Desperate Measures/Part 10

Lygrot's wings caught a gust of wind that blew him over a parapet and onto one of the black stone ramparts. Wiping the rain from his face with one clawed hand, he studied the castle from this angle, calling on the Force to sharpen his hearing and vision. His anger fed his power, and the every nook and cranny of the castle below was laid bare before his searching gaze.

Hatred fueled the dark side, and hatred Lygrot had in abundance. Hatred for his fellow Acolytes—Xargo, the brainless brute; Sanno, who might have been a formidable Sith had he spent half the time doing that he spent conniving; Mur Drok, who imagined he could rise to lordship by playing the rational mediator rather than seizing initiative and truly leading; and above all Maalt Eilan, who believed himself Kai Latra's right hand and majordomo, and simply could not conceive of a world in which everyone else didn't believe it too. Hatred for the Jedi, too—they should have been altered at once, or at least tortured beyond the capacity for flight, and would have been, had Lygrot had his way. But Lord Latra had not gotten around to them, and now, through Xargo's incompetence, they might escape. Lygrot was still not convinced they hadn't escaped, and perhaps stolen blasters from the Zygerrians. Slavers had their uses, but trusting their obedience was a fool's mistake that Mur Drok insisted on making.

Why, then, was Lygrot out here in the rain? He might have flown back to the reception chamber and wrung the truth out of the squealing Zygerrian slime…except that some small, reptilian part of his mind insisted there was more going on. In that searing kiln of hate, the dark side baked awareness into him.

And so he scoured the lower levels, watching the blood raptors snarl and slam against one another in the ruined courtyard they had made their pen. A trio of Ugnaughts plodded through the rain in another causeway, stepping around puddles where the castle's stones had cracked. There was a flicker of lightning, and Lygrot's eyes rose, as if of their own volition, to the bell tower. The bell had long since fallen silent, and yet Lygrot imagined its thundering knell sounding an alarm just for him…

His comlink beeped, and he drew it with a snarl. "Who is it?"

"I…I need…to speak to…a Sith! Quickly!"

"Who are you?"

"I'm…Justiciar Brant…Justiciar Brant of Bitter End."

Lygrot bared his fangs as if he might send the threat across the comm waves. "I am Lygrot, Acolyte to Lord Kai Latra, Disciple of the Sith. How dare you contact me on this frequency, worm?"

"I'm sorry, Lord…I got redirected…I'm using the Executor's comm and—"

"Put the Executor on. Now."

"I can't, Lord! He's…they're dead!  Everyone's dead!"

Lygrot turned away from the bell tower, looking out over the jagged terrain toward the lights of Bitter End in the distance. "Explain, quickly."

"I was out on harbor patrol, and I got an emergency alert. I got back to headquarters and…they're all dead, my lord!  The Executor, the deputies, it's gotta be a dozen justiciars…everybody's dead!"

"How were they killed?"

"I-I don't know…"

"You're a justiciar, aren't you?" Lygrot sneered. "Guess."

"There's a lot of blood, my lord…I th-think that's Taro, but somebody cut his h-head off. And the Executor…Grofunjun save me, I think he's been…t-tortured, my lord.  He's real messed up.  There's so much blood…"

Lygrot cut the link, thinking. Slaughter of that nature was not typical of Jedi; on the battlefields of Taanab, they had struck down Sith soldiers with a finesse that was as artful as it was efficient. And even if Jedi had seen fit to cut down every justiciar in Bitter End, torture was not their way. There were many reasons the masses of Bitter End might rise up against the Executor of Justice and his justiciars, but Lygrot could not believe it of them this day, when the bell had tolled and the blood raptors soared in the moonless skies over the Palace of Happiness. En masse even the weak could become dangerous, but their cowardice kept them complacent.

Lygrot's conscious mind resisted the inevitable realization, but the dark side would not be ignored and forced the gravity of it upon him: Xargo and Mur had likely been right. Unfathomable as it might be, intruders had dared to assail his master's castle.

He flexed his wings, but his comlink vibrated in his hand. "What?"

"S-s-sir…it's Justiciar Br-Brant…"

"What do you want?"

"S-sir, the spaceport just c-called…we have a sh-ship inbound—"

"The Zygerrians are making a delivery."

"It's not the Zygerrians, sir. It's not responding to their hailing or ours."

"Shoot it down, then."

"M-my lord, we don't have anyone left who's tr-trained on the artillery…"

Lygrot cut the link again in disgust. He glanced at the city lights, but saw nothing above ground level, even when he raised his face to the rain and the clouds above. If there were intruders, there was still time before their reinforcements arrived. Lygrot turned back to the castle, and with a bound and a flap of his powerful wings he was on the spire of a tower; his claws splintered the slate roof tiles and held him as he swept the battlements with his eyes, hunting with the Force. And as the Force drew his attention back to the bell tower, he saw the faint hint of movement along stones that should have been still…

His lips were still peeling back from his fangs in a triumphant grin when his comlink vibrated a third time and the grin became a glower. "What?!"

"There's no need to get testy," Maalt Eilan replied icily. "I merely sought your assurances that the blood raptors didn't get out of hand. Our friends down in Bitter End do get so infernally whiny when—"

"I don't have time for you," Lygrot spat. "There are intruders in the castle."

He threw the comlink away, not wanting the distraction as he soared over the rain-slicked stone. Curving into a draft to add speed, he flapped his wings for altitude and flexed his claws. He could see them now that he drew closer, though they had camouflaged themselves well—dark-garbed figures scaling ropes toward the belfry. They seemed to sense his approach, because he felt their sudden alarm in the Force; Lygrot grinned as their fear filled him with strength.

He swung his claws, but the figure for whom he was aiming reacted with extraordinary reflexes, fast-roping down below range. Too close to reorient and snatch the being by its head, Lygrot clawed for the rope instead, but it did not part beneath his claws; it was a cable of some hardy material, and he hissed, squeezing his chafed claws into a fist. Pain stoked his anger and the dark side drew his eyes up even as he soared out and around for another pass. Another figure was just at the peak of its climb, hoisting itself up onto one of the gargoyles whose mouth vomited a spout of acid rainwater.

He flapped hard and came in with a kick. Each curved claw on his toes was the size of a Human's fist, and simply landing the kick could disembowel most beings even without the little spin on the ankle at which he had come so adept; once, practicing a spinning kick, he had hacked an Aleena cleanly in half. The infiltrator dodged aside, though, dancing nimbly across the angled spire despite the rain, and Lygrot had to twist in midair and dig his claws in so he did not go soaring off the other end of the tower. The infiltrator was Humanoid and powerfully built for one of them, but as he rose Lygrot still dwarfed him by a head or more. The man—for so his build suggested, though all of his face was masked save his cold eyes—raised his fists as if to fight hand to hand.

Lesser beings often fled from the very sight of him, and Lygrot was so pleasantly surprised he almost took the man up on the challenge. But there came a faint mechanical whizzzzz, and with a glance he saw a cable nearby trembling as another intruder mounted the tower. He strode over to kick the grappling hook free.

At once the other man closed in a flurry of hand techniques. Snarling, Lygrot countered with powerful blows, but the Humanoid parried rather than trying to block and struck Lygrot's ribs. Adapting, Lygrot stabbed forward, his clawed fingers straightened into a spear, but the infiltrator ducked and hit him with a palm strike that sent him staggering back.

Lygrot blinked, growling to ward off a follow-up attack but reassessing quickly. No Human hit that hard; clearly the being deserved his full attention. He came in again, slashing with his claws, swiping with the spikes on his forearms and kicking with the spikes on his legs and the claws on his toes, and now the Humanoid gave ground, not daring to counterattack. Lygrot had him backed almost to the edge of the bell tower when he sensed danger behind and knew a second infiltrator had mounted the roof.

He spun into a punch, the Force guiding his blow with unerring accuracy…and the woman caught it. With both hands, it was true, and her heels kicked up a spray of water as she slid back, her elbows buckling as her arms strained under the blow, but Lygrot still stared in shock. He could not remember the last time a being other than Mur Drok had stopped one of his blows cold. Snarling, he swung into an uppercut, but the woman threw his blocked hand out and skipped to the side, and Lygrot overswung, off balance. She pushed his uppercut farther out and landed two stinging blows to the side of his face.

Lygrot flapped his wings, and the buffet of air unbalanced her even as it righted him. As she wobbled, he flattened her to the angled roof with a clothesline blow, and she lay there groaning. Lygrot raised a clawed foot for a stomp to finish her, but there was a whipcrack and a cord lashed around his neck, pulling him away from her. He staggered once, flapped his wings for balance, then seized the cord and jerked. The first intruder came flying to meet his claws, but he was suddenly grabbed from behind. As the first intruder hit the ground, Lygrot grabbed the attacker off his back and pitched her off the tower.

"Rhyna!" a voice cried; more infiltrators were still climbing. One of the climbers kicked off the wall, triggering his ascension device to give back more slack so he could launch wide into space; Lygrot watched in astonishment as the man reached out an arm and caught Rhyna as she plummeted toward the black stone below, then landed back against the wall, Rhyna's arms wrapped around his neck, and started to ascend again.

The next thing Lygrot knew was sharp pain; the first intruder had landed at his feet but, spared disembowelment, had seized the moment of the Sith Acolyte's distraction and kicked his knee. The joint strained without breaking, but Lygrot still roared and flinched, and the intruder kicked him in the hip to off-balance him. From behind, the woman he had clotheslined was obviously not as dazed as she had appeared either, because she lurched up and pushed him into space.

Lygrot's wings caught him and brought him soaring back to the peak of the tower. He seized it with one hand and roared downward like one more beast carved into the stone. But this beast was alive, and the Force demanded retribution against these creatures that had dared attack him. He could see four of them on the roof now, and more still climbing. It was time to end this game.

He leapt, and the Force brought him crashing down. They scattered away from his punch, but there was no counterattack this time; the Force of his blow shattered the slate tiles into dust and cracked the reinforced ceiling. Lygrot heard a dull dooooooong as chunks of stone impacted the bell in the belfry below. He rose into a palm strike at the nearest invader, who retreated but still took enough of the blow for his feet to leave the ground; he skidded to the edge of the roof, but one of his comrades snatched him back from the brink.

Lygrot raised his hands, and the dark side seized them both. They rose from the tower as their rib cages caved in, but Lygrot lost his grip on them when pain raced up his back. Crying out even as he felt blood leaking out to join the rainwater, he whirled to find another of the attackers already swinging her short sword for another blow. Lygrot twitched his face back out of her reach, but she reversed suddenly into a downstroke, pressing her free hand to the hilt for extra leverage, and got enough momentum to shear off one of the spines on Lygrot's forearm.

He screamed, and in his fury the Force slapped her back enough to push her killing stroke out of range of his throat. There was a faint hum of the Force about her—about all of them, he realized belatedly. They none of them were Sith, nor even Jedi, but sharp enough to be above normal, and Lygrot saw in the woman's gleaming black eyes that she was a cut about even their average.

She had to die first.

He started toward her, then turned to catch a knife thrown at his back; he snatched it from the air, tossed it into his other hand, threw it, and completed his spin to face the woman, catching her strike as he heard a cry of pain from behind him. The woman gouged for his eyes, but he planted a hand on her shoulder to tear her arm off.

Grabbing his wrist, she dropped all her weight the way he had been pulling, and their combined momentum took them both off the edge. He simply let her go as he flapped his wings to fly back to the roof, but she caught one of the trailing ascension cables, wrapped her legs to brake, and began to climb by hand. Lygrot hovered in the air, stunned, and two of her comrades raced to the rope, hauling her up faster. They returned to its slick surface at the same time.

A Force swat blew one of her helpers up the spire and down the other side. The second attacked with paired swords, but Lygrot caught his wrists and threw the man up and over his head, letting him obstruct the others behind him. The black-eyed woman shifted her short sword to a defensive grip and tensed her legs, but Lygrot was through playing games; he drew the lightsaber from his belt, and the rain sizzled on the scarlet blade. He swung.

She blocked—the sword stopped his blade. He could not understand, but he was too busy parrying her retaliatory strike to puzzle it out. He battered her back; she was stronger than a Human too, but still no match for him. She retreated, one of her comrades behind her but unable to get past her, and Lygrot was going to drive them both off the roof before he finished the rest…

Then she darted sideways, skipping up the angled roof, and flipped over Lygrot's cut, landing behind him. She dodged his whirling strike, shunted his stab to the side…and then there was pain, awful pain. A blade ripped through the patagium of his right wing and he screamed; it tore cleanly through and nearly severed the bone as well. He spun into a blind strike that missed by a meter, roaring again and again; he flapped his wings experimentally and nearly passed out. He had to tuck them both in close to his body.

The man who had struck him had lost part of his mask; his damp white hair fluttered in the wind, and his eyes contorted to betray the sarcastic smile the rest of his mask still concealed. "Watch your step, my lord. It's a long way down."

Lygrot looked around. On one side the white-haired man, wielding a two-handed sword; on the other side, the black-eyed woman with the short sword, analyzing him for an opening. Perched on a gargoyle another man, one hand clutching his bleeding shoulder but the other holding a throwing knife. Behind him, climbing the spire, more. And around the corner, still more. Below, hard stone that would burst even his tough skin and hardy bones.

Lygrot called on the dark side, letting his pain and rage fuel his power, letting the fire rip through him until he thought the very rain might evaporate against his skin. Taking his lightsaber in both hands, he raised it to guard and bared his fangs. "Come on, then!"

They came.