Funny, it's spelled just like 'Escape' (Kaine)

[Ashin Varanin]

The impromptu wrapping of metal had served well enough for moving the infected Kaine Zambrano off Dromund Kaas. It had long since been replaced by a hermetic chamber, lined with captured ysalamiri. Samples of Kaine's blood had been taken, and its nanites contained by the best medical procedures known to man.

Ashin sat before a transparisteel cube, examining its occupant.

"Kaine, I'm seriously tempted to hit you with an electromagnetic pulse and see what happens. What are your thoughts?"

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Kaine merely looked out at the Empress with dull eyes, the once bright and exuberant glowing emerald now dulled to a dark jade, blood vessels extremely noticeable under his pale skin. "I'm thinking that your continued resistance is futile. You merely prolong the coming assimilation. It would be better for you to set me free and submit to Omni than continue this foolishness. This was years in the making, Empress, I can't understand why you would reject this gift." He cocked his head slightly, a sly grin growing across his face.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"And the fascinating thing about this," she said as if he hadn't spoken, "is that it really is you saying all this, isn't it. Just slightly warped. It's not some alien intelligence, just you with a different perspective."

She stood and shrugged. Her presence came as a Force Phantom; she was currently elsewhere, managing fools. "Well, we've harvested your nanites for analysis, so I'm not opposed to more destructive testing. Electromagnetic pulse it is."

She nodded to a doctor, who flipped a switch, and the entire area was flooded with enough EMP to kill most nanotech stone dead.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Kaine would slouch down and kneel against the glass as the EMP hit, himself feeling a quake deep within himself as it passed over him. Fools, the harbinger of my freedom already comes. Just as he thought that, a small metallic object fell through the spaces of a grate in the ceiling, hitting the ground with a dull thud as legs began to form on all of its sides. The spider-thing scuttled over to where the doctor stood, unknowing on what was about to befall him. The droid leaped onto him, and shoved a metallic syringe into his flesh, injecting him with nanites that began to turn him over to OMNI. The Doctor blinked a few times and rubbed his head, as if trying to deal with a headache that had suddenly came over him before looking at Kaine in the glass cube, a discontent scowl coming over his face before he went for the controls to release the prisoner. The walls of the cube receded with a hiss and a snap, and Kaine rose from his kneeling position and walked out of his former prison, flexing and stretching his muscles. "I claim this ship in the name of OMNI, begin the infection..." The doctor nodded and went to go find his colleagues.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

...only to run into Ashin, who promptly electrocuted him to death, neutralizing his nanites. She stalked into the main chamber.

"You're claiming nothing, Kaine. Escape if you can, but don't think your patron god makes your delusions of grandeur any more feasible."

More lightning -- not her best skill, but serviceable enough -- lanced out at Kaine.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Kaine's muscle tensed as he roll to the left as he felt the sudden build up of power and narrowly avoided the lightning, some of it of course arced away from the main stream and ran across his back, scorching the flesh. Kaine was finally out of the range of the Ysalamiri, and thus retaliated with a combination of lightning and Force push to try and clear the doorway so he could try to haul it down the corridor.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Ashin deflected the lightning with ease, but the Push shoved her back, hard onto her back, and she bit her tongue as the blast slapped her across the face. She tasted blood.

As Kaine stormed past her, she spat, and the blood split into various droplets in mid-flight. If any of the droplets touched Kaine, he would feel a slight burning sensation -- but it wasn't an attack, and wouldn't trigger his danger-sense.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Kaine winced as he felt the blood droplets splatter on the back of his left leg, the burning sensation slowly taking effect, however; he attempted to turn that burning pain into power and attempted to loose Ashin by sliding into an open maintenance tunnel and closing the hatch behind him. He then began to decrease his presence in the force with Art of the Small, trying to get off the radar long enough for him to make it to the hanger bay. He'd have to escape first and foremost if he was going to be any use to OMNI.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

There were, of course, two problems with Kaine's plan. The first was that the only feasible way off this ship was via the hangar bay. The second was that Ashin had just marked him with a Nightsister Blood Trail.

But the second had all manner of long-term implications, and so she let him go. Of course, there would be troopers in the hangar and so forth, but she herself wouldn't catch up until the very last moment -- just as he was about to escape, when she could have reasonably been alerted by the dying troopers.

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Kaine dropped down from the hatchway opening in the wall of the hanger bay to the floor, attracting the attention of the guards stationed there. As they raised their guns to fire, Kaine was already reaching out with the force, dropping his Art of the Small to employ other force moves to use against these guards, the first of which was to yank the rifles away from them with the force, bringing one of those over to him for him to use. He switched it off from stun to kill, and opened fire on the Imperial troopers, putting a few of them down before the others could retreat back to a safer position. Kaine backstepped towards one of the fighters, but sensed the arrival of Ashin, things now got even more difficult.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The hangar held a number of vessels -- some of which were on launch standby. Starfighters, mostly. A man like Kaine could easily take one, and that was the plan. But so as not to make it look too easy, Ashin advanced on the Vizier, a sky-blue lightsabre igniting in her hand. Troopers attacked him, harried him, and more poured in. Soon his only hope would be those starfighters, and some were just beginning to launch to get themselves out of his reach.

It would have to look like her failure. Her personal failure. But who were they to question her?

 

[Darth Carnifex]

Kaine dodged the blaster bolts, using the force to make it to a starfighter in what seemed to be the nick of time. He activated the ship and accelerated out of the hangerbay and into the darkness outside of the ship. He needed to regroup with the rest of the ones loyal to OMNI, and he quickly made to activate the hyperdrive.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The guns fired -- they had to. But the fire wasn't quite enough to hit him seriously. That, too, was on purpose.

As Kaine's presence vanished into hyperspace, Ashin closed her eyes and focused on the blood. She could track that blood across galaxies.

"Perfect..."