I Want You To Hit Me As Hard As You Can

[Ashin Varanin]

Oren Beorn walked through the dust of the dead, a heavy shotgun in his hands. He'd borrowed the triple-barrelled monstrosity from Cousin Alec, and the ammunition from the cousins in R&D. Oren rarely favoured weapons like this, but when it came to cracking a sealed and forgotten vault, few things would do so more effectively than the new PBOL ammunition coupled with his Vahlan inclinations. That, at least, was the theory, and the theory was worth a test run -- worth occupying the consigliere for the week necessary to reach Erida. Because only Oren, of all the Rekali Clansmen outside the core family, could have a prayer against what might be inside. So it was said, at least, and Oren didn't ascribe to false humility.

This was a dead world, its population slaughtered by Force Drain, a confluence of rogue Sith, a good half decade back. Shortly thereafter, the One Sith had come in for a brief tenure, less than a year. They'd built a temple, but what use is a throne with no subjects? And now Erida's claimants had left the fold of the One, and Erida itself was abandoned. Such was its natural fate, forgotten in the Unknown Regions, remote beyond remoteness.

The plas-bonded ostrine granules made the shotgun shells cool to his touch as he loaded up, scrutinizing the sealed door. He touched the lapel comm of his robe collar. "Ferro, this is Oren. I've reached the site. Anything on long-range?"

"Negative, consigliere."

"Beginning test." He sucked his teeth and nestled the Bloodstripe's stock into his shoulder.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Oren wasn't as young as he'd been. The scattergun roared, bucking hard enough to rattle his ribs and backbone. Granules of plas-bonded ostrine slapped against a door that might have been alchemized once -- while the place was operational, or after it had been abandoned. Alchemized by amateurs. A second crack shivered dust from the roof-edges and Oren's boots as rapid cooling contracted a circular portion of the door. This place smelled rank, though everyone had rotted away years ago.

He held his breath, but not for that; he listened, with ears and the Force. Nothing was coming, and nobody cared. Something might awaken inside, below, but not yet. With a nod, he stepped up to the door and inspected it. A roughened circle a metre across marked the PBOL shell's impact. Beyond it, cracks began, shivering the door up to its seams. There was no urgency to the moment, not yet. With a tight smile, he took several steps back and fired again. Ostrine didn't rebound much, but he fired at an acute angle regardless. Gentle ricochets scattered in the dust off to his left. He'd aimed beside the first circle, his new field of fire overlapping one side of the door latch, just barely. A series of rapid-fire cracks followed the initial boom/slap of the detonation. New fissures marked the door, crisscrossing. Rapidly contracting metal had pulled the latch apart by a crucial fraction of a centimetre, warping the seal.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Precautions: Oren took a moment to reload the two spent barrels of the break-action triple-barreled scattergun. He had no desire to open the door and find something stealthy waiting behind; less still, to do so with an empty weapon, whether or not he enjoyed using it. He put down the Bloodstripe and raised his hands, eyes shut. Power over heat was endemic to the Vahla culture and a life spent in a scorching desert. Though full pyrokinesis wasn't called for per se, he threw his full strength into increasing the temperature of the two supercooled impact circles. He kept at it for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, as if enacting a Vahlan or Calyphan rite, until the center of one door glowed a sullen orange and the gap between the two doors had closed under groaning protest.

At which point he nodded to himself in satisfaction, picked up the Bloodstripe, and fired again.

The seal shattered with an ear-thrashing sound, and the dull orange radiance dimmed. He fired once more, leaving one barrel loaded, then reloaded and fired again, leaving two loaded. With each impact, harsh even through the active-cancellation earbuds he wore, the doors cooled and cracked even farther. He slung the Bloodstripe over his back -- loading the third barrel again -- and drew his sword. The sturdy old blade, black as dusty pitch, had been enchanted by a more serious alchemist than the doors. The sword flexed but did not deform as he wedged it into a wide crack and threw his weight against the grip.

And half the door came off. He stepped aside and it thudded into the dust of the dead.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

"I'm in." He pulled up the scarf of his desert robes over his mouth and nose. "And I thought it smelled bad on the outside."

"Any sign of life, consigliere?"

"Not a bit of it. Which is what worries me." He sheathed his blade and unslung the scattergun again. "I'm betting they left a surprise when they closed up shop."

"If so, should you be talking this much?"

"I'd rather it hears me coming, whatever it is." The stone floor trembled, and he eyed the gallery around him. A flick of his off hand lit torches. The hall was empty. "I've got a good field of fire here, room to move. It'll do as well as anything."

"What is it?"

"Don't worry about it, Ferro." Oren raised the Bloodstripe and sighted down the entry gallery at the inner set of double doors. The doors trembled. The seal cracked, uncannily fast.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The guardian had been a Trandoshan, once upon a time. Surgery and flesh-warping arts had made it more and less, larger and leaner, dumber but more intent. That was his guess, anyway, based on the Sithspawn he'd stalked and avoided in his time. Curved blades of green metal had been grafted into its fingers, running down to its elbows. Sickly light shone from runes in its eyes. It ran faster than thought, but not faster than a precog's trigger finger. It dodged with preternatural speed, but he'd tracked it and fired where it would be. PBO granules arrested its momentum, numbing its arm. There was little blood, but the chill would slow it. He fired again and it stopped dead, shuddering. Shivering. PBOL rounds weren't designed for this kind of thing, but they functioned a bit like a more precise, somewhat less effective CryoBan. A third shot froze and shattered the Sithspawn's fangs. Confusion glowed in its warped eyes.

No, not confusion. Welcome.

"Sssh," Oren said as it gathered its strength. "Sssh, son, it's all right." He cast the Bloodstripe aside as it charged, and drew his black blade in one whirling motion that carried him out of the warped Trandoshan's path. The flat of his sword slammed into the back of its skull, bowling it over. "Go to sleep, son."

It scrambled to its feet. No, not it. He. She, maybe. A sentient being twisted by Sith for their own entertainment and ambition. Hatred filled him -- hatred for the alchemists. The warped Trandoshan stood with its back to the broken door.

"Go to sleep," he whispered, and the grip of his mind's eye closed around its throat.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The Trandoshan charged against the choke as if compelled, venom and tears dripping down its ragged robe. It had been an adept once, an acolyte at a guess. Maybe this had been punishment, or maybe it had accepted the transformation like a Yuuzhan Vong aiming to be escalated. Whatever its degree of agency or accountability, the consequences had been far more than it had reckoned. That much was clear.

"Let him bleed prophecy," Oren whispered -- the final sentence of Calypho. He met the charge head-on, and the first point of contact was the dark blade shearing through the right arm at the bicep. The Trandoshan's bulk crashed into him and past him. He staggered but spun and leaped after the Trandoshan, and the Svolten-rhyolite-ground blade cut flesh and bone and lesser metal to take the left arm above the elbow. As the Sithspawn fell, unable to stop itself, Oren drew himself up and called on the Vahla arts. Fire seared the amputations, and a cloud of vile smoke filled the entryway. A piece of metal still protruded from one stump; he pulled it free with a flick of his mind's eye. The knees boasted impressive crystalline spikes, and the feet were a mess; Oren amputated the legs at the thigh and cauterized them. The active cancellation earbuds blotted out the Trandoshan's howls of agony and, perhaps, relief.

Oren knelt by the limbless Sithspawn, sword's point resting on the stone, as Ferro and the other black-suited Ke'dem contractors bustled through the broken door to begin the mopup. "It's all right, son," Oren said. "We'll feed you up, and you'll grow back strong. You'll grow back you. I swear it'll be seen to."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

The Ke'dem cleanup team fanned out through the abandoned temple, lightsabres and nullification resin applicators at the ready. And bags -- lots of bags. Oren and their medic stayed by the front doors with the syncope-numb Trandoshan. Bags of refuse and cartons of resin-clad detritus began to trickle out of the cavernous depths. Broken stonework bearing runes; discarded crystals; caches from long-dead acolytes; wreckage of other guardians; a few minor treasures, overlooked in the Netherworld apocalypse. Valuable, to the right people. The Clan would take its share, and Oren would see to that on the trip back, evaluating the lot alongside Ferro. The powerful Ke'dem adept led the cleanup crew, and knew the market value of the take as well as Oren or better. Oren, for his part, brought a long Tashai life to the table: he knew the genuine article when he saw it. This place's builders had pillaged enough things of genuine value that the occasional hint of worth shone from the dross.

As the medic carted the sedated Trandoshan back to the Ke'dem expeditionary ship, Oren left off examining the outbound loads and ventured farther in. He hadn't yet passed the second doors. Inside, the place was unimpressive in design and execution; but then again, he could only compare it with the classical temples of Tash-Taral, the hidden Korriban. Ke'dem's Dark Jedi had been recruited from places like this. This was all they knew.

Ferro's armored form loomed out of the dark catacombs, up a half-hidden stair. "We found another door," he said to Oren. "Scratched to Hell, but sealed. We think there's survivors inside, in trances maybe. Care to open it up?"

Oren examined his remaining PBOL shells. "That can probably be managed."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

At the base of the stair was another door, likewise alchemized, likewise poorly. Oren sucked his teeth and examined the little room between stairwell and door. Plas-bonded ostrine particles might not ricochet very much, but 'not much' would still strip off his skin in a place like this if he fired everything at a flat hard surface.

"Ferro?"

"Yeah?"

"Take your kids upstairs, bring down the door I broke."

"That'll take a while."

"Tell them it's a telekinesis endurance exercise."

"And what'll you be doing?"

"Meditating. Clear the room."

The Ke'dem operative complied, and Oren sank to the floor cross-legged. From his belt, he procured a tiny pelko bug. He pressed it to the inside of his left wrist. Venom scorched his veins and sent his mind whirling. Ferro had been right: beyond the door were several comatose Sith. They'd been here, in trances, for months or longer. Their odds of waking up again weren't high.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

They brought down a personal shield he could poke his muzzle through, and he crouched behind the salvaged door. He shoved the gun through a broad crack, shrugged, and pulled the trigger. Ostrine pellets smashed against the intact door, the one that the Trandoshan had scratched. Oren unleashed heat over the course of ten minutes, warming the target area to cherry-red, then fired again, both barrels. Cracks began to show. He reloaded meditatively, heating the door once more, then gave it three barrels. Another round of heating, a sense of wakefulness and panic from beyond, and he gave it all three barrels again. Earsplitting cracks resounded in the confined space, loud as the concussive shotgun blasts that rattled his skull despite the active cancellation. He was getting a headache on top of the leftover pelko rush, and with that pain he got a sense of the waking minds beyond. Acolytes, knights, nothing more.

His shield was down fifty percent, just from the ricochets. Withdrawing the gun from the broken door, he let it fall to the flagstone with a clang, then stalked up to the spiderwebbed vault seal. The surface was a mess of hot and bitter cold, riven with cracks. He nodded in satisfaction and turned back to Ferro and the Ke'dem team, who were finally descending the stairs. "Can you handle it from here?" Oren said.

"This part is what we do. Much obliged, Rekali."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

Later, once the loot and the captives were all contained in the Ke'dem vessel's hold, Oren joined Ferro on the bridge and looked across the dusty plain at the Sith temple. There'd been a few on this world, he suspected. There might be more, but this was the one they'd found. This was the one they would level.

'They' being a Clan Rekali Hotshuh-class main battle tank, its heavy cannon loaded with PBO particulate.

Despite himself, he flinched as the tank fired. Frost formed on the temple in the aftermath of the shivering hit. Round after round fired, the PBO cooling the barrel and allowing for extended fire. The stone walls began to supercool, shot by shot, sector by sector. A light rain turned to ice as it struck the trembling stone. The ice shattered with each impact, and re-formed. Then the Hotshuh loaded its normal ammunition.

And the Sith temple exploded. Stone shrapnel pinged off the vessel's shields, and Oren flinched again, laughing under his breath. The Hotshuh continued firing with normal ammunition. Supercooled brittle stone becoming gravel under the assault.

After a good half hour of that, they packed up the tank, did one final sweep in cold-weather gear, and left Erida to the ghosts.