literature

Bittersweet Symphony Part 2

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Ganhuff Riscan’s skin prickled as a thousand millipedes crawled over his body, their millions of feet scrabbling, scuttling, and scratching across arms, legs, and torso. From his fingertips to his toenails, he felt them creeping along, imagining the nerve-jangling violin plucking that accompanied up-close footage of insects in most holo-documentaries. He held his body perfectly still, eyes darting madly to try to get a look at them. He sensed one moving up his neck, standing his hair on end, and crawl circuitously over his ear and into the canal. Ganhuff thrashed, screaming at the top of his lungs, and found to his horror that he couldn’t move.
        Then, for an all-too-brief moment, reality pierced through the fog of tactile hallucinations. He lay in his bunk, restrained at hands and feet, suffering through spice withdrawal. Qate and Maalku had done it. At first, in the early stages of his “treatment”, they’d simply confiscated his supply of drugs, refusing his requests for them. However, as his condition deteriorated, he’d become desperate and they’d had to resort to more aggressive measures to keep him at bay; Qate had even punched him once, blackening his eye. The Zabrak certainly lacked the bedside manner of a traditional therapist.
        Raising his head off the pillow just a little, he called out to the corridor, trying to keep his voice from cracking. “Qate… I-I need a hit…” No answer and he feared she’d left him. Somehow the thought of being abandoned tore at his heart more than the absence of glitterstim. “Just a low dosage,” he begged, letting his head fall back. A galaxy exploded somewhere in his brain, sending waves of nausea surging through him and he wondered why they’d left him on his back. She probably wants me to drown in my own vomit, he thought bitterly. “Something to dull the pain some.”
        Not even the droid Wally answered his pleas. His vision blurred as tears filled his eyes and he cursed his wretched, deplorable solitude. Then he was reminded of a quotation he’d heard in university, a passage from classic literature; whom the gods destroy, they first drive mad.

        In the corridor outside Ganhuff’s quarters, Qate fought back the urge to answer his cries. It was a maternal response, one she’d gone through before with her daughter, Meshurok. They’d been in the middle of the woods, flushing out a nest of squalls, when he’d just collapsed and started convulsing. She and Maalku had carried him back to the Cuun’yaim, docked in the city of Hanna, and tied him down to his bunk so he couldn’t hurt himself.
        Behind her, Maalku heaved a sigh that sounded like a buzzing burst of static from his breath mask’s vocoder. “There must be something we can do for him,” she said, keeping her voice low as she rubbed her forehead.
        “Maalku is not a doctor,” the Gand replied mournfully, his use of third person indicating his shame at being unable to help his friend. As Qate understood it, he’d first come aboard the ship to collect the bounty on Ganhuff’s head and the two had formed a strange camaraderie since then.
        “Well he is,” she insisted, turning to Maalku and jabbing a thumb behind her at the door. “He’s got a medical books, right? There must be something in there on treating withdrawal.”
        Maalku nodded his grey-green head. “Yes, but the treatments are sophisticated beyond our means. They require special drugs to sedate him, flush his system, and maintain his sanity.”
        Qate nodded resolutely, stepping past him toward the common room. “Then we’ll just have to get some.”
        “The black market?” Maalku buzzed, following the Zabrak out of the aft dormitory.
        “Not a chance,” she answered with a derisive snort. “They’d be so cut up and laced with other narcotics, we may as well stuff a kilo of spice right down his throat. No, we’ll go right to the source.”
        She paused beside Wally, the squat little utility droid, where he sat running a new power cable to the medical suite’s antisepsis field generator and tapped him on his disk-shaped head. It spun around and he warbled a question at her. Somehow, he always managed to appear hostile to anyone other than Lynli.
        “Wally, I need you to tap into the city’s central computer,” Qate answered, ignoring the droid’s hostility. “I need pharmaceutical inventories, security system layouts, and floor plans for the primary hospital.”
        “You believe we can break in and steal what we need to ease his pain without getting caught?” Maalku asked from behind her.
        “Not every infiltration I do involves a loud bang,” she replied sarcastically.
        Wally blatted something uncomplimentary at her and turned back to his wiring. What a time not to have a restraining bolt, Qate thought, narrowing her eyes at him. “Hey!” she said sharply, kicking the droid in the rear chassis. “I’m talking to you, you nearsighted scrap pile.” Then, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “We’ll pay you.”
        Wally’s head spun around again and he blew an electronic raspberry at her before returning to his work, leaving Qate grinding her teeth in frustration.

        Buruk pulled back one of the panels lining the interior of the ship’s cargo hold and moved it aside so Lynli could start shoving crates of captured squalls into the hidden compartment. One of the things that made Firefly-class transport ships so popular among smugglers was their troublesome little nooks—troublesome, that was, for the authorities.
        “These things are so cute,” Lynli said cheerfully as she back out of the alcove and Aerek pushed another inside. “I love their big floppy ears. We should keep one for ourselves. What do you want to name him, Aerek?”
        “How about Stew?” the boy called from inside the open compartment. Buruk barked a laugh.
        “That’s not funny,” the Twi’lek frowned.
        But Buruk kept chuckling as he opened more of the hold’s hidden smuggling areas to be loaded; squalls were illegal to traffic on or off Chandrila, so leaving them out in the open in the ship’s cargo hold was out of the question.
        As they were packing the adorably delicious lagomorphs away, Maalku stepped into the cargo hold from the aft common area. “Well?” Buruk asked, his question apparent.
        “He’s suffering,” she answered simply. “Doesn’t know where he is half the time; alternates between screaming and sobbing fits.” Qate fixed him with a hard stare. “It could kill him.”
        “Anything you can do?” Lynli asked.
        “Plenty, but your shabla little droid won’t cooperate.”
        Lynli raised an eyebrow, curious how Qate intended to use Wally to help the doctor. “I’ll tell him to do as you say.” She followed the Zabrak back to the common area, leaving Buruk, Aerek, and Morran to finish packing away the contraband critters.
        Within an hour, the covers were back in place and the hold was empty; not even the squall’s constant squeaking could be heard through the bulkheads, much to Buruk’s relief. They may have been cute, but so many of them making so much noise would grate against anyone’s nerves.
        The Mandalorian turned to his partner, who had returned just a few minutes after leaving the hold. “Well,” he sighed, looking Lynli in her gold eyes. “It’s that time.” He referred to the Jedi somewhere on Chandrila, one of the Jedi that had perpetrated the massacre at Galidraan.
        The Jedi he’d come here to kill.
        “I guess so,” Lynli replied hesitantly, her lekku twitching. He could see in her face she wanted to ask him to stay. Instead, she said, “I’ll keep an eye on Aerek while you’re gone.”
        “Thanks.” It seemed so trite a statement but what else was there to say? Nothing, that’s what, he told himself as he climbed the stairway to his quarters to prep his gear.

        Sarule stood in the center of a stone bridge that stretched across the yawning underground crevasse that formed the crystal cave on Chandrila. Centuries ago, the Jedi had excavated the tunnel network that twisted and turned like the path of some mad worm through the rock and many such bridges, at varying heights relative to her, could be seen to either side of the one on which she now stood facing a quartet of training remotes.
        The little silver spheres bobbed and wove through the air around her, spinning, pausing, zipping around at random, as the blindfolded Padawan tracked their movement using nothing but the Force. One spat a burst of stinger bolts at her back and, using an economy of movement, she placed the orange blade of her lightsaber between herself and the attack, intercepting each shot. Pivoting to her right, she swung her blade back around, in time to catch a series of shots from one of the other remotes.
        Master Zabth watched as they continued to orbit her like the electrons of an atom. While his expression could have been carved from the very stone that surrounded them, he had to admit to himself that Sarule held great promise as a swordsman. Whatever the intention of the evil he’d sensed, he would do everything in his power to ensure she would have a future to fulfill that potential.
        Turning his attention to the sheet of flimsi before him, Zabth took his stylus in hand and, opening himself to the Force, began to trace the intricate letters of Naboo’s formal Futhark script. He enjoyed practicing calligraphy; it taught him to focus his mind and limbered his wrist, thus enhancing technique with the lightsaber. While he didn’t measure up to Shoaneb Zaruul’s elegance or Nurt Ulasac’s raw power, the Zabrak maintained that he struck a proper balance between form and function, as a warrior should.
        As Zabth focused, he turned his attention outward, to the world around him, and tried to locate the evil he sensed coming for him.

        As Qate chimney-walked her way up the smooth walls of one of Hanna General Hospital’s many waste disposal chutes, she resolved to send a nasty letter to the company that manufactured her breath mask; it did a poor job of filtering out the smell of rotting food, soiled bedding, and specimen cups that wafted up from the facility’s backup incinerator. Given time, they could have devised a way in that would have been far less offensive to the senses, but with Buruk intending to commit a murder, time was a luxury they didn’t have.
        Farther down the chute, Maalku grunted, “We lead a charmed life.” Even through the vocoder, Qate could hear the sarcasm in his voice. Whether his breath mask did a better job of filtering out the smell or not, it seemed he wasn’t fond of the idea of climbing up through the residual waste that surely clung to the chute’s walls.
        The Zabrak had to agree with him; she’d have much preferred to have been wearing her armor, but there was no room for the bulky suit in the confined space. Besides, she added, shifting her shebs up the shaft, beskar’gam ain’t exactly inconspicuous at the best of times. A Mandalorian warrior loaded for wampa and crawling out of a waste chute would raise more than a few eyebrows, that was certain.
        They’d chosen the backup system on the likelihood that no one would throw a fit if it inexplicably went offline for a few scant minutes, which it did thanks to Wally’s slicing of the hospital’s central computer. Now the droid was busy reassigning patients’ rooms to route as many people away from their point of entry as possible and creating false work orders to repair the suddenly malfunctioning security cameras there. Except for the stench, the plan was off to a good start.
        At last, Qate reached the top of the shaft. Reaching into a pocket, she withdrew a small plasma cutter and set to work, carefully slicing open a section of the chute cover large enough to accommodate Maalku’s stocky frame. Then she lifted herself up and out into the hallway, pulling off her mask and taking a deep breath of fresh, clean air.
        Turning back to help the Gand, she said, “Let’s go.”

        This place is huge, Buruk thought, stepping out of the narrow tunnel and surveying the underground crevasse. It must go on for kilometers… It stretched beyond sight in all directions save up; a ceiling of rock hung over him, encrusted with glowing crystals that lit the massive chamber with a faint bluish aura. He could see stone bridges spanning the gorge and statues of robed Jedi holding more of the glowing crystals like streetlamps. He strode across the bridge before him, doing his best to keep his footsteps from echoing, to another tunnel with unfamiliar glyphs carved above its arched mouth. Somewhere in this maze, the Jedi waited.
        Silently, Buruk began burying his thoughts beneath a series of random additions and subtractions, counting sabacc cards in his head to keep the mind invaders from detecting him. The three of staves and the ten of cups gives positives thirteen. The Queen of Air and Darkness and the commander of coins gives positive ten. Demise and the ace of flasks gives positive two. It was a good trick, one that had put his victims at a disadvantage on several occasions.
        He made his way through several tunnels and caverns branching off from each other that all eventually wound their way back to the underground canyon, their path crossing to the other side by way of one of the stone bridges. Some of the larger chambers he came across contained deactivated droids standing with shoulders slumped against the walls. Several smaller chambers were filled with workbenches and tools for cutting gemstones, others with shelves of holobooks on subjects ranging from crystal shaping and lightsaber construction, to the seven classic lightsaber combat forms. All very interesting, he was sure, but not what he’d come for.
        A distinctive snap-hiss to his right caught Buruk’s attention. Snapping his head around, he spotted the glowing green blade but, to his surprise, its wielder wasn’t the Zabrak he’d expected to find waiting in the shadows. One of the droids stepped forward from its place against the wall, holding the weapon in a traditional sword-fighting stance.
        Buruk snapped up his blaster rifle and fired. With reflexes only droids and Jedi possessed, the automaton swatted his shots away with the glowing blade and took several quick steps forward, closing the distance between them, while three of his fellows still at the wall stood erect and ignited lightsabers of their own, each a different color of the visible spectrum.
        Shab, the Mandalorian thought, snapping off several more shots, mixing up his aim points, and backpedaling away from the training droids. Beskar armor or not, letting them surround him would just be stupid. Far worse was the implication of their activation; it meant that the Jedi knew Buruk was coming and was prepared to fight. Sure would be nice if I had some shabla ion grenades, he thought bitterly, cursing his own failure to plan for such a contingency.
        The training droids fanned out, their lightsabers humming like piranha beetles and just as deadly as they batted away his shots. At least they didn’t have to Force on their side to send them right back at him. Buruk suddenly dropped the barrel of his blaster, shooting out the lead droid’s foot. It toppled forward and he finished it off with a shot to the head while it was down.
        The remaining three continued to advance on him, dancing about gracefully with their weapons in a manner that belied that fact that they were machines. Slowly, they pushed him back onto one of the bridges that stretched across the yawning chasm. His blasterfire echoed in the huge enclosed space; if the Jedi hadn’t known he was here already, he did now.
        The bridge actually worked to Buruk’s advantage, forcing the droids to line up single file and preventing them from surrounding him. Of course, he should have just shot himself and saved them the trouble for such thinking. No sooner had the smug smile touched his lips beneath his helmet, than it died as the lead droid leapt into the air, somersaulted over his head, and landed behind him on mechanical legs equipped with sophisticated jump servos. Of course they’d want their training droids to mimic their own abilities, Buruk berated himself.
        With the enemy on either side of him now, the Mandalorian saw no other option but retreat. Dropping a concussion grenade, he touched his fingers to the brow of his helmet in mock salute and stepped off the bridge. One of the droids tried to leap after him, its metal fingers groping the plume of exhaust left in his jetpack’s wake, and tumbled out of sight toward the bottom while the other two were caught in the explosion which ripped a good-sized chunk out of the stone bridge, raining their falling companion with debris.

        Passing a recovery room, Qate reached out and snatched a tackily arranged bouquet of flowers with a holocard that read “Get well soon.” The cliché gift had the double advantage of making her look like she was there to visit someone and giving her something to hold in front of her chest, hiding the fact that she didn’t have a visitor’s badge.  No one had stopped her or Maalku to question them on it yet, but like a blaster, it was better to have the camouflage and not need it than need it and not have it.
        A turbolift had carried them up to the twelfth floor where Wally’s schematics said they’d find pharmaceutical storage. They made their way through the bland, cream-colored halls, passing the occasional janitor or lost geriatric on a walker that paid them no mind.
        “Got any insights?” she muttered to the Gand.
        “None, Shepherd,” he replied evenly. “I have nothing to share.”
        Well, that was a double-edged sword if ever Qate heard one. Sensing no danger and remaining ignorant of danger were two entirely different things and the distinction could very well bite them in the shebs.
        And it did.
        As they rounded a corner, Qate spotted the storage room they were looking for and checked her chrono. They were right on schedule with Wally, who would deactivate the lock in another thirty seconds. Stepping up to the door, a barely audible click came from the mechanism. Qate keyed the door open and stepped inside.
        And that’s when the alarm went off.

        The droids had thrown the intruder off balance. Zabth and Sarule watched the battle unfold from a safe distance. The Jedi Master found to his dismay that he recognized the man’s armor as that of the Mandalorians. He’d thought those warriors extinct, wiped out to the last man on Galidraan; after all, he’d participated in the slaughter, cutting down no less than twenty-three of them. Perhaps this wasn’t a Mandalorian but merely a man who hoped to capitalize on their fierce reputation by wearing their armor; such a practice wasn’t unheard of, after all, and it wasn’t as though the Mandalorians had a monopoly on fighting prowess.
        Beside him, he could feel his Padawan’s tension. “Calm yourself,” he said evenly. “You must be at peace with the Force if you are to call upon it in battle.”
        “I’ve heard stories,” she said, “about the Mandalorians.” So, she’d recognized the armor too. “About their service to the dark side and hatred of the Jedi.”
        “You’ve heard wrong,” he told her. “They did not hate the Jedi or serve the dark side of the Force; circumstance and coincidence is all that brought them into conflict with us time and again.”
        “The histories state otherwise,” Sarule insisted and he could sense her anticipation.
        “Histories are written by those who perform the slaughter,” Zabth replied with a frown. “And slaughter begets slaughter until the accounts of war and conflicts far outweigh those of art, literature, and philosophy.” He sighed as the Mandalorian approached, propelled through the air on his jetpack. “Would that I had been a historian,” he said, igniting his lightsaber, casting them in a pale green light with the distinctive snap-hiss.
        As Sarule followed suit, their attacker touched down on the platform before them, landing in a crouch and coming up with his left arm held straight out in front of him. He fired the gauntlet-mounted wrist-rocket at the girl and for a moment, Zabth felt fear well up in him. As he shifted his focus to turn the missile aside with the Force, the Mandalorian sprayed a sheet of blasterfire in his direction.

TO BE CONTINUED…
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Cindrollic's avatar
:) You're Best Part Yet.