell. She hit a wall, dropped the dispenser, and clung with an instinctive spell as the rune's adiabatic shield took form around her. Huge eyes glittered below and around. Directly beneath her, the coma gas dispenser hissed its life away.

Close, Boudica, very close. And well played. Whatever you have must be worth the risk.

 

[Velok the Younger]

As an Elder, a Master, she could manage two spells at once -- the adiabatic shield and the cantrip that let her cling to the wall. The latter, however, had been designed for climbing, not for holding still, and the somatic element of the spell included the motions of climbing. And motion made the adiabatic shield that much more difficult to maintain. When she dropped Entropy, then, the fall was high enough and the coma gas thick enough that she couldn't spare the attention a third Force emanation would require. It rattled down through the dark, into the catacombs.

Later, when the coma gas took effect and AEL labor droids carried a couple of dozen terentateks up through the tunnels to the vertical access shaft, when Rave came down off her perch silhouetted by harsh artificial light, she spent hours looking for it -- the full allotment of time she'd bought from the remaining terentateks. She could sense its direction and distance by blood trail, but couldn't barter passage from the cracks which led that way. And that oppressive, thick darkness was putting out the lights, one by one.

She had a thought or two, on her way up. Uses for the sword and its location. But she put those thoughts aside, watching cargo ships of comatose terentateks fly up through the permanent cloud layer. She put the whole matter aside, for now.

She thought of confrontation, mercy, murder. In the end, once she'd returned to the AEL excavation camp, she decided to address the problem by letter.

Commander Boudica-

Well played. What you have must be worth a great deal to you, to justify that kind of risk. As my life is worth a great deal to me, here is what I propose. Keep my ring, keep your skin, keep Hythe Park safe from what I've successfully gleaned from the prison. Send me what you have -- you know of what I speak. That exchange will cancel all balances owing.

Within four hours, a Sith abattar had joined the stream of artifacts processed in the name of the Mandalorians. It then joined the subset of worthless things -- worthless to the planet's owners, anyway -- whose fate was in Rave's hands. There was no acquisition strategy so straightforward as the threat of applying two dozen terentateks to a civilian population. The Mandalorians needed results, and Rave aimed to provide.

 

[Chloe Blake]

[member="Chloe Blake"]
"Heh. Thanks anyways, thanks anyways. I'll just walk it off. It's a tough business, don't get me wrong, and more technical than I'd like, but it's useful is what it is, in the right situation and location. Force knows my wife and I used to make these all over this old city on Ossus, a city we'd turned into a training ground. All and sundry could stop in there. We had a couple of Disciples of Twilight, Iron Knights, even a Warden or two. This was years back." He paused at the top of the turbolift. "Eh, ignore me. Don't worry about the food, though I'll take you up on that tomorrow if I can. Too many memories here. Heavy diet, so to speak. G'night, Chloe."

"Ossus huh? " that sounded like another interesting story, but she didn't press it.


"Then I'll make it along with some fresh caf in the morning, " Chloe gave [member="Ember Rekali"] a faint encouraging smile, but she could see that there were demons the Old Timer was fighting that she was unable to help him with right now. Time and place.


"Good Night, Ember," would come her soft voice behind him, watching him quietly as she stepped out of the turbolift. A soft prayer of peace would be said for the man by the Warden thereafter, hoping that the Corellian Goddess would be able to let him sleep deep and undisturbed tonight.

 

[Velok the Younger]

With apologies to [member="Cerita Sarova"] - I'm gonna need this. Another time.

Tiny E4-GL3 probe droids, with small worker units floating behind them, descended into Jurgoran Prison en masse. They bypassed the cells; they died by the dozens against the confused and terminally angry terentateks. A relative handful made it down to the crevices at the bottom of the terentatek nest. Only three droids remained by the time they emerged from chambers too tiny for a human, and hallways too deadly. Their burden was a single-edged sword forged of Kwa dragonscale and a Master's blood, a weapon wrought from songsteel and terentatek essence. Its blade and pommel were red-streaked silver, the metal alchemized beyond the imagination of most of Rave's competitors. The droids carried it to safety without Rave's aid.

Because this was not about pride, she told herself.

Rave's one concession to ego was that she waited a good month to send the droid swarm, and faced all manner of terror on and off Dromund Kaas before she reclaimed her weapon. When Entropy fit her hand again like a tailored glove, when the blade slipped into the sheath at her hip, she felt more herself than she had in a good while, as if she'd accidentally bound a portion of her soul to the sword.