Location: Dragon Cave, central chamber
Equipment: One (1) custom-made shoto lightsaber, Dantari crystal, One (1) CR-1 Blast Cannon, One (1) 50-meter length of synthrope, Four (4) standard thermal detonators.
Appearance: Nondescript leathers, mismatched with standard-issue Ultranaut helmet.
Interacting:
Taozi Fuyuan
,
Kalic Daws
,
Adelle Bastiel
,
Darlyn Excron
Nearby:
LE-03 (Leigh)
Na'an nodded, and reached back to take Adelle's hand without a word. Like Doc's, her eye was fixed forward, where she could feel the slow pulse of agonizing thought. One living Cerean....and five more dead ones, lost to the dark humming of the Sith-enhanced tech. The others could handle five bodies easily, especially if they were in as poor shape as the corpse at her feet. All the same, her other hand held her shoto at the ready as the pair stepped down from the tunnel into the cavern.
Even with the light, and her implant, it took a few seconds for Na'an to get oriented in the darkness of the space. She led Doc carefully over every cable she tripped over, disregarding the sounds of the others spreading out in favor of listening for more of the dead. There was a dodgy second where Doc had to pull her towards the wall and away from a closing-in moan, but between them the two quickly made their way to the center of the chamber, which was dominated by....
Well, in the dark, it looked a bit like a power chair. Or it would have, if not for massive generator it was attached to where the repulsors would be. If not for the giant masses of thick black cables snaking out of the generator, and into the Cerean seated at its base. If not for the droning that seemed to get louder as they approached as if in warning, filling Na'an's brain with alarm bells even as she forced herself forward. The drone that filled the chamber was coming from here--from the generator, from the cables, and from the Cerean--who just opened his eyes, let out a rattling breath, and
reached for Adelle.
Na'an was three steps back from his grasp in the time it took to blink.
“You’re the one driving the other bodies, aren’t you?” She said, not sure if the edge in her voice was from fear, or revulsion, or both. Either way, she'd already made a point to keep her body--and her blade--between the Cerean and Doc.
The Cerean's breath rattled again; his hand remained outstretched.
"Jedi--"
“What's this thing you've hooked yourself into? Why the Vong tech? Why Cereans?”
“Please—please—”
At that moment, the Cerean's voice hitched. Like a child, trying and failing to hold back a sob. Na'an felt another twist in her stomach, this time not from either the stench or the darkness rolling off him in waves, but the familiar one she'd felt a hundred times before. She hesitated a moment, still not letting go of Adelle's hand, but then forced herself closer, to hold the shoto up enough to see the Cerean's face clearly.
The Cerean was young--too young to even grow a full beard. His high forehead, once clearly smooth and pretty, was marred by surgical seaming, and pale enough for the circles under his eyes to stand out sickeningly dark. He was emaciated, stomach and chest sunken in from lack of nutrients, and the hand reaching out to them was trembling under its own weight. His eyes, Na'an found herself thinking, would be a lovely shade of blue--if the pain he was in hadn't rendered them so bloodshot as to be nearly purple.
And his thoughts--Na'an had been keeping herself back from them, subconsciously. She sucked in a deep breath, let her guard down, and the suffering and desperation radiating out from him hit her like a train.
He
was driving the other bodies, that much was clear--she could feel where what was left of their minds connected to his. It was...spookily familiar. Very like how it felt to be on the green planet, in a twisted sort of way. But this Cerean, barely more than a boy, was no mastermind. He wasn't even
controlling the bodies, not consciously. This had been
done to him. He'd been altered, attached to this machine along with an entire group of his kind, and left in the dark as the planet sickened and the others died one by one. He was simply the last one alive, looking for anyone who could end the hell he'd been fed to.
Na'an disengaged her shoto, and handed it back to Doc. With her hand free and teeth gritted so hard that the droning made them vibrate, she reached out and closed the distance between herself and the Cerean's fingers.
“It’s okay," she whispered.
"I get it now. We’re here. You’re not alone anymore.”
The Cerean's voice rasped in his chest; for how weak he had looked, his grasp on Na'an's hand was surprisingly strong.
“They took us—me and—please, you have to find him.”
“Who?”
“My Kadi. Kadi Yan.” The Cerean's eyes rolled, as if looking for the person he had named; the exhale on his lips upon not finding them was almost a sigh of relief.
“They said he couldn’t be wasted here. They said his name—his name was a sign.”
A sign? Na'an looked back to Doc, abruptly unsettled. She actually didn't know much about Cerean culture, beyond their tendency for polygamy and the whole thing about them having two brains, but as far as she knew they weren't a species especially tied to the Dark Side. Some of the most famous
Jedi of the old Republic were Cereans. So what would a Cerean name mean to the Shadow Empire that would be special? What kind of sign had they been looking for?
“Yan," the Cerean repeated.
"Yan was a sign. What does that mean, Jedi?” His weak arms pulled Na'an and Adelle closer; mixed in with the terror and pain in his eyes were the last smoking embers of a terrible anger.
“What do they want with us?”
Vidalu Na'an
:||:
