Sianid Ascendant: Chapter 6

After hours of waiting through . . . what was it? . . . 11? . . 12? . . . enough hyperspace micro-jumps that she'd lost count, Sianid's impatience was about to be satisfied at last. That ridiculous Jedi droid had assured her that this was the last jump.

It was not helping her disposition that the uncomfortable feeling of internal heat had also been slowly building up again over those last hours. On Tython, it had arisen quickly as a result of testing out her newly-borrowed Force power without holding back. This time she had resolved to avoid using any of that power unless absolutely necessary, but that didn't prevent the effect as she had hoped--it just slowed it down. And, strangely, the sensation was not at all accompanied by perspiration, making it all the more unbearable.

So once again she had the ship's temperature controls set way below normal and was wearing little more than her underwear trying to stay cool. At least her modesty could be rationalized away by telling herself that it was not her own body so distastefully on display.

"Is it like this for her all of the time?" she wondered. But the thought was quickly chased away by Ashara's earlier assurances that it was a side-effect of the possession ritual. Then again, Khem seemed to want to spend most of his time down in the engine room--the warmest part of the ship. Was it the cold-blooded Trandoshan host body? Or was it just different for a Dashade?

"Oh Dear." C2-N2's voice sounded strangely upbeat even when delivering bad news.

The ship dropped out of hyperspace, and here on the bridge Ilum was clearly visible in front of the ship . . . TOO visible . . . and too large.

"Droid! What's happened?"

"Master, our hyperspace jump durations have been randomly varying by as much as 0.142%. In deep space, this is unimportant. But I'm afraid that this final jump has lasted 0.118% longer than programmed, which has put the ship closer to the planet than expected. As a result, we are firmly within Ilum's gravity well, and now accelerating toward the surface. We will have to make an immediate emergency landing."

"DAMN YOU, YOU INCOMPETENT WASTE OF METAL!" And before the word "metal" had passed her lips, her lightsaber had already activated and sliced through the droid's neck. His head made a dull thunk sound on the cockpit floor, and rolled a few inches forward as the front of the ship started to dip down toward Ilum. "Khem, to the escape pod!"

Making her way back off the bridge to the midsection of the ship, she activated the escape pod.

Khem joined her just in time to see The escape pod is unavailable at this time appear on the display.

Her explosion of anger was pre-empted by the sounds of the hull creaking against the atmospheric pressure that was changing too quickly. In fact, there must have been a breach somewhere because she was starting to notice that the air was getting thinner.

"Khem, we're going down. I'm going to try to regain control." Dianiss' cat was nuzzling up to her legs, clearly frightened. "And GET THIS CREATURE AWAY FROM ME!"

"I will crush it for you, Little Sith." Khem said as he scooped up the cat in his hands and carried him toward the back of the ship while Sianid went forward to the bridge. While Sianid was putting out a mayday signal, Khem put the cat into the little cargo locker that was where it normally liked to sleep and sealed the door, making it air-tight. Sianid was already strapped in and trying in vain to pull away from the planet by the time he returned to the bridge.

Loss of oxygen was starting to become serious now, and as her breathing became more and more shallow, she could feel the fire within rising up to sustain her, which itself made her light-headed, as it had back on Tython. She passed out soon after, but not before seeing an Imperial Fury-class ship arc in front of the Pure Light, then turn and dive full-throttle into the atmosphere toward the spot on the planet's surface where the inevitable crash would occur. "Good work, Andronikos." she thought, before the darkness overwhelmed her.

--

"Captain, everything is going according to plan. They're both unconscious now, and her cat is safe. I still have control of the ship's systems and--some--control of the ship's trajectory. At this point, there's no stopping it from coming down at these coordinates." A planetary map appeared next to Holiday's image, showing the location. "It'll definitely be a crash landing, but I can keep the damage from being too severe."

"Great work: both of you. Tharan, signal the location to the task force. We need the Jedi strike team there first, with support and transport (that's us) right behind. Once the ship is down far enough that it re-pressurizes off the planet's atmosphere, the race is on. We have to get to her before she wakes up, otherwise we have to put her down again. And that will be . . . messy."

--

Sianid awoke back on her own Imperial ship, in a panic. "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!" She reached out with the Force to feel for the connection to Dianiss, but it was weak, brittle--like a thousand-year-old piece of paper that would crumble at the slightest touch. And even without any touch at all, it was crumbling anyway, slowly but surely.

She also felt the same post-possession weakness, like before, but adrenaline kept her going. She burst from her room running toward the cockpit. "Andronikos! Are we on the surface yet? Can you see the Jedi ship?"

Andronikos turned and gave her a look that said she was clearly crazy, but he wasn't about to say so. She'd seen it plenty of times before. "On the surface? No. We picked up the distress call, and we're following it, but we're about 10 minutes out from that location."

Sianid was momentarily confused but pressed on. "Is there any way to get there faster?"

"Well I suppose we COULD dive full-throttle into the atmosphere, but that would be spectacularly insane...."

--

The Imperial Fury-class ship wasn't built for these kinds of maneuvers, and so the engines were straining beyond their limits to keep the white-hot hull from creating a big, black crater on Ilum's pristine surface. As it approached the surface with its nose pointed to the sky and rear thrusters on full, the door opened and a single figure leaped out into the wind and snow, and began falling even faster, head-first, toward the unforgiving ice below.

As she fell, she used the Force to create a massive maelstrom of lightning and tornado directly beneath herself, slowing her fall and directing herself away from the trajectory of the falling ship she'd just departed. By the time she landed, a powerful bubble of Force surrounded her and pressed a hard, round dent into Ilum's ice, shaking the ground.

As the dust, snow, and shards of ice from the impact settled, the figure of a hooded female dressed in black slowly became visible, her right knee and left hand planted firmly on the ground, her right arm outstretched holding an ignited lightsaber horizontally in front of her face that cast an eerie dark purple tint on the ice all around her. She instinctively looked to each side for enemies as her own ship landed--hard--in the snow several Huttball fields' distance behind her before she looked up and smiled.

The Jedi ship was above her, falling from the sky, and headed directly at her.

"Yesssssssss...."

--

On board the Havoc Squad ship Destiny, Major Kendsel's voice came over the ship's intercom. "Be ready to disembark in 10 minutes. And . . . we are NOT going to be alone. I've got one ship already there, and another one inbound just a few minutes behind us. Both are Imperial."

The Jedi strike team looked around at each other, disappointed. This was the bad news that they had hoped would not come.

"Excellent." said Zedemm, as he looked towards Galadina. "Nothing worth doing is worth doing the EASY way." She couldn't help but grin. His irony always seemed to have a bit of Sith sensibility behind it.

Annanya took command. "All right peoples, we still have a job to do. We get in, we get Casei in to stabilize Dianiss, we get out. If we're forced into combat, we all know our roles. Plus, we have Jedi Kendsel to back us up."

As if on cue, Kendsel's voice came up again. "We're approaching the targ-- . . . ."

The channel was still open, but he had just stopped talking. Zedemm and Casei exchanged puzzled looks, but Annanya and Galadina exchanged smiles. Annanya pointed to her eyes in a gesture that indicated a Force Vision.

"Okay, STILL approaching the target site. There will be a third Imperial ship there, but . . . not really. I don't understand it either, just leave it be. Good news and bad news. The good news is that there's just one Sith there waiting for us."

Galadina spoke up. "The bad news?"

"Yeeeaaaaah...." Kendsel responded. "That ONE Sith . . . it's Synzia."

--

Among the Sith, Synzia was an anomaly, and a bit of an outcast. She was the sort of Pureblood Sith that had a once-in-a-thousand-years level of connection to the Force, but that level of sensitivity came with a price: she could instinctively feel pain and suffering across the entire galaxy, and her coping mechanism was to simply embrace it, feed off of it, and revel in the feelings that accompany adding to it--she liked it. This, even by Sith standards, warped her sanity to point of being anti-social and psychopathic. Some have even compared her to Darth Nihilus.

By the time she was trained as a Sith Apprentice, she cared nothing at all for titles or recognition, and her master couldn't quite figure out how to train her. She excelled at channeling the Force in all sorts of destructive ways and enjoyed pushing herself to the limits of her abilities, but was completely apathetic to completing any tasks her master had set before her. Eventually--with some prodding from another apprentice whose master was plotting against her--Synzia killed her master, took his ship, and set off on her own, Imperial society and titles like "Lord" and "Darth" be damned. Power and pain were the only things that mattered.

It was from there that her reputation and legend grew. Plenty of inquisitors are powerful, but Synzia combined it with a kind of insanity that made her utterly fearless and completely unpredictable: a very dangerous combination.

All throughout that time, Synzia has continued her connection with the apprentice who encouraged her to take freedom into her own hands: Lady Sianid. While it might be a stretch to call them "friends", Sianid was always one of the few people Synzia had encountered with a soul cruel and twisted enough to relate to--along with a similar desire for power. Perhaps "rivals" is a better description, but with a mutual respect that is difficult to break. In Synzia, Sianid saw the possibilities of immense power, along with a certain . . . physical attraction. Synzia, on the other hand, considered Sianid's schemes the most fun kind of entertainment she's ever found.

And on this day, Sianid asked Synzia to come to Ilum as a favor, and promised her plenty of fun. Synzia agreed to come, but not because she felt she owed Sianid some debt. She came because if Sianid was REALLY going to acquire the sort of power she'd been talking about, Synzia wanted to see it for herself--and for the fun of fighting Jedi.

--

There were no Jedi on the scene yet, but there was the thrill of the mortal danger that comes with being in the path of an unstoppable multi-ton object hurtling straight at you. Only one thing to do in such a situation: stop it.

With a smooth, fluid motion she deactivated and belted her lightsaber, then closed her eyes and reached up into the sky, reaching out with the Force to feel the falling ship--all of its mass, all of its heat, all of its momentum. She felt the exhilaration of impending doom rise up inside her and channeled that emotion upward and downward. The "upward" took the form of a massive disturbance of wind, snow, lightning, and dark energy. The "downward" struck deep, deep into the planet's core, warping it's gravitational field and weakening its hold on the ship, until it started to form a kind of upward convection current that repelled the ship's fall, causing it to cease accelerating and even start to slow down.

The power she was channeling was massive, and she could feel it burning at her, consuming her. The pain was so intense that it--just for a few seconds--shut out the galaxy and all of its woes. All that was left was her own pain . . . and the power it gave her.

When those few seconds were up, she opened her eyes to see a Jedi starship hovering directly over her head, unmoving, the bottom of its hull less than thirty feet from the ground.

--

"Dina my dear, do remember what I taught you about sorcerers: they don't like when you get in close. You should take this." Zedemm tossed her a lightsaber with a smaller-than-normal hilt. "You can't move faster than their lightning, so you must anticipate it, and either move first or block it. For this application, the shoto will prove far more effective than a simple energy shield."

"Thank you, Master."

He gave her an annoyed look at her use of the 'Master' honorific, as he always did. "It will also assist us with the gambit for the element of surprise, as she should expect you to use a Jar'Kai attack with Juyo Form like a marauder, and be utterly unprepared for your particular flavour of Ataru-blended Soresu."

"Is this one of yours? What color is it?" Many of the lightsabers Zedemm used had a rare magenta color crystal, and she was curious if this was one of them. If she had eyes, like the other races do, she could just activate it and see for herself. But one of the side-effects of her Miraluka blindness was that she really didn't perceive color in the usual way, so unless it was one of the synthetic red crystals (the Force flows through those differently), she'd have to ask. It was sort-of a game they used to play.

"Yes, it is of my own construction, but I think I shan't disclose the colour to you until the mission is completed. Think of it as incentive for you to remain alive."

Kendsel's voice on the intercom interrupted them. "Strike Team, prepare to disembark. Drop-off in sixty seconds. Fifty-five. Fifty. Fourt-- . . . ."

Dina winced at Kendsel's pause. "Uh-oh."

"HOLD ON, EVERYONE!" he said as the ship banked hard into a sudden turn, pushing everyone down against the floor at more than twice their own normal weight.

--

With a wave of her hands and a spiteful grin, she threw the Jedi ship above her sideways, directly into the path of the Republic military ship that was approaching. Or at least that's what would have happened, had that ship not suddenly changed course--violently--just a moment before she decided to use the Jedi ship as a giant projectile.

The Pure Light landed hard on the ice and skidded several hundred yards, slowed only by the plowing snow and irregularities in the ice underneath. She cursed the pilot of that ship for anticipating her attack, crude though it was, so handily.

--

"Sorry about that, you'll see why in twenty. Fifteen. Ten."

The airlock door opened as the ship slowed to a low hover and all four Jedi leaped out onto the surface. From the trail left in the snow and ice, it was obvious which direction they needed to go. Annanya took command immediately. "Casei, to the ship for Dianiss and Qyzen. I'll cover you. Zedemm, Galadina, say hello to our new friend."

--

"Ah, finally, some Jedi to kill." she thought with a malevolent smile. She activated her lightsaber and was soon after disappointed to see half of them running the opposite direction. "That's not FEAR I smell, is it?" she said out loud, and starting running their direction.

--

Galadina activated her lightsaber in her right hand and the shoto in her left, and lowered herself into a run towards her opponent. Remembering her teacher's strategy, she started out by holding them in the positions that a practitioner of the Juyo form would. She found herself thinking back to the countless times she had sparred against Zedemm when she was a Padawan--the countless times she'd heard the words "Protect yourself!" pass his lips.

Now was the time to protect HIM. As she'd done many times before with others, she reached out with the Force to feel his presence, holding her own presence near him, in front of him, as a protective barrier and as a distraction. His attacks would, to their opponent, instinctively "feel" like they came from her--and she'd also be more in tune with the battle from his perspective.

It was easier than usual with him.

'The bond formed between Master and Padawan never fades.' she'd heard many times from many different Jedi masters. She never quite understood that--because she never really felt a bond with her "official" Guardian Master. Now, a little older and a little wiser, she understood that Zedemm was always more her master than Master Nora ever was.

Thinking back, she couldn't actually remember a time when they'd fought alongside each other. Now, she actually found herself looking forward to this battle. Her connection to him allowed her to feel some of his own resolve, and it filled her with confidence and strength. Knowing how good he could really be with the lightsaber, she almost started feeling pity on their opponent.

With a practiced calm, she reached out with the Force to feel the flow of time and hold it back, while pushing the air in front of her away and the air behind her into a surging gust. And in that moment, she leapt forward.

--

Kendsel's voice came up in the team's earpieces. "Master Casei, something's very very wrong. You have to hurry."

--

Casei was running with all of the speed the Force could give her, and quickly reached the ship's main hatch. The door was damaged a bit, but not enough to prevent the emergency access from releasing it and allowing her entry.

Once inside, she reached out with the Force and searched for the signs of living beings. She was relieved to find two inside: one strong but barely breathing, the other faint and close to death. But neither of them felt human. Running up the entry stairway, she used the Force to grab a metal object in the aft holoterminal room and throw it sideways--striking the cargo compartment door hard and breaking it open. The animal inside called out--frightened--but now able to escape, and ran from the rear of the ship faster than a speeder to the bridge.

As Casei herself reached the bridge, it was clear that the only signs of life coming from Dianiss' chair were those of her cat, who was now up on her lap, sniffing at her face.

--

Sianid screamed in horror as the last tenuous thread of her connection to Dianiss faded. "GET US THERE!!! NOW!!!"

--

Synzia's power was remarkable, and so was her speed. Galadina was constantly jumping, diving, blocking, and occasionally reflecting back the Sith's attacks. Her practiced hold on the flow of time and ability to predict her opponent's moves were keeping her alive, but Synzia's hold on time passage was often stronger. Meanwhile, Zedemm was also holding steady trying to penetrate the powerful electrical shields that prevented his blades from getting a solid strike. At most, he was making glancing blows and breaking down her defenses slowly. When he did score a solid strike, she seemed to be able heal herself well enough to keep going.

Meanwhile, Synzia was scoring hits much more often on both of them. Dina's confidence was no longer so strong, and she was getting the distinct impression that Synzia was actually just toying with them. Her lightning seemed to be doing more to inflict pain than actual injury, and she was feeding off of it. Dina could tell that the Sith's Force aura was building and brightening (or maybe darkening was a better description) as they fought.

They were losing this battle, albeit slowly. That's okay, they didn't need to win. They just needed to keep her busy long enough to let Casei and Annanya get Dianiss out of there.

But the nagging worry about what happens if Synzia really started trying was weighing on her.

--

This time Kari's voice popped up in the team's earpieces. "Strike Team, this is transport. We're now three minutes away. What's your status? I'm not liking the readings I'm getting."

Galadina responded first. "We're getting our butts kicked out here without a healer. We could really use you, Master Casei."

Annanya reported in next. "Qyzen is stable and restrained. I'm coming to you now."


Silence.


"Master Casei? Status?" Kari's voice was halfway between pleading and screaming.

"Kari, I am so very very sorry. Every cell in her body is dormant. There's no oxygen in her at all. This goes way beyond resuscitation. I don't understand it."

"What are you saying?"

"Team, this is now a Type-9 Extraction. Dianiss . . . is dead."