Who You Are in the Dark/Part 4

Creeping forward through the underbrush, the rented speeder left behind and camouflaged with dropped tree branches, Tirien followed the Force to a bluff overlooking a rocky valley. Removed from the life signs in Salik City, the dark side was easier to sense here. Dropping to a crouch, Tirien crept to the edge of the bluff, gesturing for Narasi. She followed, still taking deep breaths through her nose and exhaling through her mouth. He could sense the Flameout's fast-onset hangover hadn't left her, but he was more concerned about her self-castigation.

"Focus, Narasi," he breathed.

She nodded, and Tirien turned his eyes back down. Below, a collection of slaves operated mining equipment under the gaze of a handful of guards; Tirien saw no Humans among the slaves, and few non-Humans among the guards. The group had dug down a space the size of ten Salik City blocks; the sizzle of laser borer beams reached his ears even from this distance. Tirien wasn't sure any real structure had ever been there, but he saw tunnels leading below the surface.

"What are they doing?" Narasi whispered.

"Use the Force to sharpen your sight," Tirien advised. "Fix your eyes on something and concentrate."

He felt her reach into the Force as she squinted. As Tirien amplified his own vision, the slaves and their guards come into sharp relief. Tirien saw stun batons and blasters on the guards' belts, but only shock whips in their hands. There had to be over a hundred slaves, but only a dozen guards.

Tirien was wondering whether he and Narasi together could kill all the guards before they could raise the alarm when movement caught his eye. He focused and saw a man wearing black and gray stride out of one tunnel, his face concealed by a mask over his mouth and a hood that shadowed the rest of his features. He wore black armor over his chest, with bracers on his forearms and greaves on his legs, and a gray cloak affixed to the raised collar of his breastplate. There was a lightsaber on his hip.

"Who's that?" Narasi asked.

Before Tirien could answer, the man turned in response to some signal. He approached a guard and a slave; Tirien could see them both gesticulating. Before he could enhance his hearing enough to catch the conversation, the dark sider raised one hand. The slave rose from the ground, flailing and clutching his throat. Drawing his red-bladed lightsaber, the dark sider pulled him in range and impaled him through the heart. Letting the corpse drop to the ground, he deactivated his blade.

Narasi hissed in outrage. As if on cue, the dark sider paused, then turned his hooded face their way. Narasi started to move back, but Tirien hissed, "Freeze!"

They remained motionless, Tirien wishing he had thought to apply camouflage paint to his blue face. It was late afternoon, but he couldn't count on the shadows to veil them completely. The hooded figure stared in their direction for a moment until a faint call drew his attention. The moment he turned away, Tirien scooted back and towed Narasi with him.

Narasi blew out a breath. "Who was that?"

"One of Aresh's Dark Vanguard," Tirien answered. "We'll need to find another way around."

"You…" Narasi frowned. "Can't you beat him, Master?"

"Maybe," Tirien said. "The gray cloaks are the lowest ranks, but they're still deadly. And even if I can, you won't be able to kill all those guards by yourself.  Not without raising the alarm.  We're going around."

As they picked their way down the far side of the bluff, careful not to disturb the brush or frighten any wildlife, Tirien thought it over. It was Aresh, then; he had beaten the Council of Five to whatever they were looking for here, if there was anything to find. Tirien had never personally tangled with the Dark Vanguard, but he knew their reputation. That Aresh had spared one of his elite with the Empire and the Republic pressing his territory from both sides suggested the Sith Lord was confident of finding something on Toprawa.

"There?" Narasi suggested, pointing out a hole in an opposing cliff face.

Tirien stretched out with the Force, trying to follow it down the tunnel. He sensed a black spot in the Force, a stain of darkness. "No good. The dark side's strong there.  The last thing we need is to walk into an ambush in close quarters."

The moon was rising by the time they picked their way down, the warm arm becoming fetid and the ground growing softer beneath their boots, to a swath of close-grown trees with thin trunks and drooping boughs. From within the thicket something gave a gargling bass groan; there was an answering, higher-pitched squawk of distress, which cut off abruptly.

"In there?" Narasi asked.

Tirien pointed. Where the moonlight filtered through the trees, it highlighted an overhanging ridge of rock. "There may be a cave system underneath."

"There may be?"

Tirien led the way without waiting for her to argue further, loosening his blaster in its holster and handing Narasi back her lightsaber. Eventually the soil turned to mud, and Tirien's heel caused a whole bank to give way. Riding the mudslide down, he landed on his feet in the swamp and was pleased to discover the stinking water didn't come high enough to overflow his boots. Narasi plopped into the water behind him with a grumble.

They sloshed their way forward, sticking to patches of moonlight when possible. A python as big around as Narasi's waist gave them a curious hiss from a tree which was bending under its weight; Tirien gave it a touch of the Force until it lost interest and turned to swallow a surprised bird whole instead.

Beneath the overhang the reek of rot and decay thickened, and even amplifying his senses did little to aid Tirien's vision. Stretching out cautiously to his surroundings and feeling no sentients in the immediate area, he drew his lightsaber from beneath his vest and activated the blade. The green light illuminated the murky water ahead and sent a cloud of bats flapping past overhead.

"Do you think it leads into what they're excavating?" Narasi asked.

"There's a breeze, so it's worth a try," Tirien replied. "And I think we can be sure they didn't come this way."

"Because they're not as du…uhvoted as us?" Narasi caught herself.

Tirien chuckled once as they followed twists and turns deeper into the cave, mostly because he was glad to see her recovering her normal disposition. Stealth might get them a good ways behind Aresh's lines, but with the Dark Vanguard present only enormously good fortune would keep this mission from ending in bloodshed, and he could not have Narasi distracted in the face of threats like that.

As they rounded another corner, a flicker of movement drew Tirien's eye a second before there was a splash of water. He followed the ripples from the splash point until a second snap-hiss echoed through the cave and the walls were bathed in blue light. Narasi clenched her lightsaber in both hands.

"What was that?!"

"I don't know."

"Is there something…alive in here?"

"It's a swamp cave, it's filled with things that are alive," Tirien replied. "Stretch out with your feelings, Narasi."

He could feel her obey, and he did likewise as they moved on. There was life everywhere—before them, behind them, and even above and below. He hoped the cave system would take them up rather than down. He felt predatory instincts inside the cave and tried to dissuade them as he had the python. The water deepened as they went on, flooding into his boots after all, under it was above his knees.

"If we have to fight one of the Dark Vanguard," Narasi whispered, "do you want me to help you?"

He shook his head. "Not unless I ask you to. You're getting better, Narasi, but you're not there yet.  These people are lethal."

She sighed, so he added, "Patience, Narasi. It's not a contest."

"Why is everyone so afraid of them?" she demanded as they rounded yet another bend. The sounds of the swamp had faded entirely. "People talk about them like they're a whole group full of Darth Vandak."

"They're deadly enough that the Empire hasn't overrun Aresh yet. There are rumors," Tirien admitted. "Of how Aresh built up a whole group of them, how he trains them. Half of it's probably propaganda from Aresh himself, but if any of it is true…"

He fell silent as Narasi started. "Something just moved past my leg!"

Tirien angled his blade down, but they might have been walking in soup for how well the lightsaber's glow illuminated the depths. As Narasi spread out, blade held to guard, Tirien reached into the Force. He felt a mix of predation and fear, the feeling of a dangerous animal cornered.

"Narasi, don't make any sudden—"

She screamed, and Tirien turned in time to see the tip of a tentacle poke out of the water, wrapped around Narasi's leg to the thigh. She swung on reflex, but her blade sizzled out as it hit the water. The next second the tentacle tugged, and Narasi vanished beneath the water.

"Narasi!" He caught himself from the reflex to plunge his own blade into the water, forcing himself to remain calm. He could feel Narasi's panic beneath the muck, and he saw one of her boots kick out briefly, but he reached past that toward the violent, non-sentient brain at work somewhere in the water. It refused to relax, so he gritted his teeth and gave it a sharp, sudden prod of fear instead.

As he had hoped, it panicked, thrashing its tentacles, and Narasi broke free. Dripping wet and gasping, she threw herself to her feet. She held her blade out, but nothing happened.

"It won't work!"

"The water shorted it. Hold still and let me—"

Three tentacles splashed out of the water this time, and a slit-pupiled eye on a stalk popped up as well; the pupil doubled in size as it spotted them. One of the tentacles speared toward Tirien, but he cut it off. As he felt the creature's pain, another of its tentacles caught Narasi around the waist. Her lightsaber still shorted out, she hit the tentacle with the dead hilt. As it dragged her toward itself, she reached for her other weapons, but the tentacle had them pinned to her body.

The water was too thick to slosh toward her in time, so Tirien switched his lightsaber to his left hand and drew his own blaster. As he was taking aim, the other tentacle caught his hand around the lightsaber hilt, jerking him forward so he almost took of his own leg with the blade.

Narasi was having no luck digging in her heels into the mud at the bottom of the water, and Tirien's blade was about to be shorted out as well; there was nothing for it. Calling on the Force to steady his hand, he aimed down the channel and shot the thing in the eye.

Its agony and terror radiated out through the Force, but it let them both go. As soon as her belt was free, Narasi drew one of her knives and cut half the tentacle off before it could retract.

"Enough!" Tirien barked as she drew back her hand for another cut.

"Master, it's gonna eat us!"

"I don't think it's going to be eating anyone now," Tirien said; he could feel the thing slithering off deeper into the cave as fast as its remaining tentacles would carry it, leaving only the scent of burned flesh and the floating pieces of tentacle behind. Much as it felt wrong to leave a living thing so mutilated, there was no justification for killing it in cold blood as it fled, either.

Tirien holstered his blaster and held his blade toward Narasi, checking her over. "You all right?"

"Yeah, I just…eugh!" She spotted a short leech attached to one of her bare arms and made to poke it with her knife.

Tirien caught her by the wrist. "We kill or hurt when he have to, not because it's convenient. Pay attention."

He held his palm over the leech, focusing the Force. Not hungry, he told it. ''Do not want. Let go.'' Eventually it believed him and dropped off into the water.

"See?" he said.

Narasi frowned. "So we save it so it can eat somebody else?"

"We save it so it can do what nature tells it to do," Tirien corrected. Sweat had plastered his hair to his forehead and his shirt to his chest, and Narasi was still dripping water, but he looked at her intently. "We're Jedi in a war with the Sith, we'll have enough killing to do in our lives. The more you kill, the easier it gets, and the easier it is for the dark side to slip in.  Life creates the Force, Narasi.  Sometimes we have to kill to save lives, but we wound the Force when we kill without real need."

She frowned thoughtfully, but nodded. "Yes Master."

He led the way on; when they came to a fork in the tunnel, he turned the way that the dark side seemed stronger. The water level started to drop again; Tirien felt it when new water stopped slopping into his boots and down his pant legs. Narasi tapped the activation stud on her lightsaber without effect. "How long will it take?"

"To recharge? Another minute or two, maybe.  Longer to clean, though," he added.

Narasi examined the weapon more carefully in the light of Tirien's blade and groaned as she saw the black char around the emitter. Clipping the weapon to her belt, she asked, "What was that thing, Master?"

"I'm not sure, but I have a guess," he admitted. "If I'm right, they usually live in places with a lot of rot and decayed matter—sewers mostly. They call them 'garbage monsters', but obviously that's not the real name.  Di–something."

"Dianoga," a cold voice supplied.

Tirien brought his blade to guard just as ruby light filled the tunnel ahead of them. The bloodshine glow threw a Dark Vanguardian into relief where the water met the mossy rock ground. Two soldiers with blasters flanked him on either side. Narasi took her lightsaber in hand, but it still wouldn't activate, and all four blasters fixed on her.

"You killed our basement door guard," the Vanguardian said. "Now surrender, Jedi, or your Padawan dies."

Tirien briefly calculated, but he could not get in front of Narasi in time to protect her. Even if he could, he could not fend off four shooters and a Dark Jedi at once.

One of the guards fired a shot that missed Narasi by centimeters, and the Vanguardian warned, "Last chance."

Sighing, Tirien raised his hands and closed down his lightsaber, leaving only the ruby glow of the Dark Jedi's blade.