Get your own Free Home PageOriginally, this was posted in serial form to the Star Wars List that I currently lurk on, as a seasonal exercise (Halloween, 1995). It involves my favorite RPG character (and net identity), Tenandys Qural, a Kyanin (a felinoid, Outer Rim species that has remained isolationist until recently) Combat Engineer (an explanation follows in the story) on one of his earlier missions. It's largely what inspired me to mess around with horror on a regular basis in Star Wars.
Enjoy.
Tenandys Qural reflected on this as he crouched in the doorway of the burning tenement. By rights, he shouldn't have gotten this far. But since he had, his potential for getting messily slain had bounced.
Shots caromed off the walls around him, causing him to pull himself tighter against the steel of the door. The resistance was slowly advancing along the thoroughfare, and he had to think of something fast or be hedged in by superior numbers. His tail twitched with an edgy anticipation.
They had pulled him out of the wreckage of his Trav 6 after the battle of Kyan, his left arm mangled beyond repair. They had said it was a miracle. It hadn't been. But it had been close.
They fixed him up, replacing his forearm with a work of art, and sent him out to fight again. To survive in a situation that would, again, try to kill him.
He'd thought he'd had it on his last mission for the Alliance. A covert operative dumped into an Imperial Sector Capital, betrayed by his contact, left to die by his own commanders, hunted by a Jedi slayer with a vendetta against him, and facing off against a Dark Lord that should have died years before - he had thought his number had come up.
But somehow, he had cut the impossible deal with the Moff and wound up here, waiting to die at the hands of two thousand angry citizens. It made him wonder why he tried so damned hard.
Habit, he supposed.
He chanced a quick look down the street, garnering a couple of stray blaster bolts for his trouble. He still had a little breathing . They had taken up position in a bank 20 meters down. From there, was only a matter of time before they realized that he was alone. And then, it would get sticky.
"VX, punch up a schematic of this zone. I need a backdoor, and quick."
A couple of LEDs lit up on his arm, but otherwise, there was no that anything was happening. Qural snapped off a couple of at the more daring members of the resistance, biding time until the droid linking in his arm was able to position him.
And then, for a strange, flickering instant, an image blossomed the center of his mind's eye. It obscured all else in his perception, away the external world in vivid hallucination, and then faded away.
The interface was a little buggy when it came to visual images. and vox were simple enough, but the cortex linkage was still experimental, so it had trouble coordinating his perception with images. It was a software problem, but Qural had neither the nor the patience to upgrade. One of these days...
The map lasted for a second at best, but it told him what he had know. He was only a couple of blocks from some kind of shrine park. He could hole up there if need be, and from what he could tell, there was network of tunnels beneath it that would allow him to escape. And in his line of work, survival often outweighed the other objectives.
Tenandys Qural was an Imperial Combat Engineer, one of the most dangerous and secretive positions in the Ubiqtorate. On a given assignment, he would make the drop onto a planet, assess its weaknesses, and set about throwing the government and planetary defenses into chaos. His position was part pathfinder, part agent provocateur, and part assassin. It normally took him less than a month's time to throw the social order into chaos for the Imperial forces to crush.
Combat Engineers were trained in a wide array of skills in an attempt to allow them to function in any situation. If the assignment called for a Combat Engineer to move through the social circles of a planet's aristocracy, they could handle it with the same grace as when infiltrating a key military base. It was always a matter of assessment and adaptation.
That was the deal that Qural had cut. In the face of impossible odds, staring down a future of imprisonment and torture as a Rebel spy, he had changed the rules. Which had brought him to the attention of Faraux Geist, the leader of the Combat Engineers.
He had evaded the Moff's elite guard for longer than anyone had ever done, going so far as to call in a vendetta to craft his escape - reasoning that he stood a better chance against one lone Jedi Slayer than against a hundred of the Moff's elite troops. When he had finally been hauled in front of the Sector Governor some time later, he had thought his options had finally run out.
Instead, inspiration pushed him into the strangest ploy he had ever concieved of: if he were spared, they could put him to use on their side. He had already proven himself more competent than the elite; look at what they stood to gain in the deal.
It had been an arduous process, from indoctrination to brutal tests of loyalty, but he had pulled through it all somehow. And here he was, an alien in service to the Empire. Toppling governments, preparing planets for invasion, and looking death square in the face.
***
Tenandys flattened himself against a pillar, muttering a variety
of colorful oaths to no one in general. The riots that had raged in the streets over the last week had unexpectedly had the side effect of stripping all available cover from the park. Now he was pinned down in a structure at the very center, watching as the mob gathered to lynch him.
"A little bit of bad luck doesn't merit this," he growled to himself.
"I would hardly call the public assassination of the planet's leader a bit of bad luck, came the digital reply.
"Who asked you?" Qural glared at the intricate sculpture that was his left forearm. "How in the hell was I supposed to know that his suite was monitored, VX?" He paused, scowling. "Or that it was going to be simulcast on the planet's telecomm network? I don't think that even Geist could have second guessed that one."
"Geist wouldn't be in this mess."
Qural rolled his eyes, wondering if it wasn't time for a full system wipe on this droid. But VX was right: Geist wouldn't have gotten himself in this far. But then, Geist was capable of the impossible. Tenandys Qural, Lord Khanjheira, was not. He was just damned good at surviving. Most of the time.
"Speaking of which..." He took careful inventory of his surroundings, muttering. It was time he started putting some effort into the concept of continued existence. It was rather doubtful that he could say anything to sway the mob's opinion, leaving him two final options: fight or flight. And since he was outnumbered by a couple of thousand to one, flight was his preferred plan of action.
Not that he couldn't make a sizable dent in this mob. Perhaps enough to break their morale and send them running. With the explosives that he had planted in and around the park and city, he could do quite a bit of damage. All that would do, however, would be to make them dig in and fight harder. That was not the solution he was looking for.
So he'd have to pull back for a while and reassess the weak points until he could figure out where to strike next. He was good at thinking on the fly, and he still had a little margin for error on his timetable. When he finally called the Imperial Forces in, the planet would be ready for takeover.
That was, of course, assuming he lived through all of this.
There had to be a way out. Some way to get to the tunnels that ran beneath the park. From his position of relative safety, he scrutinized the shrine, doing his best to visualize the structure against the schematic that he half-remembered.
It seemed to him that his best chance would be the center stone.
It raised from the floor of the shrine, a decimeter high platform of polished black marble that looked for all the world like a crypt seal. There was something engraved into it, but it was a little beyond Qural's current grasp of linguistics. It seemed very familiar...
The stone probably was a crypt seal, he decided. And the tunnels beneath it were likely ancient catacombs. Not precisely his favorite venue, but he doubted that the mob would follow him into a place of the dead.
Probably there was some elaborate mechanism that would open the crypt. And given a little bit of time, Tenandys would have looked for it. But with an angry mob gathering bloodlust and courage just a short distance away, he wasn't going to waste time looking. Not when there was a far more expedient method.
"VX, release."
The muted sound of working servomotors and subtle clicks issued from his arm, and a hidden panel popped open. In the recess beneath was his prized Kyanin lightsaber. During his flight from the moff, he had been forced to strip the internal mechanisms from the arm and hide the saber there as added insurance in his final confrontation with the Moff. When he had gotten the opportunity, he had retooled the entire arm, eking out just enough space for the saber housing and the closing mechanism. It had proven very useful in sticky situations like what was developing currently.
He lifted the saber free, feeling his body falling into the combat trance that he had been conditioned into long before. Distantly, he noticed the cybernetic mechanisms closing back up, his perceptions taking on the edgy feel that a battle required. He had no intention of actually going into combat, but there was also no reason not be prepared for such an outcome.
Tenandys ignited the lightsaber, its garnet blade humming into life before him. Beyond, he heard a few scattered gasps rise from the crowd. He rolled his eyes in mild disgust, wonderin why a weapon as old as civilization itself could cause this sort of stir. Enculturation, he imagined. It surprised him on some level, but he couldn't spare the attention currently.
He brought the saber back and around in a snapping arc, striking the center of the stone. As the blade connected, time seemed to lock, freezing at the instant of the strike.
Light flooded the engraving, bursting forth with explosive intensity. Qural felt himself being lifted and thrown backward by the power behind the light, and as he did, a strange perception clicked into place.
He knew what the alien language said. He understood the words and knew that any foreboding he might have experienced before was well grounded.
His only question was why something like this would be here, of all places, in the center of a sizable city on a well populated world. By rights, it should have been on a desolate moon somewhere, forgotten and lost to civilization. So that something like this would not have happened.
Tenandys hit one of the marble pillars and collapsed into a heap on the ground, wondering what in the seven hells he would do now. The significance of the words was not lost on him.
"That is not dead which can eternal lie,/ And with strange aeons, even death may die..."
Not even Geist could have foreseen this...
Liquid darkness bubbled up from the rent stone, swirling and coalescing in a vaguely humanoid set of parameters. It looked strangely like an intricately folded cloak submerged in a pool of black blood. Its limits were indistinct and not quite perceivable, and it seemed to be in constant flux, shifting from one state to another.
Tenandys pulled himself upright, quelling the pain that impact had blessed him with. Visually, he thought, this must look really interesting.
It had all the underpinnings of an archetypal battle. One hundred and eighty three centimeters of Kyanin warrior dressed in the white duty uniform of an Imperial Combat Engineer. White mane falling in a longish braid, with short black fur covering the rest of his lithe felinoid frame, he looked the part of tamed civilization, replete with elegant lightsaber.
And he faced inchaote darkness, as primal as the night itself and older than comprehension. Feral as a Gen D'sar's cry.
Civilization versus wildness, order against entropy, reason fighting senseless fear. Light and dark. All that was missing was clearly defined good and evil. Qural knew better than to side himself with benevolence, even though he knew that his actions were in the best interests of the galaxy in the long run. It was a matter of semantics that he wanted to examine some day when he had the chance.
Unless, of course, he was slain on the spot.
And from the way the situation was stacking up, that was becoming a rather distinct possibility.
***
Tenandys Qural awoke in sudden breathless panic, every muscle in
his body tensing for action. Something moved to his left, and he swung instinctively, his cybernetic arm catching something hard in the chest. There was a sound of painful exhalation as the person collapsed.
Qural dove forward, rolling to his feet on the sterile floor. Two more people rushed toward him. He wrenched a piece of steel from his bed and dispatched them with the same ease.
At the door, someone else appeared. Tenandys sought cover beside his bed, warily eyeing the new intruder.
Slowly it dawned on him where he was. Somehow, he had woken up in an Imperial Medical Facility, well removed from the park he last remembered. And there was some sense of time having passed. Just how long, he did not know.
He let his improvised weapon clatter to the floor and rose to a standing postion. Stormtroopers were gathering in the hall outside, congregating around the young lieutenant that had been standing there, blaster carbines poised to cut the young felinoid down for any false move.
"At ease. I understand that I'm not in danger right now." The troopers relaxed slightly, but kept their cabines ready. The lieutenant stepped forward carefully.
"Qural?"
Tenandys nodded. "Yes, sir. I apologize for my actions, but I think you understand why I reacted as I did."
The lieutenant spared a glance at the three prone bodies. "Yes. Indeed, you acted as a Combat Engineer is trained to do in a situation of uncertain threat; you removed the possible threat."
"Thank you, sir."
"I am pleased to inform you, by the way, that the planet Talshan, your last assignment, has been successfully subjugated. It was a very rapid operation."
Tenandys registered an expression of shock and disbelief. "Who was able to clean that mess up? Geist? Eldritch?"
The lieutenant smiled. "Another Combat Engineer was not required. In all truth, you did a superlative job, even though you might not have realized it at the time."
"How so?"
The young man slid a chair over and sat down. "Simple, really. It takes from a doctrine that predates the Tarkin Doctrine, stating that is you subject people to a certain situation for long enough and then appear to relieve the situation, they will be desperate enough to overlook what you are doing to them."
"How does this apply?" Qural perched himself on the edge of his bed.
"You created an atmosphere of terror and chaos through your actions. Those people were so in need of a resolution to this that when our forces arrived, they cried to us to help them. And we did."
"Interesting."
"You have taken on strangely mythic proportions as some sort of demonic presence. All we had to do was come in and haul you out publicly, and they were ready to do whatever we wanted them to."
Qural was given a commendation for the efficient handling of the assignment and told to take a leave of absence on psychological grounds. This had surprised him a little, as he knew that - being an alien - he was considered expendable, but after he caught hold of the details of the operation, it began to make more sense.
The ground forces had found him in a tomb beneath the shrine, curled into a catatonic ball. He had muttered about things that were not meant to be known, and it had taken the better part of two weeks before he had come out of it.
The strangest thing of it was realizing that something was missing. When he had gotten his lightsaber back, that had been his first indication. Some significance had been removed from it. And from time to time, he found himself trying to reach out to something instinctively. When he noticed what he was doing, it confused him. There was a sense of deja vu that eluded him as he tried to search it down.
In the end, this feeling of undefinable loss and disconnection prompted him to put in for temporary transfer upon his return from leave. He didn't want to jeopardize everything by attempting to do his job like this. When he figured out what was wrong, he would go back to being a Combat Engineer.
Until then, he would try to hold onto the momentary flashes that he had and look for whatever had been cut away from his memories. The feelings of disconnection seemed to be fading slowly, but he couldn't define why.
Perhaps, he thought, the darkness knew...
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