The Spice Mines of Kessel

[Krath Apothos]

6 hours earlier. Aboard The Bleeding Edge

 

"And finalized." The voice coming over the comm was deep, clipped, and refined. While Nok could not see the hologram, he was familiar enough with the current Darth Sovros' reputation to pay careful attention to every word said.

 

"Thank you Uncle." This voice, coming from the comm on Nok's left, was feminine and radiated the naked ruthlessness of the privileged.

 

Darth Zayira. Niece of Darth Sovros. Nok Morliss' newest business partner.

 

"And the terms of the contract are understood by both sides?" Sovros asked, sounding almost bored. "We wouldn't want misunderstandings clouding up this deal, assuming success." His tone remained level, but Nok imagined Darth Zayira shivered with him at the implied meaning. As the witness to the contract, Darth Sovros would take it upon himself to hunt down and destroy any party who violated the agreement. Even his own family. Perhaps especially then.

 

"Of course Uncle." Nok thought he caught a slight tremor in her voice. "You understand, neimoidian, that my ships won't jump until we have confirmation that the defenses are down?"

 

Nok took a moment to collect himself before responding. "Yes. Just keep your forces in the nebula and wait for our signal."

 

There was silence, and even over the hologram Nok imagined he could feel Darth Zayira's glare.

 

"Don't waste my time...apprentice. House Sovros-" She stopped midsentence. Nok didn't know what Darth Sovros was doing, but it was apparently enough to make the haughty noble back down.

 

There was a blip as Darth Zayira disconnected, leaving Nok alone with the infamous Darth Sovros.

 

"...One chance neimoidian." Then another blip, and Nok was alone.

 

Present, aboard The Tortuga

 

Nok slipped the last latch shut, the hiss of the suit pressurizing distracting him from the resentment and nervousness of the men around him swirling through the enclosed space.

 

This is it.

 

As the void of space opened up, Nok sensed something was ending for him. This was the true end of his time hiding in the shadows, living off the margins.

 

He jumped out.

 

The small voice from Mon Cal, from the deepest, scarred parts of his mind, spoke up then.

 

Dead in the cold and dark.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Nok Morliss

[Krath Apothos]

Silence. Pure, perfect, dead silence. Without his sight, the lifeless void was a great blank as the others spread out away from him in the descent.

 

So, it jarred him when his comm crackled to life.

 

On 9/20/2020 at 3:21 PM, Shimsinblimp said:

“Change of plans. Get to the surface and disable defenses and communications. If Morliss has troops en route, we best make sure they get here. Morliss, tell your men to advance.”

 

Shimsinblimp knew those ships weren't set to arrive until after some of the ground defenses had been cleared and a landing zone was prepared, and there was no way they'd managed that. If Nok changed the plan, House Sovros could declare the contract invalid and leave them all with nothing.

 

But the troig was also a capable commander and experienced raider.

 

Nok grimaced, hesitated, then resolutely pressed the switch of the subspace transceiver.

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Kelzin H'nabro stared out the viewport of his ship at the roiling nebula.

"Adjusting thrusters to compensate for drift," his first officer muttered from his console, voice bored and listless.

 

"Kriffing Maw," Kelzin cussed, just as lifelessly. This was the worst part. Waiting.

"Commander, there's still time..."

 

Kelzin rubbed his forehead. "What are the odds right now?"

"3 to 1 that we get sent home, no combat."

Kelzin could understand the men's reasoning. Half of combat was positioning, advancing and retreating, fleets chasing tails. This was Kessel. Even under the thumbs of criminals, attacking it was...well it was something you just didn't do on a whim, and every crewman here (at least the nobles) could see a cobbled together attack when they were sitting at the helm of one. The commoners...well, they were brainwashed clones. They spoke when spoken to. They thought as they were directed. They didn't really have an opinion on the matter.

 

But Kezlin knew something his fellow Force-less nobles didn't. He knew his wife.

Darth Zayira, a woman with a vicious streak to match a nexu and an ambition that could out hunger a sarlacc. But more than anything else, she had an insecurity so deep it was swimming around the core of Onderon. No way would she just pull them back, not with her uncle watching. And if Kelzin failed her...well, she had two other husbands, and one of them actually was Force-sensitive.

 

"Fine. Give me 800 crowns on the long shot. There's going to be a battle, and more than that we're going to be walking on that scummy asteroid in 24 hours."

He saw his first officer shrug as he lazily keyed in his commander's bet. "It's your money...sir."

 

As if the universe had a sense of humor, the light on Kelzin's console blinked to life. It was a small thing, but every set of shoulders on the bridge of the VT-49 Decimator tensed at the tiny click.

 

Kelzin grinned.

 

"We're on."

 

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

The nebula parted, and a wedge of ships in tight formation raced out of it. Their sensors parsed the dogfight in front of them even as they became visible to others.

 

At the head of the formation flew the blade of the tiny fleet. A VT-49 Decimator, the old imperial ship painted green with brilliant gold patterns lining the wings in opulent, overwrought designs. Etched in flowing script, the bow of The Eldest proudly proclaimed its name to the stars.

Less extravagant but matching in green and gold, 4 Guardian-class corvettes spread out on each side of the lead ship, the 8 vessels forming the blades of the arrowhead. Hanging in the center, 5 Sentinel-class landing craft and 2 Gozanti-class carrier corvettes kept pace. The Gozantis each bore a HAVw A5 Juggernaut. The heavy wheeled vehicles bore blaster scars that poorly matched the polished fleet, but looking carefully one might see pilots waiting patiently for the land battle where they would demonstrate their real value.

 

Completing the advancing force, 20 HH-87 Starhopper fighters screamed out of the concealing gases and fanned out, screening the tiny fleet.

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

"Sir! Fighters ahead! Counting...X-wings...E-wings...My'tils...Javelins...Still working on the final count sir."

"What? They're already-"

"Sir! They're engaging the Kessel defense forces! And..." The first officer paused as he enlarged the still image of one of the Javelins on his screen, or more to the point, the image of the insignia emblazoned on it.

 

Kelzin's teeth gritted. "Rebels. Of course."

 

"Orders?"

 

Kelzin's stance changed. His spine turned to iron. He pointed forward, the image of resolute and commanding.

 

"Advance! Cover the transports to the landing zone! Anything gets close, you destroy it. Do not pursue. Fighters! Fan out another 100 meters and harry anything that tries to approach. Don't be brave, just keep them off us until we can get these troops on the ground."

The fighter pilots, flash-trained sullustan clones, gave no affirmation, instead simply obeying.

"Sir, we'll be in firing range in 10...9...8"

Kelzin's eyes narrowed.

 

Well...this may be a challenge.

 

He smiled.

 

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

Nok only had a moment as his own fear illuminated the ground to his peculiar sight before he struck it. He managed to turn it into a half-decent roll, and the clunky suit absorbed the rancor's share of the impact. Unfortunately, it left him bruised, stunned...and on his back.

 

He struggled, flailing in an inelegant way for almost a minute as his faculties returned to him. He then realized two things.

 

He wasn't alone.

 

They weren't Shimsinblimps men.

 

"Alright drunk spider," one of the men surrounding him, fear and anger pouring off him in equal measure, barked. The other two laughed nervously, and Nok could only assume it was a local joke. "Don't move, or we help you out of that armor with these." He hefted a serious looking blaster rifle in his hand and pointed it at Nok. The other two held their rifles at the ready, but were more focused on checking their surroundings than on Nok.

 

"Of course, of course," Nok said, voice measured even as his rage, humiliation, and fear mixed inside him into some strange emotional bonfire of indeterminate quality. "I won't move a muscle."

He reached out with the Force. He had one good trick, and while his knives were under the bulky suit, the scumbag guards (weequay he realized) had provided him with the tools he needed.

 

The blaster rifle of the most distracted guard jerked to one side. With his nerves as thin as paper, he fired out of panicked instinct, and promptly dropped the guard who'd been hovering over Nok to the ground with a scorched hole in his shoulder and a string of Huttese curses. Dumbfounded, he only had a moment to consider as the third guard raised his own blaster at the supposed traitor's head, screaming "Drop your gun or I'll shoot!"

 

"I...what?" stuttered the befuddled guard.

 

Nok chuckled. "He asked you." Then he touched the Force again, and the trigger of the third guard's gun pulled back a few hair's breadth, and the second guard collapsed, lifeless and smelling of burnt grey matter.

 

The third guard wheeled on Nok. "You're doing this!"

 

"Too late."

The first guard's gun, levitating into the air behind the third guard, went off at Nok's tiny gesture, and the third guard fell silent for good.

 

"You...you...kriffing...magician!" The first guard, now disarmed and writhing, only managed the fractured sentence through a thick blanket of pain.

 

"No need to be disrespectful." Nok turned the gun even as he lay, now relaxed, on the ground. It rotated, then fired once...twice...and the guard joined his friends in the Force's final embrace.

 

A few clicks and Force-propelled pieces of armor later, Nok was free and standing. He grabbed his comm and spoke into it, collected and feeling rejuvenated by the bursts of dark power the violent deaths had released.

 

"The fleet is on its way. We clear a landing site now. According to my comm's locator...I'm near one of the power relay stations. I should be able to disable one of their shield generators from there. Any assistance would be appreciated, but no matter what we need to clear the guns from this area...or at least blind them somehow."

 

Nok started walking.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Nok Morliss

[Krath Apothos]

There were a lot of things that Nok might have guessed would be useful in getting inside the shield relay station. His weapons, his growing mastery of the Force, his experience in sabotage...

His neimoidian sense of smell was not on that list.

Nok had been jogging towards the shield relay station, relying on the spoken instructions of his comm device to compensate for his blindness. He had estimated he was less than a mile out when an acrid stench wafted past him. Nok's neimoidian scent glands, not covered by his respirator, got a full blast of the odor, and even as his eyes watered the smell triggered a memory. Nok had once owned a small ore refinery that had smelled just like this, and if he remembered right it had come from the building's old generator. A Naboo model, it had been built to run off of Naboo-mined plasma. When the whims of history ensured that the sparkling blue stuff was too expensive to import, people like Nok had turned to artificially grown plasma to keep their machines running. Problem was the impurities in the manufactured plasma burned up when it was used, and it stank like nothing Nok had ever known.

 

And if they were using artificial plasma, then they were using a Naboo model generator, and Nok had crawled around in his own generator enough to know the usual layout. Granted, he'd been doing it to blow it up in an insurance scheme, but he figured the experience translated.

 

Mentally chuckling at how uncreative he'd been in those early days, Nok had followed his "nose" to find the exhaust port, and as he predicted there had been a maintenance hatch. It was locked and sealed of course, but once again the Naboo obsession with safety measures got Nok what he wanted. A slight Force push on the right mechanisms inside the door and he tricked it into thinking there was a sudden pressure build-up inside and that someone was trying to work the inner latch. With a hiss and a squeal it popped open, and Nok crawled down into it and towards the relay station.

 

Now, Nok was hooking up his datapad into the station's main computer. The bodies of two techs who'd had the misfortune to be doing maintenance lay a few feet behind him, bleeding out from the necks. The twitching body of an astromech lay a couple yards further back, the blast mark on its head smoking.

 

So long as he wasn't interrupted, this wouldn't take long...

Edited September 29, 2020 by Nok Morliss

[Krath Apothos]

On 9/29/2020 at 9:33 PM, Roleplayer X said:

"Step away from the Computer, Neimodian." Zepex instructed firmly behind Remo as the droids stepped across, and in Remo's case, rolled around the corpses. "Master R3-M0 requires it."

Nok stopped moving. Very slowly, he turned his head and raised his hands. His blindfolded eyes stared into space as his own fear painted the room, that sudden rush of adrenaline when something surprises you followed by the electric chill that comes when you realize it's something dangerous. Nok took a breath, letting that emotion sink in as he moved past his physical senses and unraveled into the Dark Side. This world was strong in it. Centuries of suffering, fear, and death piled onto one another into something you could almost taste in the air, behind the stink of freshly dead bodies and burning plasma impurities.

"Master R3...ah, Master Remo. I'm honored. I did not think I would ever meet the master of Black Sun. I'd bow, but I'm afraid you'd shoot me if I tried."

The console behind Nok beeped, and he fought to keep a grimace of annoyance off his schooled expression. His program was done. The entire relay station was set to send an unprotected pulse to the shield generator, forcing an emergency shutdown. If Nok had done it right, and if he knew anything about the old shield generators they used on this rock, they'd be down for almost 20 minutes. Plenty of time for House Sovros' clones to take the atmosphere factories.

 

The problem, appropriately enough, was the Naboo dedication to safety. A pulse like that would trigger a break and just cut power. The shield would be weaker, but not down. Unless, of course, someone pulled the manual override lever before the pulse got sent.

 

The manual override lever on the wall directly behind the psychotic little droid and his henchman.

 

Nok had heard of R3-M0. A dangerous criminal in control of more dangerous criminals, who regularly matched up against the darkest and most depraved elements in the galaxy. Black Sun didn't have the reach it once did, but every action of the mastermind in that durasteel dome that rippled through the underworld promised big things.

"It seems you've caught me at a bad time Master Remo. And given your...independent affiliation I can only assume you're here to lay claim to this little rock same as us. Perhaps we can work something out? I might have something I can-"

Nok's fingers barely twitched as he touched on the Force, the swirling eddies of energy around responding like the strings of a harp to second-year student. Not perfect, but passable.

One of Nok's knives tore free of its sheath and launched itself through the air at the droid's henchman.

((1))

[Krath Apothos]

Nok's jaw clenched as this hiss of those twin ancient weapons coupled with the buzz of an R-units electroshock probe.

Of COURSE this kriffing thing has lightsabers! Why the **** not!?

His spiking, brain-stem fear had painted a clear picture of the little death machine rocketing off the ground and its weapons coming out to bear. Nok had no room. He couldn't dodge in time.
 

But he could fall.

 

Nok dropped to his back and kicked off the console with his feet, sliding across the floor on a film of blood. There was no point in protecting the console. The program was ready to activate, and Nok could just do it from a different console if it came down to it.

Gyroscopic law. A spinning object doesn't change orientation quickly. Neimoidian biology. A neimoidian's head is quite high off the ground. Nok grinned as he predicted he would pass right under the droid.

 

Thermodynamics. Rocket exhaust burns.

 

Nok fought to not open his mouth to scream as he passed under the murderous R-unit and got a scorching soak from the spinning mob boss's oxidizing fuel. His combat leather insulated his body from most of the burns and didn't catch fire, but his face was another matter. A landscape of pain erupted across his bare skin, and his elegant, silken red blindfold ignited and blackened. As he slid past one of the other burning bodies and came to a stop halfway through the hall, he tore it off and threw it aside, revealing what was underneath. Framed by blistering, raw flesh stripped back by fire, Nok's ruined eyes were the star attraction of a horror show. The skin around the skull-like empty sockets was black, scarred, and necrotic with Force corruption. Where the stiff flesh had cracked under the fire it oozed a faint, yellow fluid. The stench of old sickness and gangrene mixed with the meaty fragrance of burning meat.

Nok did scream then. In pain, in rage, in hatred, there were no words in his mind, just raw emotion directed at this little trash can that had arrogantly dared to think Nok was beneath it.

The Force roiled around him, the Dark Side pooling and unraveling invisibly into threads and waves. Nok extended his hands, pain and vitriol mixing into something primal, and grasped at those currents of power. No gentle, intuitive control this time. He wrapped his will in the Force around R3-M0's companion, the droid Nok had driven the knife into, and tried with all his power to throw it at the spinning master of Black Sun.

 

 TLDR: Nok dropped to the ground, slid across the blood-slick floor under Remo's lightsabers and electroprobe, and got a faceful of fire. Channeling the pain, he's trying to throw Zepex at his master.

 

((2))

Edited October 6, 2020 by Nok Morliss
Adding ((2))

[Krath Apothos]

Nok's scream didn't stop. Fear, anger, pain, and hatred all blended as Nok surged to his feet and howled at the approaching droid, even as he scrambled backwards to give himself a few more seconds.

 

Not fast enough though.

 

R3-M0's blades came closer and closer, his speed outpacing Nok's agonizingly slow acceleration. In a fit of panic, Nok thrust out with the Force at the ground, the walls, and himself, flinging himself backwards in an awkward, stumbling lunge that banged him against one wall before sending him spinning and sliding down a ramp. The pain that was the price of such a graceless maneuver was an undertone to the blaring orchestra of agony in his face.

And then he was past it, past the deafening roar of his emotions. Just like at Mon Cal, Nok was deep in the Force. He felt, but he didn't experience. He understood, but he didn't think. If his emotions were a raging sea, then he'd just forced underwater. The intricacies of the Dark Side, hidden truths far beyond his reach, teased and tempted. Nok's mind and spirit stretched, but that power was beyond him...for now.

 

It was easier this time. Not by much, but a little. And that power, so far, was just a little closer.

 

I will not die here droid.

 

Following a plan that he couldn't remember devising, Nok unclipped the lightsaber at his belt. Stolen from the corpse of the Zeltron gunslinger on Mon Cal, Nok had barely held the weapon, much less learned how to wield it. If he tried to match the droid saber-to-saber, Nok was just as likely to decapitate himself as fall to the mechanical crime boss's weapons.

 

Instead, he pointed the weapon away from himself, and activated the saber. A bright green blade hissed to life...and Nok let go. He wrapped the hilt in the grip of his desire and sent it flying up the ramp with an intuitive ripple in the Force. He lifted his hand, ready to angle the path of the saber towards the hopefully oncoming R3-M0.

 

TLDR: To escape Remo's oncoming attack, Nok threw himself (unskillfully) down the hallway with the Force, banging himself up and sending himself tumbling down a ramp. He has activated his lightsaber and sent it telekinetically up the ramp, hoping to catch Remo.

 

((3))

 

Edited October 16, 2020 by Nok Morliss
Adding ((3)) and TLDR

[Krath Apothos]

The lightsaber passed by R3-M0's head, missing by centimeters as the droid came rolling down the ramp...no, the wall!

 

The wall...

 

Nok's hand flicked again, and the lightsaber spun midair and came flying back down the hall. Except this time it wasn't aimed at Remo. With one more flourish, it twisted and buried itself into the wall...and the active plasma conduit behind it.

 

Blue energy, hidden from Nok's blind eyes, exploded out in sparking, crackling force. The little droid was flung headfirst into the opposite wall, a single, high-pitched beep accompanying the sudden blast of power. Bolts of electricity played across its surface even as its metal frame blackened under the flood of raw plasma. The moment was over as quickly as it started, Naboo safety features kicking in to close off the leaking conduit, but the damage was done. The droid lay on the floor, lights off, smoke rising from between its joints.

 

Nok got up, face still alight with pain, and shuffled over. He extended his hands, and the shotos flipped into his palms. He weighed them absentmindedly before clipping them onto his belt, adding his own stolen lightsaber after a moment's thought. His pain echoed in the Dark Side, and Nok focused and felt along those currents until he sensed the droid's inner workings. The power core, the fuel reserves...and the cognitive module.

 

Nok gripped the little device with the Force.

 

"Good fight...lord of Black Sun...

 

I wonder, what would you have done to the universe had you lived?"

 

Nok paused, for how long he couldn't have said. Eventually, he shook his head.

 

"It doesn't matter."

 

He crushed the module.

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

"Sir! The shields just dropped!"

 

Kelzin took his eyes off the fierce dogfight.

 

"How many landing craft do we have left?"

 

"We've lost one Sentinel, and one of the Gozanti dropped its Juggernaught!"

 

Kelzin cursed. The rebels weren't even supposed to be here!

 

"Wait, the Juggernaught...the troops..."

 

"As far as we can tell, they're still alive inside. Do you want us to turn back for them?"

 

"No, if we break formation these scum will take us apart!" Whoever these fighter pilots were, they were deadly. "Commence our landing run!"

 

With a single command, the formation of House Sovros ships shot forward, weapons quieting even as their thrusters flung them towards the planet at top speed. Fire peppered their sides as they disengaged, and one of the Sentinels erupted in smoke, only to emerge trailing the black plume but still airborne. The Empire had built things tough back then.

 

The ships only barely vibrated as they breached the atmosphere, the thin air providing little friction or obstacle. The fearless, brainwashed clone pilots pulled away to their designated landing zones, intent on the atmospheric factories and the key to victory over Kessel.

 

"Sir! We've detected a flare! It's...two miles from atmosphere factory 2! Looks like a rebel ship crashed. That's Captain Hoat'te's target. Shall I redirect him?"

 

"Negative. He is to proceed to his target."

 

"...Sir, Captain Hoat'te just changed course. He's headed for the ship."

 

Kelzin, teeth gritted but without a trace of surprise on his face, activated the comms.

 

"Jol you son of a kriffing-"

 

"Save it H'nabro! Glory to the Hoat'te line! Glory for the Sith!" The line cut.

 

Kelzin pounded the dash.

 

"Sir...what should we..."

 

"Leave him to it. Hoat'te's wife will shoot him herself when she finds out about this stunt, unless that's an important rebel he captures."

 

"And if it's an important rebel?"

 

"Then she'll congratulate him in public and slit his throat when they're alone. Focus on our own factory. Bring us in for a landing."

 

________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

The Sentinel-class shuttle, garishly marked Hoat'te's Legacy, touched down 100 yards from the crashed rebel ship, it's rear facing its target. The ramp lowered, and 10 zabraks, clad in green and gold armor, marched off in near mindless unison into the dusty terrain. Blaster rifles pointed towards the enemy vessel, they slowly approached.

Edited October 24, 2020 by Nok Morliss

[Krath Apothos]

Two clones dropped immediately, the first with a sizzling hole in his neck and the second with a blaster bolt through his left eye. A third stumbled as the crimson energy pinged twice off his breastplate before punching through and leaving a smoking hole in his gut.

 

The other two, to their credit, didn't panic. Flash-training and drills robbed them of their survival instinct, and they dropped to prone out of practice instead of fear. They returned fire, sending their own green blaster fire pocking into the wreck of the X-wing.

 

Unfortunately, a rigid, ingrained compulsion to follow orders left the clones with a significant weakness. Their commander. With orders to take her alive at all costs, including their own lives, they didn't aim to kill but just to scare her back behind her cover.

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

Aboard the Hoat'te's Legacy, Captain Hoat'te watched three of his clones dropped. A twi'lek, his heavily pierced lekku wrapped around a muscled, tattooed neck, his yellow eyes focused on the brief, fuzzy image of his prize's face as she mowed down his men.

 

"Just one rebel, and three die in seconds. Pathetic." He keyed into his comm. "Send out five of the shock troops. Flush her out of there."

 

He paused as he stared at the screen, his own clones returning fire.

 

"And ready my mount. I want to take her into custody personally."

 

____________________________________________________________________________________

 

Another five figures descended the ramp, the deeper thuds of their footfalls hinting at the tall, heavily armored humanoids that emerged. Decked out in the same green and gold gleaming plate as the zabrak troops, these tall figures might have gone unidentified had they not growled in anticipation of the violence. Wookiees, hairless by genetic design, and bred for equal parts obedience and ferocity. Each bore a heavy repeating blaster straight out of the clone wars, modified and gilded to match the opulent garb of the slave soldiers. The weight of the weapons didn't seem to register to them as they all broke into a sprint, moving to flank around the X-wing on each side and catch the rebel holdout in a pincer movement.

Edited November 4, 2020 by Nok Morliss

[Krath Apothos]

Across the asteroid, the blasters of Sovros soldiers spraying fire across the desolate landscape went silent. A single order crackled in their headsets.

 

Retreat.

 

_______________________________________________

 

A small freighter, the former property of the droid boss of Black Sun, cut through the dust-churned air. Inside, the autopilot mechanically gave repeated status updates to the lone neimoidian sitting at the helm. Nok barely paid attention. His focus was on the reports and orders being frantically relayed between the Sovros officers.

 

A full rout. The rebels had managed a full rout. Nok's fingers twitched as the implications of his worst case scenario unfolded before him. House Sovros would be cutting him out at minimum. Darth Zayira would be after him personally for this disgrace to her burgeoning reputation. Contractually Nok owed them nothing, but that would hardly matter for insecure heiress's vendetta. Plus, Nok had no spice to guarantee his hold on Mon Cal, and if the reports were accurate his would-be drug lord had been in the vicinity of several large explosions and hadn't emerged.

 

"Approaching warehouse. Setting down," the autopilots tinny voice rattled off emotionlessly.

 

______________________________________________

 

"You're still alive..."

 

Nok stared down at what remained of Shimsinblimp.

 

It was borderline miraculous that the tough spice jacker was still breathing. His pain, muted by his weakness and flickering consciousness, stood out to Nok as a deep, dull thrum. Staring down at him, Nok clenched his fists. His gray-green skin tightened and paled as pure wrath flooded his carefully controlled demeanor.

 

Nok hated. He hated like he had never hated before. This failure...this catastrophe...how dare these idealistic, subservient, moronic...rebels ruin his plan? For what? To save a scummy asteroid like Kessel? They'd fought and died for this garbage scow of a world? This victory was worth the lives they'd tossed away to get it? It was irrational. It was ignorant. It was stupid. And that stupidity had cost Nok. Their suicidal, insecure need to believe in a fantasy and go out in a blaze of glory because they couldn't handle reality had put Nok's plan in jeopardy.

 

The rubble rattled as Nok's pure bile poured out of him and churned the Dark Side.

 

Then he was in control again. The hate did not leave or diminish, but his rationality took the controls back. It was the way of the universe that fools hindered the intelligent. It was childish to think otherwise.

 

Nok channeled his hate, lightly touched the Force, and lifted the prostrate, mutilated troig.

 

"You represent a significant investment. Survive if you can."

[Krath Apothos]

On 11/20/2020 at 11:51 AM, Shimsinblimp said:

“The Mandalorians lay in ambush. Shim . . .” he paused, gritting his teeth against the surge of loss. For the first time, Blimp was truly alone. “Their bodies.” he hissed, “and whatever spice you can salvage.”

 

The agony of Blimp echoed out from him with clarity as he regained consciousness. His pain was a harmony to Nok's senses, the Dark Side quivering to the pulses like the strings of a musical instrument. Physical pain, loss, rage...and hatred. Clear, cold, cutting hatred. It prickled like needles on Nok's skin. He sucked in a breath, half out of shock and half out of desire to taste the sensation.

 

It was...galvanizing.

 

Nok carefully floated the body of the mutilated troig to his borrowed ship, before reemerging to begin lifting and looting the battlefield for corpses and spice. It was quiet, tedious work. While Nok's "vision" using the eddies of dark emotion within the Dark Side allowed him to see objects and through them, sensing the physical world in a way the sighted couldn't fully imagine, it did nothing for color or light. The wording that was no doubt painted on the sides of containers were invisible to him, too shallow a difference in height for him to distinguish.

 

Then something caught his attention. One of the containers nearby distorted the echoes of the Dark Side as they touched it. It was so minor Nok wouldn't have noticed had he not been paying close attention. It felt like...pain...and death. The container itself wasn't in pain, as ridiculous as that would have been in. It was as if Nok was sensing something from a great distance, something faint yet consistent.

 

He sank deeper into the ripples and churning of the Force, the taint of that dark echo filling his thoughts.

 

Pain...yes...the pain of muscles worked past exhaustion...the pain of blows and electroshocks...over and over...

 

And death...a brief spike of fear, then despair, and then death, a final explosion of darkness that snuffed the life engulfed in it.

 

This was spice, Nok was sure of it. What else could have such a lingering fingerprint on it? The man...men?...who had mined this spice had been overworked and tortured when they had. And then they'd died violently, terrified and hopeless.

 

And Nok could sense it.

 

As he expanded his awareness, he became aware of other, tiny echoes on other containers. None were as insistent as the first, but all were present. Suppressed rage...hope that turned to pain after years of darkness...despair...fear... It was all there. It was soaked into the very stone of the world, generations of agonies poisoning the ground and seeping into the air.

 

The corpses were similar. Their pain and violent murders wafted around them like an afterthought. Had this one been scared when she'd died? No...furious. This other one had suffered, his body burning before giving up the fight.

 

Nok focused his work on the containers that bore the greatest agony, and on the corpses. Soon enough, he was finished, and the stolen ship of Black Sun's lord rose into the sky and shot out towards the stars.