The Horror at Kar Shian

[The Amalgam]

Owen Brace had always fancied himself a lucky man.

He was a mountain climber, had faced death a hundred times, on a hundred different snow capped peaks. He lived for the climb. So had his father.

He had never laughed Death in the face. That would have been asking for it. He knew his limits. That was why he had known it had been a bad idea to come here, because now he was struggling to free himself from his seat. The fire was creeping up, and Owen, a young well muscled man of fair complexion and dark, short cut hair that stopped at the ears, the red climbing gear he was in on the verge of catching fire in his flight seat, desperately tried to cut himself loose, with his utility knife. The inferno inching ever closer, already blind, nearly suffocating from smoke, he tore one strap free, feeling the intense heat under his shoes. He started to scream just as he tore his other strap free, barely getting clear of the fire that engulfed his seat. He didn't stop moving once he was free, instead clambering upward, away from the fire, away from the smoke, towards the cold. Towards the snow he felt sprinking a youthful, yet weathered face.

He climbed, the action being second nature, for however much that helped his current situation. It would keep him alive for a while at least.

He came across an opening that should not have been there, past jagged, melted wreckage. He could still feel the intense, just-short-of-blistering heat behind him. He thought about looking for survivors, but the way the inferno rushed forward to him from within the ship availed him of that notion and he was soon in an animalistic sprint for his life across the snowscape. A white fog of snowdrift that made it impossible to see past fifteen meters. Partly because of the heavy snowdrift, but mostly because it was the dead of night. And where previously burning to death had been a chief concern, now it was slowly becoming a concern about freezing.

The temperature was not at a lethal chill...not yet. Not even with the snow. But he knew his weather patterns...In three hours, maybe less, it would be thirty below. Maybe forty. He saw nothing but darkness and scattered fires through the dense drift and followed those, because it was a better lead than what he had. The wind crashed against him, making him use his arms as a shield going forward, struggling to make way against fierce wind. He heard coughing through the howling drift. He spotted him. A portly old man he knew back at the university. Edgyr Saveb. His tanned skin over taken by pale chill, still clad in his own blue colored cold weather gear. Owen saw the bullet wounds and he almost went still before he remembered his friend didn't have long.

Owen rushed over to him.

"Edgyr! Oh, Gods...what happened? Everything was going fine. I remember the ship rocking--!" Owen called out hoarsely, near stiff from fear.

"I was on the bridge...Owen...is that you?" Edgyr called out in his gruff, bassy Corellian accent.

"Yeah, Eddy. Who did this?"

"Bounty...hunter..." Edgyr was struggling to remain lucid as his body shut down.

"Where are the others? Did you see any one make it?"

"I ain't got time to jaw, boy. And neither do you. Bastard that shot me...he's still around. Not far. And Owen...you get past him...and then you find some way...any way... to get off this rock. Here, take this. Its all I got..."

Edgyr held out a simple, black hilted double edged vibro-knife.

"Now you move, son. Go."

"I'll not leave you to die..." Owen said firmly, taking the knife and its sheath. "I've got to save you."

Edgyr's cough was a pre death rattle.

"Nothing...can stop that now...go on, son. Head North. Your compass still working?"

Owen checked the high quality compass mounted on the sleeve of his climbing gear. It appeared intact, giving him a digital read out in green letters.

"It works." Owen whispered.

"Good. Go North. It'll start to dawn..." Edgyr coughed violently.

"Dawn?" Owen asked.

"How utterly karked you are..." Edgyr joked grimly. He was gone a second later. He closed his eyes.

Owen felt something hot and sharp graze his cheek and he fell to the snow with a yelp, spotted the laser pointer on his chest and only just managed to roll out of the way of the bullet that would have entered his heart. He was running, running into the thickest parts of the drift, running for what looked like the entrance into a very small canyon, he heard another bullet fly past his ear, the wake of air displacement making his ear flutter. He shouldn't have come here. Shouldn't have come to Kar Shian. But his friends needed him. His uncle needed him.

All of that was slowly becoming irrelevant in the face of dodging bullets in the drift forced into a narrow corridor of natural rock. He knew he wasn't the only one here. But that was no comfort.

He'd been stupid, made a wrong turn in the canyon, for now he found himself in a narrow wedge of rock he could barely slide through, let alone breath in. But he had to keep going. Had to keep moving. Had to. To stop was death, to stop at all in this environment was a risk of hypothermia.

He heard the cock of a revolver.

"Come out..." he heard a rough voice order. The voice of a man. He slid back on his initial path., forced back out by the voice. Owen stared at his captor. He was dressed in all black., but his gear and armor was shreaded and blood. His mask was a dark, smooth metal with a melted looking gash on one side, exposing his blue eye. His combat suit looked like it had been expensive once, just like the duster thrown over the shoulders, now in bloody tatters like the rest of it.

"Well...looks like we got a straggler here..." the wounded man rasped menacingly.

"I'm not looking for trouble..." Owen grunted.

"Oh, that's good...that...is...good...I'm not either..." the man spoke. "Your knife, please. You won't be needing it."

"You gonna kill me? Why? Me...my friends...we've done nothing to you...you bastards murdered Edgyr!" Owen snapped back.

"Yeah...we did...sorry about your pals. Just business man. Nothing personal."

Owen stared at the engraved, silver lined revolver in the wounded bounty hunters hand.

The wounded man checked the cylinder. He sighed.

"You're in luck, mate. Still got two bullets..." The wounded man said.

 

[The Amalgam]

Owen looked at his executioner.

"Why do I have to die?" Owen asked, not letting go of the knife. Sweat rand down Owen's head. He had not yet complied with giving the man his knife.

"Look kid...I'm doin' you a favor..." the bounty hunter explained. "You and yer' friends? You don't want none of Kar Shian. This is a Sith world, right? What the hell were you guys doing here anyway? You do know what goes on in these here Ancient Sith Worlds, right?"

"Yeah..." Owen said. "Yeah, we know. My uncle...he's a treasure hunter. Went missing on Kar Shian about a year ago."

"Ha! And he came here?" the bleeding man chuckled cruelly at this, snow hitting his face. "Ain't nothing here but snow and evil, kid. Shoulda let your uncle go. Only treasures Kar Shian have belong to the Lords of the Sith..."

The snow drifted between them in the canyon.

"What the hell is going on here?" Owen asked. "At least tell me why."

The Bounty Hunter said nothing for a moment.

"Long story short, Kid? Bounty went bad. About as bad as it could possibly go. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong."

"How?"

"Me and the others...we get a contract. Million Credits. Score of our lives. We were supposed to come here at an exact time and...place..." the man swooned a little.

"But the karking navigator screwed up, punched in the wrong hyperspace coordinates. We arrived on Korriban's other hellhole of a moon. Then, after...we...we recognize our...screwup..." the bleeding hunter explained, losing balance for a half second. Still not enough of an opening.

"We end up arriving here six hours after our target was supposedly at their most...most...."

The man lost balance and Owen dashed forward not thinking as he buried the active vibro-knife in the man's chest, causing him to fire one of his last remaining shots wildly into the air. He stabbed the man feverishly, cold shock and disgust washing over him as the injured man breathed his last. He dropped the bloody vibroknife, hands slick with draining life. He stepped back, looking at the corpse. He promptly threw up a few seconds later.

There was no coming back from what he had just done, even if it had been in self defense. He struggled not to shudder, even as he played it back in his head over and over.

He screamed as the bleeding man suddenly coughed violently, gurgling and hacking.

"Stupid bastard..." the dying hunter gargled and coughed. "Death at...my hands...would have been a mercy compared to...what...awaits you now..."

"What the hell happened here?" Owen asked meekly, still numb from shock. And in a rapidly lowering temperature, shock was a bad, bad thing to be in.

"No time now. You screwed...that up..." the hunter coughed out. "Maybe...maybe you're feelin'...feelin'...lucky, right? Tell me...you think you can pull...a miracle off? Me and the boys..."

He started to choke. Blood splattered out of the crack of his faceplate.

"We came in a Flarestar Shuttle...Its the green one. You'll know it when you see it. But its on lock down, like...like all the others. Only the pilot, Belle, has the access card that will unlock the shuttle. But I don't know if she's still alive..." the man coughed more blood but chuckled cruelly.

"That's your problem now. Good luck...sucker..."

Owen did not stay still, but that was only out of survival instinct. He felt like he was outside his body as he searched the other, made cold by his own hand. A special sort of disconnection from trauma. His hands trembled as he searched wet, warm remains, finding only a small flashlight. He took the revolver, checking the swing open cylinder and saw the spent cartridges, knocking them out and spotting the lone bullet. He put it back in and took the chest holster, strapping it on and putting the gun in it, but just before he pocketed it he spotted a phrase written on the mother of pearl grip:

Never forget, always save the last round for yourself.

He pocketed the flash light. He followed the attached compass.

Keep going. Find the others and keep going...


Much later...

He had been walking for over an hour, and the cold was starting to get very bad. He kept a constant pace. It would quicken soon.

He was going north. The farther he went the more burning wreckage he saw. The part of the hull that bore the name of the ship that had been carrying him, The Oddest Bastard Of All, lay partly melted as a large hunk of twisted metal, revealing traces of the red and white that had once been painted on the hull. The drift was heavy here, hiding corpses under mounds of snow. The chill was starting to reach his bones. He had to get warm.

He went closer to a large, burning mound in the darkness. The outline of of the Correllian made heavy transport, torn cleanly in half as it had descended through the lower atmosphere. It must have come apart very close to the ground. No more than half a kilometer from impact, Owen would wager, giving how intact it still was. It had been a university vessel, equipped for archeology. He knew it had no weapons. But it might have something useful in the wreckage. He headed forward, noticing bodies with multiple bullet wounds. It was the crew. A lot had survived the crash, it seemed. But not for long. Owen went closer to the fires from a burning piec of durasteel, warming his hands. He hadn't noticed it until just now, but the sound of wind had died down to almost nothing. It was just darkness, snow drift and the fires from the hull. He went closer, the heat having died down enough on the ship's various parts of wreckage for him to approach safely. He saw burned bodies, the snow killing the stench of seared flesh. He took out the flashlight, and frowned as it flickered badly in the dark. But it kept working and he went closer to a torn open portion of the hull. He recognized it was part of the cargo bay he had walked into. Snowed over and burned. Only a small amount of smoke from it. He creapt quietly forward, pulling out his vibroblade. The flashlight beam weak and blinking in and out as he went deeper into the wreck.

He saw nothing. He took steady, but quiet breaths, suppressing his urge to panic. He went deeper.

He almost didn't see the corpse until the flickering beam happened to light up on it, just in a far off corner, next to burned packing crates. It was the corpse of another bounty hunter, wearing the same gear as the one Owen had killed. He had been sliced in half, and so had his rifle, a slug thrower, but not by a vibroweapon. It looked as if a blowtorch had gone through him. Or a...a...

Owen's innards went chilly again as he realized what the man had been killed by. He saw long, black scorchmarks of melted metal around the corpse. Only one weapon did that. A weapon that, even thousands of years after its creation, was still effective.

Owen knealt down, keeping more watch around him, his paranoia having increased ten fold as he searched the sliced open, nearly frozen corpse. He found a pack of cigarettes, unopened, and pulled out a small first aid pouch and opened it, finding only a small amount of bacta ointment, and a pack of bandages, which he pocketed immediately. He went further into the remains of the once-large bay, the deathly silence outside even worse in here. He remembered the layout, even as twisted and wrecked and still burning in some places as it was. But with his stomach still sinking at the realization of what it was the bounty-hunters were after.

They were after a Dark Sider.

Owen Brace should not have come to Kar Shian.

 

[The Amalgam]

Brace took another step deeper into a nearly silent, burning wreck, the snow from outside having melted into puddles. Farther in was where most of his and his team's equipment had been stored before the crash had been in secure storage rooms. Hopefully some of it had survived. His fear was like a cold block of ice in his stomach. Logic said his situation was near hopeless...he couldn't stay here, even with the fires, he had an hour before he would freeze to death, and he had no way to keep warm. He wasn't even sure how far he was from that Flarestar Shuttle. His flashlight flickered in the twilight as he reached what was left of the secure storage rooms, coming across the decapitated corpse of one of the University researchers, Bennet, in a corner, surrounded by candles that were mostly melted, burning a red flame. He knew it was Bennet because he was wearing green climbing gear. He was clutching a climbing axe. The body was surrounded by script in blood that was foreign to him but made him nauseated to even stare at. Probably Sith. There was no sign of where Bennet's head was.

Owen felt his stomach twist, felt cold sweat start to freeze on his skin. He was reminded of the words on his new revolver.

But he wasn't dead. Not yet.

Owen walked toward the corpse, and began to pull the climbing axe out of Bennet's hand, along with his equipment belt, checking every pouch, finding only a ration bar, a lighter, both of which he pocketed immediately. He found, with some surprise, a shotgun shell in one pouch and pocketed that also. He then went to check the rooms. One was completely burned, nothing usable, and the same was true for the next one, only the last one where the personal belongings were, had survived the impact, and even then some stuff had burned partly or been broken beyond repair. He spotted his binoculars, having fallen out of his torn open black luggage case. It was lying in a pile of snow. He picked it up. No damage. Small miracles. It had a strap, so he hooked it to his equipment belt, the chill of the snowstorm reaching ever deeper into his flesh, He ate the ration bar for strength. No telling when he might get food again. Water would not be an issue. Much of an issue anyway, at the moment. He searched his own luggage, finding his recording datapad. He knew it would do no good, lugging it around. But he could at least collect his thoughts, leave a log of something, in case anyone found it. Unlikely, but he had to hope. He found it still worked and hit the audio function.

"This is..." Owen paused after speaking those few wondering how to word what might be his final statement.

"This is Owen Brace, at this moment quite possibly the last surviving member of the transport frieghter The Oddest Bastard Of All. At the moment, I am unwounded...physically. But I have virtually zero chance of survival unless I reach shelter within the hour." He said quietly, almost in a hiss.

"I'm aware I'm wasting time recording this, given my situation. But freezing to death may not be the worst way to go, given what I've seen so far."

"My uncle was a mountain climber. Taught me the trade. Went missing here three years ago. Told him he shouldn't go, that it was too close to the home of the magical psychos. But he was after some sort of Sith treasure vault full of Lightsabers made by a Sith Artisan. Kar Shian is a rocky iceball, but he got a map he said was genuine. Before I could stop him, he'd smuggled himself into imperial space. But not before he sent me a copy of the map."

"It was three years before I found my way in. I work part time at a university on Alderaan. I lead the expedition teams the University funds for archeological digs in mountain settings. Professor Aden Stromburg was the ambitious one. He had a friend who knew a friend, and he was just as greedy as my uncle. He wanted Sith Artifacts himself."

"Coming here was stupid, I know that. But he had an absolutely fool proof way to get us in and out of Sith Space. And I had to find my uncle and bring him home. I'm not even sure I'm in the right section of the planet. For all I know, I could be hundreds of kilometers away or only a few. But there's no point in reaching it now. There's some Darksider on the moon with us. Whoever they are, they are responsible for the carnage I've seen so far. Bounty hunters were here to kill the Darksider. They must have shot us down with a missile or something. Maybe they thought we were rivals. I got no food, no water, a revolver with one bullet, a flash light and a lighter, and a knife and climbing axe. I get the feeling that whatever happened here, I missed about ninety percent of it."

"I will probably be dead within the hour, either from this storm, or whatever is hiding in that storm. If anyone dumb enough to come to this place like I was finds this, anyone, please tell my mom that I love her and I am sorry. And if a Sith finds this, and decides to delete it, I hope you burn in hell. Owen Brace, Kar Shian Expedition, signing off."

Owen shut down the recoder, hiding the datapad in a ruined air vent. He searched the other belongings, finding an emergency flare, as the rest of it was all ruined. No choice now. He turned to depart.

And that was when he noticed Bennet's body was gone.

 

[The Amalgam]

Owen went still, his eyes darting around in terror. Where was it?

He turned the flashlight on again which made a flickering glare against dead, scorched walls slick with frozen blood. He shivered, getting ever colder.

Way he saw it, he was dead no matter what he did. So he could either die, waiting like a total chump, or could make whatever had killed Bennet work for its next victim.

He broke into a run not hearing anything chasing him. No snarls, no growls. He looked behind him in the intense blizzard. Nothing. Nothing was there. This made him panic harder and he ran, because he knew that whatever was after him. He knew that if it decided to attack he wouldn't see it coming until it was too late. Despite the terrible cold and the blizzard, it was suddenly infuriatingly quiet, and only his compass let him know he was still going north.

Owen's legs kept moving through thick drift. There was hardly any sound. Nothing had attacked him yet. No signs of being followed. Nothing.

Owen ran and ran and ran, fear giving him speed. The signs of ship wreckage gradually growing less and less, though tell tale man shaped piles of snow still continued the grim implications. Owen was so crazed with terror he almost didn't see Bennet's headless body lying near a pile of wreckage to his right, and when he did that was when he went nearly blind from fear. So blind he almost hit the hull of the disc shaped, chrome green flarestar shuttle. He stopped, eyes darting around, looking for whatever had moved Bennet's body, and still seeing absolutely nothing. He moved around it, shining his badly flickering, at times unfocused light in near pitch back conditions on the frost caked hull.

He fought his chilled body, refused to stop moving, saw the hatch slightly ajar, forced the still working hydraulics down and went in, knocking the ice off and sealing the hatch back up. He couldn't lock it. It was dark in the hull. He stared out of the viewport and saw nothing but snow. He turned his flashlight around and saw a corpse. Another of the duster wearing, masked hunters, having been sliced in half by a lightsaber.

Owen drew closer to the corpse cautiously, taking out his vibroknife as he checked the corpse, sticky and cold. He searched the pockets, took out a fat roll of paper credits, kept it only for use as kindling. He spotted a slug thrower in the corpse's hand pried it out of frozen fingers and examined it. Black plated, semi automatic. Stacked, eighteen round magazine of Nine Millimeter bullets. He pulled out and examined it. Four rounds left. He checked the corpse again. Nothing else.

He checked his wrist compass and with a deep breath, popped the hatch open, and heard the snarling. He raised the gun he had just pilfered and began aiming. He saw it, scrambling to him with a howl. Pale but with large jaws and deformed, sharp teeth. Rakghoul. There were Rakghouls hear.

Knowing its bite would do worse than kill him he took aim with his new gun and pulled the trigger.

The gun jammed. Owen ran from it, headed North, seeing more Rakghouls come out of the drift. Too many of them. Way too many. Staying in the shuttle would have been a death sentence. The Rakghouls would have waited him out. He had to keep running, but he was so cold...

It was at that moment, in the depths of despair, that a possible reprieve appeared, in the light of Korriban over the clouds.

It looked old, the remains of something much greater than a fort, sitting on a raised hill with an ancient stone road leading up to it, surrounded by a rusted, run down iron fence. The snarls of the Rakghouls made his decision instant, even though it was quite possibly just as fatal as the snow. But he had no more outs.

Owen raced up the snow covered road, slipping and stumbling occasionally but managed to avoid injuring himself. But the snarls drew ever closer, the howls for flesh ever more screaching. He raced through a fallen down section of the fence, spotting a large ajar wooden door with holes from gun blasts in it. He felt nauseated and full of terror as he got closer to the door and was so scared for a moment he simply considered stopping and letting the creatures kill him rather than face whatever was on the other side. But his will to live forced him to keep moving. He cleared the gargoyle-guarded wooden doors and slammed it shut, spotting a giant iron bar lock and forcing it across the door, a mere seconds before the ghouls would have gotten in. The clawed arms forcing their way through some of the bigger holes in the door. He kept running from the door through an arched stone passage to another, iron door at the end. The monsters were forcing their way past the wood, and in seconds they'd break it down. The smashed it open and went into a full sprint after Owen who bashed against the iron door, barely opening it and forcing his way in, shutting it just as a clawed hand tried to swipe for his face. He found a second sliding bar lock and forced it across, even as the monsters on the other side tried to ram it. He jumped back as the ramming attempts continued. They were screaming and enraged outside, and he shut off his flashlight, getting back from the door, realizing he was in the middle of a row of stone benches, carved from the bedrock, now cracked, ruined, and splattered with ancient blood. The roof had partially caved in, revealing the blizzard that strangely did not come inside. He walked through the benches, seeing ancient stained glass windows of a faceless, emaciated, purple skinned woman who seemed to be Togrutan, judging by the montrals, being worshipped by women clad in white. Every glass image also depicted scenes of torture so obscene and gruesome that they cannot be described here. It was vile, utterly vile what it showed them doing to their victims and screamed of malicious, psychotic insanity.

The floor was simple brick and mortar and he remained sharply aware of those creatures still screaming for his blood. He hoped they didn't learn to climb...

But he was still freezing and even the relative difference between in here and out there would not matter much if he didn't find real shelter soon.

It appeared he was in some kind of cathedral. Old, and broken down. He began to look for other rooms. This couldn't be the only one here. He saw other arched passages behind the main podium and picked one, moving out of the rows of stone pews and past a great, empty stone pit. Just as he was about to enter he heard a grown, and turned behind him.

It was another mercenary, laying on his side motionlessly in the dark. There was a pool of blood dripping from where he lay on the bench.

Owen went over to him as he groaned again. He pulled out his vibroknife, didn't turn it on, in case he needed to power it later.

"One of your friends tried to kill me..." Owen growled at the dying man. "I want answers. What is this place? Who owns it? Where's Belle, the Pilot?!" Owen asked over the shreak of the Rakghouls outside.

The duster clad merc coughed. "Eat...chit..."

"C'mon man don't go out like a total nerfherder..." Owen demanded again. "At least let someone get off this moon alive..."

"This...this little slice of hell...belongs to our bounty...some kinda old headquarters for heretics. They did unholy things to people here. They call her The Amalgam. Stupid-ass arthousey codename but she sticks with it...she's one of the sorceror types. Shapeshifter also. You got no chance, son...none..."

"You let me worry about my chances. Where's she hiding?!"

"Heh...not here. Below, maybe." The merc answered, a coruscant accent poking through. "Only way out of this place is through there. Left Belle in the dungeon, when the monster took her...she's gotta be dead...no way she's still alive...not down there..." the dying man coughed. "Not down there..."

"Down where?" Owen pressed, keeping an eye on the iron door. The door itself might be impervious to the ghouls, but he could see this thing crumbling all around him. He couldn't say the same for the stone and the hinges.

"Podium...hidden...swit...swiiiii..." the man slurred.

"No!" Owen shouted, shaking and slapping the masked man. "Stay with me, damn you!"

"Uhhhh...swi...mom...dad...swiiiiitch...hidden switch..."

"WHERE!?" Owen roared at him as he watched the mans eyes flutter.

"Under...the pew..."

"Which pew?" Owen asked shaking him. "Which pew?!"

"Mommy, can I have more ice cream?" The merc said, delerious, now in his death throes.

"Oh feth me...feth me..." Owen swore as he saw the iron door break down. He got out his light and began searching the rows of stone benches. The bricks near one of the bricks broke off. The ghouls were not giving up. They would never give up. Owen searched and searched but found nothing.

The iron door bent in one corner and his adrenaline made his hand shake so hard he dropped the flashlight and it rolled away closer to the door and he scrambled for it, banging on it for a few seconds to make it work and then looking under the benches again. But nothing...

One of the corners on the door bent and he saw a clawed, pale arm reach through, swiping at the air. The door bent more. Owen ran back, desperate to get the answer. The shrieks were louder. Harsher. They were all mad with hunger. They'd strip him to the bone, and then eat the bone.

"Where is the switch?! Damn you, where is the switch?! Owen shouted.

"Un...der...me..." the mercenary answered, weakly.

Owen glanced under, found a lightly engraved lever, and pulled it.

There was a hiss behind him. He saw a rectangular portion of the marble podium raise and part.

"Hey..." the dying mercenary called out weakly, opening up his duster and revealing what had fatally wounded him. A vibro-smallsword shoved through his side.

"Its dangerous to go alone...take...this..." the man said. "Good luck."

Owen didn't have the time or patience to wait until the man was fully expired, so he yanked it out, and the man coughed blood.

Owen heard a scream and one of the Rakghouls had managed to crawl through the gap betweent the door and the arch and charged at him.

Owen only moved at the last second, letting its swipe past his face, before decapitating it with a swift blow.

A clawed hand punched through one of the windows and more Rakghouls started to poor through. Owen went into a defensive stance as three bounded towards him...

 

[The Amalgam]

The creatures stopped for a moment when he swiped at them. But only for a moment. One lunged at his leg and lost an arm, shrieking as it bled out. Owen backed off and the other two tried to circle him, forcing him to the wall to the left of the marble podium. The rakghouls started to climb in, even as more tried to force the door down. He dodged clawing hands even as he retreated and tried to reach the opening in the floor but two blocked his way and the others were seconds from their feet hitting the ground. No choice. With a yell he charged, twitching out of the way of their lunging, snapping jaws and clawing talons slicing them open, their innards stinking with disease, though the small sword had a very short reach and put him dangerously in range of them. He jumped over the corpses as the others hit the floor, flying down the stairs to the stone lined tunnel underneath in near total darkness save for a flickering flashlight. He heard them screaming for his blood, not far behind him. He was so tired. His legs screamed for rest but he knew only pain awaited him if he slipped up. And he wasn't ready to die yet.

He spotted a turbolift at the end, an elegant engraved spherical cage of jet black metal, its golden control box lined with engraved switches of silver staring at him mockingly at the center. He gave all his energy for that final sprint. He either made it AND closed the hatch or he was dead.

He cleared the distance into the lift, having only a microsecond to read the controls, and flipped a switch, swinging the cage hatch shut a half second before they could enter. They slammed into the hatch violently but its metal was much more solid. Owen flicked the switch down, shuddering as he heard the Rakghouls give enraged snarls for his flesh. He collapsed against the hull of the turbolift cage, drawing his legs together to warm up, but he was shuddering mostly from fear.

The cage descended, away from the flesh hungry monsters, whose screams grew less the deeper he got.

When it got to the bottom, he didn't move for ten minutes, not just because he was cold, and desperately trying to get warm...

...but also because there was a great automated door depicting that same naked emaciated Togrutan with no face. The chamber the lift had descended in was also covered in skulls.

There was a body of another bountry hunter and unlike every other one he had come across so far, this one had more intact equipment. Owen forced himself up, staggering out of the cage lift and towards the corpse. The guy had some sort of goggle set on.

Shaking, he tore it off. It was a night vision set. He put it on. It still worked but the image flickered.

A thud from the sealed door drew his attention. He looked at the weapon. It was a pump action shotgun with an ammo counter reading at three. The stock had been cut off and a foregrip added. The cage started lifting and he knew he had to make a choice. Take a risk and face whatever is on the other side...or risk facing whatever had summoned the elevator...

There was no choice. He looked at the ancient crank next to the door and began turning it, He had a minute at least before the lift made it back down.

The door gave a pressurized hiss and opened to blackness.

Owen shined the flashlight.

There was nothing there.