Power and Betrayal: Chapter 13

"These doors are sealed for quarantine." Mereana called out. "I don't see any way to override it from inside, and there's something here called 'sterilization protocol' that activates if we break the seal by force. I'm trying to find a way to defeat it now."

Another blast of acid spray hit Kendsel and broke his concentration. He quickly used a medical probe on himself and tried to focus once more.

"At least we don't have to deal with the sleemos in the tanks." Jer'ell said with mock optimism.

Kendsel was now trying to focus and use the Force to see all around the room, looking for whatever it was he must be missing, when Jer'ell's comment briefly diverted his attention onto one of the Flesh Raiders in the isolation capsule. Again, he saw no weakness.

But there was something else there. He reached out as best he could to take in the entire room at once, and caught a glimmer of what he was trying to find.

"Bust open the canisters!" he finally blurted out.

"Are you crazy?!?" Mereana called back.

"NOW! Just trust me!"

"Do it!" Corvioch ordered.

"Ain't nuthin wrong with Crazy." Jer'ell added as he smacked one of the Flesh Raiders in the head with the butt of his rifle and then tossed a magnetic grenade at the closest capsule. "Frag out."

The team braced for the explosion, which smashed the glass and freed its captive.

The chaos in the room turned to pandemonium as the new Flesh Raider covered in some sort of thick blue liquid from the isolation container started attacking.

"Focus on the blue one." Kendsel called out and rapid-fired a couple of heavy rounds from his assault cannon.

The newcomer was just as strong as his two friends, but after a few seconds of combined firepower, he somehow drew the attention of one of the red ones in the room, attacking it with some sort of chemical that caused it to compulsively move closer to the source.

When the two of them touched each other, they both exploded in a gooey, chemical mess.

"Now the other one." Corvioch ordered.

"Frag out."

And the entire scene played out a second time, exactly as before, culminating in another identically messy explosion.

Evidently the sensors in the room detected that there was no longer a need for quarantine, since the door seals released automatically, allowing the doors to open normally.

"Let's not do that again." Mereana mused with a sigh of relief.

"Good work, Team. Repair and reload, and we move on." Corvioch added.

"I guess by 'Little One' you mean me. But we don't have to do..."

The shock of what happened stunned Galadina so profoundly, she forgot what she was saying mid-sentence.

Born without eyes, the Miraluka race compensates by having nearly 100% Force-sensitivity, and using that innate ability to sense the flow of the Force through all the things around them. Without the Force, a Miraluka is not just blind, but truly, profoundly blind.

So what she felt in that moment was the strangest sensation of having the entire universe disappear from around her--leaving behind only the tiny little round scoop of it that she and the Sith now shared. No Malachor, no Kari or Kinnan, and--most noticeably--no Dianiss. It was one of the most frightening things she could ever recall experiencing: equal parts loss-of-mooring and claustrophobia. Only her ears gave her any indication that the rest of the universe still existed, as she barely heard Kari's voice saying something like "Cheese-Light-Fair", which made no sense.

With little room to move and no expectation of help from either of the healers, Dina knew she'd have to change tactics drastically. The only way to beat him now would be to abandon her defensive strategy in favor of going on offense, gambling that she could do enough damage to neutralize him before he did the same to her. "I don't know what you did, but this is your last warning." she said to him, trying to sound calm, and not doing a very good job of it. She manipulated Truthseeker's internal controls so that the cordus blade also activated and then changed her combat stance from Soresu form into a double-bladed technique. "If you don't stand down, I WILL fight back."

The Sith just looked at her with a wide grin. "Much better."

"Annie? Annie? Are you in there?" Kari was on the verge of slapping Dianiss in the face because she looked like she'd gone catatonic.

"I'm . . . sorry." Dianiss said quietly, and slowly, as if each word was a struggle. "Need . . . to . . . concentrate."

"Do I need to get you out of here?"

"No . . . . Kallig's . . . stronger . . . now . . . . Not . . . like . . . before."

"Are you in pain?"

"Yes . . . but . . . handling . . . it."

After a moment of looking her friend over head to toe, Kari pointed to the purple ball in the middle of the room and asked "What IS that?" She fired a few shots at it with her blaster--which had no effect at all--as a way of punctuating her question.

"Force . . . Barrier."

"Can YOU do that?"

"Not . . . like . . . THAT." Dianiss paused a moment, then added, "But . . . ."

Dianiss stretched out her arms and channeled a barrier of her own--one that looked like a brilliant white sphere that surrounded her entire body and just barely touched her toes and her fingertips.

"Okay, that's better." Dianiss said.

"How long can you keep it up?"

"Not long."

"What about him?" Kari asked, once again pointing up to the Sith's barrier. "How long can HE keep THAT up?"

"I'm surprised he's sustained it THIS long. He must be drawing on the dark energy of this place, making himself into a conduit for it rather than being the source of it himself. That's the only way he could be channeling it continuously."

"How do we bring it down?"

"Interrupt that flow of energy through him from the source, which I guess means . . . get him off-planet?"

"So . . . what?  We offer him some vouchers for free slot play at Club Vertica? I don't think he'll go for whole 'Win your very own Rancor' spiel. Or he'd probably EAT it."

"Then I don't know." Dianiss admitted with a giggle at Kari's jokes.

"Okay then, how would someone bring down YOUR barrier?"

"Distract me to break my concentration, or overpower it with more energy than I can push back against from the outside."

"All right then," Kari said, with an I-have-an-idea look on her face, "before you start stripping for him as a distraction, let me try something. You sit tight and conserve your energy."

Kari tapped a few buttons on the controller on her wrist and then used the hand-held controller for her medical probes to point a small tracking laser at the top of the barrier, holding it there for a couple of seconds.

"One massive outside energy source, coming up!" she said with enthusiasm.

...


"Just a couple more seconds." Kari added.

...

Kari used the tracking laser a second time to designate the target.

"Dammit, what the frizz is going on??? Why isn't this working?!?"

"You're . . . bringing . . . ship . . . overhead . . . for . . . fly-by...?"

"Yes, but this doesn't make any sense. The telemetry showed her flying here and then holding position above this crater ready to fire. But the planetary position indicator says she's still back where we left her and she hasn't moved at all. It can't be BOTH!" There was clear frustration in Kari's voice and in the twitching of her lekku.

Dina had no way of making a surprise attack from behind, and doubted that trying to use stealth would even work with this Sith--to say nothing of the fact that there really wasn't any place she could go in this small space. That ruled out the sort of all-out blitz attack style that Master Annanya taught back on Tython--and Dina had never really had the chance to properly learn and train using Annanya's shadow technique anyway. Instead, without a healer's help, she'd have to substitute the use of Force techniques that could drain her enemy's strength directly and leech it away for her own.

"I'm sorry, but you've left me no choice." she finally said, and used the Force to fill the small space with a powerful field that both attacked the Sith's strength and reduced his defenses. She immediately followed up with another technique that attempted to sever his connection to the Force, and then a third that was intended to breach through his remaining defenses. The combination of attacks lingered on afterward to continue eating away ay his strength.

Her opening salvo completely hit its mark, but only because she had the element of surprise. Next she threw a sizable chunk of rock at him while rushing forward to get close enough to attack him with her saber. The rock impacted against some sort of shield that lit up when it hit him, but she could feel that she was indeed hurting him.

Then the blades came.

It wasn't just the original four that had been tormenting her before. Now there were . . . it took her a moment to count them all . . . a total of NINE blades, all swirling in formation inside this small space.

Dina did all she could to deflect them away from herself, using both her saber and the Force itself. But it was impossible to completely avoid the concentrated attack, and she earned a few burns and shallow stab wounds because of it.

At least she was successful at closing the gap, and was able to get a couple of lightsaber strikes in at him directly, wounding him a little. It was the little success that she needed to reassure herself that he COULD be defeated if she maintained her concentration.

She took the opportunity to use the Force to attack his mind directly, figuring that his insanity might be his biggest area of vulnerability. The other techniques she'd used before all interacted with this one to make it even more effective.

But in the process, she'd had to retreat a bit in the face of a coordinated frontal push with his lightsabers, so that she'd given up most of the ground that she'd gained.

No matter, she had a plan now, and still had a few tricks up her sleeve.

"Why is this not working?!?" Kari said again, still switching back-and-forth between frantically pressing buttons on her wrist controller and trying to lase the target.

"Okay . . . then . . . my turn." Dianiss said, slowly.

"I was just kidding about the stripping, but if you think it'll work...."

"No." Dianiss answered with a pained grin. "Lightning . . . storm."

"DON'T YOU DARE!" Kari shouted with a spin in Dianiss' direction, and completely stopped what she was doing. "You don't know what will happen here."

"Not . . . him." Dianiss answered. "Just . . . me."

"We'll find another way to crack this egg..." Kari started to say, but it was too late. She could already feel the air getting ultra-dry all around her.

With a clap of thunder that momentarily shouted down the dull roar of the Sith's barrier, the electrical energy poured out of the sky with a fury. Kari had to step back a couple of paces from Dianiss, who was starting to lift off the ground a few centimeters due to all the static that she was generating.

Dina readied herself for another run at her opponent, calling on the Force to heal her as well as protect her and increase her offensive abilities--even if only temporarily. Again she brought down the trio of interlocking attacks on the Sith, and some of the damage done to him came back to her as another form of Force healing.

Again, she pressed forward, and this time heard a loud BOOM coming from above and outside of the Universe as she currently knew it. She wasn't sure what it was exactly, but it seemed to be working against him--weakening him a tiny bit, and she knew she needed every advantage she could get.

Something else caught her attention, too. As she set foot on the large red circle in the center, she felt something. In fact, she had felt it before during her first attack and again when she retreated, but dismissed it as irrelevant. Even now, she wasn't sure what to make of it.

Besides, she was kind of busy at the moment.

She knew that he would adapt, so she'd have to mix it up a bit. This time, instead of throwing a large rock while running at him, she held her ground and used the Force to send hundreds of tiny rocky projectiles at him, forcing him to pull his sabers back to form a shield against them.

With every saber occupied by deflecting her barrage, she seized the opportunity to run with Force-enhanced speed around the left side of his sabers and behind him, even jumping up against the wall of the barrier itself to plant a foot and push off of it. She had only a moment to seize the initiative and stab her saber hard into his back, making contact with his right shoulder.

Clearly, she'd caught him by surprise with the back-stab, since he cried out in pain and hesitated with the sabers that were still in front of him. That gave her the moment she needed to concentrate deeply on the location where she stood, making a strong imprint in the Force of that spot and connecting her to it. It might help her later to be able to move here behind him again with near-instantaneous speed.

Again, she attacked his mind as the army of lightsabers approached from each side and he spun to his left to pull his wounded shoulder away from her. She feinted to her right, as if to stay behind him, but then followed by jumping over his head, avoiding the approaching sabers from each side.

Stay focused, Dina. she said to herself. You can do this.

Kari knew that protesting any more would do no good, so she simply drew her blaster and fired on the barrier too. "Is it working?"

"Uhhh..." Kinnan moaned. He was starting to wake up.

"It's not enough." Dianiss replied, unable to sustain the attack any longer. As her feet gently landed back on the rocky floor, she noticed that channeling what was normally considered a Sith ability like she just did was helping her to concentrate now--and wondered to herself whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. This was a strange environment indeed.

But along with a clearer head was a deep welling up of emotion, and it was getting increasingly hard to maintain her composure. She had already failed one of her group, barely saved another, and was squarely on the road to failing--and losing--the third. The hurt and the guilt and helplessness was getting to her. She knew what she had to do next.

All she had to do now was summon the courage to face her friend . . . courage that was rapidly fading.

"Kari?"

"What?"

"We have to get her out of there."

"I know what you're thinking, Annie. Think again. It's too risky. Even *I'm* starting to feel Lord Angry-Face affecting you and you DO NOT want to get him fired up."

"I know. But he wants to get in there too." Dianiss paused bit to wipe her eyes. "Do you have it with you?"

"Have WHAT?"

Dianiss had to stop and think a moment. She remembered the initials N-N-A, but not the technical chemical name. "That neo-neck . . . the Night-Night Annie serum."

"Are you kidding me?!? We've never fully tested it. It could kill you. It's DESIGNED TO kill you."

"So you DO have it."

"Yes." Kari admitted with an angry look.

"Then give it to me now. I'm going to have to bring the heat--all of it--if we're going to get her out of there. Please." Dianiss pleaded, no longer able to hold back her tears. "She's gonna die in there."

Kari gave her friend a long, slow, angry look. This situation was definitely already out-of-control, but she couldn't shake the feeling that if Dianiss pulled out all the stops then it would only get MORE out-of-control.

Still, she couldn't think up a good argument against it. The fact that Dianiss wanted to use the Neural Necrotizer Agent meant that she was taking it seriously herself.

"Annie, you . . . are gonna be the death of me." Kari finally answered as she re-programmed a slow-release medical probe and replaced the normal cartridge with a new one that she pulled out of the front of her shirt.

Kari did a quick scan of Dianiss' system and released the probe, which moved within range and began giving Dianiss micro-injections of its contents. "Wait until you feel it working before you do anything."

"...until WHAT is working?" they both heard Kinnan mumble.

Kari started to answer him while monitoring Dianiss' vital signs, but was soon cut off by a deafening BOOM and a blinding flash of light from the sky. The rumble that followed it was powerful enough that it shook the rocks around them. Kari could even feel the deep bass oscillations in her chest affecting her own heartbeat.

The monumental BOOM startled both of them, and Dina feared she knew exactly what was happening. Like before, she could sense that he was being weakened by it, but this time much more profoundly, enough to worry him.

Unlike before, she could feel the powerful presence of Dianiss, and others whose existences paled in comparison. It was definitely strange and different than normal, attenuated as it was through this barrier. Galadina had only been in the presence of Dianiss using the full power of her ancestor a couple of times, and it was unmistakable that this was also one of those times.

As she once again used the trio of Force attacks, she felt the Sith's confidence melt away and be replaced with a mixture of anger and fear. She prepared to move in for the attack when instead she felt a wave of raw power hit her entire body at once and knock her back against the wall of the barrier, pinning her against it with her feet no longer touching the ground.

Instinctively, she released her grip on her lightsaber, causing it to automatically deactivate--otherwise it would have cut HER in half diagonally through her ribcage. She quickly discovered that she could move a little bit, being pretty much limited to rolling around on the inside wall of the barrier as if it were the floor and she were simply lying on it.

As the sabers came for her, she did her best to reposition so she could avoid them, but there were simply too many of them--and now her own TruthSeeker was one of them.

In fact, it was pointed directly at her head, but mercifully, he had not yet figured out how to activate it--and likely never would be able to, since the hilt had nano-sensors fitted into key locations so that it required the physical grip of a bare hand to work.

In desperation, she reached out to grasp at it. As if to tease her, he simply pulled it away, and resumed attacking her.

She did her best to avoid getting hit--she was GOOD at that, after all--but through all the squirming and desperate dodging, she couldn't avoid taking a severe stab wound to her right leg, and couldn't help but cry out in pain as she felt it going all the way through to the bone and out the opposite side.

He seemed to enjoy her cry of pain, even fed off it a little. Satisfied with himself, he released her and she fell roughly on the floor.

Standing up again proved tricky. The pain she could endure. But the weakness that came with the damaged muscle tissue meant she couldn't do much more than limp--anything resembling an adrenaline-fueled advanced acrobatic move was either impossible or would just injure her further now. She had tried to hurt him as quickly and as harshly as she could, but that plan had now utterly failed with the way he'd quickly turned the tables on her.

But something else was going on. She'd thought that he had released her so that he could--like a typical Sith--gloat a little before finishing her, make her beg for mercy, or something like that. But evidently it wasn't that at all because something else was distracting him.

It was never like her to retreat. But she'd nearly run out of options. She could hear . . . no, could FEEL a voice inside herself, like the voice of another Jedi with whom she had a strong Force bond--but it was even more familiar and intimate, someone so close that this someone knew her better than she knew herself.

Phase. Phase NOW. it said.

The Phase Walk was one of the most tricky abilities that the Jedi had ever taught. It was, in fact, a deep manipulation of time itself, and an alteration to the Unifying Force that allowed a Jedi to choose a location and then subsequently use Force-based stealth to disappear from reality and "rewind" time to the moment of making that choice. It didn't actually change history--such a thing would be an abomination to the will of the Unifying Force, and it would exert its will in the most extreme ways to prevent such things. In this particular case, the Force would react by immediately snapping the Jedi back to the "present" so that he or she did not exist in two places at once nor have the ability to change anything, but leaving him or her still in that chosen location.

There were other ways it could fail, too. Get too far away, and the Jedi could lose the connection to that special spot. Wait too long, and the Force would push back against any kind of time travel into the past of more than a few minutes.

But to an outside observer, it appears that the Jedi instantaneously moves back to that spot, even in situations where the Jedi physically could not have moved back to that spot.

And so Dina concentrated, hoping to get in one last sneak-attack from behind, letting the Force guide her. She focused on the place that she had pre-chosen, as she had done plenty of times before. As she imagined herself moving through time to the moment that she selected that place, she willed for the Force to carry her there.

And in the last moment, she could feel that something about this particular Phase Walk was . . . weird.

Continue to Chapter 14 . . . .