Confinement

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

Neesa canted her head to one side and arched her eyebrows. She had displayed some frustration at how slow they were to get these vessels in working order to Vrak, but he had been doing the same at the time.

"How do they spread the infection?" She asked bluntly. She'd seen slaves changing and wanted to know exactly what she needed to prepare for. It was odd how the demeanour of the sorceress switched so quickly from being so blunt and frustrated to contemplative silence.

Neesa moved through the security station. A compact scatter blaster would do. It wasn't her typical weapon but she had no interest in getting up close and personal with the ghouls unnecessarily.

 

[Yidhra]

[SIZE=11pt]“Hm?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Yidhra froze, finger lingering a hair’s breadth above the screen. “Oh, claws and bites. Avoid exposed skin,” she said while waving in @Neesa’s general direction. The nagai was hardly dressed for the occasion. At least the Pureblood’s robes covered all but her face and hands.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Peering at her datapad through slitted yellow eyes, Yidhra spoke up again. “There should be some armor in the backroom lockers. Stocked it in case of Hssiss or Terentatek down in the tombs. You never know.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]“Hand,” she said not a breath later, “you are a hunter, no? Could you catch one of the bastards?”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It was a matter of simple math. At this point in time, they (1) didn’t have all that many people, galactically speaking; (2) couldn’t run a ship this big with a decimated crew. Yidhra didn’t care if they lived or died, but she [/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]did[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] care to make it back to Athiss in one piece and also sometime this year.[/SIZE]

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

Neesa moved deeper into the store room to find some more heavy clothing. Her formal robes were discarded in favour of a set of black armour. It only had firm plating across the chest, but the weave would probably keep out teeth and claws for a few moments at least whilst the whole suit didn't weigh her down. The whole setup left her looking like a riot control officer which was somewhat appropriate.

"That would require some planning," she admitted. "We've need to break one off from the main group and lock it in a cell or tranquilize it. How necessary is it? No matter what it won't come without risks."

Risks that would mostly be on Neesa to take, so she needed to understand what they could gain from them.

 

[Yidhra]

A frown strolled across her features, then came back and set up camp.

“I know,” Yidhra admitted, spitting out the words like spoiled food. She gripped her datapad a touch more fiercely and finished typing off a last series of brutal keystrokes before she turned her bright yellow gaze on @Neesa.

“Simply put: there is a cure, but this strain of the plague is different – quicker. If we capture a rakghoul, I can make a new one based on the old formula that’s still in our archives,” she rattled off in a single breath, turning the screen to show the complex arrangement of molecules to the Hand.

“If we vent them – if we can – we’ll have to abandon the ship. Not enough crew to fly it back home.”

And to think she’d been raging about the expedition turning up nothing just half an hour previous; how lucrative it was proving to be now!

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

"Feth it," she sighed, seeing the logic in the course of action. Neesa didn't typically take action quickly. She liked meticulously planned operations that followed a long period of intelligence gathering. She liked plans within plans and fallback options.

"We can't leave the ship abandoned here," she agreed. "Too close to the Silver Jedi for a start. Neesa was quite content with the notion that Vrak might try and kill her one day, but she would rather not hasten that conflict.

"You!" She called to a slave that walked past. "You're coming with us."

The slave bowed low. "How may I serve?"

"Bait." Neesa switched to galactic basic from the sith language so the slave would not understand.

 

[Yidhra]

All too often, Sith let themselves be driven by reckless passion. It had its place, Yidhra reasoned, in some deep dark hole; to be tapped only in the case of a life-or-death emergency. When survival was the only consideration, even the sorceress would let her anger and temperament spill into her magic.

But they were not there yet.

“Good,” she said, sizing up the slave with the critical eye of a butcher.

“How will you lure only one rakghoul away from the group? They hunt in packs, you realize,” the Pureblood continued in Basic as they reset their course for Maintenance.

As they walked – or limped, in Yidhra’s case – the sorceress began to check the chemical supplies in the medbay, giving out the orders to prepare her tools. When they captured the frakker, they would have to act quickly.

Already, time was running out.

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

"This isn't going to be subtle," Neesa replied as they reached a turbolift. She raised a comm-unit to her mouth. "Is the area clear around the turbolift on deck three?"

There was a pause. "Yes."

"Seal it off but give the internal control panels access to open and shut the blast doors."

"Done."

Neesa turned to face Yidhra as the turbolift took them down in a second flat. The slave kept her eyes low. "I'm hoping the pack has a leader anyway. Or rather, one that's a little bit quicker at running or chasing food."

The doors opened to another bland corridor in military grey. Neesa picked a direction and started to walk. When she saw the sealed door ahead she told the slave to stay in place. "You may want to pick a side room for this bit," she advised Yidhra. Neesa approached the door and pressed herself back out of sight as much as possible. She reached around to the controls and slapped the button. The door slid up our of sight with a faint whoosh.

"Oi!" Neesa shouted as loudly as she could, pressing herself back. The howl of ghouls responded. Neesa could see the expression on the slave's face as realisation dawned. The Nagai closed her eyes and stretched out with the Force. She felt them approaching. A group of four. The growls and snarls grew closer. Neesa waited.

She reached around for the controls before the first one appeared. The door came down just as it passed. The second one had its head through but the the door caught it on the back of the neck and drove it down into the ground. It created an awful mess.

Neesa raised her blaster and fired a stun ring at the ghoul who was still determinedly running for the slave. She missed.

 

[Yidhra]

Yidhra sucked at combat. She excelled at experiments, and science, and research, but she was absolute bantha poodoo at combat. But that wasn’t the only reason she hated physical engagements. The other was the lack of control. In the lab, on the slab, the sorceress held all the strings. She was the puppeteer, the master, the unseen hand guiding every breath, every reaction. Whatever happened was due to her design. It could be calculated, rationalized, systemized, defined.

Not fething combat, though. Thousands of random variables, unpredictable deviations, frak-ups, and Force knew what else. Anything could happen. You could never be truly prepared.

It was a situation Yidhra despised so fiercely it was a miracle her clothes didn’t catch fire.

(Which would have still been preferable to her current predicament.)

The sorceress spat out a curse so foul it would be sin to even try and commit it to writing. Her amber eyes went wide and her breath stopped in her throat as she watched the stun ring sail right past the fether’s head.

Her mind went blank. She wasn’t made for this; for looking a salivating, growling death into its snapping jaws and firing.

But there was Yidhra, and then there was the Pureblood. And the Pureblood screamed at her bantha-in-the-headlights self. That she was too good to die like this. Meant for greater things, for the highest highs. That she hadn’t yet fulfilled her ambition, her purpose, her duty to the most ancient and noble house of Dottash. If she kicked the bucket like this, an eternity in Netherworld would truly be hell: her brother would never cease mocking her. The worst thing about it? He’d be frakking right.

And that simply couldn’t stand.

The sorceress was back with a blink and a gasp. Her hands moved of their own volition, spidery fingers forming complex patterns in the empty air. Her pale lips murmured incantations without a sound, amber eyes glowing as she called to the Dark Side.

If her power didn’t betray her, the rakghoul would find itself ensnared by a tight leash of darkness binding its legs.

And then, if the bastard had any decency, it would deign to fall flat on its face.


[member="Neesa"]

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

The ghoul actually ended up falling backwards. This was on account of the screaming pureblood that went hurtling into it was its legs were bound. Neesa had been given precious little time to form a plan, but it still wouldn't do to act without having several paths to achieving the goal.

She would have been a very dead Nagai by now in her line of work otherwise.

The ghoul clawed and bit at the slave who screamed and tried to scrabbled away. The ghoul dug claws into her shin and held fast. It tried to pull itself close enough for a bite. There was a dull thrum that reverberated through the corridor and the ghoul went quite still. After telekinetically pulled the slave to her doom Neesa had drawn Sorrow. The flat of the curved blade was against the crown of the ghouls head and one of the runes faintly glowed. The sonic crack had knocked the ghoul quite unconscious. If it has been a normal sentient it likely would have suffered some permanent mental effects from the blow.

The pureblood continued to crawl away. Neesa took two steps in pursuit and then swiped down. The pureblood didn't get the flat of the blade.