Confinement

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

She was always garbed in her formal robes when she went before Lord Sitas. Even when she avoided all eyes on the way in and out of his estates she was always dressed appropriately when she reached his study.

Deep navy was trimmed bright scarlet embroidered in bronze. The robes marked her out as his Hand. He was sat in his favoured chair, crouched over an old tome. He didn't even acknowledgement her. Sitas just kept his eyes on the book.

This wasn't unusual behaviour. Neesa simply took the seat opposite him and waited. Hunched over the book she could see just how broad he was. Sitas was an old man now, but beneath those robes was still a great deal of musculature. His hands were gnarled and worn. She'd heard it said that he had been a fearsome warrior once. Certainly he was still powerful in the Force.

He slid the book shut and placed it on a table. "Neesa," he acknowledged with a nod.

"Master Sitas." It didn't matter that he was a Lord. To her she was 'master'.

"I Ran a Blue Moon," he said pointing at the open book. "Poetry."

Neesa looked down at it briefly then back up, waiting for her assignment.

He shook his head. "You read sith better than aurabesh and no study interests you if you can't see the direct benefit. Your training has a long way to go still."

Oh, it was going to be one of his more tedious lessons.

“We'll talk on that when you're back.”

Perhaps not.

“A group of Kissai have sent a party to Korriban to an old ruin they think Muur carried out experiments in. So on this occasion it is useful that you've dedicated your time to dark arts instead of poetry. Had you been born on Athiss you would have been given a fitting sith education, but we work with what we have.”

“You want me to go on the expedition?”

“No, it's already left. I don't expect you to contribute a great deal but I insisted I send you to protect to expedition and carry out some studies.”

Neesa narrowed her eyes. Sitas didn't offer much freely and it seemed he'd been kept out of the planning. “But you want me to…”

“Do that. And report back to me on exactly what they find.”

Neesa inclined her head. “Of course.”

---

Neesa saw the stealth cruiser through the viewport of her shuttle. It hung at the edge of the system away from view. Her stealth shuttle, piloted by a servant of Sitas, carried on towards the surface. The dull, lifeless surface of Korriban loomed ahead of them.

“I will go and get my things, call me on the intercom as soon as we break the atmosphere,” Neesa told him, sliding out of her chair.

It would turn out to be a waste of a mission. The tomb had already been plundered and the party on the ground were packing up empty handed. They had collected nothing. Except for the two slaves who had grazed their skin on the wall of a chamber and infected themselves with a Rakghoul plague. Within an hour they would turn, trapping the rest of the crew with them on the cruiser. But for now they carried on loading equipment back into a shuttle as Neesa's came to rest beside it.


http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Rakghoul_plague

 

[Yidhra]

Her quarters were filled with the furious silence of someone tapping away at a datapad. Long, sharp nails were all fine and well for the sith who spent most of their time engaged in politicking and scheming, but Yidhra could afford no such extravagances of fashion. She meddled with corpses and frail scrolls instead of affairs of high society, and such choices require certain sacrifices.

But that was alright when you preferred knowledge over petty gossip.

She’d gone to Korriban full of hope. Most of the tombs in the Valley of the Dark Lords had been looted a hundred times over, and that was exactly why they had set out to dig at a less notorious site. Yidhra had planned everything from the launch to their return; she’d cross-referenced her sources across three physical and one digital library; she’d even paid a visit (very brief) to one Lord Sitas, who held quite the reputation in her field.

Despite all of this, the mother-frakking, shet-gobbling schutta of an expedition failed like an acolyte trying to pull off a lightning storm.

Growling so deep it would make a Massassi proud, Yidhra finalized the frakking report on the frakking datapad and chucked the frakking piece of shet on her worktable.

“Shet,” she muttered, cradling her forehead as she sagged in her chair. Returning empty-handed was the last thing she needed.

“Lady Dottash—”

Yidhra nearly pulled a muscle as she whipped her head around. A wide-eyed servant teetered in the doorway, looking about one scowl away from pissing himself. Lady Dottash, you see, was the subject of some rumors involving the dead, experiments, and the not-so-dead.

“Yes?”

“I apologize deeply for disturbing you, Lady Dottash, but the pilot wished you to know we’re ready to depart at your command…” he trailed off, gaze glued to his dusty boots.

“Very well. Before you go, though—” she paused, tilting her head to the side as she listened. The presence was discernible on a world as tainted as Korriban simply because it was new; like adjusting to white noise made it easy to spot the momentary blink of a clear picture.

“Has somebody joined us?”

“Yes, my Lady. Another Sith. Her ship bears the markings of your Order.”

“I see. Invite her on board then, unless she has matters to attend to here that don’t pertain to our mission.”

[member="Neesa"]

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

Neesa was no longer garbed in any formal robes. Instead her slender form was hidden within well-worn travellers cloaks. Her milky white skin was a stark contrast with the scarlet sith around the ship. There was a leather satchel hanging from her shoulder over her cloak. It had been well packed with some devices and artefacts that were useful when dealing with a tomb full of traps. Across her back both swords were wrapped for travel rather than easy access.

It was well known around Athiss that Lord Sitas had trained a Nagai assassin off world and then brought her back as his Hand and personal assassin. She had a pureblood ancestor, but there were no signs of this in her appearance. It was, however, where her strength in the Force came from. Many Purebloods back on Athiss disdained her, whilst becoming more favourable towards Sitas lest her take off her leash.

Her hawkish gaze looked out from under the cloak of her hood, noticing the mess strewn across the desk. The frustration was palpable. White hands came up to pull back the hood, revealing her typically unkempt, black hair.

“Lady Dottash,” she said with an almost imperceptible incline of her head. “Lord Sitas sent me to assist, but I am told the expedition returns to the Cruiser Ustek within the hour?”

 

[Yidhra]

“Oh.”

Her mouth wrapped around the syllable with palpable disappointment, like tasting a fine dish, only to find it completely bland.

When the servant had said ‘Sith’, Yidhra had, naturally, assumed…. A small furrow split her brow and her right tendril twitched. Her sickly yellow eyes absorbed her stature with a preternatural hunger, cataloging her into an ever-expanding memory. Her quick mind jumped to conclusions, again, though this time, she was sure.

“You are the Hand. The nagai Hand,” she said, stretching a thin smile over thinner lips. “And that is correct, yes. We’re leaving within a few minutes, in fact.”

The sith stood, folding the discarded datapad into her robes. Her gaze fell upon the assassin, head full of the bits and scraps she’d heard about the woman. That despite being foul-blooded, she was strong in the Force, but also a true blade-dancer, like all of her kin.

Yidhra pursed her lips, considering all the obstacles they had yet to bridge on their way to greatness.

“You may join us, if you wish. Your Lord and I share many interests… perhaps you study Sith Sorcery as well?”

[member="Neesa"]

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

"That would be welcome," she replied. If only because she knew full well those cruisers had better accommodation available than the cramped shuttle she had just come in on. Small recompense for a wasted journey. Though she had yet to ascertain whether the expedition had truly come up empty handed or they were making off with a valued artefact as quietly as possible.

A thin smile to match reached Neesa's lips. "And indeed. Not in great depth, even if Sitas tells me I am a quick study. Likely he would not have kept me on otherwise."

All she had studied for the past six years was blade work and sorcery. She read sith better than aurabesh and had almost no knowledge of the subjects a typical seventeen year old would be immersed in. She had learned more from an expert on her expedition to an abandoned Jedi temple, particularly on the merits of being cautious. Unfortunately the opportunity to practise had apparently been lost.

 

[Yidhra]

“That’s indeed unlikely.” Yidhra was all too happy to nod along. It was good that the nagai knew her position and privilege would last only so long as she had anything of value to give. The second she became useless – the second anyone became useless – they were nothing more than fodder for the beasts.

And there were beasts aplenty among the Sith.

“Personally I find fascinating the myriad effects sorcery can have on a living being,” she spoke again as she led the way towards the bay. They were going to reach Ustek in a minute or so, exiting the shuttle for the luxury of space provided by the cruiser.

“Do you study any particularities yourself?”

[member="Neesa"]

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

"A few areas I suppose," she replied slowly. It was a reply just to buy herself a few seconds. It was reasonably well know what her main line of work was, but that wasn't the same as confirming it by admitting exactly what kind of magic she studied.

"Imbuing items, using runes to anchor spells to objects. Sorcery with a physically destructive effect," she replied. She decided to leave out her studies into magical poisons, it wasn't relevant to the conversation and would only have hammered home the fact that she studies as much as she needed.

"I've seen someone anchor a changing spell to a virus before," she said, referring to the virus Siedra had created. The one which had inspired Vrak to have Irajah work on making another to use back. "What kind of effects is it you study?" She could turn the line of questioning back to the expedition shortly and establish if she was being told the truth.

 

[Yidhra]

By the time they exited the shuttle and moved deeper into the stealth cruiser, Yidhra had already forgotten about her pointed ears and pale flesh. Certainly racism and superiority were ingrained into every sith since birth – or, perhaps, by the very virtue of birth – but they were often only skin-deep.

In the end, the drive to succeed and usurp weighed over. Getting a leg up, finding a witting (or unwitting ally), using someone’s back as a stepping stone; all valid, and, most importantly, utterly nondiscriminatory methods to achieve a goal. Whether the bodies paving the way to the throne were red or gray or scaly or feathered – none of it mattered to the truly ambitious.

And so Yidhra smiled like a shark, and nodded, and cataloged away with every word that left @Neesa’s mouth.

“Old techniques are often the best, yes. And they allow for so much freedom, don’t you think? Such breadth of possibility, one can hardly envision them all…—” She let out a little cough, straightening a pleasure-curled tendril.

“Sometimes, alchemized disease. Sometimes, imbued weaponry. Sometimes, illusion, offensive sorcery, practical alchemy… anything really. I enjoy the field as a whole, always have. So many of us,” – Sith, that is – “wield the Force so very, ah, crudely. It is quite saddening, to see it reduced to a brutish tool. Our ancestors could make it sing. That is what drives my study, Hand of Sitas.”

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

"If I had all the time I would perhaps study harder. Lord Sitas can get quite... Frustrated that I tend to burrow into subjects that take my interest instead of following his reading list to the letter."

They walked down a smooth corridor. Brand new ships there was little to no wear and test on the interior. A pair of sith slaves branched off towards the mess hall. There were precious minutes before the plague took hold.

"Lord Sitas is always looking to recover what was lost. Which was why he was somewhat perplexed that he hadn't been told the excavations was going until it was well underway."

This was the first time Neesa smiled. Just a hint of an upward turn of tight, thin lips. No point skirting around the issue indefinitely with the team already on the way home.

 

[Yidhra]

“Ah, nonsense.” Yidhra waved her off. “Studying what interests us always garners better results. Your Lord underestimates the driving force of motivation.”

They rounded a corner and walked past one of the larger cargo holds. The blast doors were wide open, the maze-like interior of crates and equipment turned into a hive full of bustling slaves. They were scurrying to and fro with armfuls of tools that had been as useful as a bicycle to a fish.

“He wasn’t? That’s… odd—?”

She trailed off as her stare fixed on something behind [member="Neesa"], yellow eyes widening with shock.

“Revan’s sweaty balls, is that a… rakghoul?”

One could only spend so many hours in the company of suffering creatures before developing certain professional deformations. Exhibiting a markedly inappropriate response to dangerous and repulsive situations was just one of them.

Yidhra’s eyes went from surprise to morbid curiosity in the span of a grin. “So the trip wasn’t for nothing after all. It isn’t a proper tomb raid until someone goes mad, right?”

Then the screaming started.

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

Neesa was immediately suspicious. Claiming ignorance of the matter and then shouting 'look out behind you!' Did the woman think she was an idiot.

The Nagai took half a step back, her delicate fingers wrapping around the hilt of a knife at her waist. There were no notions of Rakghouls in her mind, just the sith before her.

Then, as she half-turned her shoulders away from Yidhra the scream rang out down the corridor. A slave was dragged down by a pair of the creatures and almost torn to pieces. Another slave was on her back, curled up and writhing as she started to change.

Neesa said some very crude words in galactic basic. The intrigue with the communication failure could be dealt with after making it off the ship in one piece. Her left hand drew the knife whilst she dropped her satchel from her shoulder and fished for a blaster with her right. Better to keep these abominations at a distance.

 

[Yidhra]

To someone else, or literally anyone else, really, this turn of events would seem unfortunate at best. To the screaming slaves currently being torn apart either from the outside or the inside, it was downright catastrophic.

To Yidhra, it was positively entrancing.

Which was, coincidentally, the weapon she brought the bear once it became obvious that the rakghouls were looking to broaden their diet with alien flesh.

While [member="Neesa"] brandished her weapons, the sith resorted to the time-honored, good ol’ fashioned ‘Sith approach’. She stopped a fleeing worker in his path with a sharp snap of her fingers, then positioned him to act as a convenient meatshield. The moment to breath allowed her to glance around more clearly, and immediately Yidhra realized how abysmal their location was.

The open corridor was as bad is it got tactically, practically inviting the beasts to attack them from every flank. Even if they backed up against a wall, the sheer volume would end up overflowing them in the end.

“We should get out while they’re still distracted,” well, mostly. “This shet needs to be contained or we can kiss our sith asses goodbye.”

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

Neesa picked up on the notion very quickly. She thumbed off the safety on her blaster pistol but didn’t fire any bolts to draw attention to themselves. She backed away slowly. There was a blast door behind them.

For a sith sorcerer Yidhra was awfully crude with her language, she thought. Neesa was supposed to be the trained gutter rat. One of the ghouls looked up from its victim. No communication was made as far as Neesa could tell, but the two next to it almost immediately followed its line of sight.

They snapped up like sprinters, keeping low as they accelerated towards them. Neesa fired one bolt into the leading ghoul who tumbled and dragged the others down with it. Her slow walk backwards turned into a jog and she slapped the controls to seal the blast door behind them.

Both hands came up to cradle the pistol and with the efficiency of a trained killed she moved between three aiming points and let off more shots through the closing gap.

“Vrak will not be pleased if one of his new Cruisers has to be abandoned,” she said. They could probably control life support, or perhaps Yidhra was talented enough to put together a cure, but both tasks were beyond the assassin.

 

[Yidhra]

Aaaand there it went.

Yidhra cursed her genes in a plethora of tongues as she made for the doors. Her useless leg dragged and caught with every other step. Her heart was choking her own throat. Her lungs burned with anger at her own helplessness. Her eyes stung with exertion, her face wretched by a fierce rictus.

With a broken wheeze Yidhra pulled herself past the door. Her usual washed-out red was aflush with pounding blood. Forehead glinting with sweat. Skin one size too small.

“Feth,” she spat with feeling.

“And no… he won’t. He’ll rage up a storm. Kill somebody, likely.” Licking her dry lips, Yidhra glanced at the Shadow Hand. “So let’s… avoid that, yeah?”

She squeezed her eyes shut for a long breath, racking her brain for a solution.

“Quarantine. Then space the frakkers.” A chuckle. “So. Bridge.”


[member="Neesa"]

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

Neesa made no attempt to hide the fact that she looked down at the sorceresses right leg. There wasn't a long dash to the turbo lift. With any luck it would take the ghouls time to spread to the upper levels.

She turned and started walking briskly. "We will have to move quickly," he said. There would be a point where she would abandon Yidhra, but the threat wasn't high enough to consider that yet.

"If the damned doors are working yet then we can at least seal the bridge," she said in her raspy voice. The first time she had been on one of these ships they had not been. "How can they have been infected in an abandoned tomb?"

 

[Yidhra]

Gouging the distance to the turbolift brought an instant scowl to her face. Not far by anyone’s standards. Then again, most people weren’t forced to make judgments under threat of a frakking Rakghoul plague.

So maybe she couldn’t fight for shet. So maybe her leg was about as useful as a graverobber in a crematorium. So maybe frakking what.

Yidhra ground her teeth and started a fierce limp towards the elevator. By the time she yanked her leg – violently – through the door, the sith was cold with sweat and hot with rage. One of these days, that leg would have to go.

She smashed the button and let out a sigh of relief as the turbolift began to ascend. The cool metal offered a small comfort to her racing heart.

“Frak if I know. Some viruses can survive virtually anything in a hibernating state. Some sad fether probably stubbed his finger or some shet.” Yidhra snorted. “Got turned to a pissing monster for his trouble.” She peeled her sticky robes off the wall as the tell-tale ping notified them of their arrival. Stumbling out the door, Yidhra immediately realized two things: nobody had any idea what was going on below, and the doors were working.

“Everyone!” she yelled in her best commanding voice – thank you, mother dearest. “We have an alarm four situation on the cargo deck. Lock down every turbolift and blast door connecting the bridge to the holds.” Her eyes were wide open and blazing as she advanced forward with great strides, quashing her limp with sheer force of will.

“Now!”

[member="Neesa"]

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

Silence held for a fraction of a second. Most of them started moving. Neesa broke it with barely a whisper. She crammed an enormous amount of malice into three hushed words.

"That means move."

It wasn't necessary, but the three slaves nearest the command chair started moving a few moments quicker than they would have done otherwise. She didn't know any of these sith, but she was a relatively uncommon sight on Athiss. The senior bridge crew would have almost certainly heard of her by reputation. She fixed problems and rarely was this done in a pleasant matter.

"Can we flush out the air from the lower decks?" Neesa enquired.

"Of course," replied a woman. She tapped away at a console. It made a rather negative sounding noise. She tapped more fervently.

"Problem?"

"The system is unresponsive. I don't... It should be possible to override from life support."

Neesa had a bad feeling about this. "Which deck?"

Her expression said everything.

 

[Yidhra]

Yidhra’s expression, on the other hand, simply said ‘HEEEEEELL no.’

Inch by small inch, the pureblood turned to face [member="Neesa"]. Her features looked at war with themselves, caught somewhere between abject refusal and morbid curiosity.

Because despite the life-or-death situation, despite the horrid and disfiguring plague raging onboard the cruiser, the sith was practically salivating at its potential. Sure, doom was lurking just around the corner; yet around the other lay untold discoveries and revelations.

Throwing caution to the wind (or at least the breeze), the sorceress straightened her shoulders and gave the nagai a sharp nod. She summoned her mother’s shadow and stabbed an imperious finger towards the woman at the terminal.

“Give us the fastest route from here to Life Support,” she barked. Her lips twitched in cruel satisfaction when the servant jumped to it. Maybe there was something to that patented ‘Krayt dragon grin’ that mommy dearest smiled just before she took Force Lightning to her misbehaving siblings.

Anyway, story for another time.

“Lady Dottash?” called out the woman, eyes as big as saucers. “The quickest path seems to be through the maintenance shaft. We’ll have to drop out of hyperspace and shut down the engin—”

“Just do it! We need to control this as fast as possible.”

The servant snapped her mouth closed and turned back to her console. A few relayed commands later, the Cruiser lurched to a standstill in the middle of stark blackness.

“It’s done, Lady Dottash.”

If only.

The fun part was just beginning.

 

[Neesa]

[member="Yidhra"]

Neesa scowled. In her head she had come to accept that they were at their final destination and it would just be a matter of flushing out the ghouls. "If the ships are so previous to Lord Nashar he should really get them fully functioning."

She'd already seen a hint of what they could do. They were fast and appeared more than capable of biting chunks out of humanoids. Either on tooth or claw they carried the plague because Neesa had seen more servants transforming. "Armour would be nice," she muttered, but she was doubtful she would be so lucky.

Neesa turned towards the sorceress. "If they're already in the maintenance tunnels we're in trouble. Especially of any of them have been left unsealed on the upper decks. Lets hope for a moment that isn't the way things are. There are camera on this ship, can we get a look at the closest maintenance hatch to life support?"

 

[Yidhra]

“Take that up with Nashar,” grunted Yidhra as she limped down the corridor. “If we survive this, I’m sure he’ll be delighted to hear you out.”

“Highly unlikely. When the engines are running the tunnels double as exhaustion ports. Rakghouls are tough bastards alright, but even they’d choke on that.”

With a sharp nod, the Pureblood took a left turn and led them towards the security station. “Do what you have to,” she said as they entered the room to a pair of bewildered techs.

“There’s something about the plague that I have to check…” And with that, Yidhra was immersed in the depths of her datapad, scrolling like a madwoman while her lips moved on in silence.

[member="Neesa"]