Sequel: Children of Mandalore: Red Fang ›
Children of Mandalore: Prelude to Terror
Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE:
Dead. He had to be dead.
It was the only explanation for the empty darkness that hung over his field of vision. He had nothing but a memory of a stomach churning decent of a spacecraft through a moon’s atmosphere and a resulting impact that had been as violent as anything Tyran had experienced in the last few years of his life. Anything after that memory was just darkness, both cold and numb. He felt as if he was hanging over an abyss yet unable to drop into it or climb above it.
There was nothing in the void, no movement, no sound, no gentle gust of wind and no smells to pull him back from the edge. He was truly alone. For the first time in his life he felt true fear. For all his life he had always had someone at his back, whether it be his younger brother, one of his friends, or even his father, there had always been somebody there with him. But now there was nobody.
It was just him and the void. Was this his punishment for all the horrific things he’d done in the name of destroying the Yuuzhan Vong? Was he to suffer a fate worse than that of all the people he had watched become victims to the alien invaders as he and the other Mandalorians stood by, waiting for the time to strike?
Is this to be my fate, just hanging here for all of eternity unable to pass into the hereafter? his thoughts seemed to echo back to him off the darkness and reverberate back to him as voices that had belonged to people whom he had known to be long dead.
“You don’t fear death but you fear not being able to pass on into whatever lies next, you fear not being able to join your fallen comrades in their next campaign of violence, still hungering for war and combat as a spectral being.” the voice of Giel Dolvo bounced back to him. “You aren’t so different from myself.”
The comment ripped through Tyran as he floated in the nothingness. To hear something like that from a man who had sought to revive the Death Watch was unnerving, to find truth in it was almost unbearable.
“I’m nothing like you!” Tyran spat back into the darkness. “I’m not a murdering thug.”
“No, you are nothing more than a coward!” his own voice morphing once again into that of another deceased voice “Afraid that you will no longer be able to function as a warrior without the template of your father to live by. With him dead, everything that you had once hoped to become has vanished and you doubt you’ll be able to revive that hope!”
“NO!” Tyran roared at the disembodied voice of Mon Lieva “I am not a coward like you! I rose up against my enemy and I have fought them at every turn. I am not afraid of the Yuuzhan Vong!”
“No, just afraid of life.” a third voice rang out, a voice that would have dropped Tyran to his knees had he been standing. “You’re afraid of living. You have seen what horrors you are capable of committing and are afraid that after this war is over you wont be able to turn off the drive to further carry out those horrors.” Ruima Numeck echoed out of the abyss.
Unlike the previous voices the voice of Tyran’s father decided to take shape. His father’s image shimmered into existence before his horrified eyes.
“I expected better from you Tyran.” Ruima Numeck droned on in a dark tone.
“I fought to avenge you-”
“Placing many of your allies in danger in the process!” the ghostly image of Ruima interrupted “You fight with a mind clouded in anger and rage that does nothing but put others at risk, that is not how I trained you to fight.”
“You didn’t train me to fight this kind of war.”
“The war with the Yuuzhan Vong is no different than any other war, the only difference is that the stakes are higher this time and the galaxy will need every criminal, smuggler, politician, soldier and Jedi that can be mustered to save it from the coming darkness.” the ghost paused for a moment and adopted a softer tone “If you don’t clear your mind of your emotions I guarantee you that the galaxy will be short one soldier it needs, plus the number of soldiers standing at your back.”
“It’s too late, I’m already dead.” Tyran sighed.
The specter released what must have been a snort of amusement “Tyran if there is one trait I am proud that you inherited from me it is my knack for being hard to kill.”
“Considering I’m talking with a ghost that isn’t very reassuring.” Tyran tried to move his head to avoid looking at his father’s ghost “Rixa can lead the others and get them off that mud-sphere.”
“Rixa, the formidable combatant he may be, is not leadership material. Your brother is too young and still too saddened by my death to be an effective commander. He needs his brother and your team needs their leader back.”
“I don’t want to be their leader!” Tyran roared at his fathers ghost.
“What do you want?”
A silence filled the abyss as Tyran searched what remained of his soul for the answer. The seconds that could have been hours or days seemed to tick by in what felt like years, but he found his answer. Without looking up at the ghost and with a harsh whisper Tyran said “Vengeance.”
“For me?”
“For Mandalore.” Tyran said “For the thousands of others who have the same guilt and pain that I have to bear.”
“What do you have to feel guilty for?”
“Your death, I could have stopped it had I been on Mandalore when the Yuuzhan Vong attacked. You would still be alive.”
“No I wouldn’t and you wouldn’t be alive now to save that Jedi and I can’t stress to you how important it is that you rescue her.” Ruima said “I know what lies ahead for you Tyran and wish I could say that it is all warm and fuzzy but that would be a lie that would serve little purpose.”
He became confused by his father’s words “I’m dead, I have to be.”
“You’re very much alive,” the spectral Ruima said with a second amused snort “I suspect you’ll begin to regain feeling in your limbs soon.”
Muted claps of thunder began to sound off somewhere in the back of Tyran’s mind and he was certain he could hear people screaming. He tried to turn his head in the direction of the sounds but some invisible force had him clamped in place.
“Remember what I taught you as a child, you need to be cold and calculating. If ever the Jedi have gotten one thing right it is that fighting with your emotions only ends in disaster.” the ghost of Ruima Numeck echoed and his spectral form began to fade.
Tyran began to struggle against the invisible hand holding him in place trying to reach out to his father. The last image Tyran saw was the two ghostly hands of his father come together in a clapping motion which resulted in a bright flash of white light.
In one single instant, pain racked Tyran’s body surging through his nervous system like lava flows rushing down a mountainside. Normally pain would have been a good sign as it meant he was alive, but considering everything that had just happened and the, for lack of a better word, vision he had just had the Mandalorian wanted to go back to the abyss and have a longer discussion with his father. There were so many question he needed answered but knew that would forever remain mysteries.
The claps of thunder became clearer and the yelling sharper, his vision went from dark to a blurry gray and individual shapes began to appear before him. He heard a young girl scream not less than a meter from his right. His head rolled in that direction and he noted a solid black mass laying immobile in the mud. Standing just ahead of the mass on the ground was an upright mass with its arm extended gripping a much smaller grey mass.
His vision cleared to what amounted to eighty-percent clarity and the shapes became people. Tyran noted the black mass on the ground as being his little brother, two razorbugs protruding from his backplate. The large upright mass was an imposing Yuuzhan Vong warrior, disfigured in a way that signified a high ranking member of the warrior-caste. The small grey mass the Yuuzhan Vong was holding became the eighteen year old medic that had been attached to his team by Boba Fett. A young girl who was ironically named Dawk.
Adrenaline flooded his body providing it with strength and speed that it would not otherwise have been able to generate at the current time. Becoming aware that his helmet was nowhere to be seen Tyran scrambled to his feet and made a rush for the Yuuzhan Vong warrior, knowing that Rixa was in no position to be helped at the moment and probably wouldn’t be if the team medic was slain.
He flexed his left wrist which activated the sensor in his gauntlet which in turn activated one of the beskar blades housed within the armor plating. A sharp blade of the indestructible metal about a third of a meter long ejected from the black plating with a crystal clear shink. He was angry that his little brother was laying in a pool of blood and he wanted to act on that anger, but his father’s voice echoed deep in his head.
Cold and calculating.
Tyran approached the Yuuzhan Vong warrior with all the grace of a Dathomiri jungle cat, targeting where crucial arteries that sustained life were located and noting the vulnerable points in the living crab armor the large warrior was encased in. Not that he needed to find any weak points in the living armor, Tyran was confident in his beskar blade to crack the warrior and his armor wide open at its most dense location.
He watched the warrior pull a knife like weapon out from a sheath in the small of his back and made sure that the small Mandalorian in his iron grip saw the weapon as well, letting her see the tool of her demise. Whether the alien smiled or not Tyran could not tell but he paused before reaching back with the knife and lunging it forward towards the neck of his small prey.
Tyran sprinted forward and Dawk let out an uncontainable yelp of fear as the knife bore down towards her throat. Tyran brought his muscular right arm around connecting with the Yuuzhan Vong warrior elbow to elbow, using his considerable, adrenaline aided strength to prevent the progress of the knife any further.
Dropping the young Mandalorian, the Yuuzhan Vong turned his head in Tyran’s direction, a look of true shock on his mutilated face. Tyran knew his face was utterly devoid of emotion as he stared back, but his eyes must have been something different. The warrior he was now intertwined with faltered for one single, fatal instant and didn’t even try to prevent the blow as Tyran brought his left arm, and the beskar blade protruding from it, into the small of the Yuuzhan Vong warrior’s back.
The cracking sound of vonduun crab armor and alien bone mingled together in a hideous noise that made Tyran nauseous. Seeing the twisted smile appear on the alien’s face as the immobilizing pain overtook his body only amplified the sick feeling growing in Tyran.
“Oh no, you don’t get to enjoy this.” Tyran whispered to the alien.
With a single movement he ejected his second blade and brought it down across the neck of the Yuuzhan Vong, and before the separate sounds of body and head hitting the ground could catch up with his ears, Tyran was already crouching down by Dawk.
“Kid are you alright?” he said hauling her to her feet. Her helmet had come off during when the warrior had dropped her and Tyran snatched it up and shoved it into her chest, almost knocking her back down. “Are you ok?”
“Yes, what about you?” she said shakily as she replaced her helmet.
“Don’t you worry about me, my brother is down.” Tyran said shoving her in Rixa’s direction ending their conversation “Ryia I need a sitrep!” he yelled across the forty meters of mud that the Mandalorian strike team was using as its defensive position.
Ryia gave no sign of acknowledgment. He had his helmet on and was probably listening to the audio feed from the team’s shared link.
“Shab!” Tyran cursed as he twirled around as he looked for his helmet. He found it lying next to the still unconscious form of Koryn Bralor. He reached down and grabbed the dome-shaped helmet and secured it to the rest of his armor before repeating his order to Ryia again. “Ryia, sitrep, now!” was all he said before reaching down and pulling Koryn to his feet and giving the Barabel a very hard slap across the face. “Wake up!”
“Tyran!?” Ryia exclaimed over the shared link “Shab I thought you were dead.” his voice was layered in relief and disbelief “Did you just smack a Barabel?”
Koryn snarled in disapproval and his vice-like claws wrapped around Tyran’s forearms, unable to crush the thick beskar housings for his blades.
“Koryn good of you to join us.” Tyran said grabbing the Barabel’s helmet and handing it to him in a more gentle gesture than he had to Dawk.
“Thiz one feels as if he haz been….azsaulted.”
“When we get out of here I’ll be you an ale.” Tyran said clapping him on the shoulder before grabbing the WESTAR heavy repeater that had been laid in the mud next to the wreck of the escape pod. “Right now I need you to help Dawk with Rixa, he is hurt and she isn’t trained enough to hold off multiple scarheads at once.” Koryn sissed his acknowledgement and rushed off towards Rixa and the small medic.
Tyran jogged over to where Ryia, Dyir, Kas and Baydo were now hunkered down, avoiding salvos of thudbugs and razorbugs as he went. A razorbug caught him in the shoulder spinning him around in the process. His beskar armor managed to prevent the projectile from penetrating through to his skin and left nothing more than a few centimeter long gash in the black metal. He ripped the alien weapon out of his armor and hurled it at a charging Yuuzhan Vong, catching him in the forehead, the impact of the projectile combined with the alien’s forward momentum resulted in a midair back flip.
He slid into position next to Dyir and Kas who were ducked down behind a large piece of durasteel that had been wrenched from the frame of the pod and into a convenient U-shape for the team to use as cover. “Still waiting on that sitrep.” he said.
“I think our situation speaks pretty well for itself Tyran.” Kial said over the shared link.
“For once I have to agree.” Ryia said darkly.
“Then the galaxy must really be coming to an end.” If the joke had been made under different circumstances the men behind the durasteel sheet would have probably laughed.
“Elai, you want to fill him in on what you just told me?” Ryia said.
“I have visuals on multiple artillery beasts situated on a ridge two kilometers from here that are getting very close to dialing us in, the Yuuzhan Vong forces just keep boiling from over that hill in endless droves, I estimate they outnumber us twenty to one.”
“That’s it?” Tyran said in a mock-cheery tone “Well we’ve faced worse odds before.”
“You know that structure we almost collided with during our landing?” Ryia said “Well it appears to be a temple built for one of their gods.”
Tyran’s heart sank. If they had landed so close to a Yuuzhan Vong temple that meant they would be dealing with very seasoned soldiers. The warriors on the outside of the temple wouldn’t be easy to get by but the ones on the inside would be almost impossible to elude.
He sighed “Well that’s why they gave the job to us and not a team of Jedi.”
“Do you have a plan?” Ryia asked shaking his head.
Tyran consider for a moment and glanced around at his surroundings, relying on his naturally destructive nature to help him find a way out of their particular situation. His eyes were drawn to a stream of fluid jutting out from the drives of the mangled escape pod.
Very explosive fluid.
“Elai hold off on the cover fire and let as many of the Yuuzhan Vong through the perimeter as you can.” Tyran said looking up into the twisted trees that surrounded his team, not knowing which one the Kiffar sniper was hold up in but certain he was in one of them.
“What?” multiple voices rang out at once.
“You heard me, let them through. Kas I want a det charge rigged up in the pit near the pod’s drives, they are leaking coolant.”
“You want regular or super strength?” the large Mandalorian asked.
“What ever is enough to fry every Yuuzhan Vong that is standing in this pit when I give the detonate order.”
“Super strength it is. Give me three minutes.”
“Done, here’s the plan.” Tyran said broadcasting to the shared link so everyone could hear it “After the charge is planted and camouflaged we’ll begin a steady withdrawal into the treeline and set up a new defensive position forcing the Yuuzhan Vong to hold here in this location. When I see enough scarheads in this pit I’ll give the order to detonate.”
“You do know how potent that coolant is right?” Dyir asked swapping out powerpacks in his BlasTech repeater.
“I’m fully aware of how potent it is.”
“Good, just seeing if you know how fast all of us are going to have to run after Kas hit’s that button.”
“Very Fast”
**************
Raven could barely feel her arms at this point. They had been stretched out along the wall at their maximum, hyper extending both her elbows, and secured in place with blorash jelly. She had become used to the various pains assaulting her body on almost a one minute basis. She had been visited by several members of the Yuuzhan Vong whom had continued on in their attempts to break her. They could not figure out how the small Jedi was defeating their methods, why she was not succumbing to the pain as other members of her hated group had done in the past.
They had even tried to beat the answer out of her but to no avail. Drawing on the Force to heal her wounds between sessions had given her strength to resist the brutality, physically she was able to take whatever they threw at her but mentally she was sure her breaking point was nearing.
She was clinging to hope to hold her fears at bay.
Hope that the new presences she felt in the Force would be able to get to her and free her from this prison. She concentrated on those presences in the Force, those eleven different mixes of emotions and beliefs she interpreted as a wash of different colors. Each one was unique but all carried the same undertone of dark determination and practiced discipline.
Soldiers. Not Jedi.
She couldn’t figure out why her Master, or any Jedi for that matter, hadn’t come to rescue her along with the eleven soldiers that could only have been special forces. The thought had been counterproductive to her attempts at staving off the fear boiling in her. She clamped down on that emotion trying to bury it deep again.
Jedi don’t feel fear. she told herself.
She steadied herself and concentrated on one of the more vibrant Force presences, a combination of fear, courage, sadness and rage that presented itself to her as a swirling vortex of reds, browns and yellows in the Force. She reached out and touched that presence, nothing more than a simple nudge to let him know that she was here and that she needed them.
The presence faltered for a single moment, most likely do to feeling her touch through the Force, but quickly recovered and set back to what he was doing. She grabbed on to the courage in that presence, the only emotion that radiated as brightly as the crimson rage that enshrouded the presence, drawing on it to bolster her own.
Who ever you people are, please hurry.
**************
Tyran shook his head. He felt as if someone was watching him, not an unusual feeling in a combat zone, but the sensation didn’t feel dangerous as it usually would have. There was a sense of urgency and desperateness to the feeling.
“We need to hurry it up.” he said as he returned to his firing position. He had no doubt in his mind that the feeling he had felt had been their Jedi. He let loose into a couple of Yuuzhan Vong warriors rushing over the hill and down into the pit. His high-powered repeater burning neat holes through their crab armor. His repeater began to chirp as the powerpack depleted. “Reloading.”
He ducked down behind a ragged piece of durasteel and Beluin, missing several cranial horns due to a close encounter with a razorbug, popped up to take his place.
“What’s the rush?” Dyir asked.
“I don’t think our Jedi has much longer before she submits to whatever the Yuuzhan Vong are doing to her.” Tyran said grimly. “Kas have you got everything set up?”
The dark skinned Mandalorian stood up from his kneeling position near the pod drives. “Yeah we’re all set, we can blow this place to haran whenever you’re ready.”
Tyran nodded and half crouched, half ran towards Dawk where she was tending to Rixa and the wounds inflicted by the razorbugs. The two of them were situated inside the remains of the pod, Koryn was standing watch just outside the ‘entrance’, which was nothing more than a jagged hole in the side of the pods hull.
Tyran entered the shattered vessel and turned his head to the right, his brother was sitting up with his chest and back plates removed and several bands of crimson curving around his ribcage and down his the front of his torso.
“You going to be able to run?”
Rixa let out a labored snort “Yeah I’ll be fine once Dawk pumps me full of painstims.”
“Will the dosage effect his combat efficiency?”
Dawk nodded her head “If he want’s to feel absolutely no pain, yes but if he can be a big boy and tolerate a little pain he’ll be more than able to be combat ready.”
Tyran grinned at the young medic, not very many people taunted his little brother like that.
“What position are you in to make jokes?” Rixa said “It’s your fault this happened anyway.”
Dawk jammed the painstim into the wound a lot harder than she needed to and smiled as Rixa let out a high-pitched yelp.
“Sorry if that hurt.” she lied “That should take a minute to take effect, get your gear back on.”
Tyran openly laughed as the small medic and her unofficial Barabel protector exited the pod.
“You have a way with women little brother.” Tyran said helping him to his feet and handing him his missing pieces of armor.
“Seems to run in the family.” Rixa grunted as he pulled on his durafab undershirt and chest piece. The ground shook as the Yuuzhan Vong artillery continued to dial itself in on the Mandalorian team. “It’s a shabla miracle that those things haven’t hit us yet.”
“Hey I’ll take miracles where I can get them.” Tyran shoved a repeater into Rixa’s hands and rushed outside. “You’re up to speed on the plan.”
“Yeah.” Rixa said jogging behind his older brother.
“Good,” Tyran said switching back over to the shared link “Everyone grab your gear and star withdrawing to the treeline, Elai time to abandon your post.”
There was a loud thud as the red armored sniper dropped from the tree canopy above and landing a meter ahead of Tyran.
“Already abandoned.” the Kiffar said slinging his shatter gun over his back and hefting a new variant of the E-11 rifle in his hands.
The trio began running for the treeline. Tyran kept his attention on the rotted husks of what had once been trees, not checking behind him to see if every member of his team was in tow. He came to a sliding stop behind a fallen husk and began counting the sounds of muted thumps as the rest of his team continued sliding into place behind similar objects of cover. It wasn’t long before razorbugs and thudbugs began to hammer against the defensive position the Mandalorians were huddled behind.
“Hold them in the pit!” Tyran yelled as he returned fire at the alien warriors, not particularly aiming at any one warrior, but trying to keep them from exiting any further from the blast radius they were about to create.
Rixa came down near a tree two meters to the right of Tyran. Even through the black armor that his little brother was wearing Tyran could see that he was breathing very heavy.
“You alright?”
Rixa shook his head “No, that painstim didn’t to anything.”
“Should have been a little nicer to the medic then.” Dyir said dropping down beside Rixa. Kial and Baydo weren’t too far behind him.
“Tyran I think they sent a whole battalion after us.” Kial said while he reloaded his weapon. He to was out of breath. Tyran glanced over his tree husk and couldn’t believe how many Yuuzhan Vong warriors were spilling over the hillside and into the pit rushing towards them.
“Kas, do you still have that detonator.”
“It’s practically glued to my hand.”
“Give me a five count, when he reaches three we all break cover and head away from the blast zone. If any of us get separated, proceed to the designated rally points for your respective teams and wait.” he received confirmations from his ten Supercommandos and took in a large breath of air. “Start the count.”
Kas began the count, putting two beat spaces between each number. All too soon his count reached three and Tyran was once again rushing through the muddy jungles of Katna-II. With every footfall he had to expend more energy than he would have liked by having to break the suction the mud created around his boots every time they impacted the muck. It effectively turned what should have been an incredibly fast run into a slow march.
He heard a loud thunk beside him and made a quick glance to locate the source of the noise, only to see his little brother collapsed. Retreating back towards his little brother without a moments hesitation, Tyran was happy to see Rixa still conscious. The effort that it had taken to maneuver through the mud combined with the pain from his prior injury had taken a severe toll on his body. The sky beyond the treeline became illuminated for a single instant and Tyran knew that they had only moments to make a decision.
Taking in their surroundings Tyran noted a shallow pool of water, putrid though it was. He grabbed Rixa by his collar and began to drag him towards the pool. It took considerable strength on Tyran’s part to pull both himself and his brother, weighed down by armor, weapons and several added pounds of mud and grime.
“What are you doing?!” Rixa yelled at him “just let me go.”
“Too late for that little brother.” Tyran said tossing Rixa into the pool of water just as the shockwave from the explosion hit him.
He lurched forward, and fell on top of Rixa with all the grace of a dancing Hutt. The ground began to shake as if threatening to break the swamp-moon in two. A deafening roar hit the two of them seconds after the shockwave. The heat that enveloped the pair was so intense it threatened to boil the pool they were submerged in, cooking them alive in their armor. An immense wave of pressure washed down over them darkening the edges of Tyran’s vision.
For the second time in as many hours Tyran felt the abyss reach up and grip him.
**************
Raven staring up into the face of High Commander Falas Draisa let out a sudden howl of pain, not caused by the painful methods of her captors but by the sudden rippling in the Force. The eleven presences she had been monitoring all suddenly erupted into hot, searing pain. Some of them more so than others.
Then she felt the sudden vibration and hollow crack of thunder. Something horrible had just happened, caused either by the Yuuzhan Vong or her rescuers she did not know, but she knew that it had been costly. She could feel many of the soldiers who had come to break her out of her prison writhing in pain from whatever had happened and the young Jedi came to the conclusion that her rescue was not to be.
Finally tears spilled down her cheeks and she began crying. Sobs echoing out from her in uncontrollable waves of agony. The portal to her chamber opened and a lesser Yuuzhan Vong warrior approached holding a leathery sphere out towards Draisa.
The two began to speak in their native language and Draisa briskly grabbed the villip from his subordinate.
“Jeedai I believe you will want to hear this for yourself.” he said in Basic. The malicious joy in his voice unmistakable. He stroked the villip once and the face of Kurru Ivat appeared before him. “What is your report?”
“High Commander, the infidels fled into the jungle and detonated their own vessel in an attempt to decimate our forces and aid in their escape.”
“And?”
“Their plan worked my lord, but it had a high cost. Many of our warriors were incinerated by the blast but Many of the infidels were wounded by the explosion as they did not anticipate the thickness of the mud that surrounds this area. It slowed their escape considerably and they were not able to vacate the blast radius in time.”
Raven’s heart sank at the news. She now knew for certain she would never leave here alive.
“We have gathered the survivors and are transporting them back to the Temple for breaking my lord.”
“Very good Kurru, you have made the Slayer god most pleased. The stain of the Infidels on your soul may yet be cleansed after all. I await your return.” The image of Kurru Ivat gave what appeared to be a salute and the villip inverted once again. The grin that he turned on Raven practically made her skin leap from her body “Now Jeedai tell me what you were doing in my sector?”
Dead. He had to be dead.
It was the only explanation for the empty darkness that hung over his field of vision. He had nothing but a memory of a stomach churning decent of a spacecraft through a moon’s atmosphere and a resulting impact that had been as violent as anything Tyran had experienced in the last few years of his life. Anything after that memory was just darkness, both cold and numb. He felt as if he was hanging over an abyss yet unable to drop into it or climb above it.
There was nothing in the void, no movement, no sound, no gentle gust of wind and no smells to pull him back from the edge. He was truly alone. For the first time in his life he felt true fear. For all his life he had always had someone at his back, whether it be his younger brother, one of his friends, or even his father, there had always been somebody there with him. But now there was nobody.
It was just him and the void. Was this his punishment for all the horrific things he’d done in the name of destroying the Yuuzhan Vong? Was he to suffer a fate worse than that of all the people he had watched become victims to the alien invaders as he and the other Mandalorians stood by, waiting for the time to strike?
Is this to be my fate, just hanging here for all of eternity unable to pass into the hereafter? his thoughts seemed to echo back to him off the darkness and reverberate back to him as voices that had belonged to people whom he had known to be long dead.
“You don’t fear death but you fear not being able to pass on into whatever lies next, you fear not being able to join your fallen comrades in their next campaign of violence, still hungering for war and combat as a spectral being.” the voice of Giel Dolvo bounced back to him. “You aren’t so different from myself.”
The comment ripped through Tyran as he floated in the nothingness. To hear something like that from a man who had sought to revive the Death Watch was unnerving, to find truth in it was almost unbearable.
“I’m nothing like you!” Tyran spat back into the darkness. “I’m not a murdering thug.”
“No, you are nothing more than a coward!” his own voice morphing once again into that of another deceased voice “Afraid that you will no longer be able to function as a warrior without the template of your father to live by. With him dead, everything that you had once hoped to become has vanished and you doubt you’ll be able to revive that hope!”
“NO!” Tyran roared at the disembodied voice of Mon Lieva “I am not a coward like you! I rose up against my enemy and I have fought them at every turn. I am not afraid of the Yuuzhan Vong!”
“No, just afraid of life.” a third voice rang out, a voice that would have dropped Tyran to his knees had he been standing. “You’re afraid of living. You have seen what horrors you are capable of committing and are afraid that after this war is over you wont be able to turn off the drive to further carry out those horrors.” Ruima Numeck echoed out of the abyss.
Unlike the previous voices the voice of Tyran’s father decided to take shape. His father’s image shimmered into existence before his horrified eyes.
“I expected better from you Tyran.” Ruima Numeck droned on in a dark tone.
“I fought to avenge you-”
“Placing many of your allies in danger in the process!” the ghostly image of Ruima interrupted “You fight with a mind clouded in anger and rage that does nothing but put others at risk, that is not how I trained you to fight.”
“You didn’t train me to fight this kind of war.”
“The war with the Yuuzhan Vong is no different than any other war, the only difference is that the stakes are higher this time and the galaxy will need every criminal, smuggler, politician, soldier and Jedi that can be mustered to save it from the coming darkness.” the ghost paused for a moment and adopted a softer tone “If you don’t clear your mind of your emotions I guarantee you that the galaxy will be short one soldier it needs, plus the number of soldiers standing at your back.”
“It’s too late, I’m already dead.” Tyran sighed.
The specter released what must have been a snort of amusement “Tyran if there is one trait I am proud that you inherited from me it is my knack for being hard to kill.”
“Considering I’m talking with a ghost that isn’t very reassuring.” Tyran tried to move his head to avoid looking at his father’s ghost “Rixa can lead the others and get them off that mud-sphere.”
“Rixa, the formidable combatant he may be, is not leadership material. Your brother is too young and still too saddened by my death to be an effective commander. He needs his brother and your team needs their leader back.”
“I don’t want to be their leader!” Tyran roared at his fathers ghost.
“What do you want?”
A silence filled the abyss as Tyran searched what remained of his soul for the answer. The seconds that could have been hours or days seemed to tick by in what felt like years, but he found his answer. Without looking up at the ghost and with a harsh whisper Tyran said “Vengeance.”
“For me?”
“For Mandalore.” Tyran said “For the thousands of others who have the same guilt and pain that I have to bear.”
“What do you have to feel guilty for?”
“Your death, I could have stopped it had I been on Mandalore when the Yuuzhan Vong attacked. You would still be alive.”
“No I wouldn’t and you wouldn’t be alive now to save that Jedi and I can’t stress to you how important it is that you rescue her.” Ruima said “I know what lies ahead for you Tyran and wish I could say that it is all warm and fuzzy but that would be a lie that would serve little purpose.”
He became confused by his father’s words “I’m dead, I have to be.”
“You’re very much alive,” the spectral Ruima said with a second amused snort “I suspect you’ll begin to regain feeling in your limbs soon.”
Muted claps of thunder began to sound off somewhere in the back of Tyran’s mind and he was certain he could hear people screaming. He tried to turn his head in the direction of the sounds but some invisible force had him clamped in place.
“Remember what I taught you as a child, you need to be cold and calculating. If ever the Jedi have gotten one thing right it is that fighting with your emotions only ends in disaster.” the ghost of Ruima Numeck echoed and his spectral form began to fade.
Tyran began to struggle against the invisible hand holding him in place trying to reach out to his father. The last image Tyran saw was the two ghostly hands of his father come together in a clapping motion which resulted in a bright flash of white light.
In one single instant, pain racked Tyran’s body surging through his nervous system like lava flows rushing down a mountainside. Normally pain would have been a good sign as it meant he was alive, but considering everything that had just happened and the, for lack of a better word, vision he had just had the Mandalorian wanted to go back to the abyss and have a longer discussion with his father. There were so many question he needed answered but knew that would forever remain mysteries.
The claps of thunder became clearer and the yelling sharper, his vision went from dark to a blurry gray and individual shapes began to appear before him. He heard a young girl scream not less than a meter from his right. His head rolled in that direction and he noted a solid black mass laying immobile in the mud. Standing just ahead of the mass on the ground was an upright mass with its arm extended gripping a much smaller grey mass.
His vision cleared to what amounted to eighty-percent clarity and the shapes became people. Tyran noted the black mass on the ground as being his little brother, two razorbugs protruding from his backplate. The large upright mass was an imposing Yuuzhan Vong warrior, disfigured in a way that signified a high ranking member of the warrior-caste. The small grey mass the Yuuzhan Vong was holding became the eighteen year old medic that had been attached to his team by Boba Fett. A young girl who was ironically named Dawk.
Adrenaline flooded his body providing it with strength and speed that it would not otherwise have been able to generate at the current time. Becoming aware that his helmet was nowhere to be seen Tyran scrambled to his feet and made a rush for the Yuuzhan Vong warrior, knowing that Rixa was in no position to be helped at the moment and probably wouldn’t be if the team medic was slain.
He flexed his left wrist which activated the sensor in his gauntlet which in turn activated one of the beskar blades housed within the armor plating. A sharp blade of the indestructible metal about a third of a meter long ejected from the black plating with a crystal clear shink. He was angry that his little brother was laying in a pool of blood and he wanted to act on that anger, but his father’s voice echoed deep in his head.
Cold and calculating.
Tyran approached the Yuuzhan Vong warrior with all the grace of a Dathomiri jungle cat, targeting where crucial arteries that sustained life were located and noting the vulnerable points in the living crab armor the large warrior was encased in. Not that he needed to find any weak points in the living armor, Tyran was confident in his beskar blade to crack the warrior and his armor wide open at its most dense location.
He watched the warrior pull a knife like weapon out from a sheath in the small of his back and made sure that the small Mandalorian in his iron grip saw the weapon as well, letting her see the tool of her demise. Whether the alien smiled or not Tyran could not tell but he paused before reaching back with the knife and lunging it forward towards the neck of his small prey.
Tyran sprinted forward and Dawk let out an uncontainable yelp of fear as the knife bore down towards her throat. Tyran brought his muscular right arm around connecting with the Yuuzhan Vong warrior elbow to elbow, using his considerable, adrenaline aided strength to prevent the progress of the knife any further.
Dropping the young Mandalorian, the Yuuzhan Vong turned his head in Tyran’s direction, a look of true shock on his mutilated face. Tyran knew his face was utterly devoid of emotion as he stared back, but his eyes must have been something different. The warrior he was now intertwined with faltered for one single, fatal instant and didn’t even try to prevent the blow as Tyran brought his left arm, and the beskar blade protruding from it, into the small of the Yuuzhan Vong warrior’s back.
The cracking sound of vonduun crab armor and alien bone mingled together in a hideous noise that made Tyran nauseous. Seeing the twisted smile appear on the alien’s face as the immobilizing pain overtook his body only amplified the sick feeling growing in Tyran.
“Oh no, you don’t get to enjoy this.” Tyran whispered to the alien.
With a single movement he ejected his second blade and brought it down across the neck of the Yuuzhan Vong, and before the separate sounds of body and head hitting the ground could catch up with his ears, Tyran was already crouching down by Dawk.
“Kid are you alright?” he said hauling her to her feet. Her helmet had come off during when the warrior had dropped her and Tyran snatched it up and shoved it into her chest, almost knocking her back down. “Are you ok?”
“Yes, what about you?” she said shakily as she replaced her helmet.
“Don’t you worry about me, my brother is down.” Tyran said shoving her in Rixa’s direction ending their conversation “Ryia I need a sitrep!” he yelled across the forty meters of mud that the Mandalorian strike team was using as its defensive position.
Ryia gave no sign of acknowledgment. He had his helmet on and was probably listening to the audio feed from the team’s shared link.
“Shab!” Tyran cursed as he twirled around as he looked for his helmet. He found it lying next to the still unconscious form of Koryn Bralor. He reached down and grabbed the dome-shaped helmet and secured it to the rest of his armor before repeating his order to Ryia again. “Ryia, sitrep, now!” was all he said before reaching down and pulling Koryn to his feet and giving the Barabel a very hard slap across the face. “Wake up!”
“Tyran!?” Ryia exclaimed over the shared link “Shab I thought you were dead.” his voice was layered in relief and disbelief “Did you just smack a Barabel?”
Koryn snarled in disapproval and his vice-like claws wrapped around Tyran’s forearms, unable to crush the thick beskar housings for his blades.
“Koryn good of you to join us.” Tyran said grabbing the Barabel’s helmet and handing it to him in a more gentle gesture than he had to Dawk.
“Thiz one feels as if he haz been….azsaulted.”
“When we get out of here I’ll be you an ale.” Tyran said clapping him on the shoulder before grabbing the WESTAR heavy repeater that had been laid in the mud next to the wreck of the escape pod. “Right now I need you to help Dawk with Rixa, he is hurt and she isn’t trained enough to hold off multiple scarheads at once.” Koryn sissed his acknowledgement and rushed off towards Rixa and the small medic.
Tyran jogged over to where Ryia, Dyir, Kas and Baydo were now hunkered down, avoiding salvos of thudbugs and razorbugs as he went. A razorbug caught him in the shoulder spinning him around in the process. His beskar armor managed to prevent the projectile from penetrating through to his skin and left nothing more than a few centimeter long gash in the black metal. He ripped the alien weapon out of his armor and hurled it at a charging Yuuzhan Vong, catching him in the forehead, the impact of the projectile combined with the alien’s forward momentum resulted in a midair back flip.
He slid into position next to Dyir and Kas who were ducked down behind a large piece of durasteel that had been wrenched from the frame of the pod and into a convenient U-shape for the team to use as cover. “Still waiting on that sitrep.” he said.
“I think our situation speaks pretty well for itself Tyran.” Kial said over the shared link.
“For once I have to agree.” Ryia said darkly.
“Then the galaxy must really be coming to an end.” If the joke had been made under different circumstances the men behind the durasteel sheet would have probably laughed.
“Elai, you want to fill him in on what you just told me?” Ryia said.
“I have visuals on multiple artillery beasts situated on a ridge two kilometers from here that are getting very close to dialing us in, the Yuuzhan Vong forces just keep boiling from over that hill in endless droves, I estimate they outnumber us twenty to one.”
“That’s it?” Tyran said in a mock-cheery tone “Well we’ve faced worse odds before.”
“You know that structure we almost collided with during our landing?” Ryia said “Well it appears to be a temple built for one of their gods.”
Tyran’s heart sank. If they had landed so close to a Yuuzhan Vong temple that meant they would be dealing with very seasoned soldiers. The warriors on the outside of the temple wouldn’t be easy to get by but the ones on the inside would be almost impossible to elude.
He sighed “Well that’s why they gave the job to us and not a team of Jedi.”
“Do you have a plan?” Ryia asked shaking his head.
Tyran consider for a moment and glanced around at his surroundings, relying on his naturally destructive nature to help him find a way out of their particular situation. His eyes were drawn to a stream of fluid jutting out from the drives of the mangled escape pod.
Very explosive fluid.
“Elai hold off on the cover fire and let as many of the Yuuzhan Vong through the perimeter as you can.” Tyran said looking up into the twisted trees that surrounded his team, not knowing which one the Kiffar sniper was hold up in but certain he was in one of them.
“What?” multiple voices rang out at once.
“You heard me, let them through. Kas I want a det charge rigged up in the pit near the pod’s drives, they are leaking coolant.”
“You want regular or super strength?” the large Mandalorian asked.
“What ever is enough to fry every Yuuzhan Vong that is standing in this pit when I give the detonate order.”
“Super strength it is. Give me three minutes.”
“Done, here’s the plan.” Tyran said broadcasting to the shared link so everyone could hear it “After the charge is planted and camouflaged we’ll begin a steady withdrawal into the treeline and set up a new defensive position forcing the Yuuzhan Vong to hold here in this location. When I see enough scarheads in this pit I’ll give the order to detonate.”
“You do know how potent that coolant is right?” Dyir asked swapping out powerpacks in his BlasTech repeater.
“I’m fully aware of how potent it is.”
“Good, just seeing if you know how fast all of us are going to have to run after Kas hit’s that button.”
“Very Fast”
**************
Raven could barely feel her arms at this point. They had been stretched out along the wall at their maximum, hyper extending both her elbows, and secured in place with blorash jelly. She had become used to the various pains assaulting her body on almost a one minute basis. She had been visited by several members of the Yuuzhan Vong whom had continued on in their attempts to break her. They could not figure out how the small Jedi was defeating their methods, why she was not succumbing to the pain as other members of her hated group had done in the past.
They had even tried to beat the answer out of her but to no avail. Drawing on the Force to heal her wounds between sessions had given her strength to resist the brutality, physically she was able to take whatever they threw at her but mentally she was sure her breaking point was nearing.
She was clinging to hope to hold her fears at bay.
Hope that the new presences she felt in the Force would be able to get to her and free her from this prison. She concentrated on those presences in the Force, those eleven different mixes of emotions and beliefs she interpreted as a wash of different colors. Each one was unique but all carried the same undertone of dark determination and practiced discipline.
Soldiers. Not Jedi.
She couldn’t figure out why her Master, or any Jedi for that matter, hadn’t come to rescue her along with the eleven soldiers that could only have been special forces. The thought had been counterproductive to her attempts at staving off the fear boiling in her. She clamped down on that emotion trying to bury it deep again.
Jedi don’t feel fear. she told herself.
She steadied herself and concentrated on one of the more vibrant Force presences, a combination of fear, courage, sadness and rage that presented itself to her as a swirling vortex of reds, browns and yellows in the Force. She reached out and touched that presence, nothing more than a simple nudge to let him know that she was here and that she needed them.
The presence faltered for a single moment, most likely do to feeling her touch through the Force, but quickly recovered and set back to what he was doing. She grabbed on to the courage in that presence, the only emotion that radiated as brightly as the crimson rage that enshrouded the presence, drawing on it to bolster her own.
Who ever you people are, please hurry.
**************
Tyran shook his head. He felt as if someone was watching him, not an unusual feeling in a combat zone, but the sensation didn’t feel dangerous as it usually would have. There was a sense of urgency and desperateness to the feeling.
“We need to hurry it up.” he said as he returned to his firing position. He had no doubt in his mind that the feeling he had felt had been their Jedi. He let loose into a couple of Yuuzhan Vong warriors rushing over the hill and down into the pit. His high-powered repeater burning neat holes through their crab armor. His repeater began to chirp as the powerpack depleted. “Reloading.”
He ducked down behind a ragged piece of durasteel and Beluin, missing several cranial horns due to a close encounter with a razorbug, popped up to take his place.
“What’s the rush?” Dyir asked.
“I don’t think our Jedi has much longer before she submits to whatever the Yuuzhan Vong are doing to her.” Tyran said grimly. “Kas have you got everything set up?”
The dark skinned Mandalorian stood up from his kneeling position near the pod drives. “Yeah we’re all set, we can blow this place to haran whenever you’re ready.”
Tyran nodded and half crouched, half ran towards Dawk where she was tending to Rixa and the wounds inflicted by the razorbugs. The two of them were situated inside the remains of the pod, Koryn was standing watch just outside the ‘entrance’, which was nothing more than a jagged hole in the side of the pods hull.
Tyran entered the shattered vessel and turned his head to the right, his brother was sitting up with his chest and back plates removed and several bands of crimson curving around his ribcage and down his the front of his torso.
“You going to be able to run?”
Rixa let out a labored snort “Yeah I’ll be fine once Dawk pumps me full of painstims.”
“Will the dosage effect his combat efficiency?”
Dawk nodded her head “If he want’s to feel absolutely no pain, yes but if he can be a big boy and tolerate a little pain he’ll be more than able to be combat ready.”
Tyran grinned at the young medic, not very many people taunted his little brother like that.
“What position are you in to make jokes?” Rixa said “It’s your fault this happened anyway.”
Dawk jammed the painstim into the wound a lot harder than she needed to and smiled as Rixa let out a high-pitched yelp.
“Sorry if that hurt.” she lied “That should take a minute to take effect, get your gear back on.”
Tyran openly laughed as the small medic and her unofficial Barabel protector exited the pod.
“You have a way with women little brother.” Tyran said helping him to his feet and handing him his missing pieces of armor.
“Seems to run in the family.” Rixa grunted as he pulled on his durafab undershirt and chest piece. The ground shook as the Yuuzhan Vong artillery continued to dial itself in on the Mandalorian team. “It’s a shabla miracle that those things haven’t hit us yet.”
“Hey I’ll take miracles where I can get them.” Tyran shoved a repeater into Rixa’s hands and rushed outside. “You’re up to speed on the plan.”
“Yeah.” Rixa said jogging behind his older brother.
“Good,” Tyran said switching back over to the shared link “Everyone grab your gear and star withdrawing to the treeline, Elai time to abandon your post.”
There was a loud thud as the red armored sniper dropped from the tree canopy above and landing a meter ahead of Tyran.
“Already abandoned.” the Kiffar said slinging his shatter gun over his back and hefting a new variant of the E-11 rifle in his hands.
The trio began running for the treeline. Tyran kept his attention on the rotted husks of what had once been trees, not checking behind him to see if every member of his team was in tow. He came to a sliding stop behind a fallen husk and began counting the sounds of muted thumps as the rest of his team continued sliding into place behind similar objects of cover. It wasn’t long before razorbugs and thudbugs began to hammer against the defensive position the Mandalorians were huddled behind.
“Hold them in the pit!” Tyran yelled as he returned fire at the alien warriors, not particularly aiming at any one warrior, but trying to keep them from exiting any further from the blast radius they were about to create.
Rixa came down near a tree two meters to the right of Tyran. Even through the black armor that his little brother was wearing Tyran could see that he was breathing very heavy.
“You alright?”
Rixa shook his head “No, that painstim didn’t to anything.”
“Should have been a little nicer to the medic then.” Dyir said dropping down beside Rixa. Kial and Baydo weren’t too far behind him.
“Tyran I think they sent a whole battalion after us.” Kial said while he reloaded his weapon. He to was out of breath. Tyran glanced over his tree husk and couldn’t believe how many Yuuzhan Vong warriors were spilling over the hillside and into the pit rushing towards them.
“Kas, do you still have that detonator.”
“It’s practically glued to my hand.”
“Give me a five count, when he reaches three we all break cover and head away from the blast zone. If any of us get separated, proceed to the designated rally points for your respective teams and wait.” he received confirmations from his ten Supercommandos and took in a large breath of air. “Start the count.”
Kas began the count, putting two beat spaces between each number. All too soon his count reached three and Tyran was once again rushing through the muddy jungles of Katna-II. With every footfall he had to expend more energy than he would have liked by having to break the suction the mud created around his boots every time they impacted the muck. It effectively turned what should have been an incredibly fast run into a slow march.
He heard a loud thunk beside him and made a quick glance to locate the source of the noise, only to see his little brother collapsed. Retreating back towards his little brother without a moments hesitation, Tyran was happy to see Rixa still conscious. The effort that it had taken to maneuver through the mud combined with the pain from his prior injury had taken a severe toll on his body. The sky beyond the treeline became illuminated for a single instant and Tyran knew that they had only moments to make a decision.
Taking in their surroundings Tyran noted a shallow pool of water, putrid though it was. He grabbed Rixa by his collar and began to drag him towards the pool. It took considerable strength on Tyran’s part to pull both himself and his brother, weighed down by armor, weapons and several added pounds of mud and grime.
“What are you doing?!” Rixa yelled at him “just let me go.”
“Too late for that little brother.” Tyran said tossing Rixa into the pool of water just as the shockwave from the explosion hit him.
He lurched forward, and fell on top of Rixa with all the grace of a dancing Hutt. The ground began to shake as if threatening to break the swamp-moon in two. A deafening roar hit the two of them seconds after the shockwave. The heat that enveloped the pair was so intense it threatened to boil the pool they were submerged in, cooking them alive in their armor. An immense wave of pressure washed down over them darkening the edges of Tyran’s vision.
For the second time in as many hours Tyran felt the abyss reach up and grip him.
**************
Raven staring up into the face of High Commander Falas Draisa let out a sudden howl of pain, not caused by the painful methods of her captors but by the sudden rippling in the Force. The eleven presences she had been monitoring all suddenly erupted into hot, searing pain. Some of them more so than others.
Then she felt the sudden vibration and hollow crack of thunder. Something horrible had just happened, caused either by the Yuuzhan Vong or her rescuers she did not know, but she knew that it had been costly. She could feel many of the soldiers who had come to break her out of her prison writhing in pain from whatever had happened and the young Jedi came to the conclusion that her rescue was not to be.
Finally tears spilled down her cheeks and she began crying. Sobs echoing out from her in uncontrollable waves of agony. The portal to her chamber opened and a lesser Yuuzhan Vong warrior approached holding a leathery sphere out towards Draisa.
The two began to speak in their native language and Draisa briskly grabbed the villip from his subordinate.
“Jeedai I believe you will want to hear this for yourself.” he said in Basic. The malicious joy in his voice unmistakable. He stroked the villip once and the face of Kurru Ivat appeared before him. “What is your report?”
“High Commander, the infidels fled into the jungle and detonated their own vessel in an attempt to decimate our forces and aid in their escape.”
“And?”
“Their plan worked my lord, but it had a high cost. Many of our warriors were incinerated by the blast but Many of the infidels were wounded by the explosion as they did not anticipate the thickness of the mud that surrounds this area. It slowed their escape considerably and they were not able to vacate the blast radius in time.”
Raven’s heart sank at the news. She now knew for certain she would never leave here alive.
“We have gathered the survivors and are transporting them back to the Temple for breaking my lord.”
“Very good Kurru, you have made the Slayer god most pleased. The stain of the Infidels on your soul may yet be cleansed after all. I await your return.” The image of Kurru Ivat gave what appeared to be a salute and the villip inverted once again. The grin that he turned on Raven practically made her skin leap from her body “Now Jeedai tell me what you were doing in my sector?”