Children of Mandalore: Prelude to Terror

[Chapter Two]

“How large was the ship?” High Commander Falas Draisa inquired of the young warrior standing before him. Bearing little in the way of scarring or ritual marks of any kind the warrior was of little interest to the Yuuzhan Vong high commander, but he had witnessed the event unfold before the Grand Temple of Yun-Yammka.

“Not large, more of an escape vessel than anything Commander. I watched as it was obliterated over the Temple. Justice from Yun-Yammka for invading his sacred ground.”

“What of survivors?”

“I don’t believe any infidels would have survived such a crash and if they had they wouldn’t live long, critical injuries must have been inflicted. I watched as one of our fighters rammed into the vessel to prevent it from crashing through the Temple. The violence of the impact was like that I’ve never seen before.”

“You watched as an infidel vessel crashed outside the Temple of Yun-Yammka, and you didn’t go investigate the scene to be sure that no infidels desecrated the holy temple of our War God?!” Falas said slowly, his voice quite laced with venom and the young warrior stood silent searching for an appropriate response. “You’re dismissed.” Falas said feeling that the young warrior would not have much more of anything useful to tell him. He gave a subtle wave of his hand to the large warrior behind the witness, without question the large and heavily scarred warrior wrapped his thick arm around the neck of the smaller warrior and gave a sharp twist resulting in a sickening crack and a gurgling sound as the young warrior fell to the ground. “Justice from The Slayer for not ensuring his holy grounds continued to be unsullied by the filth of the Infidels.”

“High Commander, I would volunteer to search the crash site for survivors and ensure what the weakling has not.” The large warrior said.

“No Kurru I want you to speak with the Jeedai again and make sure she has no means of contacting the other Infidels that we haven’t yet discovered.” Falas said scratching at his split chin “Have your finest warriors search out the crash site and have that thing disposed off.” He said motioning to the dead body on his palace floor.

“As you command.” The warrior said with a salute motioning to two of his subordinates to remove the body and relaying the commands he’d been given into a shoulder villip.

Falas turned out towards the large viewing membrane that looked over the treacherous terrain outside his command post, he wasn’t overly worried about their being survivors, from all accounts he had heard the one thing they’d all had in common had been the fact that the crash had been a particularly vicious one and most infidels were fragile creatures at best. If there had been anyone on the craft they were more than likely dead, his concern was the ship that had engaged his picket ships in orbit. What was its purpose for entering this system and why had it launched the smaller vessel and then promptly jumped back out of the system.

The only answer he could come up with was that it had something to do with the Jeedai and if she was aware of some kind of rescue attempt Kurru Ivat would promptly discover that information and he would also discover how she had relayed her whereabouts to the other Jeedai.

“Kurru I do not want our Jeedai guest killed but she must be broken this time, you have permission to do whatever you must short of killing her to get the information we need.” He said to his subordinate without turning from the viewing membrane.

“As you command.” Ivat replied quickly

“Be patient,” Falas droned on “The Jeedai will be sacrificed to Yun-Yammka, once I am certain she has nothing of value to further tell us.” The High Commander could practically feel the smile that spread across the torn face of his subordinate.

　
　
***********

　
Pain.

That’s what had made up the existence of Raven Varos for the last week, or was it two weeks, three? She had lost count of how many days she had been pinned to the yorik coral wall deep within the winding tunnels of the Yuuzhan Vong stronghold. She hadn’t lost track of how many times she had been submitted to the Breaking. The count had reached five and it was sure to reach further than that, more than likely to the point where she was a broken shell of herself both mentally and physically ultimately leading to her execution.

At first it had been brutal physical attacks that had left her injured and weakened, the left side of her face was swollen to the point that vision in her left eye was obscured. She was positive at least five of her ribs were broken or cracked because when she inhaled it was as if one of her captures had stuck her with a knife and constantly twisted the blade. Those breakings had all been a tactic to break her mental stability.

Now every time the large Yuuzhan Vong came into the room it took all of her willpower to not scream in terror and beg for mercy but she was determined not let her captors have that satisfaction, but she was starting to doubt how long she would be able to hold out. He would ask her questions and when she didn’t answer she received a strike from an amphistaff, the snake like weapon had dug its fangs into her back and delivered its toxic venom over and over and each time a second Yuuzhan Vong warrior would apply a viscous substance to the wounds on her back. She had assumed that it was to ward off the effects of the amphistaff venom because she hadn’t died yet from the mass amounts of venom being introduced to her system. She knew that had to be some kind of counter agent to the venom and she knew it wasn’t being applied to her as a gesture of mercy from her captors, but just another way to ensure that she didn’t die from the bites and to further break her mental will.

After every session she was pinned back against the wall and left in almost impenetrable darkness, after which she used what time she had to enter a healing trance and begin to repair some of the damage done by her captors. It didn’t help dull the pain she felt but at least it made her that much stronger and somewhat ready to deal with the next round of punishment, physically anyway.

Her one desperate seed of hope was the ERS emitter buried under the skin behind her ear, there was no external lights on the device that showed through her skin or any kind of mark that would give the Yuuzhan Vong reason to check for that kind of thing. She had hoped it had been activated when the Yuuzhan Vong had begun their initial round of physical violence towards her. The device was activated by touch and her captors had grabbed her by the neck and slammed her head against the yorik coral wall more than once. She was certain their fingers had touched the area the device had been implanted but she still had no way of knowing whether it had been activated or not. She wouldn’t until a taskforce arrived to rescue her and she was sure she would know when that happened because the Yuuzhan Vong would be rushing about the structure like a swarm of Jabiim hunting wasps defending their disturbed nest.

So far no such activity had occurred and none of her captors had come to question her about anything that would give her a reason to think that anything like that may have happened. On a whim she reached out in the Force and as she suspected she felt only the hollow void left by the Yuuzhan Vong. She felt the presence of the wildlife of Katna-II, nothing more than a giant mudball in space. That’s why she figured the Yuuzhan Vong hadn’t changed the planet as drastically as they had others, it was already dark and dismal and void of any form of the technology that they found so offensive to their religion. From the little she had been able to record before being captured, the Yuuzhan Vong had done nothing more than erect several yorik coral structures at various sites on the surface. The largest being a temple meant for their war god Yun-Yammka, which also served as their base of operations.

She opened her eyes and licked her lips, which were swollen to twice their size and as cracked and dry as the ones on the hideous faces of some of her captors. Her throat was dry and itchy and it was sore from countless hours of screaming, she had little doubt that her voice might never be the same as it had been before her capture and she found herself somewhat scared of the prospect of sounding like a Hutt for the rest of her days, if they weren’t already on a countdown nearing zero. She reached out in the Force one more time and felt the empty void and the small presence of what animals the Yuuzhan Vong hadn’t exterminated yet and then she felt it. A surge of rage and anger unlike anything she had ever felt before and that’s when she knew she wasn’t the only living being on this planet.

Suddenly there were multiple presences flooding her way, at least a dozen or so. Each one of them different than the first, some scared, some angry, some concentrated on a single task set before them. She began to believe that she was going to be rescued soon but told herself not to get too excited there was every possibility that those presences were nothing more than people who had been captured by the Yuuzhan Vong and delivered here to receive the same kind of treatment as her. Still though she couldn’t keep a smile off of her face, until the entry membrane to her room opened and Kurru Ivat entered, his well used amphistaff coiled in a whip form in his four fingered hand.

Again she felt the urge to scream and found herself trying to draw her body back into the unyielding yorik coral wall behind her. The Yuuzhan Vong warrior let a sneer cross his face as he drew near.

“Jeedai I have more questions for you.” He growled at her as a few warriors he’d brought with him removed the blorash jelly from around her wrists, waist and ankles and repositioned her in a kneeling stance before Ivat “And you will answer them.”

“I….wouldn’t…..count….on it.” She wheezed through her damaged throat.

The comment earned her a backhand across the face “I have been given permission from the High Commander to do as I wish in order to get the answers we seek.”

A tremendous amount of fear trickled down her spine but she returned her gaze to the warrior and fixed him with a defiant stare, ignoring the tears streaming down her face.

“You think yourself brave Jeedai?” Ivat asked uncoiling his amphistaff “We shall see how brave you are.” He walked around her just as he had done in all the previous interrogations cracking his amphistaff in the air as a successful intimidation tactic. “Tell me why a small infidel vessel would enter this system, drop an escape pod and then promptly leave the system.” He inquired.

“They had a bad travel agent.” Raven replied.

Ivat snarled and struck out with the amphistaff and Raven tried not to scream too loud as the dagger like fangs of the living weapon dug into her back for the uncountable time. The venom rushed into her body as if she had acid in her veins burning through every blood cell she had. Ivat did not remove the creature from her back as he done so before, instead he let it stay there pumping more and more of the venom into her in an agonizing wave after wave of searing pain. She began to scream louder feeling as if her throat was going to tear itself apart. The amphistaff retracted and a smaller warrior applied the venom absorbing salve as usual. The substance did not remove the pain the venom had caused but at the same time she could feel the venom being removed from her system. The pain from the amphistaff overrode the burning sensation caused by the salve itself.

“Why do you make this hard on yourself Jeedai?” Ivat asked again “Answer my question and your sacrifice will be all the sooner. Why would an infidel ship enter this system?!” he demanded. She continued sobbing choking on what little saliva had made its way into her throat, which felt like it would be ripped to shreds by the gentlest of breaths. “Tell me Jeedai! Do you have a communication device? Did you signal other infidels to come to your aid?”

That’s when she knew for certain that the dozen or so presences she had felt were not those of prisoners but those of her saviors. The glimmer of hope she had been clinging to suddenly became a very real beacon shining bright on the horizon. She lifted her head and blew a lock of her black hair out of her bruised face.

“I have no communication device, I don’t know what the ship was doing here.” She said her voice cracking and stinging her throat with every word. “But I hope that whatever they were doing is bad news for you scarhead.”

Ivat snarled something to one of the warriors in the room and the warrior promptly exited and came back holding what looked like a human liver in his hand. Raven watched as the warrior handed Ivat the creature that was sure to be bad news for her. Ivat grabbed the liver in his left hand and gave it a hard squeeze, a small dot of a glowing substance landed on the tip of his index finger and a wisp of smoke appeared the moment the substance hit his skin. He closed his eyes and savored the pain the acid sent racing down his arm and fixed Raven with a very, very large smile.

“I don’t believe you.” He said walking towards her and kneeling down so he was eye level with her. He pressed his acid coated finger to the bare skin under her right eye and she immediately began to try to pull away as the acid began to burn into her skin. Ivat grabbed her by the back of her hair and pressed her face against his finger and the scream she emitted was as animalistic as anything the Yuuzhan Vong warrior had heard out in the swamps of the planet. He pulled his finger away and felt satisfied with the red circle that had appeared where he had touched her, the skin around it blackened.

“Do you wish to continue lying to me Jeedai or would you like to have another taste of the voka’s acid?” She was sobbing again, her face feeling as if it had just been struck by the raw power of lightning.

“Please….no more.” She found herself begging and every Yuuzhan Vong in the room adopted a look of satisfaction at having finally broken the Jeedai. “Please.”

“Answer my question!” Ivat snarled his nose less face mere inches from his. “I have touched you with my bare hands and have become unclean all in the service of the War God and I grow tired of dealing with you and your frail body. You are unworthy of being in my presence and I promise you that the Priests will make your sacrifice a drawn out and painful ordeal if I don’t get my answer!”

Raven drew her head up and tried to work some saliva into her mouth in order to form the correct words. She looked him in the eyes fixing him with a defiant stare and spat into the disfigured mass in front of her. Ivat drew back, enraged by her action he pulled a silver cylinder from his belt and Raven instantly recognized it.

Her lightsaber.

“Having already dirtied myself in the service of Yun-Yammka and you appearing to have become accustomed to several of my methods I think a new approach is in order.” He growled at her as he eyed the cylinder in his hand studying it. If she could have had some use of her hands she would have tried to reach out for the weapon in the Force and used it to free herself, but the blorash jelly had completely coated her hands. She gasped when she heard the all too familiar snap-hiss of her weapon being activated and she cringed when she saw the room was now bathed in the purple light being emitted by her violet blade.

“Blasphemy.” One of the other warriors yelled “That is an infidel weapon and you have the nerve to activate it within the Temple of our War God?!”

“It is in the service of Yun-Yammka that I activate this weapon, in an effort to protect this Temple from the filth of the infidels do I further dirty myself. If the Gods wish to punish me for this than I will take whatever punishment they assign to me.” Ivat roared back swinging out with the weapon and lopping the accuser’s head off at the shoulders.

He turned his gaze back to Raven and she tried to swallow “My life may be forfeit now but I will not have this temple dirtied by you or any of your allies.” He pointed the blade at her throat and she feared that maybe her rescue had come too late. That was when the entry membrane opened into life and a large Yuuzhan Vong enshrouded by a blood-red cape embedded into his shoulders entered the room.

“High Commander!” Ivat said turning off the lightsaber and saluting his superior

“Your scouts have reported in Kurru.” Falas said fixing his eyes on Raven “They have encountered infidel resistance and have begun to take casualties.”

Ivat snarled and made a move to backhand Raven again but Falas stopped him “You have sullied yourself enough for one day Kurru. I want you to take as many warriors as you can muster and engage the infidels, stop them from entering the Temple.”

“As you command.”

Kurru and his one remaining warrior departed the room at a fast pace and High Commander Falas Draisa turned his gaze from the captured Jeedai to his now filth ridden subordinate. “You are strong Jeedai, that I will give you, but I would not hope to be saved by your allies.” He said turning back to her “They are vastly outnumbered.”

　
　
***********

　
“They just keep coming!” Beluin yelled as another wave of razorbugs impacted the fallen tree the Zabrak was using as cover.

“Hold the line!” Ryia yelled back as he opened fire with his repeating blaster burning a hole through the armor of a rushing Yuuzhan Vong warrior. When the warrior fell Ryia turned his attention to the group of wounded Mandalorians propped up against the shattered hull of the escape pod. “Dawk I need a sitrep!”

“Not good.” she yelled back “Koryn is still alive but unresponsive, Baydo’s arm is dislocated and more than likely a concussion, Tyran is in the same state as Koryn.”

“Shab.” Ryia said “Try to get Tyran and Koryn up on their feet, we wont be able to hold this position much longer.”

The young medic didn’t respond and went back to work on trying to revive the strike team leader and the unconscious Barabel. Baydo was propped up against a sheared piece of durasteel hull, safe from the incoming alien projectiles. Dawk came to a skidding halt at his side.

“How’s your head?” she asked grabbing hold of his arm.

The older and larger Mandalorian gave a slight shake of his head “Visions clearer than it was, my arm isn’t feeling so great though.”

“Well considering it was almost ripped free of your body I can see why it might hurt some.” she said “It has to be popped back into place.”

“Do it.” the Mandalorian said instantly “I need to get back in the fight and you need to get Koryn and Tyran up and in fighting order.”

Dawk nodded and grabbed hold of the dislocated arm. It was a lot heavier than the medic had thought it would be. Years of physical military training and farm work had turned Baydo into one of the more muscular members of the strike team. She wasn’t certain she had the physical strength to achieve the desired effect. She looked around the crater at the rest of the strike team looking for the least occupied Supercommando. Considering that they were all fighting for their lives, they were all pretty occupied.

Her gaze came to rest on the team’s heavy weapons expert, a tall Mandalorian with dreadlocked hair and spiraling tribal tattoos down his arms. She could see the tattoos because Kas Birek’s red on black armor had no sleeves to it. Just a body cuirass, shoulder pads, greaves, gauntlets and boots. He was the largest human member of the team, outsized only by the Barabel.

“Kas I need some assistance here.” she yelled over the shared link. His head turned in her direction and hesitated for a brief moment before sprinting over to her side.

“What do you need?” his deep voice boomed in her helmet.

“I need you to pop his arm back in its socket, I don’t have the strength to do it.” she pointed over to where Baydo was sitting.

Kas nodded and quickly darted over to his injured comrade, gave him a quick pat on the uninjured shoulder and grabbed hold of the dislocated limb at the wrist and elbow and gave an unceremonial shove far more forceful than anything than Dawk could have done. There was an audible click and an short outcry of pain over the teams shared link followed by Baydo’s heavy breathing.

“Thanks vod, I owe you one.” he said.

Kas hauled him to his feet and shoved a light repeating blaster into his hands “We have to get out of here in one piece before you can owe me one.”

The two men hurried off to fill in weak points within the perimeter that had been created around the crashed pod. Dawk ran over to Tyran and removed his helmet. She didn’t have any stinksalts on her, nor did anyone else on the team. But that would have been to easy. She stared at him for a few seconds and simply gave him a hard slap across the face.

“Wake up!” she yelled.

A sudden roar filled the air and Dawk looked up and around the battlefield for the source. Molten rock began to rain down around the Mandalorians, making smaller craters within the already massive crater the team was situated in.

Rixa was at Dawk’s side in an instant.

“Whats your status, we need to move.” his voice was calm and stable.

Dawk gave a defeated shrug “I can’t get either of them to respond to stimuli.” her voice wasn’t as stable as his.

“Then we’ll have to carry them.”

“I’m not carrying the Barabel.” Volar’s voice echoed over the shared link.

“You’ll carry who I tell you to carry.” Ryia’s voice joined in. “Until Tyran gets back in action, I’m in charge.”

Rixa paid no attention to the argument the two men were having while simultaenously fighting off their attackers. His gaze never left the ground where his brother still lay unconscious. “Elai we need to move, got eyes on any defensible locations from your vantage point?”

The Kiffar sniper was positioned in one of the many trees that surrounded the front of the pod. The tree the red armored sniper had chosen was just over twelve meters high and provided a decent view of the battlefield.

“Rixa I have eyes on what looks like a cave entrance, it’s the only defendable position in the immediate area.”

“Ryia did you copy that?”

“Affirmative.”

Rixa was in the process of waiting for Ryia to give the retreat order when a solid mass slammed into him from the back. A searing pain raced up from just under his shoulder blade. He wheeled around and a second and third mass slammed against his chest plate knocking him off his feet and onto his back. The razorbug that had lodged itself into a weakpoint in his armor penetrated even deeper as he landed on it. He tried to sit up but the two thudbugs that had hit him in the chest had driven every ounce of air from his lungs and he was still struggling to catch his breath.

Dawk brought her blaster rifle up with the speed and precision to be expected of a soldier engaged in their first battle. She fired off a quick burst into the large Yuuzhan Vong warrior who had felled Rixa, the three laser bolts merely blackened the already dark crab armor of the warrior. He roared at the small soldier and brought his amphistaff into its rigid form and began moving at a quick pace toward Dawk. She switched her blaster rifle over to full auto and depressed the trigger.

The crab armor began to smoke as it took impact after impact and the warrior began to move in a tight zig-zag pattern and the maneuver immediately affected the accuracy of the Mandalorian medic. He drew to within a meter of her and gave a savage swing with his amphistaff that would have connected with her head had she not performed a combat roll to avoid the strike. She came out of the roll behind the warrior but wasn’t fast enough to avoid the second swing of the amphistaff. The living weapon connected with her body in between her shoulder blades and knocking her down so she was now parallel with Tyran’s unconscious form. Her arms and fingers were numb and her nerve endings were exploding in little eruptions of fire within her body. A large boot came down on the small of her back and she cried out as a new wave of pain hit her.

An equally large hand grabbed her by the back of her neck and hauled her to her feet. That was when she came face to face with her Yuuzhan Vong opponent. His face was nothing more than a mix of torn flesh and gold angular tattoos. His four front teeth were celarly visible through a missing patch of flesh on his upper lip and where the should have been a nose was nothing more than two ragged slits. Her visor fogged as his breath hit it and she couldn’t see as he pulled out his coufee, a knife like weapon. His grip tightened on her throat and she found herself wandering where the rest of the team were and why none of them had come to her aid yet.

Then again she was just a rookie to them, some one who was just as expendable as any Galactic Alliance or Imperial Remnant foot soldier to the Mandalorians. It was only after this though crossed her mind that she saw the knife in the Yuuzhan Vong’s hand and saw the evil intent in the alien’s eyes. His arm drew back and promptly shot forward.

Dawk hit the ground and remained still.